North Shore Reaching Sailing School is the premier American Sailing Association certified school in Canada, established in 2017. With our extensive variety of certification, endorsement and non-certification course offerings, we are uniquely poised to teach every level of adult sailor, from novice sailors looking to embark on the keelboat sailing lifestyle, to those more experienced who wish to hone skills and gain formal certification or are looking to build sea time. Our courses are tailored to meet individual needs with flexible day, evening and weekend scheduling, on our boat or yours. We are ideally situated on Eastern Lake Ontario with access to a variety of cruising grounds including The Bay of Quinte and The Thousand Islands.

Owner and lead instructor Andy McCabe is a certified American Sailing Association Instructor and Master Instructor. Andy’s passion for sailing began in his teen years with the Royal Canadian Sea Cadets. His experience includes extensive sailing on a variety of sailboats, traversing numerous of bodies of water, and brief forays into racing.

After 35 years of working and teaching as an Advanced Care Paramedic, Andy established North Shore Reaching Sailing School – a school built on the foundation of safety, quality instruction and focused learning. Andy’s dedication to quality instruction and sailing experiences has led to his receipt of multiple ASA Outstanding Instructor of the Year awards, an honour that places him in the top one percent of instructors world-wide.

North Shore Reaching Sailing School instructor Bill Bernaerts 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 extensive hands-on experience maintaining, repairing and updating sailboats.

Whether your goal is to achieve certification in sailing or to build skills and time on the water, we offer it all at North Shore Reaching Sailing School.