Is This Really What An Inexperienced Skipper Gets?

[secrabtree]

Originally Posted by surf_km55

I raced other people's boats for 5 years taking that exact advice and disagree wholeheartedly, unless you only want to get good @ hoisting/dousing sails & sail trimming...which I did. In order to get helm time, REAL helm time, you need: a generous boat-owning friend who doesn't like to steer, to take classes, charter a lot, or get your own boat.

I raced and cruised for years, decades really. In boats from 8 feet long to 70 feet long. When I was skipper I always gave helm time to the newbes that wanted that experience - before and after the race. And where did I learn that? From the more experienced skippers I raced against.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Pete17C

Given the choice of docking someone else boat with them on it, I'll pass. I don't like when I ding my boat, I would really hate to ding yours (or worse), especially with you watching.

Out on the water, sure, I'll take the helm for a while. But that doesn't really translate into knowing how to handle the boat in/out of the dock/mooring, which for most of us is the most stressful part of sailing.

We get quite a few boats changing hands here with inexperienced new owners. Including a good proportion of 38-45ft liveaboards. (Lots of expats on 3 year contracts )


Quite a few of these new owners are smart enough to ask the more experienced sailors for assistance in learning to manouver in the marina.


For some, it is just a case of being beside them while they are at the helm and making suggestions. In other cases, it takes a few rounds of them watching and line handling on deck before they are prepared to take over the helm.



In all such cases, having plenty of fenders and competent deck crew/line handlers available initially is a big help.

[Tetepare]

I think there isn’t a lot of negativity toward tyros in general, and certainly not those who are willing to ask for help. I think the critique is reserved for the dreamers who tell us how simple it is, and the big money buyers who tell us it can’t be nearly as hard as running a success company which they did and yada yada yada.

[Franziska]

The previous owner of my boat, gave good advise when I left with her: "If in doubt, aim for something cheap".
On the delivery trip that came handy as we had an engine failure when heading into a port filled with expensive yachts and, one barge...

:-)

[lo2jones]

I love these honest, frank replies. A phrase I have repeated many times in 30+ Years of sailing instruction: Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement...that includes all of your sailing instructors...me included.

[waterman46]

Originally Posted by jmschmidt

Someone just responded with some BS. He/she stated that racing is not the way to learn how to handle a boat because in an emergency only the skipper might know how to handle the boat.

In nearly fifty years I have never been racing, as crew and skipper, where everyone didn't get a chance at the helm. For new people it may only be while motoring out to the start line or back from the finish line, but if you watch, listen, learn and show initiative the skipper may soon put you the helm with a spinnaker up in 25K of wind.

Especially on ocean racing where the skipper needs lots of relief. When I was racing we always let everyone take a turn, with supervision until they get experience. In racing you learn to sail through all conditions, no motoring. That is huge difference from most cruising.

[asistephen]

in some posh marina in south of France I noticed all yachts got help coming in by guys on inflatable boats used as tugs and so was on , I’ve never moored yet out of the uk but I would think you can always take you tender in first sort out exactly where you’re going get some staff help and reduce the risk factors as far as you can. I put L Plates on my first boat Honestly everyone stop shouting at me and just laughed but helped too 😆

[Bill_Giles]

I have a philosophy with regards to berthing. If you can use the boat again afterwards it is a good one, if it does not involve an insurance company it is a great one.

[Cpt Pat]

Originally Posted by lo2jones

I love these honest, frank replies. A phrase I have repeated many times in 30+ Years of sailing instruction: Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement...that includes all of your sailing instructors...me included.

“The officers who are over-sure, and "know it all like a book," are the ones, I have observed, who wreck the most ships and lose the most lives.”
― Joshua Slocum, Sailing alone around the world

Direct experience is only useful if you survive. The cheapest source of experience is knowledge gained by the mistakes of others. As a pilot, I read every NTSB accident report that applies to the types of aircraft I fly. Unfortunately, while the NTSB will thoroughly investigate accidents involving the smallest aircraft, they only investigate major marine accidents involving larger vessels. I suppose it's because a small sailing vessel isn't likely to land in someone's living room.

