One-on-one instruction will give you fully personalized attention from one of the best sailing instructors in the country.  We can arrange custom sailing and/or cruising instruction for individuals or groups at prices which compare favorably to standard courses.  We will custom tailor the curriculum to meet your specific goals, and maintain flexible schedules which will accommodate your needs.  Classes can be held aboard our boats or yours.

The Learn to Sail Class from is designed to provide the essential foundation of sailing skills. This class is conducted at our sailing centers in San Francisco Bay, San Diego, and Puerto Vallarta.

Offered as a four day (Monday-Thursday) sailing course, or as a two weekend class, this course gets the complete beginner started out right, or builds upon previous experience. Using the modern J/80 as our teaching platform, we begin on Monday with basic boat-handling and terminology, and progress rapidly through an extensive curriculum.

This course is extremely comprehensive.  We spend more time on the water in one day than many schools do in an entire class...  we believe strongly that the best way to learn how to sail is by actually sailing!  And with a maximum of four sailors per boat (and the courses often run with fewer), all attendees are certain to receive plenty of personal attention.  Participants gain extensive hand-on experience, building the sailing skills and knowledge to pursue sailing endeavors on their own, with confidence.

Really Learn to Sail: Confidence through Competence

Without question, this is the ultimate course for learning how to sail.  If you are going to invest the time and the money, make sure you get the most of both, so that you can get the most out of sailing.  Our J World curriculum, continually refined over 30 years of teaching sailors, far exceeds any other schools' or organizations' criteria for 'basic' level sailing courses.  We'll readily admit that there are sailing programs which profess to offer effective learn to sail courses and take less time, and cost less money.  But you get what you pay for, and we will put our sailing instructors, boats, and curriculum up against any in the world.

 Topics in the Learn to Sail class include:

Our ultimate goal in the Learn to Sail class is that by the final day of class, each student feels competent skippering a small keelboat without instructor input.

Course Requirements

None.

Certifications Available

US Sailing Basic Keelboat

For sailors who have experience in smaller boats and have the basics of sail trim and boathandling wired, Blue Elelment  offers our Performance Cruising course.  This course is offered in a two weekend format, or over four day (Mon-Thurs) and builds the skills necessary for handling a boat in a wider range of conditions and with a higher degree of control and efficiency.

In this hands-on sailing course, we use the J/80 to brush up on our boathandling and sail trim skills.  A responsive boat gives us prompt feedback, rapidly indicating which adjustments were beneficial and which were detrimental.  We are very much able tofeel when the boat is sailing well and when we need to be more attentive.

At our San Francisco and San Diego locations, we will also introduce students to a larger boat, the J/105, for the second half of the course (in Puerto Vallarta, the full course is conducted aboard the J/80).  This sailboat cruising and daysailing course concentrates on many aspects of sailing and introduces skills that bareboat charter companies are looking for before accepting you as a potential sailboat charter client.  Successful completion of this course qualifies you to charter boats without a skipper in at our Blue Element locations.

Topics in this sailing course include:

Course Requirements

The ability to comfortably sail a small boat on your own with an understanding of fundamental sailing skills such as those covered in our Learn To Sail course.

Certifications Available

US Sailing Basic Keelboat
US Sailing Basic Cruising

We include one certification with each class. Sailors with sufficient previous experience may achieve both certifications in this course for an additional $60.00.  Please contact us directly to discuss this option.

This sailing course is for the more advanced sailor.  If you are moving up to a larger boat, interested in the shipboard life of passage-making and adventure sailing, or if you are wanting to bareboat charter, this course is for you.  For this one, we take the classroom underway!  This course is taught aboard a 40-50 foot sailboat.

The liveaboard cruising course will give you the confidence you need for offshore cruising and/or coastal cruising.  We offer seven, five, and three day options at our San Francisco, San Diego, and Puerto Vallarta locations. Blue Element also offers special adventure sailing Liveaboard Cruising courses in the Channel Islands, Mexico, Hawaii, and other outstanding destinations.  Please contact us for details and information.

For all these sailing courses, we create our float-plan as a group on the first day, taking into consideration our goals and current weather conditions.  We have a maximum of four sailors per class, so you are guaranteed plenty of personal attention.   

The Seven Day Liveaboard Cruising Courses are usually special events, and often have separate starting and ending ports.  Trips such as San Francisco to Santa Barbara and Puerto Vallarta to Cabo San Lucas happen regularly throughout the year. 

The Five Day Liveaboard Cruising Course (Monday - Friday) is our most popular cruising course.  Possible destinations from our San Francisco Bay base include sailing to Monterrey Bay, Santa Cruz, Half Moon Bay, Bolinas Bay, San Pablo Bay, and the Sacramento River Delta.  In Puerto Vallarta, we explore the further reaches of Banderas Bay, and venture along the Mexican coastline to some beautiful areas which can be found along less-traveled paths. Our San Diego itenerary regularly includes Catalina Island.

The Three Day Liveaboard Cruising Course runs Friday to Sunday at all our locations.

The course covers many topics in great detail, including:

Live-Aboard Cruising Course - Requirements

The ability to comfortably sail an auxiliary powered sailboat. Knowledge of sailing, seamanship, basic navigation, and boat handling.

Live-Aboard Cruising Course Certifications Available

US Sailing Basic Cruising
US Sailing Bareboat Cruising

In order to obtain certifications you must already have the US Sailing Basic Keelboat Certification and a current US Sailing membership. We include one certification with each course. Sailors with sufficient previous experience may complete the course work for both certifications in the five-day Live-Aboard Offshore Cruising. The cost for additional certification is $60.00.  Please contact us directly to discuss this option.

Blue Element offers Coastal Passagemaking and Offshore Passagemaking opportunities throughout the year on special trips between California, Hawaii, and Mexico. Please contact us with details regarding your sailing background and goals and we will be happy to discuss options.

At Blue Element, we have been teaching yacht racing skills since 1981.  Thousands of sailors have come through the programs of J World (our wholly owned subsidiary), either learning the basics or polishing advanced sailing skills.  Our coaches are national and world champions, America's Cup team members, and offshore racing veterans.  Our alumni are competing in fleets around the world, and have gone on to win some of the most prestigious events that yacht racing has to offer.

The Blue Element racing curriculum has been finely polished, yet we never cease in constantly updating the course contents.  In the classroom, we use a truly multimedia approach, using our own course books, videos, power-points, and lectures.

But you can talk theory until you are blue in the face; it doesn't mean a thing until you put it into practice.  This is why we spend six hours on the water everyday, conducting drills and practice sessions which reflect the experience of many thousands of hours of making sailors faster!  We sail our fleet of evenly matched high performance boats, our J/80s, which are nimble, responsive, and perfect learning platforms.  And with a maximum crew of four per boat, you are sure to keep busy and get lots of personal attention.

In our racing classes, you  will take your racing skills further in one week than a whole season of trial-and-error racing. You will hone your boat handling skills, learn starting, upwind and downwind tactics and strategy and much more. Choose from Introduction to Racing or Advanced Yacht Racing classes, or if you can't make the full week long courses, we offer weekend options.