Introduction
Keelboat sailing lessons are open to those who have achieved a junior dinghy rating. We believe that this rating gives you the fundamentals of sailing and best prepares you for handling the keelboats, which operate on same principles. Lessons are often given on Wednesday evenings.
The lessons are usually announced by the teachers who will teach that Wednesday night in the Cal-Sailing-Announce email list. Please sign up for that email list to get those announcements.
The lessons are given on the club's six keelboats that are kept on J dock in the Berkeley Marina harbor. The lessons typically last three hours. Students rig the boats, and practice steering, keeping watch, man overboard drill, VHF radio use, compass use, tillerless sailing, changing headsails, spinnaker, and docking. To take a lesson, sign up following the announcement and then come down to J-dock on University Avenue opposite to the Club house, next to the Marina offices, at lesson time.
If you have any questions about keelboat instruction or about becoming a senior skipper, please read the Keelboat Guidelines and contact the Rear Commodore.
Skippers may offer lessons on other days, and will announce on this same list. So watch for announcements.
Keelboat skills levels and progression
The club has divided organized basic keelboat skills into levels that more or less follow a path of increasing difficulty, but not strictly so. The list of skills and levels can be found here:
Cal Sailing Keelboat Basic Instruction Program – Outline of Student Progression
Cal Sailing Keelboat Basic Instruction Program – Outline of Student Progression
Use the list as a set of goals to work on each time you go out for a lesson. As you gain proficiency, your instructor can then sign you off on those levels on your white card, which is where we keep track of your membership info and ratings. Here is an example of what getting signed off on the keelboat levels looks like on your whitecard:
Complete all your levels? Congrats! As you get your levels signed off and you are interested in getting a keelboat skipper rating, you will want to arrange sails with senior keelboat skippers on our Merits and Commanders. You do not need to be a senior dinghy skipper to go for your keelboat rating. See
for more information.
Keelboat Communications
We use Google Groups for announcements and discussions and Slack for discussions. Some are specific to keelboats. To access these communication channels, visit:
Email Lists
Keelboat fleet
To see the types of boats we have, check out: Sailing Fleet