Jack Dale wrote:
On 27 Dec 2005 15:12:16 -0800, "Andy"
wrote:

Why do you say we were very lucky? What exactly does one need a lot of
experience with before going coastal cruising that can't be learned
from books?

Docking under power and sail

I mentioned earlier in this thread that docking is one of the things I
think is best learned from an instructor.

MOB (upwind and downwind) and under power

The basic principles of MOB are easily learned from a book and then you
can practice on your own by throwing a cushion over and getting it back
over and over. A live instructor is not necessary.

Reefing

Easy to learn from a book and practice on your own. I think my
instructor showed us once, the seller of our boat showed us once at the
dock how he had things rigged up, we read up on it, and then we
practiced a few times.

Gennaker and spinnaker handling and trim

You don't need a gennaker or a spinnaker to cruise. I figured out how
to use the cruising spinnaker that came with my boat from a 5 minute
explanation from the seller and some reading.

Anchoring with two anchors

Pretty straightforward to learn from a book.

Anchoring stern-to shore / dock

Ditto.

Practical application of Colregs

Easy to learn from a book.

Getting meaningful weather forecasts

I learned this from reading books and info on the internet.

Being able to read clouds, wind directions and barometers to do your
own forecasting

This is covered well in books.

Passage planning

Covered well in books.

The actual sailing part of cruising is pretty simple and
straightfoward. While it could easily take a lifetime to master the art
of sailing for maximum speed, for purposes of cruising you just need to
know how to roughly trim the sails.

Eventually you will want to learn sail trim to go faster as well as
save wear and tear on your sails.

I learned the finer points of sail trim from books and experimenting.
No particular reason to pay an instructor other than to teach you the
basic principles.

Navigation, especially with a GPS, is pretty straightforward and can be
learned from books.

I would suggest that navigation is not that straightforward. I teach
both traditional navigation and elctronic navigation (but not
celestial). Our courses run 8 to 10 weeks in length.

I don't see any advantage to learning navigation from a teacher as
compared to learning from a book.

I think an instructor is very useful for learning basic helmsmanship,
sail trim, rules of the road, and docking, say 15 to 24 hours worth of
time on the water. After that it is possible for an intelligent and
motivated person to teach themselves from books.

Andy

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

Andy wrote:
snip
: All the finer points of sail trim, including mast bend, are covered
: well in books.
: Andy

Could you please list some of the books you've read that
you feel contributed to your sailing knowledge. Not so
much sail trim in particular, but engine maintenance and
mechanical systems, anchoring, docking, navigation, etc, etc.
The ASA and US Sailing books I've read for courses
(Basic Keelboat, Basic Cruising, and Bareboat) I've taken
seem way too light-weight for complete self-learning.
The USPS Advanced Sailing course book seems much better,
and sail trim seems very well covered by Tom Whidden's
The Art and Science of Sails. But I haven't found (what
seemed to me like) good books for many of the other topics
you've mentioned in your preceding posts, and would be
very interested to know what you found the most helpful.
Thanks,
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: where j=john and f=forkosh )

"Andy" wrote in message
oups.com...


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

Yes you scare me, if that's your attitude towards learning without a person
on board to prevent mistakes being made. If you have made it without
injuring someone or breaking boat too much I congratulate you. However,
books only tell you what to do. They rarely tell you what not to do.

DP

"Andy" wrote in message
ups.com...
Jack Dale wrote:
On 27 Dec 2005 15:12:16 -0800, "Andy"
wrote:

Why do you say we were very lucky? What exactly does one need
a lot of
experience with before going coastal cruising that can't be
learned
from books?

Docking under power and sail

I mentioned earlier in this thread that docking is one of the
things I
think is best learned from an instructor.

snipped, but you listed other elements easier learned from
instructors

Andy,

I support your views completely. Thanks for airing the pragmatic
approach to learning to sail. Dangerous thing to do in this forum!

One factor others in this thread have ignored is that some people
learn best from books, then exploring for themselves, while others
learn best by seeing and doing under supervision. The latter group
are served by some who will criticise you - but let's remember
they have a vested interest in increasing the demand for their
market.

