d parker wrote:

Your ignorance is frightening! You have already proven that with your
comment about anchoring- a bigger anchor is not the answer.

If my ignorance of anchoring is frightening, why did I never drag once
in a year of living at anchor? If someone can spend almost 300 days at
anchor in all kinds of conditions without dragging once, wouldn't you
say they probably had an adequate knowledge of how to anchor?

MOB: what mistakes did you make? Do you know if you made any? What
techniques did you not use? Who was there to tell you?

Well, the Ukranian sailor I pulled out of the ocean off of Panama 6
hours after he fell off his freighter seem pretty pleased with my
technique, so I would say that any mistakes I made were probably
cosmetic. In any event, my wife and I practiced MOB from time to time,
and we could tell when we did a good job of it, and we could tell when
we made a mess of it. Its not that hard to distinguish a poor MOB from
a good one.

Radio: What mistakes have you made on the Radio? Ever done a mayday Relay
transmission? Ever Practiced it? I doubt it -an instructor will make sure
you do.

I was cruising in an area where the local standard was to whistle into
the radio to get another boats attention, and then babble in spanish at
a high rate of speed. We had everything from cruisers to cruise ships
to container ships to shrimpers to various navies, all with differing
levels of proficiency, different languages, and different radio
customs. You listened and learned as you went and you did whatever
worked.

Groundings: a good instructor will take the student through the motions of
backing sails, heeling the boat by several means etc. How many times have
you sailed backwards? Have you ever laid a kedging anchor? What techniques
did you use? What mistakes did you make? Where was the instructor to prevent
you making them?

Books explain techniques for getting out of a grounding perfectly
adequately. I learned sailing backwards on my own; I taught myself to
anchor under sail and weigh anchor under sail and my wife and I
routinely anchored and raised anchor under sail. I also taught myself
to pick up a mooring under sail. Never needed to use a kedging anchor,
but if I did I knew what to do.

Sail trim: What about mast bend? What mistakes have you made? Where was the
instructor?

All the finer points of sail trim, including mast bend, are covered
well in books. I have made plenty of sail trim mistakes. So what? I
spent probably 1000 to 1500 hours under way over the course of a year,
and I had all the time in the world to fiddle with sail trim and see
how it affected my speed. If I had learned everything about sail trim
from an instructor before I left I would have deprived myself of many
hours of entertainment on long passages.

The list is endless. I have over 30 years on water experience and have
taught professionally. I have two titles to mine name and have thousands of
seamiles under my belt. It not the ocean, I worry about. It people like you
that scare me.

People with 7000 sea miles of experience scare you? I guess you are
easily frightened. I am all for knowing the proper techniques for
various situations, but for a cruiser what is the real advantage of an
instructor over a well written book once you have learned basics of
sail trim, docking, and helmsmanship?

Andy