The Most Selfish Yachtsman of the Year Award- 2002

[JamesS]

Ok, it's a liitle early to be handing out awards, but here goes.

Had a few days in the Solent last week, finishing up on Town Quay in Cowes on Friday night.

Town quay is a pleasant enough mooring, although exposed to north easterlies, and can accomodate about 4 boats each side plus rafting.

We were just about to leave on Saturday am to avoid the lunchtime crush when up pops a Hunter, takes the last available potoon space, lashes his very substanstial wooden dinghy fore and aft alongside before dashing into town.

He had bagged his little bit of Cowes and blessed if he was going to share it with anyone!!!!!

Beat it if you can - I feel sure you will.

Cheers

 

[Guest]

How about the yottie who leaves the VHF switched off because he can't stand the chatter. When asked why he has a VHF at all he replies "in case I get into trouble".
He expects us to answer his calls for help, but he's damned if he will bother to listen for anybody else's.

 

[davel]

What options did he have for his wooden dinghy? Could he have taken it on board? Front or rear could have occupied more space. Is there a dinghy park nearby?

I suspect your interpretation is the correct one but I'm feelking in a generous mood today so I'm prepared to consider alternatives !

Dave L.
Location: 50 51.0 N 1 18.6 W

 

[RupertW]

You're right in so many ways but incessant muzak or DJ chatter would completely spoil sailing for me and sometimes VHF chatter can be just as bad, especially in places where radio discipline is lax.

A couple of weeks ago two of us were doing watch-on, watch-off during the night and had to put up with two idiots putting on silly voices on Channel 16 for hours on end.

I'm afraid we just switched it off until the morning. I know... I know...

Rupert

 

[JamesS]

mmmm - I'm not so generous - in fact I suspect this was the sole purpose of carrying the dinghy in the first place!!!!

 

[Gordonmc]

We were settling down to a night's kip at a visitor pontoon berth when there was a noise like a rustling crisp packet as heard through Iron Maiden's sound system. I got my head out of the hatch just as the racket stopped. Back to bed... just slipping off to the land of nod and it happened again.

Checked once more... no-one on any of the boats around which were locked up tight. Eventually I realised what happened... the owners of a boat on the next pontoon had left the VHF on at full volume before heading home.

A shotgun would have been useful...

 

[billmacfarlane]

I entered Bembridge on the day before Good Friday last year. I was directed to tie up to a boat of similar size. It was a family on an Easter cruise with husband , wife and 2 young children. The husband , who took my lines said " Do you know we're leaving soon ? " . " No " , I said , thinking I'd have forego the visit to the pub I'd planned. " When are you going ?," I asked. " Tuesday" , was the reply !!!!!!

 

[Grehan]

Rafting question . . .

Since this thread seems to have focused on rafting situations . . .

One often has to 'select' who to raft up alongside. So:

Qn 1
Is there an etiquette to this? - choosing one and 'rejecting' the others. Should one be vaguely apologetic toward one's chosen 'victim'?

Qn 2
The self-interest side to this.
How do you choose the 'best' (quietest, civilised, co-operative, helpful, whatever . . .) candidate from what has to be a fairly quick glance/appraisal?

[Apart from the obvious racing boatload of rugby-prop-forward-built gorillas] [and the equally obvious boat size/compatibility factor]

 

[tcm]

Re: Rafting question . . .

1. If they are on board, then ask. Usually it's okay. No "apology" needed in busy times and in busy places (most of the south coat, for example.

2. Choosing a victim - Avoid boats ...
- with nappies/vsmal kids clothes drying
- signs saying "no rafting " (unless they all have signs n which case choose the
most badly-writen sign )
- playing music and/or with large sound speakers on deck (!)
- obviously packed busy "charter boats" (benjenbavs, sometimes signwritten,
have saftey gear but nothing else on deck in the way of home comforts)
- very new and shiny boats
- boats witha big dog on board, unless you like dogs

Ignore protestations such as "we're going soon" of "we're going early tomorrow morning" from any boat against the pontoon - If they *were* going early they'd be pleased to hang off and be the last raft on. So if they're on the inside and protesting that "we're leaving at four o'clock in the morning" or suchlike you should immediately offer to wake them at 3.30 am. Or perhaps 3:40am? They never ever accept the offer.

