First season mistakes (or should I give up before I kill someone?)

[DanielPerry]

Yeah don't give up, just make sure you find out HOW or WHY you made the mistake, and you'll be fine.

[Group9]

One of the great inventions in boating! I used to have one on my boat I had in south Florida. It helped keep me straight when I would start day dreaming!

[Mrkva]

Oh, there was one more incident I totally forgot to mention... I managed to hit a pile when returning to the slip with pulpit. Broken 8mm screw like it was a wooden stick.

I'm glad I've pushed through. I guess I should thank again for the support I've received here! This season has been a lot of work, a bit of sailing (even though a lot more than last season), and no major incidents at all. Just some really minor stuff like like jammed mainsail that took some persuading to raise, genoa sheets caught on deck hardware...

And now comes the worse half of the year with no boat...

[jtsailjt]

I’ve been sailing virtually my whole life, beginning on a Sunfish that my mother bought when I was about 10 but I soon sort of took over and have now inherited and reconditioned a few times. I very rarely lose a race with it and oftentimes am the only boat out on our very large lake when the wind blows so hard everyone else is staying safely ashore, so I’m reasonable competent in small daysailors like this. Then, I’ve had 3 cruising sailboats that I’ve maintained and sailed for the past 30+ years. But on my first attempt to learn how to windsurf there was a single telephone pole with a guy wire about 100 yards off the beach where my lesson began and despite doing my level best to go in any other direction than towards it, I managed to run right into it. So I guess I’ve come to accept that I’ll continue to occasionally be humbled by sailing and there’s always more to learn. As long as you’re still afloat and nobody is seriously hurt, just laugh it off and accept that it’s all part of the fun and challenge of sailing that never ends. Then, when you have the luxury of time, you can go over it in your mind and figure out just how to avoid a repeat and maybe you can share your mistakes with a newbie so they might avoid repeating your mistakes and will feel free to invent some of their own.

[Tetepare]

Originally Posted by Group9

One of the great inventions in boating! I used to have one on my boat I had in south Florida. It helped keep me straight when I would start day dreaming!

What is that? I can’t figure out where it is, what it’s supposed to do, or why.

[Joh.Ghurt]

Originally Posted by Tetepare

What is that? I can’t figure out where it is, what it’s supposed to do, or why.

It's an aid to remember which colour channel and port markers you should see on what side of your boat. It helps with confusing channel-crossings. and not hitting the rocks between two channels.

Works only in the USA and other developing countries where they never managed to get the colours right in the first place. In civilised countries you have red on port when moving towards a port from the sea.

[LoudMusic]

Originally Posted by Mrkva

3) When leaving the marina for the last time this season, in a strong crosswind, I forgot to pull up the mooring line, which got wrapped up in the propeller. We had not crashed into the breakwater only thanks to the favorable wind.

This is really dumb. And I'm not sure how you accomplished it. But otherwise I think you just had a first season learning experience. And you'll never leave lines in the water again, I'm sure

[IanTrail]

I've been sailing for 45 years and most of them were just like that. Do more, go further, new things, screw up. It would be boring otherwise, wouldn't it.

[TrentePieds]

John Ghurt said: " In civilised countries you have red on port when moving towards a port from the sea."

Factually correct, but in this 'ere Colony, which I do count among "civilized countries" despite our being cheek-by-jowl with America, we observe the Yankee convention regardless of its origins :-)! There is obviously good reason for that, since it's incumbent on US to keep U.S. sailors safe as they head north to Alaska.

Makes no odds to me because it takes maybe seven nanoseconds to learn to say "Red Right Returning!" and most of the time I'm perfectly aware just where I am to an accuracy of say - oh - five or ten miles. Nautical ones at that! :-)

Now, I do recall from my callow youth in a time long ago and a land far away that we kept the "red ones" to port when we were inbound. Problem was that with little islands everywhere we couldn't always know whether were coming or going.

