Training

General
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I had an interesting day, yesterday.

I don’t know anyone around here with sailing experience. And I’m not allowed to go solo. So I am inevitably sailing with inexperienced crew. Two friends have become very regular sailing companions and have become pretty good crew within the range of the things that they normally do. They can get the boat fully setup and ready to sail and put her away when we are done without my help. Though I do help, of course. In fact, they often remind me of things I’ve forgotten! (And vice-versa. We are all old and forgetful.)

Recently, due to my health issues, they expressed concern about what they would do if I became incapacitated while we were out. I can sympathize with that: being stuck out in a boat, such a complex and dynamic environment without the skills to deal with it. So we started off by talking about it.

They know how to drop the sails safely, so I reminded them of that. I taught them how to start and stop the engine. Very easy and they got it just fine. We spent a couple of hours with them motoring around in circles, stopping, proceeding, reversing, etc. But none of us could quite make that leap to docking. It’s almost as hard to teach your friends a difficult skill as it is to teach your spouse!

So we hired a professional training captain to help us out. We spent 6.5 hours yesterday working on their boat handling and docking and doing MOB training and practice. I mostly just watched and tried not to wince. Only had to jump in and extract the boat from a bad situation once and no actual contact was made. :slight_smile: My two friends were left really wrung out, but feeling much more confident, and I was relieved that I did not have to do this. (And frankly, I could not possibly have done such a good job as the pro did.) It cost us $400, which we split three ways. I was happy to pay my share because having them trained gives me great peace of mind, too. And I doubt that I will become incapacitated (it’s not that kind of cancer) so it was mostly about piece of mind.

The training was for Mark and Karen, not for me, and I only took the helm during MOB practice and while raising/lowering the sail. (And in that one emergency.) Most of the time I was so debilitated by my recent Lupron shot that I really did play the role of “incapacitated” pretty well. But I watched carefully and picked up some pointers that I intend to put into practice, myself. Only a fool would ignore the potential lessons to be gained from a skilled individual.

Selecting your training captain is crucial. A very experienced captain works his boat off of the same dock that I am on and he has expressed interest in sailing my boat. But he was totally disinterested in training. I searched around and found a guy who seemed to have a great attitude and comes highly recommended. He was relaxed, gently, precise, persistent, and non-confrontational. No Captain Bligh here, just a good teacher. He truly seemed to enjoy our day out as much as we did and he defused the one bad incident so well that the friend who was at the helm never felt bad about it.

We did vow to practice. We’ll see how that goes. :slight_smile: And Karen is writing up a MOB checklist which they are going to laminate. They are a good crew.

I’m not writing this to advise anyone else to do it. I think everyone’s situation is different. But it’s something to consider.

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Brian G,
It’s good to hear you are so mindful of the safety of your crew and I’m sure that what you are doing is optimal.
I have been of a mind that as long as my crew ( family and friends) know how to lower the sail , drop the anchor or start the motor and move to a place they can drop the anchor then call for a tow ( I have Boats US policy) then they should be safe. As time goes on and they find time from there busy lives to come aboard and just be blown about by the wind for a few hours they may find the joy that I feel and take more interest. Then when it’s my time for me to go beyond the vail they will carry on and I won’t have to sell my beloved boat.

Brian C

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Really good advice, Brian G, every bit of it.

In addition to training (definitely not instead of training), I would go a bit beyond Brian C. and recommend passengers knowing how to contact the Coast Guard, local harbor patrol, and a tow boat.

Hooray for supportive friends of the type that Mark and Karen sound to be. People like that make it all worthwhile.

– Bob

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Brian,

I admire your sensible approach to solving problems and sharing knowledge.

I second all that you’ve done and Bob’s suggestions.

A couple additional ideas :

  • Make sure your crew knows about evacuation options and is prepared to act depending on assets available. Sometimes a good samaritan ( with a fast boat) is a lifesaver, sometimes it’s a nightmare. I’ve seen some crazy stuff at regattas, often it’s best to wait for the pros if they are close.
  • Encourage your crew to use the radio for normal stuff to build confidence. Even marginally important calls. Most marinas will send someone to toss lines to a returning boat. Even if you don’t need help docking encourage your crew to call for docking assistance a couple times. A distress call follows a similar pattern. We have a laminated cheat sheet on Soave with instructions for making a distress call.
  • Drill your crew on reporting Vela’s location so they can do it under pressure.
  • While sailing, monitor 16 and listen to the distress calls so your crew is prepared for a conversation with assistive help in an emergency.
  • Designate a 2nd in case you are incapacitated. On a return from Bermuda two years ago, the owner was incapacitated by hypothermia for about 12 hours, at the tailend of a storm. I assumed a supportive role, but the guy that assumed the lead had some gaps that made it tricky. I’m glad we worked things out and stayed safe. I’ll not do another trip without knowing more about the rest of the crew ahead of time.

Keep on doing what you do….. Rob….

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Well they are my friends, too. :slight_smile:

And they are at the point you are looking forward to. They started with me at zero knowledge and have become very helpful at many parts of it, though definitely not skipper level yet.

