Tips for Beginning Sailors

[curtisv]

Its good to see you again Curtis. I have noticed your posts again. Always nice to have a old friend show up. As for channels with strong currents and swells, (esp in opposition to each other) Stay Away!...at least for the first few seasons!
Humility, and accepting that you in a hostile environment that can kill you is important to remember.

Newt,

The reason I'm on and off on this forum is I get ridiculously busy with work at times.

I've seen a lot of people come and go on the YahooGroups list and here after Kurt started this site.  I'm gone from Yahoo after they no longer took just an email address and changed privacy policies.  I do miss Larry Bracken, Bob Burgess, and David Barnicoat in particular from that list, and Michael Quiggley who later bought a Beneteau and CaptK himself that bought a Pearson (me thinks, or Bristol?) and is less active here than he used to be.

We still have a great group of sailors here, some experienced and some new at it, and some fine craftsmen.  I hope to meet some of the sailors here on the water some time.  Though it may not be until after I retire (again) or if I opt for some extended time off.

Curtis

[curtisv]

Henry (aka Ready Eddy),

All the tips for beginners are good advice, and should definitely be followed.  But chances are, they won't. 

The stories of new sailors around here are comical, in a way.

A sailing instructor that I had the chance to speak to (real old salt, circumnavigated, lived aboard for many years, owned a 43 foot Hershoff ketch) told me a few stories as we were admiring a bent keel and busted up 50 foot hull in the sling.  I was wondering aloud how the keel got that way and he knew the story.  He summarized the cause as "new sailor with too much money and not enough brains".  Sailing in water marked in the charts as 12' and strewn with rocks with his month old 1/2 million dollar Hunter 50, with fin keel and 10 foot draft, he found a new rock that wasn't on the chart.  He didn't seem to know that sailing downwind at full speed where the chart said the bottom had many rocks was just below his keel was not a good idea.  He somehow thought that if there wasn't an asterisk marking a rock that there couldn't possibly be a rock there.  That was in Mystic CT.

I heard of two total losses at Watch Hill RI.  Its a well protected harbor with a jetty enclosing it.  One brand new sailor with a brand new boat and all the electronic gadgets that one could imagine set a waypoint back to his mooring and didn't realize that the GPS would just follow a straight line right through the jetty, which it did.  Another sailor had inexperienced crew (a friend who had never sailed before) at the wheel entering and went into the cabin during this critical move.  The crew misheard or misunderstood "leave the mark well to your right" and went well to the right of the mark only to hit a submerged end of the jetty.

Fortunately in these cases it was only property damage.  Its no longer comical when injury or death is involved.

The commercial fishing boats are experienced but can be among the worst.  A few years back two vessels collided off Nantucket in broad daylight under clear and sunny skies because neither had anyone at the helm or on watch.  Both boats sank and two men died.

Every coast guard station keeps records and the local papers here report the trends in anual boater fatalities on record at Coast Guard Chatham and Coast Guard Woods Hole.  The average for Cape Cod and the islands (Marthas Vineyard and Nantucket) is about ten a year.  Most are commercial fishermen and lobstermen, but some are recreational boats.  I only know of one (in many years) that was sailing related, hypothermia on a hobbie that couldn't make it home in high winds.  Nationally (last I looked, a few years back) there were 12 sailing related deaths of about 900 boating related deaths.  The USCG web page has reports summarizing the statistics.

Its better to be "Ready Eddy".

This discussion started out as "tips for beginning sailors".  To summarize, know what you are getting into.  Some sailing (small lakes, inland waters) can be quite forgiving and easily handled with a little instruction and limited experience.  Some situations are best attempted after gaining more knowledge and experience.  I think we've gone way off on a tangient on situations that the begginning sailor asking the question won't be running into.

Curtis

[HenryC]

It's amazing how much common sense comes into play, and I say this not to poke fun at anyone's ignorance, we all do it, often without realizing it.  Here's a real  tip!.

I went sailing with an experienced couple who had been on the water together for years.  At the fuel dock, I noted the skipper cleating the spring line on by passing a set of figure eights across the wings of the cleat.  I interrupted him and demonstrated the right way--"First, take a turn or two of the bitter end  around the stem of the cleat", (the vertical part that is bolted to the deck), "Then", after the line is secured, "do your figure-eights around the cleat wings to keep the hitch from coming undone and to neatly take up the excess line off the deck and dress up the hitch". 

"What difference does it make?", he asked.

I explained to him if there was suddenly a great strain on the line, say, because of a sudden wind or a dockside collision, the strain would be taken by the round turns on the cleat upright, not the figure-eights, and he would be able to leisurely undo the figure-eight without having to worry about the knot jamming or getting his hands tangled up in it.  He would then be able to gradually release the strain on the line in a controlled fashion, using the friction of the turns on the upright part of the cleat as a brake.

"You're absolutely right", he replied, and pointing out where I was standing, "and make sure you've got your foot INBOARD of the line so in case the cleat fails it doesn't take your ankle with it when it goes over the side!"