Another factor ignored is that a lot depends on where a sailor
first gained experience. It's very easy to learn (for instance) in
the Mediterranean in the summer in a sheltered area such as the
Inland Ionian Sea (no tides, light winds, no weather, no swell,
only one dangerous under water rock to hit) After 24 hours of
instruction you can send Mr and Mrs average out to skipper
their own 30ft yacht - under daily supervision. It's quite another
thing to learn sailing around the Channel Islands in the English
Channel (5kt tide streams, 9m tidal range, thousands of hidden
rocks requiring tight pilotage in sometimes poor visibility, and a
good swell to boot). Instruction with these complicating factors
is a lot slower, and exposure to variations a lot more important.

And these two groups are pretty intolerant of each other's style
of learning, though both are valid.

A third factor ignored is that *everyone* extends their experience
from their first 'instruction' (book or on water). What matters is
how they extend their experience; responsibly (with some fear, and
the knowledge that there's a lot to learn?) or irresponsibly (full
of confidence that they've learnt most of it?).

On extending experience: about half my (yachtmaster) examination
candidates had attended full courses, and about half presented
themselves as 'experienced'. A few of the total didn't meet
acceptable standards. 'Course' candidate failures were mainly
those who'd be difficult to teach to drive a car - lacking the
ability to puzzle out a new situation under stress. More sea time
was
the cure. 'Experienced' candidate failures stemmed mainly from not
reading through the syllabus being examined; gross omissions -
such as believing that racing rules were good enough knowledge to
pass for colregs! Their solution was to humble themselves by
reading the syllabus and boning up on the gaps in their knowledge.

JimB

John F wrote:
Andy wrote:
snip
: All the finer points of sail trim, including mast bend, are covered
: well in books.
: Andy

Could you please list some of the books you've read that
you feel contributed to your sailing knowledge. Not so
much sail trim in particular, but engine maintenance and
mechanical systems, anchoring, docking, navigation, etc, etc.
The ASA and US Sailing books I've read for courses
(Basic Keelboat, Basic Cruising, and Bareboat) I've taken
seem way too light-weight for complete self-learning.
The USPS Advanced Sailing course book seems much better,
and sail trim seems very well covered by Tom Whidden's
The Art and Science of Sails. But I haven't found (what
seemed to me like) good books for many of the other topics
you've mentioned in your preceding posts, and would be
very interested to know what you found the most helpful.
Thanks,
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: where j=john and f=forkosh )

Hi John:

I agree with you about the ASA books; they are pretty lightweight and I
wouldn't rely on them alone. I used the ASA books as basically an
introduction and overview of the topics. Chapman's Piloting, while
pretty thick, I also just used as an introductory text. When I was
actually out cruising I don't think I ever opened the ASA books, and I
only checked Chapman's as a last resort.

Here are the books that I considered to be the most useful to me in
learning to cruise. I am not saying these are the best books
available; Some of them I were on board when we bought the boat and
some of them I picked up at yard sales, etc. and I ended up finding
them useful.

1. Nigel Calder's Cruising Handbook. This is what I turned to first,
since it adequately covers a surprisingly large number of diverse
topics. I suspect that if people in this newsgroup threw random topics
at me we would find that 85% of them are covered in sufficient detail
for cruising (not racing) purposes.

2. Boatowner's Mechanical and Electrical Manual; Nigel Calder. This
book resolved at least 90% of my mechanical and electrical issues.

3. Marine Diesel Engines; Calder.

4. Fundamentals of Sailing, Cruising, and Racing; Stephen Colgate.

5. Sail Like a Champion; Dennis Conner.

6. The 12 Volt Bible; Living on 12 Volts with Ample Power

7. Surviving the Storm; Dashew.

8. Pardy books, i.e. The Cost Conscious Cruiser, the Capable Cruiser,
etc.

9. Sensible Cruising: The Thoreau Approach; Casey and Hackler.

9. A bunch of books in the peril-at-sea genre. Its good to read about
other people's mistakes.

10. Sailboat Hull and Deck Repair; Don Casey.

Andy

d parker wrote:

Yes you scare me, if that's your attitude towards learning without a person
on board to prevent mistakes being made. If you have made it without
injuring someone or breaking boat too much I congratulate you. However,
books only tell you what to do. They rarely tell you what not to do.

