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The Finger Lakes Chapter has a comprehensive education program with a wide variety of formal and informal courses from which to choose. These courses can be divided as follows:

America's Boating Course

Get your state boating card and learn the skills you need to be safe while boating. Take the finest National Association of State Boating Law Administrators (NASBLA) recognized boating safety course available. By enrolling in the America\'s Boating course you will learn navigation rules, water sports safety and other valuable boater safety skills.

Navigation Courses

The courses that compose the core of the ABC educational program are known as the Advanced Grades courses. Completion of these courses is recognized with the award of a "grade" that can be thought of as being similar to the various degrees one can get from traditional educational facilities.

The courses offered in the Advanced Grades sequence are:

Electives

Electives are a collection of formal, classroom-based courses covering popular boating subjects that can, generally, be taken in any order. These include:

Seminars

Seminars are short (2-4 hour) sessions intended to present a specific topic to interested students. The number of seminars available increases steadily as new presentation materials are developed.

Current seminar topics available include:

Seminar topics coming soon:

Home-Grown Informal Instruction

These are informal tutorials that have been developed locally in response to requests by our membership. Some are opportunistic in nature, but all provide practical, hands-on opportunities for our members to learn new boating skills.

Boat Operator Certification

Courses, electives and seminars are grouped into four families and complimented with skill demonstrations (i.e., hands-on tests) to create certification programs that are recognized internationally. Certification levels available to members are the following:

Details of these programs can be found in the BOC section of the Educational web pages on this site. Click here.

USPS Grades and Awards

Within America's Boating Club (a.k.a. United States Power Squadrons) we recognize educational accomplishments in several ways. First, there are "Grades" awarded to members for completing navigational courses:

Awards also recognize additional educational accomplishments: