NAUTICAL NEOPHYTES UNITE; AREA CLUBS PROVIDE STRUCTURE, VESSELS FOR BOATLESS SAILORS.

Byline: JEREMY BAGOTT Latitude 34

The second-happiest day in a sailboat owner's life is the day he buys his boat. The happiest day is the day he sells it.

- Anonymous

Judy Cosgrove spent countless days looking up at the dockside office of the California Sailing Academy near her home in Marina del Rey. She had sailed Sunfish and Lasers at Penn State, but there are differences between sailing a dinghy around a lake in college and plying the Pacific in a deep-keeled sailboat. One day, she stopped in. That was two years ago.

Since then Cosgrove, 38, has chartered a boat or taken part in a club sail nearly every weekend. She has gained two of the American Sailing Association's certifications: the Basic Keelboat Standard and the Basic Coastal Cruising Standard.

She has also learned to race and has studied celestial navigation, preparing her one day for the ASA's most rigorous endorsement, the Offshore Passagemaking Standard - the proven ability to skipper a sailing vessel on a long sea passage, making all navigational, mechanical and crew-welfare decisions in all waters under all conditions.

The most demanding club sail Cosgrove has been on was a foray to the Channel Islands aboard a 40-foot Scandinavian-made flush-deck racing sloop.

``We sailed North from Marina del Rey to Paradise Cove where we anchored for a night,'' she said. ``Then we set sail for Anacapa (Island). We put in a night at Little Scorpion (an anchorage on Santa Cruz Island) and another night at Smuggler's Cove and went ashore and hiked around. It was great. It was the first time I had every really lived aboard a boat.''

Her choice to join the academy puts her among a growing number of sailors who choose the camaraderie and support of a sailing club over the often lonely and expensive prospect of owning a sailboat, which a wag once likened to standing in a bathtub filled with ice cubes while feeding a wad of $100 bills, one bill at a time, into a vacuum.

Sailing clubs serve as intermediaries between boatless sailors who pay monthly dues and charter fees and boat owners willing to lease out their boats to offset costs.

Dues tend to be on par with what you'd pay for health club membership and optional charter fees equivalent to a day of ski rentals and lift tickets in the local mountains: About $150 will charter a 30-foot sloop with full galley, inboard engine and marine head to be used at the member's discretion for a 24-hour period. Some clubs discount the rate for multiple-day charters.

Clubs also arrange member day sails and live-aboard offshore clinics, where skills like advanced spinnaker handling and navigation are taught. Informal sails offer only bonhomie and the chance for beginning sailors to benefit from cruising with more experienced crew.

The first body of knowledge for the beginning club sailor is the ASA's Basic Keelboat Standard. It is taught mostly on the water. It includes the points of sail, nomenclature and sail theory, how to handle rigging and maneuvering in different conditions, safety at sea and right-of-way.

``The first thing we do,'' says Rick Mosier, president of Marina Sailing, ``is we put you on the boat with an instructor. There are three students to a boat. You learn the parts of the boat - the shrouds, the sheets, all the rigging. During the lesson, one student is at the helm, another handles the sheets and the third observes. We have a rotation system that ensures each person gets ample time at the helm.''

Marina Sailing, which has boats and facilities at a number of local harbors, including Marina del Rey and Long Beach, combines the Basic Keelboat and Basic Coastal Cruising standards into nine lessons, which work out to be about $50 per lesson.

Another sailing club, Offshore Islands Sailing in Oxnard's Channel Islands Harbor, offers the option of taking the Basic Keelboat and Basic Coastal Cruising standards as separate courses. Students who pass the former may then sign out the club's Illusion 12s, Capri 22s and Santana 22 until they feel they're ready for the latter. Class size is limited to two students, and - true to its name - Offshore holds nearly all of its lessons in unprotected waters.

``We try to give students a realistic picture,'' said club president Steve Smith. ``We want it to be hands-on. The homework can be done at home. We do man overboard drills out in the open ocean, so it's much more realistic.

``Students find out that the hardest part of the whole thing is finding the swimmer. We use a buoy that's about the size of a person's head. With a foot of wind chop, the thing is disappearing all the time.''

Instead of dues, Offshore has a monthly charter minimum of $45, which is forfeited if no boats are chartered. Offshore charges about $100 for each of five full-day lessons for its combined Basic Keelboat and Basic Coastal Cruising certifications.

Besides the ASA-sanctioned courses and bareboat charters, most clubs tend to hold racing programs. They also offer privileges to visiting members of other clubs.

With the common standards, a member of a Marina del Rey-based sailing club with an Intermediate Coastal Cruising certification could set up a charter through a sailing club in, say, Puget Sound or San Francisco Bay, and the club would know the sailor has met the training and experience for the given rating.

Harry Munns of the ASA points out that all standards are minimum standards. In some sailing waters, site-specific training may be necessary.

``You wouldn't start a person out lake sailing and then put him in the Santa Barbara Channel without additional training,'' Munns said. ``We can assess their skills, then figure out where you need to get to.''

The American Sailing Association's national club-information line is [phone], Ext. 1512.

WHERE TO SET SAIL 

A listing of regional sailing clubs, from south to north:

Blue Dolphin Sailing Club, Balboa Island, [phone].

Marina Sailing, Newport Beach, [phone].

Marina Sailing, Long Beach, [phone].

Pacific Sailboat Charters & Leasing, Long Beach, [phone].

California Sailing Academy, Marina del Rey, [phone].

Marina Sailing, Marina del Rey, [phone].

Pacific Sailing, Marina del Rey, [phone].

Sea Mist Skippers of Marina del Rey, [phone].

Marina Sailing, Oxnard, [phone].

Offshore Islands Sailing, Oxnard, [phone].

Pacific Sailing, Ventura, [phone].

Sailing Center of Santa Barbara, [phone].

TESTING THE WATERS

The American Sailing Association administers the following keelboat certifications:

Basic Keelboat Sailing: Sailors must sail a keelboat of about 20 feet in moderate wind and sea conditions in familiar waters without supervision.

Basic Coastal Cruising: Sailors must cruise safely in local and regional waters as both skipper and crew on an auxiliary-powered sailboat of about 20 to 30 feet in moderate winds and sea conditions.

From there, sailors can test for a series of additional certifications, including (in ascending order): Bareboat Chartering, also known as Intermediate Coastal Cruising; Coastal Navigation; Advanced Coastal Cruising; Celestial Navigation; and Offshore Passagemaking.

Experienced sailors may challenge any of the ASA standards by demonstrating both sailing knowledge and on-water skills.

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, 2 Boxes

PHOTO (1--Color) Jerry Cline steers a club ketch home-ported in of Channel Islands Harbor.

Michael Owen Baker/Daily News

(2--Color) Maria Jonasson, right, and Irene Bagott club sail off Port Hueneme. Club sailing is growing in popularity.

(3--Color) Maria Jonasson stands watch at the helm of a Capri 22.

Jeremy Bagott/Daily News

BOX: (1) WHERE TO SET SAIL (see text)

(2) TESTING THE WATERS (see text)