MBM CRUISING CLUB-WHAT A NIGHTMARE

(engine failure, F7, ebbing tide!)
If there are any like minded folk around Bristol/Portishead please get in touch. Nothing better than talking boats and drinking beer!

PS to the guy with the Freeman; lovely boats - don't give up!

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No eng, ebb , F7 Ooh Err!
Boats and Beer, Freemans all good stuff!
Sorry not in Your vicinity.
Did a Cruise in Company in My vicinity a couple of Years ago.
4 Planing hulls and 4 semis.
Anglesey to the IOM.
Worked out great.
Half the owners and their boats had never been outside the Menai Straits.
They were dead chuffed and it has lead them to be more adventurous and use their boats more.
K
 
I thought we had tides in the Bristol Chanel but after seeing the majors post it seems to run through the straits at a hell of a rate!
Wouldn't want to break down there, or anywhere else (again) for that matter. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
At risk of being unpopular again...


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As an aside, some of the posts on here renew my faith in human nature.
"Come and join us" etc.


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As much as it is a nice gesture, that is part of the problem

The Wokingham group are large modern seagoing boats that would consider a trip F4/5 slight to moderate a good crossing.

F4/5 slight/moderate would feel like survival in a Freeman.

I know Freeman well and have been on one many times and have cruised with one to the Farne Islands two words come to mind ' slap , slap' each slap is a back breaking compression as you hit a slight sea wave.

I stand by my advice

keep the boat and carefully choose your day or change your boat for one that may have less space.
 
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or change your boat for one that may have less space.


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oh for more internal space on Phaeton ............... /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif......... on the other hand, as I think you are saying Daka, you can't have everything!
 
Sorry to hear the rather delayed report of that chaps bad experience.

I wouldn't write off CICs. I've organised quite a few coastal ones for the IWAI here in Ireland. They key is to plan a flexable schedule with multiple exit strategies if the WX goes pear shaped. CICs are meant to be fun not maritime achievments for novices. It's is important to be able to change plans and as such all participants of CICs I've run are aware of potential time over runs, and perhaps the need to leave boats behind in ports if the WX stays bad (ie come back when the WX is nice and bring the boats home). CICs organised in this way can be a great learning experience. Suitability and sea worthyness of vessels is vip. In my time I have unfortunately had to discourage some vessels from participating either due to the suitability of vessel or a crews inexperience. Also mid way through some CICs we have advise some boats to stay put in a harbour and wait for the fleet to meet them on the return journey to base (ie river boats not suited to the sea state on exposed atlantic coast, or weather window for return uncertain for some slower and less seaworth boats). I have in the past filtered the participanting boats in their own interests depending on the CICs planned route. During CICs we keep boats grouped into similar speed classes so it is reassuring for the nervous 1st timers to see other similar boats around them if it gets a little lumpy. If the WX is not nice we don't go, and if we do go and the WX around a major headland is awful we divert or U-turn - it's meant to be fun and safe - not a challenge!

In my experience it is impossible and stupid to attempt to stick to a schedule planned months earlier, you've got to adapt the schedule to the weather, vessels and crews you have on the day.

PS: Freemans once very popular on the Shannon would not be suitable for cruising on the SW coast of Ireland except in untypically prolonged periods of stable weather.
 
Dear All,

Having read this post thoroughly I think that it raises a number of issues that we could all take notice of, whether cruising in company or not.

I have to agree totally with hlb on this issue. Cruising in company should not be looked on as an easy option for less experienced cruisers. In fact, in many ways, it is more difficult to make the correct decisions when in company given... the pressures of wanting to keep up with the group, not wanting to look a plonker, believing that being in a group will make things easier. Sure, being in company means you have access to more experienced people perhaps and they can often help you make decisions but there is no getting away from the fact that ultimately the decisions are YOURS and yours alone.

When cruising in company I am always even more particular and fussy about my own decisions. It is important that the big decisions you make are EXACTLY the same decisions you would make as if you were on your own. If your boat lets in water when on your own then it will still let in water when in company and so the decision whether to go or not is the same in both cases. If you would be unhappy on your own then you should be unhappy in company. There is little that a group member can do to help you when at sea (other than a tow perhaps and then only perhaps and probably only in goodish weather) and so you need to be 100% happy with your boat, equipment, crew and passage plan before you start the trip - with or without company.

I am sorry if this sounds a little harsh. I don't mean to be harsh.

Plan and execute the trip as if you are totally alone and you will tend to make the right (or at least better) decisions.

I am an experienced flying instructor and one of the most dangerous apects of flying a small, private airplane is the pressure to do what others want... passengers that want a ride in the plane, pressure to get back before the weather closes in, pressure to get back because of work the next day, pressure to save money by taking a shortcut, pressure to look good and experienced in front of family and friends and other more experienced pilots. All these pressures conspire together to lead the pilot to make bad and potentially unsafe decisions. Although I am not hugely experienced in boating I would imagine that most of these same pressures apply to us when we go out in our boats. We need to be strong and guard against them with the aim of making the best decision for our own equipment, experience, weather and circumstances.

One of the most hardest things a skipper can do is to cancel a trip that everyone has been looking forward to. Even harder to turn back once set out. If you find yourself saying words to the effect of -

"... we might be OK"
"...the weather might improve"
"... we might be able to get into so-and-so if things get bad"

or anything similar then you probably should think about whether you should be going at all.

Clearly, experience and equipment play a big part in this and I am not suggesting for a moment that this is something that should be followed by everyone... if you have the training, experience, equipment and crew then you can often make decisions to go where I might not, and do it safely. But I use this as my starting position and it is a good position to start from IMO.

The old saying... "I would rather be at home wishing I was at sea than at sea wishing I were at home" comes to mind too.

Penpal, I am glad that you and your family came through that experience safely albiet a bit shaken. I am certain that every boat owner will have some story to tell that is not unlike yours. But it is important to remember that no one was hurt and your boat came through it OK. So I would look on it as an experience and part of the learning curve we are all on with this boating thing. You said you were not really happy going out at all and ,as you say, you had the opportunity not to go or to return once at the Neddles. If you now believe that you would make that decision not to go or to return next time then you have learned a valuable lesson from the experience and no harm done.

I am really pleased you posted. Lessons such as this are all part of the fun of boating and now you have posted they are there for us all to learn from.

So continue to have fun in your boat and I hope we will all be more aware of the dangers of the cruising-in-company pressures that can coerce us all to make those dodgy decisons!
 
Glad we agree, I have never cruised in company as such, so can only guess about the added problems of peer pressure, which is bad enough, even on your own and with your own commitments.

Part of it maybe just me, because I hate organised events of any sort and much preffer casual meetings.
 
as I hope came through from my earlier posts I agree with you both - Arny has also explained more fully the additional issues and necessary understandings appropriate to even a couple of boats setting off on a trip. The 'unsaid understandings' are fine until tested; 'we are doing the trip together' until one party proposes a return late one evening to get ahead of a sudden worsening weather and the says they would prefer to fly back and collect the boat another time than be out there arriving home in the dark......(for example!).
 
..and me too.

"A flotilla cruise is scheduled for a particular date and you take the risk that the weather may, or may not be good on that day, but as skipper, it is up to you to make the decision whether to go to sea or not."

Arny put the argument in the best way.
 
Thanks for this, but to be fare on this the other boaters in much newer boats were also travelling at 4/7 knots, long term I think I would be better off in something like an Aquastar
 
Good responses from all I think.
SWMBO and me are nearly allways on our own but it would be nice to meet someone we knew the other end from time to time.
Anyway happy passage planning and enjoy the trip more than being there!
 
I agree... for us it is more the meeting up at the other end and doing things there perhaps (walks, meals, drinks etc) rather than the actual travelling together. Although we might actually set out together I treat it as if we are traveling separately. Might have a chat on the radio enroute just to keep in touch with progress though.
 
Thing is, if you and Arny hang around here long enough. You will find you can book your own itinery, with loads of folk to meet up with on the way. Ok it's a bit haphazard, some trips you meet loads of folk, other times not many. Suppose it depends how much work you put in, did you get a few folks moby number, so you can tell em where you are.

We've met loads of forumites, from Solent to Cornwall. Isle O Man. Med and CI's, not to mention London.

Dont forget there loads of forums down below, for that very perpose. Maybe you'd stand out better with a famous forum Burgee. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
One question, if by some foolish mischance I was to have signed up for one of these ordeals, what exactly would my £400 be spent on?

dv.
 
Duno, I've never been. Nor intend to. Guess it's for the blokes in charge and other parafinalia, oh and proffit.

In my limited experience, blokes from mby, mbm, are far to poor, to have a boat or even, enough time off to ride on boats and mostly, know nothing about boats at all. Mind, I've only met three or four of them. Some of them have said, they would like to go on a boat though.

I think they must get shuffled about a bit. Horse and Hound one minute. Slut House Wives the next. Then promoted to Motor Boat Monthly, or maybe the other way round. would think House Wifes Stories. Or Big Boobs Of The World. being the pinnicle before the big pension and retirement.
 
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blokes from mby, mbm, are far to poor, to have a boat or even, enough time off to ride on boats

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I get the impression that Keith knows his poop from his hawse hole.
 
Oooerrr, think your lifetime membership to use the executive bogs at IPC towers might just have been revoked!

And anyway, I don't consider myself to be well off. I have a boat instead...
 
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