Forum trolls

[tob]

I am 40 years old and have around five years of sailing experience in coastal waters with two different sailing vessels, first was 26-feet, second (current) 30 feet. I work full-time with computers (0% boat related). My native tounge is not English I find it easier to get answers if I state questions as simple as possible, possibly rendering myself somewhat “stupid”. I don’t care about that. Time is limited, need to find and purchase the boat in two years time. I admit not knowing a great deal about boats. Having said that, people who must challenge that, why not keep remarks such as 1. “you know nothing”, 2. “postpone your project until you retire” etc to yourself? Constructive criticism however is always welcome!

Remark # 1: knowing nothing would be impossible, I wouldn’t be able to sail at all, would I? I know little compared to some people, admit to that. Why is this so important to state and discuss, write pages of useless text about that topic, putting people down? Then again, I’ve never understood negative, sarcastic and too ironic people, not sure if that makes me or them an outsider. Forums, as I see it, can be a shortcut. I have read a dozen books about sailing, boats etc, but time is limited, some nice (!) people have read and understood more, and most important, sailed more (hands on experience!), so why not ask?

Worst that can happen is you get no replies! So it’s worth asking in forums as I see it. Working as engineer in a narrow field, working with extreme details all day, what you want to do in the free time is to 1. Work with your hands, working on the boat is perfect, 2. Not having to be the neurotic defender of principles, spelling and not-so-important details (everybody understand anyway!), rather talk “loosely” about things (mainly things that are not so important to be detailed about), so I admit to not expressing myself 100% perfect in forums all the time, not having the luxury of time to cross-check 10 sources of information to get the spelling correct. Unless I answer somebody of course, then I would take great care to note the model of a gadget exactly how it’s written on the thingy, capital letters vs small etc.

I was adviced in a boating forum that there exists “forum trolls” in these kinds of forums. Maybe I should just disregard those negative comments then…I truly hope it is not long-term voyaging people, people we are bound to meet in harbours, that are responsible for the negativism, as I’ve heard people help each other out and are nice to each others. So I am pussled. Perhaps it is some frightened teenager in front of the keyboard, pretending to be something they are not. I hope so.

Finally, I am a bit of an anarchist, I have always revolted a bit against common notions (they can be incorrect, and should be challenged!), and noticed that if people have bought, possibly the worst choice of boat for e.g. ARC, are very unlikely to say anything negative about their boat, they get territorial about the topic etc “my fin-keeled vessel of poor design is the best because I payed #### dollars for it” (not what they say but possibly what they think?).

I simply want the perfect boat for the trip, from all possible perspectives, safety being a major concern.
Remark # 2: Beth Leonard writes in her book Voyaging - Cruiser’s handbook, don’t wait to long, you get health problems etc. I am 40 and pretty bored sitting in front of a computer all day). I don’t want to wait until 65 and I’ve read several books about people who, with an even tighter time-schedule than ours, have done a circumnavigation etc. They got remarks such as “you are surely going to die etc”. Well, they didn’t. We have made up our minds, nothing can change that, better to do the best of the situation!

I am a big fan of Sven Yrvind. A very intelligent and creative man! I have no more to say on this topic. Waste of time really...

My wife has sailed her entire Life! More experience than me.

Cheers all happy people!

[atoll]

welcome to the forum!

sorry to be a punctuation Nazi, but could you try in future to break up long posts into paragraphs as it makes reading soooo much easier

[Hudson Force]

Tob, Welcome to the postings on the Liveaboard's forum. I've followed your posts on "Finding a Family Cruiser" ; "Best European Cruiser....." and "Finding the monohull family cruiser....". As people who are cruising are also living aboard, I hope you find good advice here too. I was pleased, in reading the responses to your posts, that all were positive except one on the day after Christmas. Sure, we enjoy those most positive and dislike the negative ones.

So, to the topic of living aboard while cruising.... I understand you and your wife will be cruising with three children. What are their ages? We raised our two children aboard and found the close quarters a reward for family communication and cooperative problem solving. What are you schooling plans for the children? What are your cruising destination plans?

[Birdseed]

I've been land locked for 20 years. Now my sentence is up. Before moving to NW Pennsyltucky I lived in coastal New England. I sailed, raced and help deliver boats from the age of 10 till 35. Since my time here is up, I'm going to become a liv aboard in a more moderate climate. I found that I'm very rusty in nautical terms and practice. I spent about $100 on amazon for some used books on sailing, sailing alone, inspecting used boats, etc. I suggest you start with some nice reading and then use the forums here to answer any questions you may have or to delve deeper into areas which interest you.

[Dockhead]

Hi Tob:

I think that you will find that there are very, very many very helpful people on CF. I don't think you need to worry about being "put down" for knowing little -- that's not the way we do it here, and you should report posts that deviate from this principle. We were all beginners once, and the usual attitude on CF is to make a lot of effort to help people who are just starting out. Besides that, all of us, no matter how experienced, are still learning, so trying to learn new things is one of the most important activities on CF, maybe the most important.

