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"Creating
Shipmates"
(Article from Blue Water Sailing - Feb 1999) |
The program: Modern Sailing Academy (MSA) has 16 cruising
boats up to 53 feet LOA that serve as classrooms for what it
terms "a non-confrontational, non-militaristic teaching
style of instruction." MSA believes that there is more
than one way to solve a seamanship problem offshore, and the
philosophy of its passage making instructors - ocean-crossing
veterans all - reflects this recognition that, at sea, each
situation should be treated as a new situation requiring its
own fresh response. Polaris, MSA's 53-foot Islander, departed
the Bay Area last April, bound for Acapulco, the Marquesas,
and points west - about 18 legs with six student-shipmates aboard
each leg. According to MSA, this is the longest ASA Ocean Passage
making course in history. Most of Polaris's crews, upon completion
of their respective legs, will go on to engineer their own offshore
experiences. Among these are Jerry and Marilyn Bruner.
The experience: By the time you read this article, the
soon-to-be-retired brother/sister team of Jerry and Marilyn
Bruner and Jerry's 10-year-old son may be heading south, bound
for Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, aboard Marilyn's Mogan 462 Fanta-Seas
out of Redwood City, Calif. "This is why we signed up with
the Modern Sailing Academy," says Jerry. "With my
previous sailing experience, and after four weeks aboard two
academy boats, I now have no qualms whatsoever about taking
my skills offshore."
If they're still having fun by the time they get to Cabo, they'll
spend the win-ter in the Sea of Cortez. Come spring, if they're
still having fun, they'll head for the Panama Canal, and once
there, if they're still having fun, he says, they'll decide
whether to turn left. or right, with the Caribbean and the East
Coast of the U.S., or the islands of the South Pacific and New
Zealand distinct destination possibilities.
"A lot of today's technology was not part of the sailing
environment back when I started sailing," Jerry says, "and
I wanted to get experience in operating large boats with complex
sail-handling systems and operating systems like watermakers,
refrigeration and gensets." Marilyn had owned a Catalina
30 and then traded up to the Morgan, which she moved aboard
two years ago. "I wanted to watch individual skippers at
work, see what they thought, what made them worry, and what
they did in response to that concern."
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