Blue Water Sailing Seminars

Beyond postcards or preconceived ideas, is boat life for you? An exclusive creation of the Grand Large Yachting group, the Blue Water Sailing Seminar has been a growing success for over ten years. Quite simply, because this program allows you to take in all the information you need to plan your blue-water cruising journey, whether you are a beginner or experienced sailor.

An annual meeting in Paris

The Grand Large Yachting Group’s Blue Water Sailing Seminar offers you a two-day immersion focusing on the key factors for the success of a long-distance sailing voyage, including on a blue water catamaran:

  • weather routing,
  • active and passive safety,
  • medical procedures on board,
  • route planning,
  • communication,
  • but also photography on board…

Meals and breaks are rich in exchanges between attendees and the experts present.

This instructional sailing seminar owes much to the inspiration, support and involvement of Jimmy Cornell: navigator, author of works of reference, multilingual speaker and rally organizer. He is usually present over these two days to exchange ideas.

Webinars all year round, open to all

The Grand Large Yachting group is convinced of the scope and relevance of the themes of Blue Water Cruising. This is why, to fulfill your virtual dreams of oceans, we regularly hold Blue Water Cruising Webinars that give owners and future owners the tools to plan their sailing voyage.

Free for all, the Blue Water Cruising Webinars are based at this stage on five online sessions calling on the expertise of recognized speakers such as Knut Frostad, Martin Oudet, Nikki Henderson, Loic Helies and Pete Goss.

#1 “Sailing digital, a freedom factor on board”, by Knut Frostad

Knut spent many years as a professional sailor and raced in the Olympics and later four times around the world in the Whitbread and Volvo Ocean Race, twice as skipper. More recently he spent 18 months cruising with his family on one of our sailing catamarans, the Outremer 5X. His normal day-to-day job is as the President & CEO of Navico, a world leading provider of marine electronics including B&G for sailing and C-Map cartography.

2# “Medecine basics on board”, by Martin Oudet

Martin is a sailor and a medical doctor who works at the Lorient Hospital, in Brittany. He will speak about different topics and medical situations, and how to anticipate and manage them to make you autonomous and able to have a nice cruise on your boat.

#3 “Can there be more than one skipper on board?”, by Nikki Henderson

At 25 years old, Nikki Henderson became the youngest ever Clipper Round the World Race skipper, bringing Visit Seattle home in 2nd place in the 2017/18 edition. She has raced the Caribbean 600, Fastnet, Race to Alaska, Middle Sea Race, and was a guest skipper on Maiden. She also joined YouTubers La Vagabonde to sail Greta Thunberg across the Atlantic on one of our catamarans. Nikki partners sailing with her other passion: storytelling – as an author, and as a motivational speaker. Profoundly affected by the lessons she has learnt at sea, she enjoys sharing her refreshingly honest and unique insights into the human side of this extreme sport.

#4 “Technical boat management”, by Loïc Heliès

Well known to owners and future owners of the Outremer community with whom he has shared his extensive experience during by-annual training sessions, Loïc will explain in his webinar how methodology and processes he uses as an airline pilot can be used in the context of Blue Water Sailing when it comes to boat technical management.

#5 “Dare to dream”, by Pete Goss

Pete Goss MBE is a sailor and adventurer turned entrepreneur and author of the bestselling book “Close to the Wind”. He now splits his time between his ongoing adventures and delivering inspirational and motivational talks to organisations around the world, as well as lecturing at business schools including Oxford University.
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