Posted by Grant Headifen on July 8, 2010 under About NauticEd, Bareboat Charter, Skipper, Videos and photos | 
I get this message below all the time from people that I know or meet. Here’s one I got this morning through my Linkedin account.
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Hey Grant,
Long time no see. Grant, I’m thinking about learning to sail. Your sailing vacations all over the world have inspired me. What do I do, where do I start, can I buy you a beer some time and get some advice from you.
Mark.
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Here’s my reply this morning
Mark,
Would be good to catch up. In the meantime – here’s my advice. Obviously I’m a little biased here but you should really start with one of my online theory classes. I’d recommend the NauticEd Skipper Sailing course at http://www.nauticed.org/course/view/skipper. That will give you a good solid knowledge of what you need to know when starting out on a learn to sail quest.
Skipper Sailing Course
The next thing I would recommend is to spend ¼ million dollars on a boat – nah just kidding. Go join our local yacht club and do some racing. Almost every yacht club is begging for members to be crew on their boats. A note on their pin up board that you want to crew will attract multiple phone calls to you. Also just call their office and ask what you should do. But I guarantee that they will be more than happy to have you out there. Yacht clubs appear old and stodgy on the out side but once you get inside there are dozens of skippers that are keen to help out.
Whether or not you’re into yacht racing, racing is the absolute best way to learn fast through immersion and you can rack up the experience fast. By taking the skipper course you’ll have the theory knowledge to know what you’re doing on the boat. Now you just need to burn it into your brain with the practical sailing skills.
Log all your yacht club time in our free online logbook as it counts towards your sailing certification rank.
Another thing you can do is to go to the local sailing school. In Austin it is the Texas Sailing Academy. They teach a 2 weekend long basic introduction to sailing and will give you hands on training. Just make sure that whatever school you go to that they don’t put too many people on the boat at one time. It waters down your practical experience. Some schools do this to keep the cost down but if you’re there to learn to sail then you’re there to learn to sail not water it down with a cheap course. With Sailing courses you get what you pay for.
The other ways to gain practical sailing experience is to catch up with friends who have a sailboat. Funny enough but sailboat owners are almost desperate to have some one call them and say “would you like to come sailing with me on your boat this weekend”? But people learning to sail are always too embarrassed to ask – so sailboats tend to sit in the slip month after month. So just ask.
If your goal is to take a sailing vacation then I’d also recommend aiming to reach our Bareboat Charter Master Rank. Most worldwide charter companies accept our certification. Here’s a video explaining that.
http://www.nauticed.org/faq_sailing_certification/
Sailing vacations are the way to go. They’re relatively inexpensive and you get to go to some awesome places. As you know, every year we gather our friends and go somewhere. This year we’re chartering three boats with The Moorings South Pacific in Tonga. I was up there a few months back and wow – what an incredible place. By the time we get there next month the place is supposed to be teeming with whales.
Let me know if there is any way I can help out.
Cheers
Grant
Posted by Grant Headifen on April 17, 2010 under About NauticEd, Skipper, Videos and photos |
This is day 3 of 6 in your introduction to NauticEd
Today we’ll discuss why and how to fill out your free online boating resume and our free iPhone application which lets you update your boating resume on the fly. We’ve created a helpful Sailing Experience Video to assist in filling out this portion of your profile.
Why fill out your online boating Resume?
Pilots record their flight time in a logbook because it is an absolute must for determining the potential competency of the pilot. The United States Coast Guard and most other country’s coast guard or maritime agencies require a person to document their practical time on the water for professional boating licenses. Yet, in reality few if any sailors document their time in a paper logbook. Practically, it’s just not done.
Charter companies, however, when determining if they will charter a boat to you, will ask sailors every time for a sailing resume and a list of practical experience to ascertain the worthiness of the sailor – and rightly so. Sailors typically scramble to determine their sailing experience and often misquote real experience due to lack of documentation.
Sailors deserve to be recognized for their experience. There is no existing certification that recognizes this because of the previous lack of practicality in logging time on paper.
Times have changed and NauticEd has met the challenge to recognize sailors for their achievements.
NauticEd’s sailing certification uses real practical experience a sailor has achieved to determine levels with each rank. From yesterdays’ email you would have discovered that:
- 10 days = Level I
- 25 days = Level II
- 50 days = level III
- 100 days = Level IV
- 200 days = Level V
Thus each time you update your boating resume, you raise in level. This gives you more credibility with charter companies when looking to take a sailing vacation. Plus, with the push of a button you can print out your resume for review by a charter company. And even better than that, you can simply give a charter company your logbook code and they can review your sailing certification directly online themselves when they go to http://www.nauticed.org/student_verification
Filling out your Sailing Resume
We’ve noticed that you’ve already started filling out your resume. Congratulations. We now want to encourage you to fill it out as completely and accurately as possible so that you gain the maximum benefit from the experience Levels.
