Mid Island Sail Training (MIST) – 2026

MIST (Mid Island Sail Training) is an active on-the-water weekend designed to build confidence, capability, and camaraderie for skippers, admirals, and crew preparing for offshore and remote coastal cruising. Whether you’re seasoned or just getting started, everyone is welcome. Bring your boat, your questions, and a wish list of skills you want to practice or learn.

No boat? If you’re boatless, contact me and I’ll do my best to find you a berth. New BCA members are especially encouraged to join. No experience required. Think of it as a weekend to try the skills you have heard of or seen, but haven’t had the opportunity to try or practice.

No two MIST weekends are ever the same. With lots of skills to explore, limited time, and weather shaping our choices, the weekend naturally evolves with the group. MIST is a hands-on weekend of skill-building, shared learning, and connection with fellow sailors while developing awareness of other boats, new ideas and our co-adventures.

We tackle the skills we’ve always meant to practise, along with essential techniques that are easy to overlook. The focus is on “traditional” skills, to make your passages safer, especially when technology fails. And yes, it’s meant to be fun. Expect to learn, laugh, and possibly get wet.

By the way – we’d also love it if the salt-soaked long-time doners with stories and lessons-learned joined in.  Just come and share your wealth of experience and tales.

Top left: Blind navigation (2024); Top right: Throwing a heaving line (2025); Bottom left: Sailing on and off the mooring (2025); Bottom right: Swinging a compass (2024)

MIST 2026 – May 8 to 10

The fun begins on Friday, May 8 at Montague Marine Park. We’ll gather there with an informal group supper at the picnic shelter. If tides or other commitments get in the way, feel free to arrive when you can. After supper, we’ll share what everyone hopes to learn, shape the weekend plan together, and most likely enjoy a presentation from an RCSAR officer/doner. The evening is a relaxed way to connect and sets the stage for an engaging and rewarding weekend ahead.

Saturday and Sunday will be spent mostly on the water and may include a short cruise to find space and wind. Participants are encouraged to bring and use their immersion suit, dry suit, or wet suit as we practise hands-on safety skills. Activities may include a life raft exercise, recovering someone from the water and working through other realistic, but safely managed, on-the-water “inconveniences.”

Check out the MIST pages on the BCA website for more details.

Post-MIST Invitation

After MIST, I will be cruising locally, ending at the May Rendezvous the following weekend. Participants are welcome to cruise alongside me and extend the MIST experience. Given the value of MIST shown by the returnees each year, it’s time to establish a MIST community – something we should talk about over the weekend.

Tight lines, full sails and following seas. Hope to see you at MIST.

Contact David Vincent, MIST Co-ordinator: MIST Coordinator or Commodore or David Vincent.