The Five Day Complete Beginners Course
Day One - Sailing manuals, clothing, lifejackets, wind awareness, ropework, coiling, boat checks, windward & leeward, port & starboard, bow, stern, beams, thwart, launching, rowing, boarding, keel action, rigging, sailing positions, leaving a mooring, no-go zone, safety procedures, in irons, luffing, beam reaching, heaving to, the 3 essentials (sit opposite the sail, steer a straight course, trim the sails), weather vaning, going about, sail dynamics, rights of way, changing helmsmen, returning to a mooring, de-rigging, coming ashore, stowing, de-briefing, figure of eight stopper knot, reading assignment.
Day Two - Consolidate Day One's work. Using shore transits to check progress. Beating to windward, right angle tacking, broad reaching down wind to the point where the jib collapses, steady on course, gybing, hardening up, onshore & offshore winds, lee-shores and offings, above and below the wind, tidal theory, the twelfths rule, springs, neaps, the difference between a collapsing jib and a flogging jib, returning to a mooring, de-rigging, coming ashore, stowing, de-briefing, round turn and two half hitches, securing a dinghy on shore, reading assignment.
Day Three - Consolidate Day One & Two's work. Setting & sailing a triangular course with a weather, gybe and leeward mark, recovery procedure for moored buoys, anchoring, returning to a mooring, de-rigging, coming ashore, stowing, de-briefing, double sheet bend, reading assignment.
Day Four - Depending on progress achieved - tying up a tender to a mooring line with a double sheet bend, use of tiller extension for fine manouevering (man overboard drill, coming alongside, recovering a mooring under sail). De-rigging, rowing ashore, debriefing, bowline, reading assignment.
Day
Five - Depending on
progress achieved - stopping at a particular place, coming alongside, recovering
buoys, Reefing using a bowline. Safety procedures afloat and ashore. Boat
handling and seamanship without instructor aboard, demonstrating setting
and sailing a triangular course as taught, sailing tight circles around a
buoy, recovering a man overboard dummy, recovering a mooring, de-rigging,
stowing, rowing ashore, de-briefing. Check list of achievement. How to join
the club and charter the club boat.