Bare Boat Cruising (BBC)

Part of the US Sailing program, this is where many students finish (few go on to CPM let alone OPM)

The Bare Boat class covers things beyond simply sailing, like an introduction to the systems on a cruising boat, anchoring, etc.

I first did this class in 2009, it was a lot of fun - four days of sailing, crew overboard drills (lots of them), anchoring etc on the bay. At the end (after passing another test of course) I could charter any of the yachts in CN's fleet.

We spent a night at anchor in Paradise Cove after sailing about the bay in the dark. Initially we had trouble getting the anchor to set so we opted to shift down the beach a bit. The next morning I looked about and noted a jetty about where we were originally trying to anchor, we were probably very lucky we moved.

Grand plans of chartering in the BVI's etc ran into the reality of school age kids, soccer, ballet you name it. I did manage to take Sam sailing on a friend's boat in 2012.

Fast forward to 2018 and with both girls off at college (or graduated) it was time to go sailing again. I finally joined CN and signed up for their Passage Making program - which covers all the US Sailing classes I'd not yet taken, and let's you take their boats out of the bay.

I did Bare Boat again - and again it was a lot of fun. This time our night at anchor involved a very sumptuous beef tenderloin thanks to one of our crew who was a dedicated foodie.

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Author:	sjg@crufty.net /* imagine something very witty here */