Using your IPhone or Facebook
Now this is really cool, after a days sailing you can simply boot up your iphone, run the FREE NauticEd application, hit one button and viola – you’ve logged your day out on the water. Alternatively, you can log any experience past or present via your Facebook page by going to http://aps.facebook.com/nauticed
It’s that simple and easy.
Login to NauticEd Sailing School and visit your experience tab on NauticEd now and complete your boating history. It’s FREE!
Tomorrow well discuss the list of courses available at NauticEd.
Posted by Grant Headifen on April 16, 2010 under About NauticEd, Bareboat Charter, Skipper, Videos and photos |
We produced this video to help you in filling out your NauticEd Sailing Logbook.
All yacht charter sailing companies require you to fill out a sailing logbook or resume when you take a sailing vacation. NauticEd sailing school makes it easy with a free online sailing logbook. Watch this sailing video to learn how to fill out your sailing logbook. If you’re learning to sail, then the NauticEd Sailing School sailing certification with the sailing logbook is what you need to show yacht charter sailing companies that you are a competent sailor.
View the Video NauticEd Sailing Experience Logbook
Posted by Grant Headifen on January 21, 2010 under About NauticEd, Bareboat Charter, Skipper, Videos and photos |
Annapolis Bay Charters becomes NauticEd’s first Flag Ship Practical Sailing School
NauticEd announced today that the 30 year old and well respected Charter Sailing Company, Annapolis Bay Charters, would become it’s first Flag Ship Practical Training Sailing School.
To date, NauticEd has successfully established itself as The World’s Most Advanced Online Sailing School and provides 12 online sailing courses and clinics helping students learn to sail – on the theory side. Now with Annapolis Bay Charters joining the NauticEd team, students can learn practical skills alligned to the theory courses offered by NauticEd.
Scott Farquharson, Owner of Annapolis Bay Charters, says that this is an obvious alliance. “We’re allowing NauticEd to take care of the theory while we concentrate on teaching the practical sailing skills on our modern fleet of sailboats. We wanted to bring a high-tech, high-touch approach to teaching our students.” Annapolis Bay Charters will be offering a four-day intensive Bareboat Charter Master practical training sailing course. Students must complete the theory requirements for NauticEd’s Bareboat Charter Master Rank online prior to the beginning of the school. “If you’re taking out a $300,000 yacht on a sailing charter vacation, you’d better know what you’re doing,” says Scott. “This course, combined with the NauticEd theory sailing courses, will get you there under the proper standards and quality deserving of such ventures.”
Practical sail training classes will be conducted on modern 37 to 40 foot, fully appointed yachts matching the requirements that anyone will find when chartering a sailboat anywhere in the world. Annapolis Bay Charters will also offer a one-day NauticEd Skipper Practical Proficiency Checkout. This is designed for students who are already proficient at sailing but want a final tune up and the Practical Skipper Proficiency Stamp on their NauticEd Sailing Certification.
NauticEd online sailing school has long promoted that its students should get on the water training and experience as soon as possible after taking their theory sailing courses and recommendeds various hands-on-schools on it’s website at http://www.nauticed.org. With the new Flagship concept, NauticEd students will be guided through the practical training closely associated with the theory teachings. NauticEd’s sailing courses are self paced online classes whereby the student can learn and test out on their own schedule, suiting the busy lifestyle of people today.
NauticEd’s practical training and experience system works as such: Students, after passing their online sailing courses, can be trained from novice through Skippering their own boat in near coastal waters to Bareboat Charter Master. With the Bareboat Charter Master Rank the student is expected to have enough skills to safely charter a sailboat on a charter sailing vacation. The Practical training sailing schools will “sign off” on the student’s proficiency and a verification stamp will be automatically added to the student’s NauticEd Sailing Certificate. NauticEd developed the web based technology to allow an instructor to log into the student’s profile and click a button indicating to which level the student is now practically proficient. “By the time the student arrives home, their online and downloadable sailing certificate will reflect their new practical proficiency level” says Grant Headifen President and Founder of the NauticEd sailing school.
The NauticEd sailing certification also contains information about the student’s self logged practical sailing experience. This gives charter companies the essential knowledge they need to ascertain the skill level of a charterer prior to accepting the booking. NauticEd provides an online logbook free of charge to it’s students. Students log their past and on-going practical sailing experience through NauticEd’s website and through a free iPhone sailing app available online from Apple iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nauticed/id326119851?mt=8. Headifen interviewed dozens of charter sailing companies prior to developing the Bareboat Charter Master Rank sailing certification. The conversations resulted in ascertaining that students should have logged a minimum of 50 sailing days experience before reaching charter level competency. The Bareboat Charter Master Rank requires this 50 day level in addition to passing the NauticEd Skipper, Maneuvering Under Power, Bareboat Charter and Coastal Navigation courses prior to being awarded the rank.
