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Training for sailboats/yachts
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 |
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