Why would I need a person on board to tell me if I was making a
mistake? In my experience real mistakes lead to real consequences that
are pretty obvious. If the only way to detect a mistake is by having
an instructor on board then I would suggest that maybe its not a very
important mistake. Please give me an example of a mistake that:

(1) presents a significant safety risk,
(2) would not be obvious to someone who has carefully read the books
I listed in my other post,
(3) would escape detection without a qualfied instructor, i.e. the
mistake doesn't cause any consequences that would alert an ordinary
person to the fact that something is going wrong.

I would be very interested to see just one example of such a mistake.

Here is an example of a very serious mistake that I doubt is covered in
any course, but which I was aware of from reading books. There is a
certain type of anchor swivel which, if connected directly to the
anchor can fail if there is a strong pull on the rode from
perpendicular to the anchor. You can see the swivel I am talking about
he http://www.reddenmarine.com/site/new...fm?id=SD181206

To use this swivel safely you have to put a shackle on the anchor,
attach the swivel to that, and then attach the chain to the other end
of the swivel. I learned this from one of the books I read, and it was
a good thing since the previous owner of my boat had the anchor rigged
with one of these swivels mounted directly on the anchor. When I was
in Costa Rica I met a woman who lost an anchor in a very rolly and
rocky anchorage because she had one of these swivels incorrectly
mounted. Lucky for her the swivel didn't break until it came time to
raise anchor and she brought up a chain with only a snapped swivel on
the end.

My point with this example is that I doubt something this obscure would
be covered in any standard course, but someone who read a lot of books
would be aware of this issue.

Andy

Andy wrote:
Gary wrote:

Andy wrote:


My wife and I bought a 36 footer and cruised from San Diego to Panama
City and back after about 24 hours of instruction, a few day sails
around San Diego Bay, and copious amounts of reading about cruising,
navigation, anchoring, etc.


You are very lucky.

Gaz


Why do you say we were very lucky? What exactly does one need a lot of
experience with before going coastal cruising that can't be learned
from books?

Lots experience counts. A lot depends on where you cruise and the boat.
Of course in very mild areas with a small basic boat there is less to
learn.

The actual sailing part of cruising is pretty simple and
straightfoward. While it could easily take a lifetime to master the art
of sailing for maximum speed, for purposes of cruising you just need to
know how to roughly trim the sails.

Sailing is easy until the weather turns against you then some experience
is a big asset.
Navigation, especially with a GPS, is pretty straightforward and can be
learned from books.
Of course but once the GAPS fails then experience counts. Whip out the
sky wrench and a book. Pull out HO 249 and a pencil. Lets find land.

Anchoring is an important skill, but it can really be learned from
books, and getting an oversized anchor can provide a good safety
margin.]
Tell that to the hundreds who have experienced dragging or weighing in
adverse conditions. Or anchored where it is deep, rocky and windy.

The other skill needed for cruising, which is repair and maintenance of
the boat and its systems, is not really taught in sailing courses
anyways, and in any event, those can be picked up from books too.

It is taught in the advanced courses.
Andy

Of course everything can be learned from a book but nothing counts like
experience. Sometimes looking it up in the book is too slow.

Gaz

In article
,
"d parker" wrote:

Yes you scare me, if that's your attitude towards learning without a person
on board to prevent mistakes being made. If you have made it without
injuring someone or breaking boat too much I congratulate you. However,
books only tell you what to do. They rarely tell you what not to do.

DP

Truth be told, as with any practical knowledge, we only really learn
from experience. Some of us can get the clues from books; some need
personalized instruction; others need to be shown, but it's the *doing*
that does the trick.

Having an instructor at your elbow is not the same as being totally
responsible and having to remember everything at once. Sometimes, the
student (such as my wife) only gains the confidence in their skills when
the instructor (me) isn't there. [Every once in a while, I'll "fall
asleep" on a long leg. We always get "there".]

Strangest story: Had a friend go out for his first sailboat trip with us
and I gave him the basics of sail trim and eyeball navigation that
afternoon. He was enthusiastic, so he handled the boat most of the day.
Next we heard, he'd bought an old sloop and successfully gotten it down
to Florida. He learned quite a bit along the way, including becoming a
pretty fair sailor. Biggest lesson, though, was to NOT move unless he
felt ready for the conditions. He got "stretched" a couple of times and
did the stupid things we all do, but I don't think was ever in actual
danger. [Told him I thought *starting* the trip was a stupid idea, and
he agreed, but he had FUN.]

