Just posted the sailing video of the experience of racing the St Thomas Rolex Regatta 2011 with NauticEd students and Safe Passage Sailing.
Safe Passage Sailing chartered Kialoa V, an 80 ft maxi, and Northern Child, a 51 ft swan. NauticEd students and charterers with Safe Passage Sailing attended. Over all we had about 20 people on Kialoa V and 9 on Northern Child.
Race conditions were perfect with 10-15 knots of wind and sunny days.
Kialoa V is a legend racing sailing boat, built in the 1980′s it used to win regattas world wide. Northern Child is a professional Captained Charter Boat. Christian Reynolds and Lucy Jones are the Owners and professional Crew Members they specialize in cruising, racing and corporate charters in the UK, Mediterranean and the Caribbean. They offer their clients a range of charters from individual berths through to full boat charters.
Safe Passage Sailing put this together as an experiential event – providing people a safe team environment where they could do something they’re not likely to do on their own. And from the testimonials on the sailing video, you can see that everyone had a spectacular time.
Dowsing the massive spinaker on Kialoa V
It was a week long event. We stated out flying in on Saturday, getting aclimatized to the Caribbean waters (not hard) then on Tuesday and Wednesday we had two practise days of learning how to sail and handle the boat. We all fitted into our natural positions on the boat and Brian Thompson and Rich Stearns the professional racing mentors lead the team.
On Friday Saturday and Sunday we raced the St Thomas Regatta. Each race was between about 10-20 miles with upwind beats, cross wind reaches and down wind runs flying our spinakers. While none of us came first or second, the experience told it all. The learning curve was steep but no one minded a bit.
Watch the video you’ll see how much fun we had.
If you want to get on the list to be invited to the next regatta we will attend, make sure you’re a fan of NauticEd on facebook – that you’re following us on twitter and/or that you’re signed up for at least a free account on NauticEd.
Tassos who is sailing a maxi yacht - he'll never forget this
Here’s a pic of the all female crew of Northern Child lead by Suzette Smith who had participated in an all female crew in the Americas cup.
NauticEd’s online sailing school recent growth spurt has been due to our students telling other students about us. So we have implemented a reward system for that awesome behavior.
Introducing NauticEd’s Social Expansion Loop Program. Watch the video here.
Essentially – you can now set up your own NauticEd Promocode and give it out to as many friends as you want. When your friends use your promocode they get $15 off any one NauticEd Sailing Course and you get big time kudo’s for that. Then you get to accumulate $10 credit for every friend that uses your code. Refer 2 friends – get $20 credit and thus any NauticEd clinic for half price. Refer 4 friends and get a NauticEd clinic for free. etc. etc. There is no limit to the credit you can accumulate.
To set this up – login to your NauticEd account and click on the new “Referrals” tab and follow the instructions. After your friends use the code, you’ll notice your credit starting to accumulate.
We wanted to implement this because it is rewarding what people were doing anyway but with out the reward – so thanks to everyone for being such great stewards for NauticEd. Much appreciated. Please enjoy the new reward program.
So now – if there is anyone you know of who wants to learn to sail, get a sailing certification or just brush up on their sailing skills, make sure you send to them your personalized NauticEd promocode.
But the only one catch is that people can only use an introductory promocode once, meaning that if some one else gives them their code before you do – you won’t get the credit – the other referring person will. So act fast – add the promocode to your facebook or twitter feeds and email anybody who is even thinking about sailing.
It’s an old song but it certainly rang the bells for me recently. Over this last new year’s break 2010-2011, my family, extended family and friends that we call family all traveled to Matauri Bay in New Zealand for probably one of the best aquatic experiences one could imagine. Unfortunately it was sans sailing cruising but sometimes it’s good to see the other side of the ocean (meaning other than sailing).
Matauri Bay - New Zealand
Here is the list of aquatic/camping toys we took
6.7 m Surtees aluminum fishing/diving boat
5 m wakeboarding/party jet boat
6 sets of scuba gear
10 fishing rods and reels
2 lobster snare hooks
3 windsurfers
4 sea kayaks
2 skim boards
3 surfboards
5 boogie boards
1 performance jet ski
An uncountable amount of tents
A huge marquee tent
5 sun umbrellas
Probably 2 liters of sunscreen
2 barbecues
and…
23 dozen eggs.
Our Campsite at Matauri Bay
The result, as with all vacations, was achieving absolutely nothing except good times. See the video here.
