My wife and I had a somewhat similar experience. We had some land-based trips and fell in love with the BVI and then did a crewed charter (Sailing Catamaran). We were immediately enamored with the experience on the boat, but had absolutely zero experience at doing it ourselves. A year later, we were trying to decide on what to do for our anniversary trip (2017) when we came across info on the Offshore Sailing Fast Track course and decided to go for it. Since we did the sailing course, the first couple of days were focused on Basic Keelboat and we were based out of Scrub Island. It was a great way to start. Our instructor, "Dutch" was awesome. After that we spent 5 days on the catamaran with the instructor. It was a great way to learn, hands on, and there is no more enjoyable place to learn it than the BVI. We had a tremendous sense of accomplishment when our instructor left us at Cane Garden Bay and we were on our own to get back to Scrub the next day. I want to reiterate that we had no experience, but I highly recommend thoroughly reading and studying all of the information that they send you. Enjoy mornings over coffee quizzing each other prior to the trip. I don't know how different the Power Cruising is compared to Sailing, but I assume it is fairly similar (minus the sailing aspect). Since receiving our certifications in June of 2017, we have been on 4 charters and have our 5th one planned in March and plan to go in May as well. One of the best gifts we have given our family as our 11 and 14 year old girls are now very knowledgeable and helpful on the trips and incredibly passionate about the BVI.