About the Event
The Young Sailors Academy is a special project, and one we love dearly. Organizing family sailing trips with kids is always a serious responsibility: every detail has to be thought through. But the result is worth it! In summer 2025 we’re opening our tenth season of family sailing. The new Young Sailors Academy season will take place in Montenegro!
WHAT IS IT?
The Young Sailors Academy is more than sailing! We’ve been running family sailing trips for ten years in a row, and we know from experience that a sea voyage on a yacht, with hands-on learning and active participation in life on board, means a complete change of scenery and activity, a reset for adults and kids, and a long-awaited alternative to the usual annual package holiday on land. Kids’ regattas are a chance to live through a new, unlike-anything-else emotional experience of traveling together with your child, where no one has a passive role. Parents discover new sides of their children: their wisdom and courage, their readiness to work together and overcome difficulties, their happiness every minute at sea.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Led by experienced skippers and counselors, the crew sets off on a week-long sea expedition aboard comfortable cruising yachts. We select qualified skippers who teach participants seamanship and fill adults and kids alike with a love of the sea and adventure!
WHAT WILL WE DO?
Together with the skippers, we’ll raise the sails, take the helm and plot routes on charts. Together with the counselors, we’ll learn to tie sailing knots, find out all about the life of real sailors, put on a play and shoot a film, build sandcastles, have a picnic on a desert island and find treasure! We’ll also spot the North Star and find the Big and Little Dipper in the night sky. While the kids have fun, parents can spend their free time on their own interests or join the kids, which is often just as interesting, if not more so! No more worrying about how to keep the kids busy on holiday. Especially for parents, we’ve come up with “parents’ hour”: every evening the counselors take the kids to watch a film on deck under the stars or read them a book, giving parents the chance to sit over a glass of wine after dinner or stroll through the quiet streets of the coastal towns.
WHAT’S NEW THIS SEASON?
Now this is the most exciting part! Besides mastering the basics of seamanship, learning about every role on board, sunshine and games, this year something completely new awaits us. Ready? Let’s show our cards!
Our wizards, our incredibly vibrant and upbeat counselors, have come up with a program that will make the journey even better this year. There’s no limit to perfection!
This year we’ll have themed days on the yacht: Theater Day, Cinema Day (we’ll shoot a really cool film!), Intuition Day, Self-Government Day (the kids will prepare a real quest for you, parents. Get ready!). And, of course, Treasure Hunt Day.
It’s hard to say which of them will be the highlight of our journey. Every day, we adults will probably think there’s simply no room for more children’s laughter per square meter of the yacht. But we’ll be wrong! :)
HOW DO WE LIVE?
Kids and parents live on the boats in comfortable double cabins. There are 3 bathrooms with showers and hot water for every 5 cabins (depending on the boat model). Each boat has its own galley, where we make breakfasts and lunches from the freshest produce bought at local shops and harbor markets. We have dinner at picturesque little restaurants on the shore. A kids’ regatta means learning always alternates with fun and rest. Passages are short, 1.5–3 hours; every day we land on new beaches and spend lots of time active ashore. And no gadgets! First, there’s no time! Second, nobody even remembers them! For teens over 14, we’ve arranged a separate boat (they’re in the middle of separating from their parents, after all). The teens will sail the boat, keep it clean, help with steering and mooring, cook their own meals and be completely independent (while staying close to you)!
WHAT DOES IT GIVE YOU?
By the end of the trip, parents and kids will know what the jobs of a deckhand, boatswain, navigator, radio operator and first mate involve, as well as what a bowline is, how to tie on fenders, cleat a line, cast off and take mooring lines, and how to shout “Anchor’s aweigh!” loudly as we set off. Besides new experiences and vivid memories, you’ll leave with new friends, and not only the kids, but their parents too! Sailing brings together whole families around the world who love visiting each other and meeting up at new regattas! You can read more about what to bring in the FAQ section. To see what it’s all like, check out our Photo Reports and our participants’ Reviews.
Program
Day 1: Meeting at Porto Montenegro marina at 17:00, safety briefing, introductions, dinner.
Day 2: 12 miles. Leaving Porto Montenegro for an anchorage at Stradioti Island, swimming. Passage to Kotor. Evening climb up the fortress walls.
Day 3: 9 miles. Morning walk around town, visit to the Maritime Museum. Passage to Morinj Bay. Anchoring or mooring at the new pier. Dinner at Ćatovića Mlini restaurant, which can be reached by motor dinghy.
Day 4: 7 miles. Sailing program, swimming, short passage to a restaurant pier in Dobrota. Mooring on buoys / mooring lines.
Day 5: 12 miles. Passage to the Adriatika restaurant, mooring on buoys.
Day 6: 5 miles. Passage to Portonovi, dinner at a restaurant.
Day 7: 10 miles. Passage to Tivat, Porto Montenegro.
Day 8: Returning the boats by 9:00, goodbyes and hugs.
The route may be changed at the skipper’s discretion due to weather conditions.
What’s Included
What’s Not Included
