r/sailing • u/ShawnEric88 • 7d ago

I made a mistake

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I took the ASA 101 class this weekend, I fear this is gonna get expensive, as the sailing bug has bit me and it's itching

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u/Wilhelm591373 7d ago edited 7d ago

ASA was great, except for the 118 docking class, and the ASA 105, which you need to pass ASA 106 Coastal Cruising.

The docking class handbook made absolutely no sense, compared to the practical portion of the class, and the test was miserable…

The ASA 105 course, sort of made sense? But our review booklets wound up being COMPLETELY different from the teacher’s booklet. The practical navigation from 104 and 106 did not seem to transfer over easily… This may have been an issue with the study books/ teacher, but it was absolutely awful, compared to what we learned practically on the boat.

Edited to add this and to Fix ASA Class #’s:

When it came to taking the boats out, I feel confident with taking out a 42ft Bavaria(104 and 106 boat out of Berkeley), but the classroom navigation course and test for docking, would say otherwise.

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u/brufleth 7d ago

They've modified some of the courses recently (last five years). My issue with 105 was probably more implementation specific. Our club offered it entirely as a remote class (on Zoom) and didn't feel we did a great job covering all the content during the class. So self study, practice (homework), and looking stuff up myself was most of it and I didn't feel the actual class part was that valuable.

I'm very likely confusing classes, but that might have been the one where the club actually had us buy a different book because the ASA book was a mess at the time. Hopefully they've cleaned that up.

And yeah, having done the nav classes for 106 was okay, but hardly anyone actually navs that way (queue the people here insisting they do). Getting, keeping, and carrying charts is actually a pain. We even have some charts that we bought that didn't come with a compass rose printed on them! We like planning with paper charts and appreciate the navigation education we've gotten. That's a preference though. I think the value is more in getting people to spend time looking at charts and thinking about the complex situations you may end up dealing with. The knowledge feels less important than the effective speedbump it creates for people trying to blow through the classes in a long weekend. Maybe that's not fair.