I should add that I don't think it is a matter of which comes first -- boat-handling skills or understanding of the wind. They are inextricably bound together.

You cannot learn how to sail in the first place until you know where the wind is coming from. And you can't learn boat-handling skills, and do a proper tack and proper jibe, or park your boat, or point properly to windward unless you know where the wind is coming from.

The biggest problem some of our seminar students have (and it is immediately evident on that first day of boat-handling skills) is that even if they have been sailing for a couple of years, they do not really know where the wind is coming from. And they don't know that they don't know. Once they better understand the wind, then they can start to perfect boat-handling skills.

That's why I said earlier in this thread that it is a chicken-and-egg situation.

Throughout your sailing life you never stop studying the wind and the water, whether you are sailing a fast beach cat or a big, slow monohull.

I was just pointing out that study of wind and water is something that you can always practice when you are out sailing without other boats around, which I think was the question that started this thread.

It's not matter of first or last or instead of. You do it every time you are on the water -- you can even do it when you are anchored out on a little fishing boat.