My first thought on viewing the video was to be uber impressed with how well everyone behaved in the midst of some chaos. That hasn't changed.
But on reflection the whole situation and how that
charter GOT to where it was has been on my mind, and reviewing the posts here has me really thinking about it.
Because the posts we have all been putting up don't have as much to do with the folly of credit card captains, as with the challenges we all face when starting or stopping our vessels, sail, twin prop
outboard or whatever.
And I am thinking how in my years
boating my best AND worst moments have been at the beginning and end of the day.
I prided myself on my slick
docking technique in our old
school chris crafts, and was secretly tickled when the old salts hangin out watching complimented me on my skill with what are notoriously difficult boats to handle at low speeds.
And I am secretly relived every time I get one of the sailboats out and (especially) in to our windy and tight slips.
And I was mortified on a regular basis while we were working out the technical difficulties with our outboards and lack of power and looked like we were playing a very spastic form of pinball in the marina...
But I have never EVER docked (or anchored or moored) in a way that had me scared that I was going to hurt someone. Worried I might ding up a
paint job? Yeah. Dreading looking like an idiot? sure. but never have I needed to be concerned I was putting anyone at risk, or in
danger of doing actual damage to someone else
boat.
So what went wrong here?
In the end no one was hurt, or even at risk. But clearly it was a fair bit of luck that it didn't go that far south, and of course LOTS of aid and assistance that short-circuited the potential for any big disaster.
How did the guy at the
helm of that
boat not have the little internal warning that I know I get when I am approaching a situation that has the potential to go south that badly.
What thought process let him, under sail, not
motor (all argument about mowing down swimmers aside it looked pretty clear to me that for me at least this would have been an under power maneuver, with that handy reverse thrust if I needed it at hand),
cruise into the busy anchorage?
Even the briefest lessons in the smallest of sail boats should have given him that internal sense. But it didn't. Everyone here, the novices and the most experienced among us here seem to carry a strong sense of wariness about care and safe practice when in situations like this.
Everyone worries (in the sense that either they know they are not yet expert at it, or are expert and thus know how bad it can get) about starting and stopping.
It seem like there must have been something else at play here, but I can not imagine what it is.