'Captain calamities'

[awol]

I think that the CC syndrome is about not knowing, understanding or accepting that a risk exists & not being able to deal with it in any meaningfull way when it occurs.

I think it goes a bit further than that. It seems to include not being able to recognise that anything untoward has occurred. I suspect that a lack of imagination precluding any "what if"
thoughts, the absence of an inquiring mind to ask "why?" together with an unshakable self-belief is a cause.

I'm afraid, though, that I am all in favour of letting them carry on and doing their worst. After all, any attempt to stop CCs could very well catch me!

 

[Sybarite]

Years ago, I remember reading about a person who bought a large motor cruiser in London and ran aground in the Thames Estuary. When asked his destination he replied Australia. He had few charts and instruments on board. His method was to follow other boats as far as the Med and once in the Med there was only one way out at the other end. By then he had hoped to have picked up enough knowledge to complete his journey.

 

[Flapjack]

About four or five years ago now we were pottering up and down the front of Hayling Island one morning when we heard a call on the VHF from a Mobo that had run aground on the West Winner just outside Langstone Harbour, Solent Coastguard dutifully dispatched a boat to tow him off and we thought that was the end of it, later that same day a very familiar voice comes on the radio saying that he had run aground on the sandbank outside Langstone Harbour, the coastguard also seemed to think that the voice was familiar as he asked him if he had called in earlier that day, the Mobo replied that he had and the coastguard asked him if the sandbank was shown on his charts, after quite a long pause the coastguard prompted him with “you do have charts on board sir?” and back came the reply ”we have an AZ of Portsmouth” I was laughing so hard I didn’t hear what the coastguard said next.

 

[Ubergeekian]

I think it goes a bit further than that. It seems to include not being able to recognise that anything untoward has occurred. I suspect that a lack of imagination precluding any "what if"
thoughts, the absence of an inquiring mind to ask "why?" together with an unshakable self-belief is a cause.

I think you have it there. We can all fail to recognize a danger we don't know about - Captain Calamities keep on having the same accidents.

 

[Wandering Star]

I had a steep learning curve on my first boat; I've been meaning to post something of it on the confession thread, but it's too hard to pick one incident. Boat handling skills were there from dinghy sailing (not that a bilge keeler with a 10 inch deep rudder handles like a dinghy), but a lot of knowledge was missing. No dramatic rescues, but a few near misses.

I look back on it very fondly though, it was much more exciting than when we got the hang of it, and those first passages, when the plan came together, were intensely rewarding.

This and Full Circles later post echo those of my own exploits. I hesitate to criticise or condemn anyone, certainly in the early years of my sailing learning curve I came a cropper lots of times - some quite serious incidents including one incident where I lost my (small plywood) boat having been blown across from Anglesey via the IOM onto the Cumbria Coast in a F9 which was forecast but which I'd ignored (in my ignorance)! I haven't done anything terribly wrong in the past 40 years. As Sighmoon says, a lot of knowledge missing in those days but equally a lot of knowledge very quickly gained as a result. I look back on them fondly the formative years!

I think in those early years, I could easily be described as a Captain Calamity but so could just about all my friends too as they learned to sail the hard way.

For younger readers, we had no GPS, chartplotters or sailing instruments and VHF was still the preserve of the rich yotties. We did have RDF and echo sounder.

Cheers, Brian.

 

[mph]

I remember a couple of guys who could qualify as a Capt Calamity.

Many years ago I worked as a yacht broker in South Devon, one of the curses of being a YB is the number of dreamers you can see wanting to look at yachts…you can’t ignore them as you never know, they may be serious.

Anyway, this guy had been down several times to look at a couple of boats on the books, from chatting to him it was blindingly obvious that he had zero experience! He’d read a couple of books and reckoned he knew enough and was fired up with getting a boat. I had already talked to him about the benefits of getting some training.
Finally, he came and looked at a nice little (yellow) Oday 22 sloop which had just been listed. End result was he bought the boat on the spot (for the asking price!), the vendor was jolly pleased and let the purchaser use his harbour mooring for the rest of the season..
Anyway, a couple of days later, I noticed the boat heading into the long pontoon below my office so I decided to saunter down to have a chat. Boat came in alongside (downwind) and the guy hopped off holding a single coil of rope…which wasn’t made fast onto the boat…which was still in gear…..and moving forward…. = Crunchhhhh into the steel ketch ahead!
I was able to run down the pontoon and just grab the guardrail, hopped on board and knocked the OB out of gear. The guy was looking puzzled in a ‘what happened there’ way so I was able to broach the subject of training a bit more bluntly.
The upshot was he did get 4 days own boat training with an instructor friend of mine, this sorted out a lot of problems but my instructor chum reckoned he just wasn’t getting through to the guy, he just kept making the same mistakes over & over. I saw the guy several times over the following few months and each time he had some boating cock up to tell me about. Privately, we were calling him the Yellow Peril!
The boat moved away at the end of the season and I saw it ashore in the spring at Polly steps in Teignmouth looking in a sorry state with a for sale sign on it..