I have tried this. Two other friends are both semi-retired police officers and very comfortable with radios. Others go pale and start looking like they are measuring the swim back to shore if I keep talking about it. On the other hand, I have one of those PRBs which I never use on a life jacket. So I have it velcroed to the post next to the desk down below. I make sure everyone who comes aboard knows how to activate it. I tell them if there is a major emergency that they can activate it and someone will come. Will they remember when the time comes? I don’t know, but the more times I tell them the more likely it seems.
It’s not exactly the legally correct thing to do. I don’t have an EPIRB and this is kind of my cheap substitute. Help will arrive expecting to pick someone up out of the water, but might find some other emergency. As long as they help us out, they are welcome to fine me later.

(Man, I’ve got 25 or 6 to 4 on the headphones and it is hard to remain in my seat right now…)

I think Mark and Karen will be working up to most of these. They have a good friend who is a licensed captain in Australia. They will be going to spend a couple of weeks with him cruising to, uh, some famous island* down there next July and are eager to be as competent as they can be by then. I suspect they will be taking some other lessons with our captain from yesterday because linehandling on my boat is pretty trivial compared to a 47’ sloop. My other passengers, including my wife, are generally just interested in having a nice sail. I cannot do a total info dump on them and expect them to remember any of it. Radio emergency operations is on a placard next to the radio and we always listen to it because SD is such a busy place. If they have an emergency I want them to feel confident in calling for help. If I make it too spooky they may fear to do so. I’ve heard the CG deal with scared people who didn’t know radio procedures and they were very good at it.

* Whitsunday Island - yes, I am very envious. And they’ll probably be teaching me stuff by the time they return.

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To be honest, I try to remember to tell guests that if they don’t know what to do, they still know how to call 911 on their mobile. Most emergency call centers can get them patched through to the right organization.

One could argue it’s not the seaman-like thing to do, but getting out of a jam beats pride every time.

I seem to get a bar or so in my waters up to about 7-10 miles offshore.

My one charter ln Australia near the Barrier Reef was cut short when the holding tank sprang a major leak on the second day. No repair parts available, they said. We got our money back, but I woulda liked to have sailed there. Sigh.

– Bob

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Yeah, 911. I used to teach kayakers, including safety lessons, and always emphasized 911, but for some reason it slips my mind on the sailboat. Foolish, I know, and I’ll try to do better. Hmmm. But I wonder how well it would really work down here. We are frequently overwhelmed by higher power cell towers in Tijuana. I wonder if they would patch us through to the CG or Harbor Patrol. I’ll have to ask around about that.

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BTW, the captain we had on Wednesday gave us an interesting suggestion. He says he puts some orange life jackets out where they are visible from a distance. He says he’s had the CG or Harbor Patrol look at him and then move on, but has never been stopped since he started doing that. Life jackets must be accessible in order to count and are a pretty easy ticket if they can’t find anything else. So don’t look like low-hanging fruit.

Hopefully the LifeSling on the rail will help to dissuade them, too.

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Here’s another little anecdote from our sail which I suspect most of us will chuckle at. After we had the sail up I gave the helm over to Capt. Jeff. After a bit I asked him to tack. He looked around for the jib sheets and then asked what we do to tack. I said “turn the wheel”.* He had to think about that for a second and then called out “ready about!” and waited for us to do something. I was standing up and looking forward across the top of the dodger, so he suggested I get down. I asked why and he said “so the boom doesn’t hit you.” I assured him that the boom wouldn’t hit me and so he shrugged and tacked, watching as it and the sail cover / foot of the sail passed well over my head. The boom, of course, is half way to the moon. He had a really good time after getting past that bit of stress.

I did have a question, though. We had a good breeze and he sailed with the boat heeled much farther than I usually do. And we didn’t go as fast as I thought we should. I vaguely remember something about losing speed if you heel too far. Does anyone remember anything about that? What angle would be the max?

* To be fair, we didn’t hire him to teach us to sail the boat, just to teach my friends docking and to help us work on MOB procedures.

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I’d have to look around to refresh my memory as to where I saw it, but 15 degrees sticks in my mind as the max to the angle of heel.

The older traditional designs with no bulges and curved bottoms gained waterline length when heeled. That might be part of what was influencing Capt. Jeff. Also, there’s a tendency to think of a Nonsuch sail as a main and haul it in tight. The actual advice is to treat it like a jib and err on the side of looser rather than tighter.

Here’s my best understanding of the issues, fwiw in case anyone’s interested.

Nonsuch waterline lengths are already pretty close to their length overall to begin with. (E.g., my 26 really is 26’ LOA and has 24.38 feet at the waterline, your 33 is actually 33.45’ LOA and has 31.46 ft at the waterline.) Heeling can’t change that much.

Also, the boats are beamy and relatively flat-bottomed. So all heeling a Nonsuch beyond a certain point does is create an asymmetric shape in the water and immerse more hull area. I.e., add drag.

So, sailing with less heel should come out ahead.

– Bob

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