We're looking to begin on the road to certification with the Keelboat 1 course at SailPro in Phuket, Thailand.  Would you recommend ASA (American Sailing Association) or ISSA (International Sailing Schools Association) stream - both are offered.  Going to be international (based in Singapore now, both of us are teachers, mobile profession...) for a few years - is one stream better recognized / more accepted than the other, globally or regionally?

Thanks in advance!

There is little difference between standards published by the major sailing organisations throughout the world. The key aspect of training courses is ensuring that the instructors know their job and previous clients have had a good experience. SailPro have been operating for many years and I would be surprised if you had a bad experience with them.

If you wanted some in-depth bed time reading to compare courses, have a look at the draft ISAF Learn to Sail Training Programme. This will eventually be a world-wide programme to assist countries to set up a national sail training scheme & have it assessed & registered by ISAF. In years to come, the answer to your question will be to check that whatever the scheme, ASA, RYA, USSA, FFV etc, it has ISAF certification.

The ISAF LSTP is available here http://www.sailing.org/learntosail.php - http://www.sailing.org/learntosail.php  but as it is a heady document in total, I suggest that you download the main file (not the appendices) which contains the sylabus for various levels.

Hope this helps

Ralph Tingle, Executive Director, International Sailing Schools Association