The Boston Harbor Sailing Club, located at Rowes Wharf Marina, has offered sailing instruction and membership since 1974. Day-sailing courses are $649 and include 30-day sailing privileges. This course teaches folks with little or no experience how to navigate vessels like the club’s 23-foot Sonar and 26-foot Solings around Boston Harbor in favorable-to-average wind and sea conditions. The classes and on-the-water guidance will get you get on board with everything from safety regulations to storm-weathering maneuvers. For the more ambitious would-be helmsman, the club offers charters and rentals ranging from the Albin 28 ($75 per hour, $225 per day) to the Pearson 34, a performance cruiser ($115 per hour, $345 per day). With names like Overnight Sensation and The Unthinkable Molly Brown, these boats are sure to cruise. Mark Healy, the club’s CEO, confesses, ÒThey’re all named for old girlfriends.Ó

Tucked behind the North End, with offices in a riverboat, the Boston Sailing Center welcomes both newcomers and experienced sailors to the boating life. For $675, you can cast off with ÒLearn To Sail,Ó a comprehensive approach to beginner sailing that covers the basics: rigging, points of sail, balance and sail shape, chart reading, and navigation. The course entails 10 classroom hours, plus 16 on-the-water hours; classes meet once a week for five weeks, from 7 to 9 p.m. Sailing time can be scheduled at your convenience. All instructors are certified by the US Sailing Association. The center also offers frostbite racing in the winter months.

If your bank account resembles a slightly deflated raft, we’ve got something to keep you from sinking. Nestled between the Esplanade and the Longfellow Bridge on the Charles River is Community Boating, the largest and oldest public sailing program in the US. Founded by Joseph Lee Jr. in 1936, Community Boating has a simple mission: to make the fun and adventure of sailing available to everybody! Kids get to sail for $1 for a 10-week season, and adult rates are only $75 for 45 consecutive days, $120 for 75, and $190 for a full year. The Learn To Sail program consists of four classes, all taught with the Cape Cod Mercury, a stable, high-performing centerboard sloop. At prices like that, why isn’t Community Boating overrun with members? Sailing instructor Sean Gass speculates, ÒMost people think we’re a private club when they walk or drive by. They’re amazed to discover they can just come right in, that we’re open to the public.Ó

• Boston Harbor Sailing Club, 58 Batterymarch Street, #249, Boston, (617) 720-0049

• Boston Sailing Center, The Riverboat at Lewis Wharf (off Atlantic Avenue), Boston, (617) 227-4198 or www.bostonsailingcenter.com

• Community Boating, 21 David G. Mugar Way, Boston, (617) 523-1038 or www.community-boating.org