So, firstly I have no knowledge of boating, Yachting.

Last year I spent a superb week on a friends 22ft Sailing Yacht, helped by the fact it was in the South of France, and the weather was glorious.

So a year later, I still quite fancy something like this, but unlike my friend who has been messing about with boats since he was a kid, I'm starting from first principles.

So what would people suggest as a first step, local Dinghy course ?, intensive course somewhere ?

I'm in no particular rush, but it looks like a hobby I would enjoy, if not a bit on the expensive side. BTW I live in landlocked Bedfordshire !

Thank you

Do your RYA level 1 and 2 dinghy courses first. Yes, you can go straight into a yacht, but you will learn far, far more and be a better and faster sailor if you start in dinghies. It will make you ten times more aware of the wind, improve your boat handling and tell you what you need to do to sail any boat in an efficient and balanced manner.

There's a reason airline pilots start learning in Cessnas and Lewis Hamilton started in karts...exactly the same is true in yachts.

Sailing dingies is the best place to start - join a club, have some lessons and do a couple of seasons crewing in somebody else's boat. The way you get experience without commitment, can decide if you like sailing and there's always a rescue boat to fish you out when things go wrong.

If you still like sailing then try to blag a few trips and overnights on a yacht - you'll probrably find most skippers will be glad of the company and enjoy taking you as much as you'll enjoy the trip. You'll learn lots too from an experienced skipper.

Once you've done that then and still want to carry it's time to get some training. You carry a lot of responsibility skippering a yacht and need as a bare minimum a VHF licence and level of knowledge - not just a shiny new RYA certificate - so you can be sure that at night, in half a gale and pouring rain and when you're absolutely sick and tired of boats you can still instinctively make the right decisions. How will you get home if you're 40 miles away on a sunday evening and and the weather goes tits up on you?

Think very carefully too about buying a boat. Cheap enough to buy but can be ruiniously expensive to run. How often will you use it? How many people do you need to crew it? Where will you keep it? How long does it take from front door to berth? How many other demands on your free time do you have - there's no such thing as going out for a quick sail. What else are you maybe giving up to pay for it all?

You'll need antifouling every year which is a filthy job and antifouling is expensive. Sails for even a modest 6m boat will cost north of a grand to replace. A all tide access marina berth in the south east for a 6m yacht will be close to £2k a year, a drying mooring knee deep in mud up some forgotten creek will be cheaper but where are you going to keep your tender?

Get yacht ownership right and it's great. Get it wrong or loose the time and commitment you'll need and it's a right pain in the rectal area.

First things first - excellent hobby choice. You will get addicted to it.

You could do any of the above, but I'll tell you what we did and worked for us... I would recommend this route as it gets you sailing decent size boats in the med by yourself pretty quickly... If you want to go dinghying or UK sailing by yourself, then this probably isn't the way to go of course...

As a bit of background, I used to windsurf as a teenager to an OK standard and did crew for a boat a few times over a couple of summers as a teenager (not that I knew what I was really doing back then). The Mrs' only experience of boats was being sick on a Channel ferry.

We are also landlocked but in Cambridgeshire and started with a competent crew course in Ipswich with a company called Anglia sea ventures last year - It was fairly simple as people have said above and I guess going straight to day skipper could also be done.

It does get you out in a well equipped nice size boat exploring the coast round the UK and you pick up the basics. The instructors we had were keen for everyone to do as much as they wanted. We stopped at a few Marinas, anchored up near a sunny Aldeburgh and got caught in a storm 12 miles off the coast which was v v nice whilst learning the basics.

The key for us though is that both me and the Mrs could do this together (we did it with some other friends at the same time). It took 2 weekends and we both then had the comp crew qualification which they say is the minimum for Sailing holidays flotillas which I would recommend as step 2 - some of the other Sailing companies demand day skipper / ICC certificates etc as a minimum (I don't know if they enforce this).

With 2 of you at comp crew standard, you can then do a flotilla with Sailing holidays. We did a 2 week tour of the Ionian in Greece last year and have just come back from a 1 week tour of the Saronic Gulf over the Jubilee week.

Last year we had a Beneteau 323 and this year a Beneteau 331 all to ourselves.

We fully expected to be the least qualified on the first flotilla but as it happened, I think we had the most sailing experience there. The family next to us had never ever been on a yacht before turning up in Greece and didn't know where the stern was or what a fender looked like....

For us, the sailing in Greece is excellent - you get nice wind most days, nice equipment and a nice tan along the way. "Sailing holidays" are brilliant - they operate a really relaxed flotilla and you get to do what you want sailing wise. They seem to cater for all levels of experience and you always have the lead crew on call if anything does go horribly wrong.

We have bumped into a few of the other sailing companies operating in Greece on our travels and imho, it can seem all a bit more serious to them.

The problem we have had is that you want to do more and more and as you say it ain't cheap.

The next step for me is probably a day skipper course or even a coastal skipper course in the UK with the plan of either bareboating in Greece or venturing to Turkey / Croatia or even the BVIs which is supposed to be nice.

Alternatively, we would like to buy a yacht and keep it somewhere near Ipswich, although I am yet to find anyone who thinks this a good idea.........

Bob

I would start sailing in a dinghy to get the idea of how the wind works and what reactions (in principle) the boat makes to different adjustments.

I am a dinghy instructor, and have quite some experience in yachts and most of the people who I have met whilst yachting who learned to sail on a yacht have very little sense of how the wind actually affects what the boat is doing. Dinghy sailing gives you an awareness that I don't think you get in yachting if you're just starting out.

Oh, and by the way it does not have to be "that" expensive. I have a 27 footer, that could take me to the Azores (saying that as a few of the same class have been that far) or further. She's probably worth about the same as people in my old dinghy club pay for round the cans on an inland pond toys. Insurance is less than my own dinghy, even though one lives on a trolley out the water for 99.99% of it's life, and the other has gas systems, a diesel engine, and lives on a swinging mooring all year. Most fittings/ ropes/sails are less than dinghy racing ones, my sailing club membership costs me under £100 a year and my club mooring in portsmouth harbour is less than £150 a year. Winter storage (she came out this winter was under £200 including craneage. She has a 650cc diesel engine also used in generators and cement mixers that sips diesel at a very frugal rate.

So please don't think yachts need be that expensive, I reckon if you do your research,join a good club, and do it right the costs for sub 30 foot can be about the same as a smoking habit...