Matauri Bay is about a 4 hour drive north of Auckland. The bay is about 1 km wide with a beautiful sandy beach. A 250 m high upside down bowl shaped headland sits at one end and the top of that provides a commanding view out of the Cavalli Islands 1 km off shore. You can also see 30 kms south to the famous Bay of Islands.
The Cavalli Islands provide an abundance of sea life and spectacular anchorage bays. The water temperature at this time of the year is 20 deg C (68 deg F). In fact the entire Coastline is pretty impressive with high rocky cliffs leading down to beautiful bay after beautiful bay.
Cavalli Islands
If you ever think about sailing in New Zealand, spend the almost required 4-5 days exploring the incredible Bay of Islands, but do not miss the Cavalli Islands and then venture slightly further north to Whangaparoa Harbour, a remote harbour with bush right down to the shoreline. If you’re not thinking about sailing in New Zealand – you should start. One of our Sailing Charter business friends here in the Bay of Islands is Sailing New Zealand, http://www.sailingnewzealand.co.nz give them a call or contact me and I’ll hook you up.
Cavalli Islands, New Zealand - Sailing Paradisese
Scuba: We scuba dived so much that on one particular day I actually turned it down and opted for a day on the beach. We dived mostly for New Zealand Lobster which is referred to as Crayfish. The New Zealand Crayfish has no pincers unlike the lobster most people in the USA think of, but they do have a very spiny crustacean shell which makes it necessary to use a dive glove to capture them. One variety called the Pack Horse Cray can get pretty big.
Matauri Bay is also the sunken location of the famous Green Peace protest boat, the Rainbow Warrior. It’s wreck was moved here after being initially attacked and sunk by the French Secret Service in 1985 in the Auckland habour. And so we were able to dive this wreck situated in 23 m of water. The sea has taken pretty good hold of it now and it thus inhabits a really great display of reef life. There are a few places for advanced divers to swim through the wreck and whilst it’s very ominous to swim through a sunken ship it is a fun thing to do to see the fish attending school inside the hull.
A memorial to the Rainbow Warrior and it’s crew Member who died in the attack is erected atop the Matauri Bay headland.
Rainbow Warrior Memorial
Thanks go to Craig Johnston who saved my dive. We showed up at the dive site in our 6.7 m dive boat, suited up (5mil wet suit required preferably with a hood), almost ready to tip over backwards into the water when I discovered that I’d left my mask behind. Although air is pretty important down there – a mask is probably the next most important. Craig was the Dive Master on the Paihia Dive boat that tied up to us. Paihia Dive is a professional dive company that takes tourist divers out to the Rainbow Warrior and Matauri Bay area for a 2 tank dive. Embarrassingly, I called over to their group and pleaded for a temporary borrow of a spare mask and offered up a bag of Salt and Vinegar chips as compensation. Graciously Craig accepted the highly unfair trade. Thanks Craig – the dive was great. Hope you enjoyed our chips.
Scuba Diving in the Cavalli Islands
Fishing and Sea Life: It’s hard to put a hook on the bottom in New Zealand with out catching something. In the north, it’s mostly snapper and thus the 12 days were mostly spent eating superbly fresh snapper although we did hook (and eat) quite a few other varieties.
Snapper - about 11lbs
All in all we sampled 11 different sea garden foods, including, lobster, local abalonie (called Paua), scallops, and fish fish fish.
Crayfish catch of the day
At Matauri Bay you launch your boat off the beach – there is no ramp. Dean is the local tractor driver and for $20 he’ll expertly launch and retrieve your boat. I say expertly because sometimes the waves can be a little challenging and an expert tractor driver can save you from a lot of damage should a wave come in at the wrong time.
Launching the boat
Windsurfing: It’s been a while since I’ve windsurfed but now from this trip, I figure it’s time to get back into it. I used to be pretty good about 10 years ago. My 15 year old niece, Steff, wins local competitions and so we went out on a couple of windy days together. I got a few good rides on one particular day when the wind was blowing 30 knots. I chickened out when I ventured out further and started getting into a 2 meter swell. Although I could handle it fine the small voice of caution was speaking PRETTY LOUDLY.
