Sunday Times reporter chartered from Sailing Holidays with no experience. Mad?

[tudorsailor]

In this week-ends ST travel, the reporter took his family on a flotilla with Sailing Holidays from Lefkas. He had no previous sailing experience. The Sailing Holiday website confirms that

How much experience do I need?
Absolutely none at all...honestly. Our team in Greece are used to this and have a wealth of knowledge and experience to subtly assist and guide you through a fabulous week or fortnight of sailing. http://www.sailingholidays.com/holidays/learn-to-sail

All they got was a couple of hours explanation on how the yacht worked and how to sail.

My first flotilla was a "learning flotilla" with Sunsail in the Ionian. Again "no experience essential" but I had done some dinghy sailing and windsurfing. SWMBO and I got three days sailing with an instructor before being given a yacht for the second week. I still shudder when I recall sailing out of control in the strong afternoon breeze.

Surely a couple of hours chat at the quayside is madness.

Thoughts?

 

[sailorman]

No doubt they will all have a new unused Dazed Kipper cert

 

[dylanwinter]

In this week-ends ST travel, the reporter took his family on a flotilla with Sailing Holidays from Lefkas. He had no previous sailing experience. The Sailing Holiday website confirms that

How much experience do I need?
Absolutely none at all...honestly. Our team in Greece are used to this and have a wealth of knowledge and experience to subtly assist and guide you through a fabulous week or fortnight of sailing. http://www.sailingholidays.com/holidays/learn-to-sail

All they got was a couple of hours explanation on how the yacht worked and how to sail.

My first flotilla was a "learning flotilla" with Sunsail in the Ionian. Again "no experience essential" but I had done some dinghy sailing and windsurfing. SWMBO and I got three days sailing with an instructor before being given a yacht for the second week. I still shudder when I recall sailing out of control in the strong afternoon breeze.

Surely a couple of hours chat at the quayside is madness.

Thoughts?

sailing is easy

sailing is safe

 

[Twister_Ken]

It's the telly, stupid. Some sort of drama, disaster or horrific injury is required to keep the punters happy.

Know how to sail, went on a sailing holiday, nothing went wrong, everybody had a jolly good time. That's not compelling viewing for the lumpen masses.

 

[sailorman]

Will he charter a "Luxury Yacht"

 

[Cloona]

the yacht will have an engine and steering wheel - anyone can do it

 

[Jamesuk]

We trust kids under 25 on the roads..... People are legally allowed to go sky diving lol

 

[mjcoon]

It's the telly, stupid. Some sort of drama, disaster or horrific injury is required to keep the punters happy.

Er, what TV?

MIke.

 

[tudorsailor]

Er, what TV?

MIke.

This was an article in the travel section of the Sunday Times not a reality show...

TS

 

[obmij]

Presumably Sailing Holidays business model depends on punters having a good time and not totalling their boats. I'm guessing that by and large they do and they don't respectively.

'out of control in the strong afternoon breeze'

Most terrifying solo experience I can remember is pushing 60mph on a motorbike. But how else can you learn? I'm guessing that the 'strong afternoon breeze' of that first day wouldn't trouble you now..

 

[Sailfree]

Many years ago I did the same with only dinghy sailing experience.

Sailing holidays have started many people sailing

 

[mjcoon]

This was an article in the travel section of the Sunday Times not a reality show...

Hence my query of relevance of mentioning "telly"...

Mike.

 

[mjcoon]

Presumably Sailing Holidays business model depends on punters having a good time and not totalling their boats. I'm guessing that by and large they do and they don't respectively....

But you can have an "interesting" time in their boats even without any impacts. E.g. having a holding tank partially fall off its bulkhead and splash the contents over my bare feet!

Mike.

 

[prv]

No doubt they will all have a new unused Dazed Kipper cert

No. They turn up with no experience, and awarding them a Day Skipper in exchange for a short briefing on the boat is taking the piss even for Med charter companies.

By and large they're not killing themselves though, so it seems to work.

Pete

 

[Mistroma]

I remember about 15 or more years ago finding out that one charter company dealt with travel agents and so many of their customers knew nothing at all about sailing. We were tied up somewhere not far South of Levkas when their fleet of 12 boats arrived. The lead boat crew arrived mid fleet and pretty much ignored the chaos.

Too many stories to tell but to give a couple of examples:

Older chat with hearing aid and more interested in throttle or cockpit floor when reversing at full tilt towards quay. His wife couldn't even get the anchor untied, let alone into the water. Much screaming from the quay and he finally spotted it in the nick of time, full throttle only just avoided major damage. He took about an hour to get the anchor down and that was only because I chased up the lead crew to help. Every other boat had some sort of major incident and it was pretty obvious that nobody had a clue what to do. Luckily, it was a flat calm that day.

The next day was going to be windy later and I watched as the lead crew spent 5 minutes showing the boat next to us how to reef. It was all done in a dead calm with the sails down and ropes being pulled around the bagged sail. I spoke to them afterwards and they said they didn't understand any of what he'd said or done. Everyone motored out mid-morning in a dead calm with 2-3 reefs in place and we knew the wind would not get up until late afternoon. I often wondered how many tried to put up full sail and then couldn't reef again.

We made a point of getting their itinerary before they left and managed to avoid them entirely.

This was many years ago and I got the impression that this was pretty unusual and that the other charter companies tended to have customers with some knowledge of sailing.

 

[Dave-Shafa]

I was on the Caledonian Canal (2004?) saw a young couple join their Charter Yacht. Cuple o hours tuition.
Then I got talking to them. Very nicely dressed, they were keen as mustard (French), had read a book.
Saw him going about in a very expensive suede jacket in the rain. Asked where his oilies were. Go none.

Met them a week later - they had sailed and sailed, Loch Ness,++ ...
It was raining. They were both wearing black bin bags.

But they could SAIL.

Sailing is easy. I do it, they did it.

 

[lustyd]

Older chat with hearing aid and more interested in throttle or cockpit floor when reversing at full tilt towards quay. His wife couldn't even get the anchor untied, let alone into the water. Much screaming from the quay and he finally spotted it in the nick of time, full throttle only just avoided major damage. He took about an hour to get the anchor down and that was only because I chased up the lead crew to help. Every other boat had some sort of major incident and it was pretty obvious that nobody had a clue what to do. Luckily, it was a flat calm that day.

Put another way, the worst example you could think of out of every boat having a "major incident" was an inexperienced sailor not hitting the quay overly hard and taking longer than you would have done to tie up. I think our definitions of major and incident may be very different

 

[johnphilip]

sailing is easy

sailing is safe

I know, how else could this lot do it? The forum just add their air of folklore about seamanship as a sort of ego boost.

 

[aquaplane]

Dad bought a 25' Westerly and got a book out of the library, we learned to sail in that, as a family.

We got scared a few times but they were the best learning experiences, mainly learning that a gust won't turn over a Westerly, it'll lean a bit but no more.

Sailing is easy.

Sailing is safe.

Winning a race is a bit harder if that's your thing.

 

[ronsurf]

+1 on the sailing is easy. Being good at it is a bit harder, and coping with an emergency takes some experience, but the sailing part is easy.

In the Med there are no tides to deal with, the water is clear so you can see if you're going to hit anything and there are people around to help. A radio to ask for advice.

We're not superheroes because we can sail a boat.