And so, wisdom is often limited to "tribal knowledge," and we see the same mistakes being made with monotonous regularity. My own examination of the El Faro accident points directly at an absence of modern Crew Resource Management practices such that, an experienced crew - who clearly saw a disaster coming, were restrained from speaking up by the old marine tradition that the Captain is God.

There is only one valid hurricane survival strategy: avoidance. Too bad the Captain of the Bounty II couldn't personally explain that to the Captain of El Faro.

[Peeew]

Although I have suffered from a few very negative replies to questions posted here overall mostly all the input is positive and helpful. I learned a lot about cruising sailors on my first real trip, four months in the Bahamas. One night a storm hit and I dragged anchor in miserable conditions. I felt like the worst skipper ever. In the morning I met many that were anchored nearby and I got universally good input. Generally the comments related to the notion that we all get fooled by our anchor once in a while and “seamanship”!means making that a rare occurrence and doing a good job of recovering. No criticism. Some good tips. And all thankful that nobody got hurt. Not a single bit of name calling etc. even from the boat I hit. I learned. I said thanks for the tips. Really felt like a community. In answer to your question: I don’t know what to expect as a new sailor, but I was pleasantly surprised at the support on the water.

[baytreecott]

Hi,

I get where you are coming from. I am a master mariner and just retired from being a ship's pilot after 28 years. However, I am still getting to grips with sailing.

I have learnt over the years to learn from whoever I can whenever I can. You will know when you are getting good information. If the teacher is really good he/she will encourage you to try things on their boats. I know from training new pilots that it is much more difficult to let the new boy make the decisions. It takes some skill to allow the trainee to attempt to make a manoeuvre and know when to step in should a situation be heading towards the unrecoverable.

Perhaps those full of armchair advice and abuse should put the gins down and see how hard it is to teach.

Keep going with your endeavours and before you know it folk will be seeking advice from you. Just remember how you started and try not to let it happen to others.

Calm seas and fair winds

Rick

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by baytreecott

Hi,

I get where you are coming from. I am a master mariner and just retired from being a ship's pilot after 28 years. However, I am still getting to grips with sailing.

I have learnt over the years to learn from whoever I can whenever I can. You will know when you are getting good information. If the teacher is really good he/she will encourage you to try things on their boats. I know from training new pilots that it is much more difficult to let the new boy make the decisions. It takes some skill to allow the trainee to attempt to make a manoeuvre and know when to step in should a situation be heading towards the unrecoverable.

Perhaps those full of armchair advice and abuse should put the gins down and see how hard it is to teach.

Keep going with your endeavours and before you know it folk will be seeking advice from you. Just remember how you started and try not to let it happen to others.

Calm seas and fair winds

Rick

Nice post, Rick, and a great start to your participation in CF... so welcome aboard! I look forward to your contributions in the future as I have great admiration for pilots (ship kind). The challenge of guiding different ships into difficult berthing situations with no previous experience of their individual habits is daunting for this WAFI to consider.

If you have questions as you segue into sailing, there are lots of well skilled folks here to attempt answering them.

Jim

[bobnlesley]

Originally Posted by bmonteiro

...been reading about the differences on mooring, etc. In the process I am finding out that there are a lot of people in the boating community that seem very intolerant towards inexperienced skippers/sailors with absolute negative comments being shared online for little reason. Is this really what we are facing?...

From some, indeed far too many, unless there's been a drastic change since we left the Med in 2012; it used to irritate the life out of me, so whenever we could I tried to do my bit to alleviate the problem. The two 'classic' situations we saw and noticed repeatedly:

1. An obviously privately owned long term cruise/livaboard yacht approaching a Greek quay and looking to drop his anchor and tie back to the quay, can be fairly certain that by the time he's making the final approach a half-dozen people off similar 'cruising' yachts will have put down their books or ipads and be stood on the quay waiting to take lines and assist 'one of us'. When thirty minutes later a charter yacht appears, the book/ipad goes down, but only to instead 'watch the show' and/or hurl abuse if the charterer then gets it wrong in any way. That charter is not necessarily a 'worse' sailor, but he's likely to have far less experience in making that manouevre and have less idea of how that specific boat's likely to react in differing conditions; he's the one more likely to need advice/assistance and by giving it and making his holiday more enjoyable/less stressful, you might find that next year or perhaps ten years down the line, he does become 'one of us' because of it.

