Cruiser forums loves a good disaster story

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by Mr Saturn

I have read the posts on this forum and there is an alarming element of "oh blood in the water it's feeding time!" that goes on here. I have heard many say how 'helpful and friendly' Cruisers are when you meet them on the water. I guess that friendly spirit drys up when you put a keyboard in from of them.

Mr Saturn, perhaps you should read a few other posts...nay, a lot more posts, before you make the above statement. While it is undeniably true that there is some of the "blood in the water" crap that you object to, there are thousands of friendly and helpful posts that negate your conclusion.

I think you do Cruisers Forum an undeserved injustice.

Jim

[John_Trusty]

I don't know many good sailors that do not run through emergency scenarios in their heads at odd times, practicing what they would do. How many of you can come up with their first half-dozen actions based on scenarios of fire, flooding, MOB, or grounding - in all types of weather and lighting? I use these 'bad things' stories as the basis for my imagining - like I just incorporated @Tetepare 's story of grounding above into my category of groundings I'd like to imagine. I've found that when the material does hit the fan, I'm better prepared.

[mikedefieslife]

Originally Posted by atoll

i could go on but i think you get the gist of why some of us have a degree of "shadenfrude" for those that substitute seamanship with gadgetry and impatience,then wonder why it all went pear shaped....

True, but of course you've got people all over the world taking to the water, some with little more than bed sheets for sails.

On the learning aspect, I imagine that most of us drive, or cycle, yet we aren't out analysing every car crash. Mostly, all there is to learn is to use good sense. Don't play with your phone whilst driving, make sure you double check your Navionics autoroute etc..

Of course since I've started this thread, I've probably cursed myself to having an incident now. Not zooming in on the chart plotter or something equally daft.

[George DuBose]

I like to read how others solve their problems and different approaches to emergency repairs.

[mikedefieslife]

Originally Posted by George DuBose

I like to read how others solve their problems and different approaches to emergency repairs.

This is a top response.

I very much like doing the same. That is usually a different type of thread though.

[barnakiel]

I have no such stats, but my gut feeling is maybe 90% of boat accidents are operator error.

The skipper sailing alone, fell asleep, hit the rock. Yes, I will pity them. One case. And we are unlikely to hear from them.

Big crew, big plasma, joyfully clipping a reef? Sorry. This is the good story to read and chat. Irony? Yes. Cynicism? Maybe, but none implied. Pity? No, they are idiots who should stick to cars and the cars best be of the modern, self-driving kind too! 9/10 cases. We are sure to hear from them and see the pictures, maybe naked too (if it sells the story).

Why do you expect people falling of the cliff while taking that selfie to get anything more than whatever they get on the social media where they post such selfies?

I think all forums are social media, like FB, Instagram, you name it.

Expect normal, everyday, common reactions from normal, common everyday people.

Bible reading forum? I do not know. Maybe.

Cheers,
b.

[picklesandjesse]

Originally Posted by atoll

some of us remember the good ole days when doing a watch meant staring at a compass for 3 -18 hours or so and hand steering.

getting a fix meant ,dead recconing,star fix,lop or noon site.

weather forcasts at sea involved watching the upper level cloud formations , barometer and wave patterns.

dinner at sea after the first week involved tinned food.

sail reduction involved leaving the cockpit to reef at the mast and un-hank,and hank on smaller sails.

water and power was something that was conserved,and accumulated when the opurtunity arose......

arriving at night at your destination generally would have you hove to till daylight untill safe to approach an unknow coast.

i could go on but i think you get the gist of why some of us have a degree of "shadenfrude" for those that substitute seamanship with gadgetry and impatience,then wonder why it all went pear shaped....

Yes, it really was like that but it all changed with GPS, enabled the RV crowd to get on the water. But mostly genuine cruising people still seem to help and learn from each other.

[atoll]

Originally Posted by picklesandjesse

Yes, it really was like that but it all changed with GPS, enabled the RV crowd to get on the water. But mostly genuine cruising people still seem to help and learn from each other.

even before the days of gps,there was the coconut telegraph among cruisers ,almost as fast as the internet is these days,...,and boy horror stories could travel fast amongst the community

not to disparage the nature of cruisers with a common goal on ocean passages when they meet up in far flung places,as the sailing is a great leveler,so definetly there is mutual assistance cohesion among the group.

moral : bad news travels fast

[JPA Cate]

Here's yet another opinion.

The considered assessment of someone with lots of sea miles, who has learned from his or her time at sea may sound cold and judgmental to someone who lacks similar experience. And, offence may be taken.

******

Take the case of the Tanda Malaita (there's a CF thread about it's loss at Huahine.) Here we have a blogger, a pilot, who, using Navionics, routed himself too close to the fringe reef at Huahine. Anyone familiar with the SE trades and charts could see the potential danger, but not experience to evaluate the reef rise and what it does to the waves, the boat went up, and I understand has been dragged ashore to be someone's home. This was an error of seamanship, pure and simple. It was night, improper watch, poor navigating for the conditions.

Most of us have been lucky and survived our mistakes--and shame on us if we didn't learn from them.