As to spelling -- Trying to write well, with decent spelling and punctuation, and breaking up your post into paragraphs, is a sign of respect to those who read what you write. It's not an excuse for anyone's being rude, but if you obviously make no effort to write intelligibly, you will not get as good a response as you might otherwise, simply because you make it much more difficult for people to understand what you are trying to express. We have very many people on here whose native language is not English, and no one expects perfection -- just a bit of effort to make what you write readable by others. A hint -- you can write your posts first in a word processing program like Microsoft Word and use the spell and grammar check function -- works wonders.

I wouldn't say that what you've written above is all that bad (we get far, far worse! ), but a little effort is always appreciated. As Atoll hinted at, using paragraphs and commas to structure what you are saying a little more really helps a post to be more readable.

Good luck!

Regards, Dockhead

[Dauntlessny]

Welcome aboard.

You are starting just as i did about 6 years ago.

In the beginning, I also started a spreadsheet, but soon realized my search was too broad. Same for asking broad based questions in that the answers always had a range wider than the present known universe.

Based on all my readings, these forums, books, magazines, I finally got my boat choice down to a few brands and then went back to the spreadsheet.

Good luck and welcome to the party

[FamilyVan]

Hi Tob,
Try not to get frustrated with the few bad apples on here. I find from my experience very specific technical questions get excellent responses from very knowledgeable people. Broader questions seem to get a lower percentage of constructive responses.


As far as people treating you like an idiot goes, that seems to be a tough crowd to please.


I'm an experienced commercial ship Captain and therefor previously a Navigator and seaman. I sailed all over hecks half acre as a teenager on sail training Tall Ships have been a full time year round live aboard (in cold places), I currently own my second cruising boat over 30 feet. I no longer work full time on the water as I have moved to a mostly shore based marine operations management position, but I still have a dozen or so ship Captains reporting to me. So I feel I'm qualified to answer questions in which I am a subject expert. Navigation and safety are my areas of expertise.


That handful of bad apples still seem to assume that I'm a complete imbecile and would accept no amount of evidence to support fact or well documented theories. So I'd say- it's the internet, people get bored, they say stuff, ignore them. Focus on all the really good positive stuff you hear- it's why you joined in the first place.

[Sailor_Hutch]

My wife has sailed her entire Life! More experience than me.

You lucky dog. Mine gets seasick on the speedboat/dingy/kayak/dock.

BTW: Your "second language" works better for you than many others who take it as a first language! Why do I keep noticing this?

[boatman61]

Tob... don't worry about it.. think your being Trolled..?
Hit the Ignore Button, personally I don't use it.. it spoils my fun

[rob67]

Hi Tob
I can relate to your frustration, I am by no means an English major and English is my first language.
Some of my posts have been scrutinized which is fine , at first I took it personally but now I just move on Life is to Short. Even though I am not an elegant speller I am just as smart as they are.
I have also received some excellent advice from this site which keeps me coming back.
I am a technical guy with lots of hands on experience, that's how I learn but I am a lousy teacher. So for me forums are a challenge to get my point across to help someone.
I was raised if you have nothing nice to say don't say anything at all. I agree constructive criticism is productive,but negative criticism is the product of low self esteem.
I left a yacht club because all the commodore would talk about was who's sailboat was a piece of crap.( never to the person just behind your back)
In a lot of ways I am like you , I am 47 I have power boated off and on my whole life , but my wife and myself are ready for a change. We want to cruise the Caribbean for 4 months a year. Doing this in a power boat just doesn't seem feasible so we have decided to learn to sail and cruise on a sailboat. Our time frame for this adventure is 3 yrs. Can this be accomplished in that time frame I do not know, am I going to try yes.

So to sum up ,don't worry about the negativity and focus on the positive advice

I say this as I write wondering if my advice will be scrutinized
Rob

[boatman61]

Of course it will.. the Grammar/Text Gestapo/Stazi are alive and well here...

[rob67]

OOPS

I lost all of the indents for my paragraphs'
My bad

[goboatingnow]

It's also worth pointing out, that CF doesn't exist " merely " to answers people questions or to provide you or others with " answers"

It's a " discussion " forum , that means within reason, anything is up for grabs., you , nor I don't " own" threads. CFers can and do head of on tangents , have a laugh or slag of your newbie ideas ( in a nice way ). Often people come unto discussions sites presenting questions and are not happy when many ( or some) not onlyo disagree with them , or even point out the obvious nonsense .

Thin skinned is not useful either

Dave


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[autumnbreeze27]

Most of the trolls are couch sailors, they are usually landlocked or stuck in a slip somewhere.

Your best bet is to ignore the trolls, they feed on attention, expect them to flock to this thread to discuss the merits of being a troll to you.

I didn't gather many questions from your post, it seemed more like a rant about trolls, but if your wife sailed her whole life, I would ask her what boat she thinks is best before trusting the trolls advice.

[weavis]

We're heer to help youse.