For as long as I’ve known Lauren she has been obsessed with the sea. Most likely stemming from growing up on a small island, she’s always been interested in any kind of water related activity. While she’s an expert swimmer, enjoys boating, and is an expert at beach napping; there has been one activity that has always eluded her: Sailing. I decided to finally help her cross that item off her lifelong bucket list while we were in Baltimore for her birthday and enlisted the help of the team over at the Annapolis Sailing School.
Centrally located about 45 minutes from both downtown Baltimore and Washington DC, Annapolis Sailing School is in a prime location for anyone in the area that wants to learn to sail. Annapolis is popularly known as America’s Sailing Capital so it seemed like it would be the perfect place for a sailing lesson for us. When I was doing my research on Annapolis Sailing, I found out that they are actually the oldest adult sailing school in the USA and they’ve been in operation since 1959. One of the other reasons I decided to use the Annapolis Sailing School was that they offered an Introduction to Sailing class that lasted 2 hours and promised to teach us all the basics of sailing before committing to a much longer (and more expensive) sailing course.
We arrived for our course and the check-in process was easy and painless. Then, with minimal waiting, we were immediately put onto our sail boat with our other classmates and our crash course to sailing began.
The entire 2 hour course is actually conducted out on the water so it’s much more fun and interactive than sitting in a classroom learning all the basic terminology. Within just a few short minutes Lauren was hoisting the main sail and we were on our way!
During our 2 hour session we were taught all the basic terminology of sailing, how to control our main sail and “jib”, and how to steer our boat using the tiller. Our instructor was young, but well versed in sailing and very comfortable with teaching 4 adults how to sail. One of my favorite things was the fact that anytime anything had to be done, one of us students were doing it as opposed to our instructor. We all also had a chance to be “captain” and control the tiller and give the rest of our mates some orders.
One of the coolest things about the whole experience was that the boats we were on were actually designed by the founder of the Annapolis Sailing School. He designed them to be extremely stable and easy to steer, which helped us novices keep everything in balance while having fun.
The two hour course went by super fast since every minute of it was either packed with something to do on our little boat, or filled with the beautiful views of the Annapolis harbor.
By the end of the class, Lauren and I both had a new found passion for sailing and were already talking about how we could get more time in on a longer class and really learn to be sailors.
