Largs to Barra Sail/Fly: Scotland Sailing Adventure

This was a really excellent week sailing on the west coast out of Largs March 2025. we sailed across to ballycastle, back via campbelltown in some challenging conditions with an excellent skipper Peter. the boats are modern and very capable, comfortable lots of good grub. A highly recommended experience. Great training great experience.

I was doing RYA Coastal Skipper Course with Go West Sailing in Largs with Danny as Coach. Great experience with loads of fun, where I learned a lot of theory, tips and tricks plus practicing with Scottish tides & winds is the best sailing experience you can get. Nice team, very practical and professional.

I have just finished a Ladies only competent crew course with Sally, and I cannot recommend this experience enough. I chose a ladies only course, among other reasons, because this is a very male dominated sport and I have had very bad experience with Alfa men instructors | skippers who are passive aggressive to say the least and do nothing but lower your confident down or dissolve it all together. Sally is the calmest person I have met in my life and managed to restore my confidence to the point that I enjoyed mooring the boat on a busy marina with strong winds. This is something I would have had nightmares of doing before, even though I have lived aboard a monohull for six months and moored every three days during that time. She was calmed even in moments of stress and never had a moment of anger to any of the students during the 5 days and nights that we spent together. She repeated explanations as many times as it was necessary without showing a sing of exasperation. She addressed any issues that were raised by us in timely and effective manner. I originally booked the course as If felt that even though I had logged more than 5000 miles as crew, I had unfinished business with sailing after my negative experience with previous skippers. She has inspired me to go further on my qualifications and already looking into my Day Skipper theory course.

Most of the times, I don't do a review on anything, maybe that's because I'm lazy, however, after 2 weeks with Go West RYA center, as soon as I got to my laptop I felt to write these words. I'm at the beginning of my sailing journey with just 2000 nM of experience in my 2 years, but since I started this quest I did more than 12 trainings with the same number of instructors, in both tidal and non-tidal waters across Europe. From the first moment with Go West, up until the end, I was inspired by their professionalism as instructors. On this subject I don't even want to mention anything else because they are top on this subject, and also on sailing safety on every aspect of sayling (even not at sea). I want to mention their warmth (I'm not a native English speaker, so even if my term is not exact, you will understand what I want to emphasize from my next words). Seeing an instructor with maybe more than 200K nM, all the oceans traversed severals times and 30+ years of experience, teach a competent crew a bow line or a clove hitch, not once, but multiple times a day during multiple days without any nervosity, or blame, it's something really rare to be seen. Or, for me, as a Coastal Skipper, repeat the MOB exercise both on engine and sails as many times as from an accidental gybe that was of course followed by a second gybe... to executing it perfectly at the end that my other instructor telling: "looks like you did this before". Sailing is not only boat, sheets, tacks and gybes and sailing in Scotland is fantastic. I will not mention, landscapes, villages which are impressive, but the marine fauna, I don't even have words for this. 20 dolphins staying with the boat, not for several seconds, but for hours and the emergency tiller exercise happening when there were 3 whales close to the boat was... Even if it was my 4th emergency tiller exercise, now I really wanted it to do it properly, because i followed the whales during the exercise. Of course every story has a culminating point, when at the night sailing exercise the Northern Lights appeared. I can't not say more, but everything ended with an under sail docking that made me exclaimed to my instructor: "what an extraordinary proof of seamanship", and this after a sector of 3 hours sail with 20 kn of wind, in the night, where after a week, every student on the boat knew exactly what he needs to do: from reefing, to sheet out the main sail and more. I will stop here even if it's more. Go West, even if I had great instructors up until now in my sailing quest you are my number one! Thank you so much and I can't wait to join the Yachtmaster course with you.

Even though I been sailing for over ten years, skipper and instructors ofGo West Sailing are always provide me with useful trips and hints. This year we took Advance sailing to St. Kilda, and it was just awesome. Danny (chief instructor) is also excellent local guide, but also he was able to make the adventure sailing possible for our three year old son. I highly recommend to anybody who either looking for a practical course and an advance lesson to put Go West Sailing on top of your list. More than happy to provide you with more reference.