Windsurfing in Matauri Bay
The principle of windsurfing is pretty cool. Once you start to understand sailing and forces it doesn’t take to much to figure it out or get back into it. Raking the mast forward moves the center of pressure of the sail forward and thus positions the force on the board more forward causing the board to turn downwind. Conversely, raking the mast backwards, turns the board towards the wind. The raking movement is done with your hand closest to the mast. Your aft hand works the sail like a mainsheet, pulling the sail to center line on upwind runs or letting out on downwind runs. It acts like an accelerator and helps with your balance.
Steff showed me some technology advances in windsurfing equipment. She told me that tightening up the downhaul made the top of the sail twist out. Wow I had to think abou that for a sec. Turns out it’s pretty easy to understand and is the same principle that I wrote a blog on a few months back. On a flexible mast, tightening the downhaul puts a significant bend in the mast. This bends the tip of the mast down closer to the aft of the boom and thus reduces leech (aft part of the sail) tension on the sail. New windsurfing sails have a large roach in the sail, ie the line from the head (top of the sail) to the clew (back bottom of the sail) is not straight but curves out significantly. Thus reduced leech tension allows the curve of the sail to twist out under wind force. In my previous blog the same twist out on a large sailboat is achieved by releasing the main sheet but bringing the traveler to windward. In both cases you are effectively reducing the size of the sail and more importantly forces aloft on the rig. It’s cool to know that once you understand the principles you can just figure it all out from there.
Skim boarding: I doubt there is very many people at my age hydroplaning on a skim board in the 1 cm wash of the beach waves but anyway I gave it a pretty good go without busting a hip. My 11 year old nephew, Rafi, mastered it quite well and was doing 180’s by the time we left.
Surfing: I’m not a surfer. Give me a sail. But my 60 year old brother-in-law rode the 1.5m waves on several days and showed up every one on the beach.
Jet Skiing: OMG – this jet ski was a high performance version built for time trials and wow it could accelerate faster than you could hold on almost. The requirement to make the tight turns at speed make it very unstable to sit on. In deep water it’s very difficult to climb onboard . One day, it was hosing down with rain and so we figured that the only thing to do on a wet rainy day was to get wet in a big big way. The jet ski was the answer – that was fun.
Sea Kayaking: The rocky coastline around the headland and further up the coast provides a most awesome sea kayaking location. The surge from the swell washes water through cracks between close to shore rocks and reefs. Running the kayak through these is pretty exciting at times. But you also can see into the water and watch the kelp below flow side to side with the occasiona fish venturing along. Seagulls protecting their young dive from the rocks above.
Seakayaking in Matauri Bay
We paddled quite a way up the coast to a house set slightly back from the beach – but there was no road into the house – just a very basic farm track. Which brings up another point – I just can’t think of any other place in the world where you have working farms that go right down to the shore in such a high percentage of coastline than New Zealand. This little (beautiful) house was just sitting there in the most gorgeous bay with a backdrop of a green grass valley and 100 feet from a deserted beach and an ocean loaded with sea life. Wow!
The Beach: Great place for the kids to play. My Daughter and (great) Nephew had the best time of their lives.
Alexandra and Cooper
Whales: I left the high light for the end. We were blessed with 2 visits from a pod of Orca Whales.
Orca Whales Right Next to the Beach
On one occasion they were swimming all around us on the boat when we were returning from a scuba dive on my birthday. On another, they came right into the beach next to us. My sister and I promptly jumped in the sea kayaks to go for a visit. They were breaching all around our kayaks so close that we were getting wet from their blow holes. Although seemingly slightly scary because they have big teeth, our Captain Nemo friend Alex (who we are sure has gills on the sides of his neck, assured us that Orcas in the wild have never eaten anyone. Despite this – I my heart raced a bit when one breached about 5 feet away from my kayak.
Orca Whales
So that’s what one can do in 12 days in paradise with a big family and lots of toys. Now it’s back to work with NauticEd – we’ve got some exciting advances coming this year. Right now we’re working on a referral program to be launched in the next few days and a Skipper test out exam for advanced sailors. Beyond that we’ll launch more courses this year including a sailing race regatta clinic. Some large companies are approaching us for alliances and … whew it’s exicting being at the forefront of technology, education and wrapping it up with something we love – SAILING. I hope you all can take advantage of everything what we offer and get your sailing certificate!
TTYL
Grant
PS - if you’ve ever been to Matauri Bay – add your comment below.
Also viewable in our press release section on the website
Today, NauticEd unveiled a huge booster to the boating industry by announcing the release of boat sharing software to the public called myBoat™. Until now such purpose built sharing software has been closely held by professional sharing companies. NauticEd hopes that by making its Internet based sharing software readily available, people who have chosen to stand on the boating sidelines, due to the economy, will find that sharing a boat is their ticket back onto the water.
