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Brittany is the home of the world’s best offshore sailors. Our 7-day fast-track performance monohull course will have our favourite French native Hugo Picard turning you into a fine-tuned sailor. Your training happens on a Ferrari-like Pogo 12.5. All prices are per person.

Can’t see a date that works for you? Register your interest in future Performance courses here to ensure you are notified when new dates become available.

Course Preparation

Who is a Performance Course for?

We started our school with the belief that people under 50 want a sailing experience that is more athletic, more exhilarating than your typical cruising course. Our strong growth last year and perfect five-star ratings on Tripadvisor, Google and Facebook, making us the highest rated sailing school on the planet, suggests we’re onto something. Here is a bit more information about us.

This course follows our guiding principle, that sailing is one of the most exhilarating, athletic things you can do. Sailing courses are often held on tired old cruising boats. We have a Pogo. This thing is fast. Designed by Finot-Conq, the Pogo 12.5 is the boy-racer of monohulls. 15 or more knots is to be expected on a week in this part of the world: the mecca for offshore racers.

How many people can go on a course?

On this boat we can take five students. We have a senior instructor for the week, making sure everyone gets both boat and instructor time.

Who is the instructor?

Your instructor is Hugo Picard, known as The Sailing Frenchman on YouTube (with over 100K subscribers). Hugo has run race boats for Clipper, instructed in the Caribbean, raced single-handed in races leading up to the mini-Transat and is an unflappable, inspirational human. We love Hugo at Sailing Virgins – we all agree he’s pretty much the coolest person we know.

To be a Sailing Virgins instructor you need to have at least two seasons as a lead skipper for The Yacht Week in the Med and Caribbean, plus have at least a couple of ocean crossings under the belt. Our instructors can sail like nobody’s business. And they can get on with anyone and everyone.

Catamarans or monohulls for speed?

We like them both.  The spoiler here is that it’s not about the boat so much as the crew. Nevertheless they have their pros and cons. While cats are normally faster, a Pogo will beat all but the fastest cats (one of the few who can beat it is the TS42, which we sail in our Performance Cat Course). We cover the difference in more detail here.

I still need convincing. Why Sailing Virgins?

To see if we are a fit for each other, check this page.

This itinerary is subject to change based on conditions.

Bretagne (aka “Brittany”) France

The Pogo is widely known as the fastest non-foiling production monohull available. They scream.

More information on the Pogo 12.5 can be found here.