Learn To Sail: Your Options For Sailing lessons

If you’re looking to get sailing lessons, you’re in the right place. Rubicon 3 is Europe’s leading adventure sailing school and whatever your experience level – from total novice to more seasoned sailor, we can really help you progress, with expert tuition and guidance every step of the way. Below, we show you how to progress at every stage.

Getting started?

Try a gentle sailing holiday with instruction

If you’re just getting started, the main thing is to get out there and have an enjoyable time on the water. It can be tempting to go straight for a big challenging voyage like crossing the North Sea or even the Atlantic, but you really shouldn’t. You don’t know if you’ll like it and you can quickly become overwhelmed.

Instead, an ideal first taste of sailing is something like our Canaries Explorer, run for a week in the warm trade winds of the lower latitudes. It’s perfect for beginners, with short days of sailing, plenty to explore ashore and expert tuition every day. You even end up with the RYA Competent Crew qualification at the end. Another one you would really enjoy is the Grenadines in the Caribbean. Wonderfully warm, with beautiful islands, turquoise water, perfect white beaches and the wonderful Caribbean culture ashore.

… or you can sign up to a dedicated Competent Crew sailing course

Alternatively, you can sign up to our dedicated RYA Competent Crew course, run in the Solent between the Isle of Wight and the UK mainland. This is the perfect introduction to sailing and will give you the basic skills and confidence you need to be a useful member of crew on board a sailing yacht. The course is run over 5 days (or two weekend and a Friday). You train all through the day with an instructor and then anchor up or dock in a different marina each night. It’s a really educational, fun low-pressure introductory sailing course.

Already got some experience?

Once you have your Competent Crew qualification, your next step is to get the Day Skipper qualification. This is an ICC recognised qualification, meaning that you can use it to charter a yacht on something like a flotilla holiday. The first step is to take the Day Skipper theory course. This 5 day classroom based course introduces you to basic navigation and seamanship skills. Once you have that, you can take the 5 day Day Skipper practical course. This really focuses on the skills you need to skipper your first yacht, with lots of handling, learning about reefs, practising navigation and more. It’s a huge fun course where you make rapid gains and is the real start of your yacht sailing career.