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Outbound Sailing is a premier ASA Sailing School located on Lake Travis in Austin, TX. All basic courses are taught on the lake, and we teach the advanced courses in the Caribbean. We provide you with personalized sailing lessons from Basic Sailing to Coastal Navigation and Advanced Coastal Cruising. 

Why Outbound Sailing? Because our sailing lessons are all about the quality of the learning experience. Our goal is to help you realize your sailing dreams by providing you with the best sailing instruction available, then providing you with options as to how you can easily and economically maintain and grow the skills you’ve learned.

How? We start with world class sailing instructors.
Captain Tim is a recipient of the ASA Outstanding Sailing Instructor award which ranks him in the top 2% of ASA sailing instructors world wide. Our instructors are all ASA Certified Sailing Instructors and each brings their own unique sailing experience to the team. This includes voyaging on their own boats, yacht deliveries, ocean passages, offshore racing, and dozens of charters.

As you read on you’ll see there are many other factors that make us a Premier sailing school. So whether you are interested in day sailing or have visions of chartering a sailboat in exotic locations like the Caribbean or the Med, our sailing lessons are specifically designed to prepare you to safely skipper a cruising sailboat in a variety of conditions and locales with total confidence. You will learn on boats that are clean, safe, professionally maintained, and fitted with safety equipment that exceeds the US Coast Guard requirements. Almost all of the people who come to us are wanting to do some sort of cruising, so instead of a little tiller boat that you’ll probably never sail again, we start you out on a real cruising sailboat.  Since our sailing classes are limited to a maximum of three people, you are assured of receiving a level of attention and personalization that you cannot achieve in a large scale class. You have the instructor’s undivided attention and the “hands on” time is all you and your teammates working together learning to command a cruising sailboat with a wheel helm and an inboard diesel engine.

When you register online for one of our courses, you immediately get access to a private portal which contains all the information you need about your class. In addition to general information such as the location of our boats, where to park, daily detail of what happens in your course, etc., it contains videos and other resources to help you properly prepare for your course. Good preparation will maximize the amount of time we spend on the water and maximize what you personally gain from this experience.

Retaining and Enhancing your sailing skills is very important, so we not only teach you to sail, but provide you with opportunities for hands on practice. See below for a summary of our programs.

We encourage you to call and make an appointment to come out to the marina, meet our Instructors, and see the boats you’ll be learning on. So give us a call today – you’ll be glad you did!

Skills Maintenance and Enhancement Programs

OUTBOUND SAILING COMMUNITY

The primary purpose of the Community is to help our 101 students get out on the water and get sailing time before taking 103. We do several Community sails each month, depending on demand, and the sails lasts for 3-4 hours. There is maximum of 5 students on board, and an ASA Instructor to provide coaching and ensure everyone is safe. You will meet other sailors with similar interests and objectives, and you will have the opportunity to build some great sailing relationships.

OS ALUMNI CHARTER CLUB

The purpose of this club is to provide our students who have completed 101 and done some Community sailing with the opportunity to rent a cruising sailboat. For this skill and experience level, there are some restrictions such as no night sailing, no single handing, and no anchoring or docking at restaurants. This is simply about getting out on the water and practicing your sailing. Again, very cost effective.

MONTHLY MEMBERSHIPS

The Monthly Membership on Utopia (Beneteau 31) allows members to share the boat with up to 7 other members. Members are allowed to use the boat as if they owned it, so long as they use sound judgement and clean up any mess they make. There is unlimited access on a 48 hour reservation basis, and you can book a limited number of reservations up to a year in advance, all for a monthly fee that is not much more than slip rent.

REFRESHER COURSE

We offer a 4 hour Refresher Course which includes an ASA Instructor and generally covers all of the basic sailing. If you like, we can customize this course to focus more on things that you particularly want to cover. It’s an excellent way to get some one-on-one time with an instructor to brush up on your basic sailing, or focus on skills you want to improve.

CARIBBEAN ADVENTURE LEARNING COURSE

Our Caribbean Adventure Learning trip is a 7 day, 8 night course at one of our many destinations including the BVI, USVI, SVI, the Windward Islands, Cuba, and the Bahamas. This is not just a vacation – it is a customized, “learn by doing”, sailing course designed to grow sailors into mariners as you tackle a broad set of challenging cruising experiences. Think of it as a full blown, hands-on, bareboat cruising course on steroids, where you wrap your ASA sailing lessons in a wealth of real-world experience. We typically do these trips in May and November. This Caribbean Adventure Learning course is the ultimate in preparing you for chartering or sailing your own boat in all sorts of exotic places.