When you’re ready to expand your boating horizons beyond day trips, you’re a cruiser! From an overnighter to a nearby marina or a quiet anchorage to an ocean crossing to a foreign land,
Cruise With Confidence is a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to help you plan, prepare, and enjoy the trip.
You’ll learn how to choose the right boat, understand propulsion and electrical systems, and master onboard essentials like electronics, navigation, and communications. From the big picture to practical tips, you’ll develop skills in safety, security, anchoring, and seamanship. Whether under power or sail, you’ll gain confidence to handle emergencies, understand weather, and keep your crew comfortable and happy.
From provisioning and meal planning to chartering and crossing borders, you’ll finish this course ready to chart your own course — calm, capable, and confident at the helm.
Boat Operator Certification
This course is required for the Boat Operator Certification level of Advanced Coastal Navigator (ACN).
A comprehensive study of how ocean currents and tides affect navigation. Use navigation software when planning and underway to evaluate current impacts on your route.
$34.95Car and marine GPS aren’t the same. Learn how to choose a chart plotter and use this tool to create waypoints, build and execute routes, and check your progress along the way.
$34.95Become a more useful crew member by learning how to operate the boat. Understand the basics of navigating, docking, preparing for bad weather, handling onboard emergencies, etc.
$34.95Learn the signs of changing weather, how to anticipate storms, what causes weather, how to read weather maps, what clouds mean, how weather systems move, why winds blow.
$34.95Important for offshore boaters, the 500 millibar upper air chart will help you predict upper-level wind speed and direction, trough and ridge patterns, and the 5640 storm track line.
$34.95