The justification for keeping the "red ones" on port when inbound is, of course, that they mimic the port side light of vessels, and when you see one, you bear off to starboard in order to avoid a collision. So what to do when you see a green one? Well, you bear off to port, of course, so as to go under the make-believe-vessel's stern.

Perfectly straight-forward in my opinion - as long as you know whether you are coming or going.

Beste Grüße

TrentePieds

[Jim Cate]

As sailors who learned the trade in the North American continent's waters, when we first arrived in IALA "A" regions we would say "red right when reeving". Silly, but worked for us!

Jim

[DMF Sailing]

Originally Posted by Joh.Ghurt

It's an aid to remember which colour channel and port markers you should see on what side of your boat. It helps with confusing channel-crossings. and not hitting the rocks between two channels.

Works only in the USA and other developing countries where they never managed to get the colours right in the first place. In civilised countries you have red on port when moving towards a port from the sea.

And even in this developing country, red-right-returning doesn't always work. Here's an example from the wilderness outpost that is my home port, Boston.

Returning from what? Where? One way or another, if you follow that rule with R N 2P, you are going to hit that 2-foot-deep (0.6096-meter) obstruction.

[sepharad]

As a boy in the USA I learned Red, Right, Returning. ie. you will keep a Red light/buoy, on your Right, when Returning from sea.


At 60 I moved to Europe and became mighty confused to see Red, Left, Returning.


I began to search for the reason for the lack of uniformity.


All sorts of guesses were made. Americans are difficult. Europeans are contrary, etc.


It seems the effort to make aids to navigation uniform began before WW 2, then the war struck. 7 years of chaos ensued. When the war ended, so had Empires, countries had vanished and new ones were emerging, resources had vanished. The project died with the Atlantic one way and the Pacific another. A shame really.

[Joh.Ghurt]

Originally Posted by sepharad

I began to search for the reason for the lack of uniformity.

https://www.irishlights.ie/misc/iala.aspx is a good start. Seems this was something brewing a long time before a quick solution was necessary in 1971.

[flightlead404]

Originally Posted by jmschmidt

The answer to your second question is probably a resounding YES! I'm not exactly sure what kind of a qualification the "European equivalent of ICC" is but if it doesn't include knowledge of what "Range Lights" are your probably paid too much. I don't mean to be to be rude but your long-winded post seems to indicate that you are very unsure of yourself.
I have developed a sense for these issues over several thousand hours training pilots from primary flight students to airline captains and a few hundred sea-days training crew members on sail and power boats. Good luck, only you can make the right choice for yourself.

In my first season as well.

I consider it the equivalent of being signed off to solo in the local area.

I don't know about you, but I made a few mistakes back then including talking to one tower while lining up to land at another airport, and pulling the rudder out of the brackets on a 150 inadvertently entering a tail slide while out spinning for an hour.

I'm about halfway through my first season:
-Pressed on with an overheating engine when I should have stopped, or even turned around and gone back to the slip which was only a couple miles away, which lead to
-Sailed out of the Ft. Pierce inlet in 20kts gusting and 5' seas on our 2nd sail, and the main furling line parted leaving the sail half in/out, and now relying on the overheating engine to stay off the rocks while battling the main down
-Left the slip with 25kts blowing right across the slip, didn't plan ahead, didn't understand effects of current and wind properly and tried to motor out instead of warping out. Lead to pinballing down the fairway with every other boat throwing every fender out while I went stop-to-stop on the throttle
-Ran aground on a sandbar in strong current in the ICW (king tide) - 1st mistake, it was 30 mins after low tide but I had Sea Tow take me off instead of tossing out and anchor and waiting 20 minutes - 2nd mistake

I've got till the end of April to mark my 1st year, I'm sure there'll be more

[flightlead404]

Originally Posted by sepharad

Don't whine about it being hard...because it IS HARD. Give yourself credit. You my friend are competent.

If its not hard, its probably not worth doing. Or at least, probably won't be much fun lol