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

[dylanwinter]

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.

only some of them though - the odd classic nautical drama queen

some very useful advice though and I have been saved many thousands of pounds by advice here

but there are some real drama queens on here

However, for classic examples of the genre then look to the canal boat world

The most entertaining examples can be found in the canal boat world


they like to pretend that canal boating is dangerous

and tell you gruesome stories of crushed legs, drowned children and boats getting caught on sills

experts who think that just because they can do one of these

they can bestride the towpath and dish out advice to everyone they meet

These guys need some respect though

these blokes who take canal boats to places they should never go

http://www.tuesdaynightclub.co.uk/tour.html

 

[Iain C]

I disagree. Sailing is safe if you know what you are doing. If you don't, there's all kinds of room for ropes around props, booms in faces, rope burned hands, hands in winches, gas explosions, feet in windlasses, people in water, port/stbd collisions, hitting the bricks, driving on the wrong side of the road, damage to your boat and everyone else's.

Yea, pretty much anyone can get from A2B but they won't be "safe" without experience.

 

[jordanbasset]

Went on holiday with Sailing Holidays, a couple of the boats had people with no sailing experience on them. They used the boat like a motorboat, seems a loss of opportunity to me, but they seemed to enjoy themselves and no one died at the end of the week
Not sure where the Day Skipper certificate came from, they never used to issue them and cannot see how they can now with just being on a flotilla for a week.

 

[capnsensible]

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.


Pete

Myth. Sailing Holidays are not an RYA recognised training centre and do not award Day Skipper certificates. Their website is quite clear about training.

 

[capnsensible]

sailing is easy

sailing is safe

Now that depends where you set your boundaries........ :nonchalance:

 

[KellysEye]

Our first charter was a Sunsail flotilla boat in the Ionian Jane had been dinghy sailing in Gibraltar and I had Shearwater Cat but had neither of us had sailing qualifications. We had no problems even with the Katabatic winds. Our next charter and dozens of charters from then on was bareboat in Croatia.

 

[Sandy]

Thoughts?

It is a newspaper. They are great at fiction.

 

[dylanwinter]

http://www.thetoptens.com/most-dangerous-sports/

yacht racing is 77

dancing is more dangerous

as for the most injuries

---- horse riding

50 years in the saddle and I lived

woo hoo

D

I am quite a dangerous dancer though

 

[Duster]

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

Quite, the whole thing seems a lot of fuss about very little..........if there were a significant number of incedents where the boats got damaged, the charter companies would take a different view.

Each year I go snowmobile touring somewhere, training for a 1000km/ weeks tour is a 10 min briefing, you learn as you go along, we have a few incedents but nothing too serious. So long as people are emjoying themselves, what does it matter.

I get a bit tired of this "training for everything" / "health and safety obsession" / wrap everyone in cotton wool attitude.............Much of it is a "catch penny" for training organisations / job creation for instructors and an ego booster for those with a bit of paper and a little experience.

In the UK we can buy our own boats and use them without any training or qualification..........most of us did and we are still here.........maybe we had a fright or two and lost a bit of gel coat along the way, but SO WHAT?

 

[vyv_cox]

We have been at a Sailing Holidays base in the Ionian when a novice charter fleet set out on their first day. Before the start they were given a brief introduction to the physics of sailing, then set off on a beat of about four miles in around a force four. Several we spoke to had never sailed in their lives. The lead boat stood by to make sure everybody was making progress. All seemed perfectly OK to us and everybody made it to the point of the bay, where they made off on a beam reach for about another four miles, where they berthed. No problems at all and a nice way to start the week.

We have also been at the venue for the first night of a novice flotilla in the Aegean. The wind was a good force six and the beat of about ten miles was trying for some of them, with much vomit issued. All survived and seemed to enjoy their evening meal.

 

[capnsensible]

It seems that out of season, people forget the power of wind and wave.

 

[jimi]

http://www.thetoptens.com/most-dangerous-sports/

yacht racing is 77

dancing is more dangerous

as for the most injuries

---- horse riding

50 years in the saddle and I lived

woo hoo

D

I am quite a dangerous dancer though

Bit of a rubbish list with Horseriding more dangerous than Basejumping!

Credibility zero!

 

[mjcoon]

Myth. Sailing Holidays are not an RYA recognised training centre and do not award Day Skipper certificates. Their website is quite clear about training.

But years ago the flotilla companies liked to issue us with certificates to mollify any local jobsworths and convince them that despite appearances we were occupying the yacht legally. I have a collection of them somewhere...

Mike.

 

[JumbleDuck]

We have been at a Sailing Holidays base in the Ionian when a novice charter fleet set out on their first day. Before the start they were given a brief introduction to the physics of sailing, then set off on a beat of about four miles in around a force four. Several we spoke to had never sailed in their lives. The lead boat stood by to make sure everybody was making progress. All seemed perfectly OK to us and everybody made it to the point of the bay, where they made off on a beam reach for about another four miles, where they berthed. No problems at all and a nice way to start the week.

That's how they teach kids - and adults - to sail at the place I keep my Hunter 490. Quick briefing ashore, then out in Funboats / Bugs / Picos according to size, and wind strength and just do it, guided by an instructor in a RIB who buzzes round and gives advice. It works fine and everybody has a great time.

 

[dylanwinter]

Bit of a rubbish list with Horseriding more dangerous than Basejumping!

Credibility zero!

http://www.moderngentlemanmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Driving_Gloves.jpg

 

[Babylon]

Sailing (however badly) is indeed relatively easy. The chances, especially in the Med, of horrific injuries or death are pretty low, otherwise the charter companies wouldn't get the business or the insurance.

My own first experience of sailing however was as a teenage day-sail passenger on someone's 40' ketch. His own teenage daughter had just stood up in the cockpit when a gust caught the old boy unawares and the mizzen boom crash-gybed. Daughter was a robustly-built girl and the boom smashed her very hard into me. She was lucky it caught her on the shoulder rather the head, and she was also lucky to be hurled onto my chest rather than her face onto a winch barrel.

Riding big motorbikes is also easy - I did it for twenty years and only ever came off once.

 

[JumbleDuck]

Bit of a rubbish list with Horseriding more dangerous than Basejumping!

What evidence do you have that base jumping is more dangerous than horse riding? Not potentially more dangerous, but actually more dangerous in practice.

 

[prv]

Sailing Holidays are not an RYA recognised training centre and do not award Day Skipper certificates.

Reading comprehension: C-, Must Try Harder.

That was exactly my point.

Sailorman's prejudices are the only suggestion of Day Skipper certificates in this thread, and seem to have caused an unwarranted amount of distraction.

Pete

 

[JumbleDuck]

Myth. Sailing Holidays are not an RYA recognised training centre and do not award Day Skipper certificates. Their website is quite clear about training.

http://www.sailingholidays.com/holidays/rya-courses/day-skipper

(Although I note that they run RYA courses in partnership with Corfu Sea School)

 

[jimi]

What evidence do you have that base jumping is more dangerous than horse riding? Not potentially more dangerous, but actually more dangerous in practice.

Fatality rate is one in sixty participants, I doubt if horseriding approaches that.

http://www.blincmagazine.com/forum/wiki/Fatality_Statistics