Sail Eastern Lake Ontario
North Shore Reaching Sailing School is excited to be in our eighth year of teaching sailing and the cruising lifestyle! We sail out of Belleville, Ontario - and all of our instructors are Canadian. Contact Us to learn more or book your courses today!
Meet Captain Andy McCabe, Head Instructor
|
Andy McCabe is a certified American Sailing Association instructor and Instructor Evaluator with years of experience successfully teaching and operating his own ASA sailing school. In 2021, 2022 and 2023 he was awarded the ASA's Outstanding Instructor of the Year, recognizing the top 1% of ASA instructors worldwide. In 2024, Andy obtained his captain's license through the US Coast Guard. With more than 35 years of teaching and working as a Paramedic, Andy's passion for sailing and education culminated in the founding of North Shore Reaching Sailing School. Since beginning sailing in his teenage years, Andy has traversed various bodies of water, achieved multiple credentials and forayed into racing on a few occasions. North Shore Reaching Sailing School is ideally situated on Eastern Lake Ontario and Andy now spends his time teaching adult sailors of various abilities and enjoying the easy access to Lake Ontario, the Bay of Quinte and the Thousand Islands. |
Meet Bill Bernaerts, Instructor
|
Bill began his boating as a child back in the 1960s. A self-taught dinghy sailor at 12 years old, he progressed to windsurfing and ultimately, monohull keelboat sailing. Bill spent 6 years cruising Lake Ontario and has extensive experience sailing Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, the North Channel and Lake Erie. He is experienced in delivering boats and has skippered from Jacksonville Florida to Albany New York via the Intracoastal Waterway and along the Trent Severn.
Bill has almost a decade of experience with the Brighton Auxiliary Rescue Unit, a division of the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary and was Unit Leader for 5 years, overseeing the purchase of a new rescue vessel and complete retrofit while also training crew and guiding rescue missions. Bill has hands-on experience maintaining, repairing and updating several vessels, with the latest being a refit of his Tartan 3500 in 2023. |
|