The suffering of the family is regrettable, but the suffering does not cancel out a grievous error of seamanship. Period. And yes, Navionics did have a problem with what it showed compared to the French chart for the area. And trust in computers has to be part of being a pilot, too. He went too close [a fundamental error was the proximity--the depth wasn't the problem] with a big sea running, trusting the computer--another computer assisted grounding.

It is very difficult, I think, for landlubbers to understand that there is a qualitative difference between buying an RV and a boat, to go exploring in. The difference that gets people in trouble that we see most often is in navigation, and it is a problem because the ocean environment is different from the land environment, so that an error of judgment can get you in a whole lot more trouble, faster, than on land. Many landlubbers tend to not respect that difference.

Blogging brings out the cameras in good weather, and u-tubes showing what winds up being advertisements, not realistic reflections of life at sea, so people form unrealistic expectations.

Me, and Criswell, I guess, but I predict more computer assisted groundings, because the people don't get it that they are being unwittingly over-confident in fallible tools.

atoll and Jim and I actually made passages in the days of sextant and paper chart navigation. You used to routinely live with positions sometimes being 5 miles out--wrong. It taught avoidance and caution. Today, you have GPS directing you in cars, and many can not even read maps, let alone relate charts to what you have to deal with. The hard bits can wreck your boat.

Nuff said.



Ann

[picklesandjesse]

atoll and Jim and I actually made passages in the days of sextant and paper chart navigation. You used to routinely live with positions sometimes being 5 miles out--wrong. It taught avoidance and caution. Today, you have GPS directing you in cars, and many can not even read maps, let alone relate charts to what you have to deal with. The hard bits can wreck your boat.

Nuff said.



Ann[/QUOTE]

I used to allow for at least a 20 mile error at night even after a good sextant sight if there was a reef somewhere ahead, even then I would be imagining breaking waves ahead and would have to run up to the bow and check.

[Jim Cate]

I used to allow for at least a 20 mile error at night even after a good sextant sight if there was a reef somewhere ahead, even then I would be imagining breaking waves ahead and would have to run up to the bow and check.

Hey, I always ran to the BACK of the boat... get farther from the scene of the wreck, ya know...

But seriously, going through (not around) the Tuamotus using celestial was pretty scary. Poor charts and the vagaries of celestial nav made for poor sleeping! By not taking the common route around the group we got to some atolls that were very seldom visited, and had some of the most memorable of our cruising adventures... something hard to accomplish nowadays.

Jim

[Diesel Bill]

I guess I'm in the learn from other's mistakes category. Although I still feel their pain.
Possibly for some people there's the excitement like seeing a car wreck up close. Just thinking out loud here.

[redbeard1]

[QUOTE=mikedefieslife;2518382]On the learning aspect, I imagine that most of us drive, or cycle, yet we aren't out analysing every car crash. Mostly, all there is to learn is to use good sense. Don't play with your phone whilst driving, make sure you double check your Navionics autoroute etc..
/QUOTE]


Just my opinion,

With cars, bikes, motorcycles much of the risk will never be in your control. Other driver texting, other driver sleep deprived, etc. Even if you do everything right, you cannot control other drivers. So there is not much point to blogging about how someone got into an accident if there is no/little way to prevent it.

With sailboats the areas of risks can be worked on until they are mostly skipper-sphere of control. Even bad weather can be controlled/estimated from pilot charts (there is still a random element, but it can be estimated, i.e., if you want to avoid 99% chance of hurricanes, do x route in y month). Now the data is historical and the future may be different but you can still control a large segment of that risk.

To repeat another poster, in the last year or so, from many posts on this website, I have internalized that sailing in storms shakes up fuel tank sediment. Sediment clogs fuel filters. Don't count on an engine to keep you off a lee-shore during a storm. Have a back-up in mind before your engine sputters or better yet don't get in that position. I am glad to have learned this from others and saved a few white hairs or worse.

Another poster mentioned airplanes and diving. I don't fly, but used to do deep diving and it does not surprise me that divers share their stories. All my close calls were own error and could have been eliminated and shared to prevent others from repeating.

As an aside, I gave up riding motorcycles when I started learning about risk and internalized that too much was out of my control.

[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

H

Nolex, I was wondering if the above is a typo or a rather clever pun? If the latter, hats off!

Jim

You can keep your hat on Jim. It was just bad spilling .

[nic26]

Originally Posted by atoll

some of us remember the good ole days when doing a watch meant staring at a compass for 3 -18 hours or so and hand steering.

getting a fix meant ,dead recconing,star fix,lop or noon site.

weather forcasts at sea involved watching the upper level cloud formations , barometer and wave patterns.

dinner at sea after the first week involved tinned food.

sail reduction involved leaving the cockpit to reef at the mast and un-hank,and hank on smaller sails.

water and power was something that was conserved,and accumulated when the opurtunity arose......

arriving at night at your destination generally would have you hove to till daylight untill safe to approach an unknow coast.

i could go on but i think you get the gist of why some of us have a degree of "shadenfrude" for those that substitute seamanship with gadgetry and impatience,then wonder why it all went pear shaped....

Agree with you 100%. Just a little detail: in German the word is "Schadenfreude" and its quite some fun sometimes (if it hits others)