The sharing software will also benefit existing boat owners who are tightening their belts and considering selling their boat. Now they can invite a few friends to join their boat and share the expenses.
Boat Partnership Sharing Software
NauticEd’s founder Grant Headifen designed the sharing software currently used by the SailTime and Beneteau Fractional Programs. He says that he has incorporated quite a few improvements and now opened the Internet based software up so that anyone can login and create a new boat online to share, invite some friends and be up and running inside a few minutes. NauticEd also provides boat sharing agreements which cover entry and exit strategies and what if contingencies between partners.
The myBoat™ software is configurable to fit most people’s sharing profiles and incorporates fair sharing rules developed from 10 years of knowledge gained from using the older versions. NauticEd has developed a youtube video regarding the myBoat software at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl0nyZMGwC8.
“With an Internet based sharing software program, a member of a shared boat feels like they have almost total access to the boat’s time. People who share a boat with designated weeks or days are really missing out. If there are 4 people sharing the boat, rather than getting 25% of the time, myBoat will give a member closer to 90% access to the time.” Says Headifen.
NauticEd’s survey of its ten thousand plus students shows a significant percentage do not have daily access to a boat. By providing this sharing service to its students, NauticEd believes that it can get more people out on the water. “And that’s a good thing for the industry” stated Headifen. “More people on the water means the faster the boating industry can recover from the recession”.
Headifen acknowledges that people have been sharing boats for thousands of years. What NauticEd is doing is making sharing more accessible. NauticEd also hopes that boat sharing members will require their “mates” to take the Sailing Education classes that NauticEd offers, although it is not a requirement.
Some of the features of the boat sharing software are:
• Online Swap and Wait list functions
• Grab and go – inside 48 hour free reservation period
• Add as many members as you like
• Reserve for half day or up to 10 days in a row
• Anti-weekend-hogging limits
• Anti-holiday-hogging limits
• Reserve, cancel, re-reserve without penalty
• Reminder emails to confirm reservation
• Snooze function for confirmation
• … and more
NauticEd also developed an enterprise version that allows professional sharing companies to access state of the art multi-boat sharing software for a few hundred dollars per year instead of licensing software for thousands of dollars per year or developing it for tens of thousands.
Beneteau sees this release as a big potential booster to their sales. NauticEd will advertise Beneteau sailboats and yachts for rent on the sharing site and encourage people to use the software and share the purchase price and operating expenses of a new Beneteau sailboat amongst their friends.
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.
>>>>>>>
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.
>>>>>>>>>>
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 day skipper courses. 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 and our day skipper theory courses. Most worldwide charter companies accept our 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.
This is day 3 of 6 in your introduction to NauticEd International Sailing School. Watch the video and/or read the text below.
Today we’ll discuss why and how to fill out your free online boating resume and our free iPhone App and Mobile webpage which let 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 a client, will ask them every time for a sailing resume and a list of practical experience to ascertain the worthiness of the sailor – and rightly so. But 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 yesterday’s 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 (listed under your profile tab) and they can review your sailing certification directly online themselves when they go to http://www.nauticed.org/student_verification
How do you fill out your resume?
NauticEd has made it easy to document on the water experience using the power of the internet. When you login to NauticEd, click on the experience tab. You’ll be able to enter all your history of boating experience there.
Look for this big “Enter Your Sailing HISTORY” button!
Under the Vessels tab, you can set up your own personal boats or enter the experience on generic boats. One you’ve entered your history, you can then enter any on-going experience when you like.
If you’ve already made a start to this, well done. 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, iPad or Smart Phone
Now this is really cool, after a day of sailing you can simply boot up your iPhone device and run the FREE NauticEd application, hit one button and viola – you’ve logged your day out on the water. Download your free app now!
Alternatively, just visit http://m.nauticed.org and click on the LogB button – this button will add time to your sailing resume in the current month. You’ll also be able to view your achievements under this button. Bookmark this page now on your smartphone!
NauticEd Mobile Webpage
It’s that simple and easy.
Visit your experience tab on NauticEd now and complete your boating history. It’s FREE!
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.
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. 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.
Here is a question posted by Nancy KnudsenEditor 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.
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
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 Go Completely Nautical Take the FREE online Rules of Right of way clinic for Sailboats at NauticEd.org
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