mediterranean Prep-weekend
Learn the essential skills for a relaxing sailing holiday in the med!

Master the Mediterranean Mooring and park like a pro! Get valuable tips for managing your charter boat and sailing holiday in the sun. Practise how to work as a team and manage the yacht short-handed. Get valuable inside information from you instructor who has 7 years of full time teaching experience in Greece and knows what to look out for in the Med!
The Course Overview

The Mediterranean prep-weekend course is for you who want to come well prepared for your sailing vacation. In this intense 2-day course, you will cover all the things that will make you confident and competent, and you will get the tips and tricks to have a successful and stress-free sailing holiday in the Mediterranean.
This is an exclusive and tailor-made course, not available anywhere else, and it is carefully constructed to last over a weekend only (Sat-Sun). This is so that you don't have to spend your precious vacation days for training, but rather allocate them where they belong: To your holiday! This course is suitable for the whole family and for shorthanded couples. And of course for a skipper talking novices or friends out for a sail in the sun!
Course Content & Schedule
The goal is for you to enjoy a relaxing vacation and come back from your holiday with good memories and with a sense of achievement. The course is designed to do precisely this, targeting situations and areas where people usually fail and teaching you how to avoid or deal with holiday-disasters! Time permitting, this is what you will cover:

What to expect
THE CORRECT METHODS
One of the most daunting events on your sailing vacation is to execute the Mediterranean Mooring. And indeed, the amount of catastrophic errors happening in Greek harbours during “parking up” is staggering. But why is this? It's simply because most books, instructors and schools have the wrong methods for med-mooring and they explain and pass on these incorrect techniques to their students. Even some popular and large training organisations are teaching the wrong approach and yet proudly standing by them!

We don't subscribe to any of this ineffective methodology, but we rather aim to teach you the techniques that work and the principles behind them, so that you don't end up in stressful situations on your holiday. Of course, the weekend contains much more than just the med-mooring and you will be drilled in a variety of things that can happen on your holiday: Anchoring correctly, receiving the yacht, safety brief, rope handling, teamwork and short-handing, just to name a few.
MADE BY A PROFESSIONAL
Your instructor is a certified RYA YachtMaster Ocean and YachtMaster Instructor, who has 7 years of experience living in Greece all year round. He worked as a Flotilla skipper, Charter skipper, Delivery skipper and RYA Instructor, and he has taught over 750 students for the training centre in Greece. As a flotilla skipper, he wrote the flot-manual for the charter company, and kept training the new flotilla crew each year. Needless to say, he knows his way around and has lots of valuable information to pass on to you during the course.

A PROPER COURSE
This 2 day course is not just a throw-together. The author of the course is very passionate about Mediterranean sailing, and wants you to have a successful and empowering sailing vacation. We also limit the participants to 3 teams, so that there will be enough time for everyone to do the exercises. Also, there will be plenty of handout material during the course, from the S.T.E.P. resources.
What's included
What's not included (and what to bring yourself)
Various logistical information:
The course is very flexible in terms of participants, but we ensure that you don't share a cabin with a stranger! This is to allow you to work in the same "team" that you will be in on your holiday, and that you get the appropriate amount of training during the course.
The course starts at 0900 on Saturday and finishes at 1700 on Sunday. Expect to cover theory or practical exercises on Saturday evening as well!
There are showers and toilets in the harbours, and of course also on the yacht.
The yacht has ingredients for breakfast, lunch and a delicious dinner. However, you are welcome to visit a restaurant in the evening if you prefer.
Unless you are notified otherwise, the course start and finish is at one of our bases in Zeeland. Currently we primarily sail out of Kats and Wemeldinge which you can reach by car (Kats - Google Location), (Wemeldinge - Google Location), or take a train to Goes and a taxi from there. If you prefer to arrive the night before, there are several hotels and B&Bs in the area.
As a participant of the course, you are expected to clean the yacht on Sunday afternoon, before leaving.
The course is held in English, and it is heavily advised that you are fluent enough to get the most value out of the course.

S.T.E.P. Academy Courses Schedule
In the calendar below you will find all the planned courses for the year. Please click on the course you are interested in to see more information and the course cost.
Please be aware that the schedule and courses may change. Therefore, it's advisable to come back here regularly and keep yourself updated with the current schedule. Please use the form below to make an enquiry about the course you are interested in.