Another guy actually ended up buying 2 boats from me! He was again looking for his 1st boat with no prior boating experience. The first boat was an old Tamar 24 Motor sailor fitted with a ratty old Petter inboard. Shortly after he bought the boat, this guy decided to replace the engine with a new Yanmar 1GM10. He swapped the engines over on the Marina berth (much to the dockmaster’s annoyance) and in the process bending the boom.
Shortly afterwards, he moved the boat to a drying fore & aft mooring in the inner harbour (not sure if he was kicked out by the marina – probably) Anyway, the inevitable happened one day and he got the mooring lines wrapped around the prop…

Imagine my surprise when this mud splattered guy walked into my office carrying a propshaft which looked more like a giant corkscrew!! It hadn’t occurred to the guy that with the prop shaft out that he had a bloody big hole in the bottom of the boat….and the tide was coming in!!
I quickly gave him a wooden bung and told him to bang it into the hole from the outside….and make it snappy!!
Anyway, he fitted a new shaft & stern gland & I got a mechanic chum of mine to help him sort out aligning the engine with new engine mounts (when the rope wrap happened it tore the engine off its mounts which hadn’t been fitted properly)

Shortly after this, the adjoining boat to his was listed and he set his heart on buying it. Luckily I was able to find a buyer for the Tamar 24 quite quickly, allowing the guy to buy the larger adjoining wooden ketch straight away. For the rest of the season, I watched or heard of this guy getting into quite a few scrapes locally.
At the end of the season this guy called into the office & told me he needed to sell up, I think he was moving to a new job away from the sea or something & couldn’t afford to keep the boat. Again I listed the boat even though there’d been a lot of scrappy ‘DIY’ standard maintenance on board…Not good. This time around it took a good long time to shift.

Over the years, I’ve come across a good few other muppets, but these two stand out as ones who didn’t seem to learn anything from each cock up!

 

[Stemar]

I like to think that I learn from my mistakes, so I don't qualify as a CC (I hope!). I've also learned far more from the mistakes of others being discussed on here, so thanks everyone - keep the cockups coming! Your story may keep me from making a similar mistake.

One classic from my porfolio was first time out on someone else's boat. Fresh from the Solent, where, generally, buoys are for big boats, I ignored the green buoy maybe 100 yards off Wrabness (to port) and half a mile off the starboard shore. The log reads "Stopped, dropped anchor & had lunch".

 

[chart5011]

coastguard - 'What is your position?'

Surprised reply - 'I'm the managing director of a rather large engineering company'

 

[Ru88ell]

She may be skippering somewhere, so worthy of a mention:-

A good few years ago during my Day Skipper practical week out of Brixham, a nervous middle aged female student was made skipper for the morning. We were heading south to Dartmouth, when all of a sudden she let out a scream and shouted that she needed someone to take over the helm immediately. There was a tanker on the horizon, and she didn't want to crash into it!?!!?

She passed the course!

 

[Touchwood]

She may be skippering somewhere, so worthy of a mention:-

A good few years ago during my Day Skipper practical week out of Brixham, a nervous middle aged female student was made skipper for the morning. We were heading south to Dartmouth, when all of a sudden she let out a scream and shouted that she needed someone to take over the helm immediately. There was a tanker on the horizon, and she didn't want to crash into it!?!!?

She passed the course!

Since this thread seems to have identified a major criterion for qualifying as a CC as the failure to recognise ones shortcomings, surely she clearly doesn't qualify?

 

[Bosun Higgs]

It's great fun in the club bar and elsewhere talking about other skippers qualifications as a CC. But you do wonder if any of the posters on here are appearing twice - once reporting someone else as a CC and once being reported as a CC.

 

[westernman]

Tilman may have lost his edge in later years but should be absoved by the scale of the sailing he did. Bringing a pilot cutter home without engine (in effect) might defeat many, even the redoubtable commentators on this forum.

Bringing a pilot cutter home without an engine is not a problem.

Getting it into its parking space in the marina without an engine is. Actually even with an engine it is still a problem.

 

[electrosys]

Tilman may have lost his edge in later years but should be absoved by the scale of the sailing he did. Bringing a pilot cutter home without engine (in effect) might defeat many, even the redoubtable commentators on this forum.

Bringing a pilot cutter home without an engine is not a problem.

Getting it into its parking space in the marina without an engine is. Actually even with an engine it is still a problem.

It's been suggested that one major criterion for qualifying as a CC is a failure to recognise ones shortcomings.
With Tilman I suspect it may be a question of simply having a different set of standards - bit difficult to ask someone who takes climbing serious mountains and epic voyages in his stride to be overly concerned about taking the paint off a few parked boats and headbutting the quay on his way to a mooring. He probably didn't even consider having a few scrapes as being shortcomings, and thus not worthy of any concern.

Different breed entirely.

 

[westernman]

It's been suggested that one major criterion for qualifying as a CC is a failure to recognise ones shortcomings.
With Tilman I suspect it may be a question of simply having a different set of standards - bit difficult to ask someone who takes climbing serious mountains and epic voyages in his stride to be overly concerned about taking the paint off a few parked boats and headbutting the quay on his way to a mooring. He probably didn't even consider having a few scrapes as being shortcomings, and thus not worthy of any concern.

Different breed entirely.

You may well be right. Pilot cutters, in common with mine and even some modern yachts have rubbing strakes. But people seem to get very upset if you rub those rubbing strakes against anything.......