Saltmarsh Sailing School, Flushing
Home
Courses
The school
From the quay
Contact

What we teach, and what it costs

Five courses, every price per person, nothing added at the end. Beginners are welcome on two of them with no sailing behind you at all.

The five courses

All five run from Church Quay in Flushing between April and October. Start times move with the tide, so we set yours the week before and tell you the night before if the forecast changes anything.

RYA Start Sailing

£265 per person

Level No experience needed
Length Two days, start time set by the tide
Ages 16 and over
Boat Wayfarer, three students and an instructor
You leave with RYA Level 1 certificate

The two days that turn a passenger into a sailor. Rigging a boat from bare hull to ready, steering, tacking, the points of sail, and what to do — calmly — when you end up in the water. You will capsize on purpose at least once.

Ask about Start Sailing dates

RYA Basic Skills

£265 per person

Level Follows Start Sailing
Length Two days, start time set by the tide
Ages 16 and over
Boat Wayfarer or RS Quest, three students
You leave with RYA Level 2 certificate

The second half of learning to sail. Stronger wind, sailing on all points with control, righting a capsize on your own, and coming alongside the pontoon without three people shouting. Most people take it a few weeks after Start Sailing; some wait a year and are fine.

Ask about Basic Skills dates

Day Skipper practical

£695 per person

Level For sailors with some miles behind them
Length Five days, one night at sea if the forecast allows
Boat Our 27-foot keelboat, three students aboard
Also needed Day Skipper theory, done anywhere, before you come
You leave with RYA Day Skipper practical certificate

Five days of running the boat rather than crewing her: passage planning, pilotage into places you have not been, anchoring, berthing under power and sail, and a night passage to Fowey and back when the weather plays along. When it does not, we work the Carrick Roads instead and nobody is short-changed.

Ask about Day Skipper weeks

Junior summer course

£240 per person

Level No experience needed
Length Five mornings, Monday to Friday
Ages 8 to 15
Boat RS Quest, two children and an instructor
You leave with RYA Youth Stage certificate, at the stage reached

Five mornings in the school holidays. They rig their own boat, sail it, swim off it at the end of the week, and come back on the quay hungry. Two to a boat with an instructor alongside, which is why the weeks fill by March.

Ask about junior weeks

Private tuition

from £180 per booking, half day

Level Any, including complete beginners
Length Half day or full day
People One or two, in a dinghy or the keelboat
Includes Boat, kit, and one instructor to yourselves

Whatever you want to work on. People book these to practise mooring, to learn to reef properly, to sail their own new boat for the first time with someone aboard, or to get over a fright they had somewhere else. Tell us the problem and we will plan the day around it.

Ask about a private day

What to bring, and what we lend you

Nobody needs to buy sailing kit to come here. The hut has everything that keeps you afloat and most of what keeps you warm.

We lend: buoyancy aids, waterproof jackets and trousers, wetsuit boots in most sizes.
You bring: old trainers or boots, a change of clothes, a towel, sun cream and a hat.
Lunch is your own on dinghy courses; on the Day Skipper week we shop and cook aboard.

Paying and cancelling

A third holds the place and the rest is due on the first morning. We are a two-person school, so a late cancellation genuinely leaves a boat empty.

Cancel more than three weeks out and the deposit moves to another date.
If we call off a day for weather, you pay nothing for it.
Prices are per person and include the boat, the kit and the certificate.

Tide and weather, honestly

Two things decide when a course starts and whether it runs at all, and neither of them is us.

The slip at Church Quay dries around low water, so start times shift through the week. You get yours seven days ahead.
Above a Force 5 forecast we do not take beginners out. The day moves, and there is no charge for the one we cancelled.
Fog stops the keelboat leaving the harbour; rain stops nothing at all.
August can be windless. If there is no sailing wind we teach ropework, anchoring and tides afloat, and you tell us whether that counts.

Which one suits you?

If you are not sure whether to start with Start Sailing or book a private day, tell us what you have done before and we will say which we would put you in.

Send an enquiry
+44 7700 900123
WhatsApp us
bookings@example.com