2. Anchoring: Once again, charter yachties are not necessarily any more/less competent as sailors than the long term livaboard cruisers, but anchoring, beyond dropping a hook for lunch is not something that they do that often, rather than the 200+ times a year that we might. Livaboards (including myself) are therefore much more comfortable when they see another livaboard anchoring upwind of them than a chartered yacht and as a result more 'forgiving'. On many ocassions I've seen a charter get berated for being 'too close' but after he's moved and a subsequently arriving livaboard yacht's dropped anchor in much the same spot, he receives nothing more than a friendly wave. In point 1 above I've at times seem similar too, whilst the charter yacht crossing someone's anchor chain is totally unacceptable, the Cruising yachtie doing similar hears nothing worse than: "We'll be leaving about 08:00 in the morning, you will be up an around to lift/move if needs be if you're over our chain, won't you?".

Don't get me wrong, we've seen some hopelessly incompetent charterers (and cruisers/livaboards too) do some truly ludicrous things, but they're a small minority, for the most part charterers are competent sailors but in a new situation and if rather than just shooing them away you/we try to help and educate them (again, I accept that a small minority refuse to listen) then perhaps they'll do better tomorrow evening? During our years in the eastern Med I would conservatively estimate that we assisted/taught/advised 50+ charter yachts on how to choose a suitable spot, assess the needed scope and judge distances so that once the anchor's down, dug-in and the full scope released, you're at least somewhere close to that chosen spot.

And how do we know how to do it? Well, the experience/practice of having anchored several thousand times over many years cruising certainly helps, but the starting point was guy called Chris, who rather than hurl abuse at us twenty-odd years ago, took the time to approach quietly/politely and say: "Look, I've done this an awful lot over the years and it seems to be new to you, would you like a bit of assistance." then spend a half-hour teaching us the basic principals. As for the town quays, we often helped take lines, but never once proffered advice, as our yacht (and we) never did get beyond being 'vaguely competent in light weather' ourselves.

[alanvdh]

Hi Peter,
Interesting. I'm also a newbie. I had a Wauquiez moored at the Haslar marina. I sold the boat a couple of years ago. Couldn't find anyone to help out crewing or generally socialise. Also the fees are astronomical. I intend to buy another boat within the next year or so and I'll be doing the coastal skipper course this summer. You mention the RAFYC and the Royal Southern Yacht club. Which one would you recommend ?
I'd like to crew and socialise.
Cheers,
Alan

[Sailor 99]

Originally Posted by jmschmidt

My advice; race, race, race.

This ^^^^^ It will make you a much better sailor and much more able to fix the inevitable breakage that occurs on a boat in heavy weather. Race boats are out in everything, things break and they need to keep moving. The boat I started on would not come home before the race ended unless there was no way to keep going. That teaches self reliance.

Originally Posted by DavidMRea

"We've all done it....Better go on a boat maneuvering course". W.

and this ^^^. It will make you more popular in marinas.

Then on your own boat... Practice, practice, and always be prepared.

Before I installed my bow thruster I could turn my boat 180 in less than 1.5 times her own length. You don't do on your first time and you won't do it by being gentle either. But sometimes you need to do it and it would be good if you know how in advance. The only way to do that is practice.

The other pc of advice is when docking realize when the operation is going sideways while there is still time and room to bail out. Have lots of fenders out.

You bump in to my boat with fenders down no problem. It happens. I will fend off and come and help you. Rip a 6 foot gash out of her gelcoat because you were not prepared and I am not going to be happy. The former is courteous, the latter is obnoxious.

If your courteous most people are more than willing to cut you slack and help you out anyway they can.