Going Ashore Made Easy: The Essential Dinghy & Outboard Manual

American Sailing (ASA) was founded in 1983 with a simply stated mission: to teach people to sail safely and confidently. To achieve that goal, the ASA set out to establish standards against which to measure a sailor’s level of knowledge and skill, the first such unified standards in the U.S. to apply to sailors in keelboats.

Today, American Sailing is an association of sailing schools, charter companies, professional sailing instructors, and sailors, with over 300 affiliated sailing schools located throughout the U.S., as well as in Europe, Japan, Central America, Taiwan, China, and other far eastern countries. These accredited schools offer ASA certification to individuals who meet the requirements for a given level. To date ASA schools have certified over half a million sailors.

The ASA system has eight primary levels of student certification from Basic Keelboat all the way to Offshore Passagemaking. Whether your goal is to skipper a bareboat charter in the Caribbean or to crew confidently on a short weekend sail, the ASA’s sailing-education system will guide you as you learn the theory behind sailing, practice the skills needed to handle a sailboat, and build the foundation of knowledge that will enable you to navigate a vessel safely and within the law.

By establishing national standards for sailing education, the ASA has provided a way for more people to take part in the sport safely, with the proper training and respect for their responsibilities as boaters, ensuring that sailing will be safer, smarter, and more fun for everybody.

Captains Andy Batchelor and Lisa Batchelor Frailey are both life-long sailors and retired military officers who met at a sailing regatta while stationed in Italy. Andy served in the Royal Air Force in aviation and intelligence, and Lisa served in the US Navy in aviation, meteorology and oceanography – a combination of skills that have proved very useful to sailing, cruising and passagemaking.

They founded and operated Sail Solomons ASA school and charter base, receiving numerous awards for ASA Outstanding School and Outstanding Instructors. Cruising for seven years onboard their Passport 47 ZINGARO and Outbound 46 KINETIC, Andy and Lisa have made numerous coastal passages and ocean voyages, conducting cruising and passagemaking training while living aboard in exotic locations. They also lead sailing flotillas and teach courses on catamarans and monohulls.

Andy and Lisa are editors and contributors to ASA’s textbooks for Bareboat Cruising and Catamaran Cruising, and are the primary contributors to ASA’s Advanced Cruising and Seamanship text. Having owned, operated and serviced a wide variety of dinghies and outboards, they were a natural choice to write Going Ashore Made Easy.

Both USCG Captains and ASA Master Instructors, Andy and Lisa launched Kinetic Sailing to offer marine consulting, charter brokerage, instructional yacht deliveries and tailored instruction with a global scope. They are regular speakers to live and virtual audiences.