The Global Life: Savvy Sailing

Clever skippers earn certificates that let them rent boats all over the world

Yamila Sigler is wondering whether she enrolled in a Berlitz course instead of a sailing class. All morning on Miami's Biscayne Bay, in a 23-ft. keelboat called the Woolly Bully, instructor Dean Sealey has been drilling her and three other students on tacks (zigzag turns), nuns (channel-marking buoys) and cunninghams (sail-tightening lines). "English is not my first language," frets Sigler, 33, a civil engineer who came to the U.S. from Cuba a decade ago. And sailing jargon is certainly nothing she ever expected to learn. As the Woolly Bully heads home, Sealey tells Sigler to do the docking--which will of course...

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