
Demystify passage making in this online course with Nikki Henderson, as we explore the best practices for planning, preparing and completing your next offshore or ocean voyage.
You don’t need to be an expert sailor to go blue water sailing. But you do need realistic, quality coaching. Finding strong opinions about passage planning and passage making isn’t difficult. But, figuring out which ones to listen to - now that’s a bit of a challenge. This course is designed to help you navigate all of this clutter so that you can head out to sea with clarity! It will clear out the clutter, and leave you educated on good go-to strategies for planning passages, frameworks for preparing, and some useful tips for route making and managing life at sea.
Online class overview
WHO IS THIS CLASS FOR?
Designed specifically for anyone who has the goal to make a long passage at sea one day. Equally, this would be very applicable to anyone who is a passage-making veteran, but wants to fine tune their passage making strategy. All experience levels are welcome.
List of topics:
- Preparation:
- When should you start looking at weather and planning?
- How to approach preparing?
- Checklists and how to use them for planning and passage making.
- Example checklist format and how to use it.
- Benefits and errors commonly made with checklists.
- Tips for route making
- Are there any ‘rules’ - red flags or green flags for routing?
- How and if to incorporate a weather router into your passage making?
- Strategies for squalls and bad weather.
- Provisioning: food, water, fuel and other stuff?
- Strategy for life-line management (fuel, food, water).
- Common mistakes made and how to avoid them.
YOUR HOST
Nikki is one of the most experienced and influential offshore and ocean skippers you will come across.
For over a decade, Nikki has coached, skippered and led amateur crews in the most extreme offshore and ocean races in the world. That includes leading her team to a victorious 2nd place in the Clipper Round the World Race, just two days after her 25th birthday. She then sailed halfway around the world again, this time skippering the infamous Maiden throught the pirate infested waters of East Africa on the first leg of her world tour. You might have seen her on Sailing La Vagabonde’s Youtube Channel, where she supported the couple on their unseasonal Atlantic Crossing to deliver young Greta Thunberg to the climate conference in Europe. Or maybe you followed her on one of her numerous other ocean adventures: 12 Atlantic crossings, a Sydney Hobart, three RORC Caribbean 600 races, 2 Rolex Fastnet races and even 2 entries into the Race-to-Alaska’ races, one of which she won.
Nikki is a passionate teacher, inspiring leader, motivating speaker and head turning author. She often hosts episodes of On the Wind with 59 North. You can enjoy her regular column in Yachting World in which she steers the hearts and minds of the sailing community. Stay tuned for her upcoming debut book.
Be sure to check out Nikki’s most recent project: SALTED: her new ‘learn to sail’ subscriber platform which she describes as: “An unpretentious, upbeat community inspired by sailing. A newsletter that will empower you, and educate you, to think differently about not just how to sail, but also how to live your life.”

Regular Price
$39
$29