busy day

[masterofnone]

78 regulars and 67 anon users, presumably another busy day at the office. Me , I've nothing better to do with my time, as up here in the N. hemisphere, its cold , wet and miserable.

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[Biddy]

It may be cold and wet up here (although no rain in B/mouth) but I'm not miserable !!! tee hee hee.


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[Goodge]

I've just returned to work today after Yachtmaster prep and exam.

I have 163 e mail messages in my Inbox but also there were 207 forum threads that I hadn't read.

Guess which one is getting more attention at the moment ?


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[snowleopard]

Presume you don't want to tell us why in case you get banned from the forum?

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[snowleopard]

never mind the emails, tell us how it went!

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[pragmatist]

The answer is in his profile !

<hr width=100% size=1>a pragmatist is an optimist with a boat in the UK - but serious about not being in the UK !

 

[Goodge]

Happy to say that I passed.

Dam tiring week doing all the drills and working on a passage plan till midnight some nights. Only went to the pub once during the week and that was for 2 drinks.
Made up for it yesterday evening though !

It all seemed to click on Saturday, spot on with MOB under sail and picking up a mooring under sail. Slightly dodgy reverse on to pontoon but all the nav went well.

For info, one guy failed straight away. We left Mercury at 1hr before LW at about 2100.He failed to turn to deeper water in R Hamble and we ran aground less than 5 minutes after we left the pontoon. Poor bloke left the boat next morning.







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[Goodge]

Updating my profile was my first priority.

The work can wait !

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[snowleopard]

did he go of his own volition? i've heard that going aground is not necessarily an instant fail, it's more what you do afterwards.

did you have to do night sailing or blind pilotage? i was surprised to get away without either.

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[masterofnone]

Boats on the side. All winter jobs done.
Pigs fed and ready to fly.

Oh and started work at 0200. still xmas coming. needs must

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[Goodge]

We were aground for about 4 hours.

The examiner told us before that if we ran aground unexpectedly or bumped another boat it would be an instant fail. We ran aground fairly hard, probably at 5 knts as we had tide with us. He tried to reverse off and then turn towards deeper water but we were stuck. After about 10 mins we pumped up the dinghy and took a line to a pile mooring in deeper water and tried to use the electric windlass to haul us off. This failed when the windlass 'tripped'. We then tried to haul it manually on a winch but we were stuck fast.
Most of us went to bed for 3 hours until we floated off. Once back on the pontoon the examiner told the candiddate that there was no way back from that but he could stay on the boat if he wanted. He decided to leave next morning.

As for night sailing , we did a fair bit. We did our pontoon bashing in the dark, one guy had to find an unlit tide mark using transits and two of us did blind nav. Not that darkness matters in that. We also had to do pilotage back in which was fairly easy.
Got back about 11.30pm Saturday.


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[Sybarite]

I hope you filed the mandatory incident report in conformity with the law of 20 September 2004......?

No........?? And you passed..........??


John

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