Tampa Bay · Cape Coral
Liveaboard ASA school teaching from Tarpon Point Marina in Cape Coral since 1984, on the fleet it shares with sister charter operator Southwest Florida Yachts. Courses from Basic Sailing through Advanced Coastal Cruising run two to ten days aboard on Pine Island Sound.
Every course here is a liveaboard. Students board the evening before class starts, the boat is the classroom, and tuition covers the bunk, the instructor, the fuel, and the materials; a course runs anywhere from two to ten days. The school has taught this way from Cape Coral since 1984.
The fleet is shared with sister company Southwest Florida Yachts: the same boats run ASA instruction one week and bareboat charter the next, which keeps them maintained to a teaching standard. Sail stock runs from a Catalina 36 up to a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 440, and the teaching water is Pine Island Sound, with Sanibel, Captiva, and Cayo Costa in day-hop range.
The sail pathway runs Basic Sailing (101) through Basic Coastal Cruising (103), Bareboat Cruising (104, a minimum of 48 hours aboard including a night at anchor), Coastal Navigation (105), and Advanced Coastal Cruising (106), which adds night sailing and passages of twenty-plus miles; Cruising Catamaran (114) rounds out the ticket list. Graduates step straight into the sister fleet as bareboat charterers: earn the certification on the boat, then take the same boat out.
The unusual half of the operation is power. By its own account the school pioneered hands-on trawler and motor-yacht training in the late 1980s, and it still teaches liveaboard power cruising alongside sail, including courses aboard your own boat. Instructors are USCG-licensed masters, one holding ASA’s Outstanding Instructor award. Veterans get ten percent off the 101, and additional crew can join a course at half price.
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