[Bob23]

Thanks for that tip, Henry. I always took a turn around but never knew why.
Another indispensable tip:
   ENJOY IT!! Feel the wind blow your hair, enjoy the salt water (or fresh) spray on your face, fall in love with the feel of the wind moving your boat through the water. I could go on and on but you get the idea. Don't get too bogged down with performance that you loose sight of the reason you started sailing in the first place: FUN.
Bob23

[HideAway]

I had a student ask me  once how risky sailing was.  So I told him the truth - Its extremely dangerous, people die from it - but once you get out of your car and on the boat it is a very safe place to have some fun.   Matt

[HenryC]

From Mr. John Vigor, at

http://www.goodoldboat.com/reader_services/articles/blackbox.php

"...every boat possesses an imaginary black box, a sort of bank account in which points are kept. In times of emergency, when there is nothing more to be done in the way of sensible seamanship, the points from your black box can buy your way out of trouble. You have no control over how the points are spent, of course; they withdraw themselves when the time is appropriate. You do have control over how the points get into the box: you earn them. For every seamanlike act you perform, you get a point in the black box. Points come in so many ways it would be impossible to list them all. But I can send you in the right direction. Let's say you're planning a weekend cruise down the coast, and time is precious. You have been wondering for some weeks if you ought to haul out the bosun's chair and inspect the masthead fittings. It has been a couple of years since you checked everything up there, but it would mean delaying your departure by an hour, maybe more, should you have to change a shackle or something.

"If you finally give in to the nagging voice inside you and go aloft, you earn a point in the box. If you don't take that trouble, your black box will stay empty. If you sniff the bilges for fumes before pushing the starter button, you'll score a point, just as you will for taking a precautionary reef at nightfall or checking the expiration date on your rocket flares. Thinking and worrying about what could happen is also a good way to earn points - if the wind started blowing into your quiet anchorage at 40 miles an hour and the engine wouldn't start, or whether you should put a couple of reefs in the mainsail before you climb into your bunk, just in case.

"No matter how good your seamanship, there are times when there is nothing left to do but batten down the hatches and pray. If you have a credit balance of points in the box, you'll be all right. People will say you're lucky, of course. They'll say a benign fate let you get away with it. But we know better. That luck was earned, maybe over quite a long period.

"Not that there's any room for complacency. If an emergency drains all the points from your black box, you must immediately set about replacing them by tending to your boat, your crew, and yourself in a seamanlike way and by practicing extra caution for as long as seems right.

"It may seem unfair that you cannot check your credit balance in the black box, but it's just as well. If I knew I had sufficient points to get me through a weekend, I might not bother to go up the mast before setting out. Not knowing keeps us on our toes.

"In practice, however, your conscience will be a good guide. Have you put off changing the engine oil for the umpteenth time? Does the port navigation light still need a new bulb? Be careful. You may be running low on points.

"In the same way, your conscience will tell you when you have credit. You will glow with that quiet sort of confidence that inspires crews and makes for happy voyages."

[curtisv]

It's amazing how much common sense comes into play, [...]

"You're absolutely right", he replied, and pointing out where I was standing, "and make sure you've got your foot INBOARD of the line so in case the cleat fails it doesn't take your ankle with it when it goes over the side!"

This reminds me of two situations that I've been in where nothing bad happenned but there was a lapse in caution.

In one case there was someone sitting on the cabin top on the leaward side.  If anything had given holding the mainsheet that person would have taken the full force of the boom.  That day we found a clevis pin the had lost the cotter ring and was about to fall off.  Had the clevis pin worked its way out just a bit further the boom would have come across.  That was on a 43 footer, with a good sized boom.  We later found the bent cotter ring on the cabin sole.

The other situation was a teenager that sat up on the cabin top and then poked his head through the mainsheet arrangement to lean over to say something.  I explained that I didn't like what he was doing because if a block let loose it might rip his head off.  As unlikely as that seemed, I didn't like seeing him take that risk.  This was on a 50 foot boat with a three part tackle on the boom and lots of force on those lines.  It was also a badly maintained charter boat so things letting go was not too far fetched.  A few years later I spoke to someone who crewed on a Newport to Bermuda race (or it might have been Marion to Bermuda).  Weather turned stormy and it was a rough race.  Another boat had a rigging failure and a crew member was partially decapitated and killed.  Their boat got involved over the radio because they had a doctor on board but the situation was hopeless.  It made me think of the kid with his head through the mainsheet.

The good news is our boats are smaller than these and there are no lines carrying enough force to tear someone's head off.  You still can get hit with the boom.  I know a very good teen sailor (now sailing in college) that took a small boom to the head (through no fault of his own) and got a concussion.

[btw - You might wonder "how do you get hit with a boom through no fault of your own?"  They were racing 420s in tight quarters near the downwind mark and the boat next to them jibed, hitting him in the head with their boom.  Since then he continued to race in close quarters but with a helmet.]

Curtis