What You'll Get
Experienced seafarers possess the courage to sail through treacherous shoals and the resourcefulness to know which kinds of wave are edible. Learn to survive on hardtack and sea-foam with today's Groupon: for $389, you get a three-hour private sailing lesson for up to four people from New York Sailing Center & Yacht Club (up to a $780 value).
New York Sailing Center & Yacht Club's instructors instill sail-rearing skills in teen and adult seafarers of all experience over three-hour lessons held both on and off a seaworthy vessel. Designed to introduce sailing to beginners or serve as a refresher for experienced-but-rusty sailers, a 15-minute introduction to sailing talk serves students the fundamentals of sailing and the significance of seeing red skies at morning, at night, or inside your television even when it's unplugged. Wave-riders then board a ship and begin to tack and jibe firsthand, heading up and down as they traverse the shores of City Island and pass landmarks such as Stepping Stones and Manhasset Neck. After three hours of adjusting sails and steering boats nimbly around the island, voyagers head back to port laden with sailing knowledge and any swordfish they hypnotized into jumping on deck.
The Fine Print
Promotional value expires Jul 28, 2012. Amount paid never expires. Limit 1 per person, may buy 2 additional as gifts. Subject to weather. Reservation required. Merchant is solely responsible to purchasers for the care and quality of the advertised goods and services.
About New York Sailing Center
Just a subway train's throw from Manhattan, City Island seems like a different world—tree-lined banks and sprawling waters that stretch toward the New York City skyline and out into the open Sound. New York Sailing Center's owner Captain Stephen Glenn Card touts the location for its absence of man-made disturbances such as wind shears and strong currents. Captain Card has taught since the 1980s, and continues to lead multiday immersive-sailing classes for everyone from beginners to advanced cruisers and navigators.
Throughout the years, they have developed a fine-tuned training system that combines in-classroom instruction (including practice with a large, moveable boat) and on-water obstacle courses within Eastchester Bay and Long Island Sound. Atop these waters, students practice on Beneteau sailing boats —twin-rudder vessels that can accommodate beginner's mistakes, and are also the only boats to receive endorsements from a national sail training organization, such as ASA or US Sailing. As students progress, instructors teach more advanced skills such as bareboat cruising and navigation. They even take some of their brightest pupils on sailing trips to destinations such as Italy or Captain Hook's retirement home.