We have had crew onboard that had done all the courses and had all the
certifications. Would rather have dinghy sailors, and usually soon feel
comfortable going below with them at the helm. Even complete neophytes
sometimes were better than all of the the "accredited" "sailors" I've
met.

But that's not a condemnation of courses, or an absolute approval of any
particular method. Everyone learns differently. Some will never learn;
others merely need a suggestion.

--
Jere Lull
Xan-a-Deux ('73 Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD)
Xan's Pages: http://members.dca.net/jerelull/X-Main.html
Our BVI FAQs (290+ pics) http://homepage.mac.com/jerelull/BVI/

Andy wrote:
: John F wrote:
: Andy wrote:
: snip
: : All the finer points of sail trim, including mast bend, are covered
: : well in books.
: : Andy
:
: Could you please list some of the books you've read that
: you feel contributed to your sailing knowledge. Not so
: much sail trim in particular, but engine maintenance and
: mechanical systems, anchoring, docking, navigation, etc, etc.
: The ASA and US Sailing books I've read for courses
: (Basic Keelboat, Basic Cruising, and Bareboat) I've taken
: seem way too light-weight for complete self-learning.
: The USPS Advanced Sailing course book seems much better,
: and sail trim seems very well covered by Tom Whidden's
: The Art and Science of Sails. But I haven't found (what
: seemed to me like) good books for many of the other topics
: you've mentioned in your preceding posts, and would be
: very interested to know what you found the most helpful.
: Thanks,

: Hi John:
: I agree with you about the ASA books; they are pretty lightweight and I
: wouldn't rely on them alone. I used the ASA books as basically an
: introduction and overview of the topics. Chapman's Piloting, while
: pretty thick, I also just used as an introductory text. When I was
: actually out cruising I don't think I ever opened the ASA books, and I
: only checked Chapman's as a last resort.
: Here are the books that I considered to be the most useful to me in
: learning to cruise. I am not saying these are the best books
: available; Some of them I were on board when we bought the boat and
: some of them I picked up at yard sales, etc. and I ended up finding
: them useful.
: 1. Nigel Calder's Cruising Handbook. This is what I turned to first,
: since it adequately covers a surprisingly large number of diverse
: topics. I suspect that if people in this newsgroup threw random topics
: at me we would find that 85% of them are covered in sufficient detail
: for cruising (not racing) purposes.
: 2. Boatowner's Mechanical and Electrical Manual; Nigel Calder. This
: book resolved at least 90% of my mechanical and electrical issues.
: 3. Marine Diesel Engines; Calder.
: 4. Fundamentals of Sailing, Cruising, and Racing; Stephen Colgate.
: 5. Sail Like a Champion; Dennis Conner.
: 6. The 12 Volt Bible; Living on 12 Volts with Ample Power
: 7. Surviving the Storm; Dashew.
: 8. Pardy books, i.e. The Cost Conscious Cruiser, the Capable Cruiser,
: etc.
: 9. Sensible Cruising: The Thoreau Approach; Casey and Hackler.
:10. A bunch of books in the peril-at-sea genre. Its good to read about
: other people's mistakes.
:11. Sailboat Hull and Deck Repair; Don Casey.
: Andy

Hi Andy,
Thanks very much, indeed. Looks like a terrific reading list,
and I'll definitely be checking them all out and buying at least
several.

P.S. to original poster, David, if you're still reading this...
I didn't originally realize pinnacle was one of those fractional
ownership deals. If that's what interests you, also check out
www.sailtime.com , which has boats both at Chelsea Piers and also
at Liberty Landing. (Their Chelsea boat used to be at Pier 40
alongside pinnacle's, but Chelsea's much better protected, making
it more comfortable for evening parties
You can also try bareboat chartering a boat for a day. Several
places, e.g., Brewer Yacht Haven Marina (www.byy.com), along LI Sound
do this kind of business (roughly $500/day for a 40 foot Beneteau).
But in these cases, I believe they'll want to check out your skills
a little more carefully than pinnacle seems to be doing.
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: where j=john and f=forkosh )