The NauticEd Sailing Certification Explained on video
NauticEd touts that it is the only sailing training company offering such a high tech and experience based approach to awarding sailing certificates which are now accepted by most major charter sailing companies. “Now with Annapolis Bay Charters and other flagship sailing schools coming online, the NauticEd sailing certification becomes an extremely strong education program and verification system of a student’s proficiency” says Headifen.
Learn more about NauticEd at http://www.nauticed.org
Posted by Grant Headifen on January 18, 2010 under About NauticEd, Skipper, Videos and photos |
Here is a question posted by Nancy Knudsen Editor Sail-World Cruising. Sail-world is one of the largest and respected online sailing news companies (http://www.sailing-world.com) to NauticEd this week. Followed by our answer.
On 1/16/10 6:47 PM, “Nancy Knudsen Cruising Editor Sail-World” <cruisingeditor@sail-world.com> wrote:
Hi Grant
I have a question about the [sailing certification] video you have sent me. The practical experience that is mentioned in the video. For a sailor not within practical distance of your facilities, how does this happen. Do you take the word of the sailor that they have completed this? – or what happens.
As my readership is international, this is a very important point for me. (I understand that if it is an honour system then the ‘verification’ process at the end would make up for this)
Cheers
Nancy Knudsen
Editor
Sail-World Cruising
www.sail-world.com/cruising <http://www.sail-world.com/cruising>
TetraMedia established in 2000, operates the largest online marine news network in the world. It now has regional sites around the world, with Sail-World UK-Europe, Sail-World Asia, Sail-World NZ, Sail-World USA, Sail-World Australia, Sail-World Cruising International, Sail-World Cruising USA, Sail-World Cruising Canada, Sail-World Australian Cruising, Powerboat-World and Marine Business News.
Each week, more than 165,000 newsletters are sent to subscribers, by its seven editors. More than a million individual boaters have visited Sail-World and Powerboat-World in 2009.
This is NauticEd’s response
Nancy,
Yes - as with all charter company resumes – it is the honor system. It is completely impossible to verify time. Additionally the United States Coast Guard accepts the honor system for the USCG Commercial Captains license as do most other country licenses.
What I’ve been able to do is to also back this up with a Proficiency Verification by a NauticEd affiliated sailing school. Right now we are encouraging schools to be affiliated with us because there are a ton of “students” (we are all students) out there who don’t see the value in taking a basic course if they are already past that point. Thus the entire sailing school network is missing out on touching many students. With the verification check out, schools now can actually add this to their income stream thus it’s a big incentive for them to align. Students benefit by solidifying their resume to charter companies and by picking up a few professional tips along the way.
The technology is simple but clever. When an instructor is finished verifying a student’s proficiency, he or she simple logs into the site and clicks the verification button against the student. Before the student can get home, their certificate is updated with the Verification stamp.
We’re making it pretty simple for a school to sign up with us. They must be an established school with a website and have commercially legal instructors and follow our standard when performing a verification. A new system that we will implement shortly is a way for students to publicly rate the experience with the school on-line on our site. This ensures the school is providing an excellent learning experience for the students else they may get a bad rating. This I think is essential for the growth of the industry – no one in the sailing industry wants a single student to have a bad/boring/unprofessional initiation experience to sailing.
So to answer you question specifically – we plan on expanding our verification-training schools. However even with out a verification the honor system for building a resume is fine. Whats’ exciting to us is our sailing iPhone app which makes it easy for a student to update their resume on the dock in 2 clicks.
If you have any more questions please let me know.
Grant
Grant Headifen
Ph 512-696-1070
http://www.nauticed.org
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/grantheadifen
READ MY BLOG: http://www.nauticed.org/blog – it’s really interesting
PLAY WITH NED: http://www.nauticed.org/sailing-instructor – it’s totally cool
Go Completely Nautical
Take the FREE online Rules of Right of way clinic for Sailboats at NauticEd.org
Or
Challenge our sailing knowledge facebook app at http://apps.facebook.com/sailingrules
The World’s Most Advanced Online Boating Education
Posted by admin on December 17, 2009 under About NauticEd, Skipper, Videos and photos |
NauticEd just released a simple video explanation of how to gain the NauticEd Sailing Certification.
Click to watch the Sailing Certification video
Posted by admin on November 24, 2008 under Videos and photos |
Funny Video of a guy learning to sail
He should have used Nauticed – Online sailing courses.
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