American Sailing Association Honors Florida
Sailing and Cruising School

Named One of the Best in North America

NORTH FORT MYERS, Fla. – American Sailing Association (ASA), the international accreditation organization, named Florida Sailing & Cruising School to its honor roll of 2007 Outstanding Schools, saluting it as one of its 20 best sailing instruction programs in North America.

Florida Sailing and Cruising School scored in the top tier out of more than 300 ASA-accredited schools based on the number of excellent evaluations submitted by students who have attended its courses.

FS&CS conducts liveaboard sailing courses for up to four students at a time, and has been ASA-accredited since shortly after it was founded in 1984. Students live aboard the vessels while taking courses conducted by U.S. Coast Guard-licensed captain-instructors.

At FS&CS students learn by doing -- steering, plotting, casting-off, cruising, using the radio, anchoring, maneuvering, tying-up -- and more. Students bring their own groceries and prepare their own meals. By night, around the salon table, they study their textbooks before retiring to one of the vessel's cabins.

"Our students learn a lot, and they retain what they learn, because by living aboard the vessel they are using all learning powers, mental and physical," said proprietor Barb Hansen. "Our students watch it being done, then they do it themselves, and then they do it again. They study it, they laugh about it, they even sleep on it and dream about it."

Florida Sailing & Cruising School offers two and three day liveaboard sailing courses including Basic Sailing (S-101), Basic Coastal Cruising (S-103), Bareboat Charter  (S-104), and Advanced Coastal Cruising (S-106). There is and one classroom-only course, Coastal Navigation (S-105).

Courses can be combined in various ways to suit the needs of the students. For example, the three-day “Weekender” combines S101 and S103, the four-day “Islander" combines S-103 and S104. The ultimate course combination is a 12-day course called "The Offshore Adventure" that incorporates a major sailing expedition into the Gulf of Mexico.

Tuition for liveaboard courses includes on board accommodations, instruction, fuel, and course materials. Students are responsible for their meals and personal expenses, dockage at other marinas, and other provisions for themselves and the instructor.

The school also conducts liveaboard power yacht courses at Marinatown Marina in N. Fort Myers.

All liveaboard courses include real-world sailing in the picturesque waters of Southwest Florida. Students often observe dolphins surfing the bow wake and occasionally take note of a manatee rising for air and a look-see.

Students sail Charlotte Harbor and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), the placid channel just inside the Gulf of Mexico that runs north and south past a picture show of colorful tropical vegetation of birdlife, sealife and wildlife. This is the channel that takes sailors past the sheltered barrier island paradise of Sanibel, Captiva, Pine Island, Cayo Costa, Gasparilla, Useppa Islands and a hundred others, some just spits of sand, oyster bars, and mangroves.

Hansen and her husband and co-founder Vic Hansen also manage Southwest Florida Yachts which charters sail and power yachts for cruising the Gulf of Mexico and inland waterway coastlines of Southwest Florida.