 

[Mirelle]

Tis better to raft than to be rafted onto...

Fellow owners of older wooden boats will recognise what I am about to describe here....

As we approach a quay or pontoon and look for someone to go alongside, owners of GRP boats become extremely hostile, assuming, wrongly, that we are about to poke our bowsprit through their topsides and, rightly, that they don't have any decent sized cleats, posts, bollards or fairleads able to cope with our displacement.

If, on the other hand, we are alongside, we attract them like flies, because not only do we have a generous supply of cleats, posts, bollards, kevels and fairleads, but they seem to assume that we are in fact part of the jetty! Wooden boats dont actually sail, do they?

Our paint can be scraped with impunity because, after all, we have to repaint it every year, they can thunder over our decks in hobnailed boots and stilleto heels because, after all, the decks are well over an inch thick, and the urge to have a peep down below to see how the despised lower orders of modern sailing eat and sleep becomes overpowering.

This does not apply to motor boats; whom we have always found polite and helpful.

 

[Mirelle]

Guilty

I never have the d... thing on, except when I want to call a bridge in Holland or when in or near to commercial harbours like Harwich or Dover.

I make three points in my defence:

1. Endless taunting of Filipinos as "Monkeys" has a negative effect on my wife, who is one.

2. I did not buy it to call out the lifeboat; I bought it to get Dutch bridges to lift.

3. At least I will never leave the boat with it on!

Incidentally, I don't agree with the received wisdom which holds that the VHF should be wired direct to the battery and not via the breaker panel and master switch; which clearly contributed to the thing being left on in Gordon's neighbour's case. It is extremely difficult to think of an accident which would allow a hot wired VHF to function when the rest of the electrics did not, and extremely easy to imagine a dangerous short circuit overheating the VHF wiring....

 

[Grehan]

Re: Rafting question . . .

Thanks for the tip, tcm.

We've got a fairly big labrador on board. But she's so obviously friendly I think she'd act as an attraction, not a disincentive.

We'll obviously have to fit her with one of those big spiked collars and chain her up on the foredeck! Non-stop wagging tail would be a bit of a giveaway, though.

 

[NigeCh]

Dead simple

1) loose the dinghies knots and let it float away according to the wind;

2) Get your fenderboard out with the nail ends on the outer side;

3) Raft up and enjoy the boat to boat graunches

4)



NigeCh

 

[davel]

Terminology

Is the newly arriving boat the Raftor or the Raftee. Or is it the other way around?

I think it's important to get these thinks right. As a reference point, perhaps we should reflect that when one is involved in a conspiracy, the person doing the shafting is known as the shaftor, whilst the victim is the shaftee.

Dave L.
Location: 50 51.0 N 1 18.6 W

 

[jimi]

Re: Terminology

Is the victim always Bobby ... 'cos he's maybe rafiting up 'cos he wants to go to town .. or is that Shafto .. in which case he's already gone

 

[tcm]

Re: raftor/raftee

The raftor is the one joining. Raftee is the one already attached to the ponton/quay. Once attached if another boat wants to join, the outermost obviously become raftee and new boat becomes raftor. The whole lot is a raft.
A "rafter" is either a bit of wood, a person who fixes the roof, or a very good tennis player. A "raftette" is a group of stringed instruments playing an arnagement for a different number of instruments, or a raft made of Optimist dingies, or a very very attractive female skipper looking for somewhere to put the boat in Yarmouth.

I hope that clears up the issue.

 

[davel]

Re: raftor/raftee

Thank you for your most informative post. It answers many questions but raises others.

In a raft, is there any notion of superiority? Should, for example, a foreign boat be rafted inside or outside your own boat? What about the situation when memebers of the same clubs raft together - or, god forbid, two members of the same club AND a foreign boat on the same raft. What happens when a Blue Ensign arrives?

The more I think about this the more complex it becomes. I think I going to buy myself a big wooden dinghy and tie it off on my outside.

Dave L.
Location: 50 51.0 N 1 18.6 W

 

[Cobra]

That reminds me!

Thinking back about 20 years ago my parents had a lovely old 30 foot gaffer...not that pretty to look at, but she sailed like a dream! We were moored up alongside just after midday, late afternoon and the rush for berths starts! We ended up with a real clown alongside us...after attaching ropes to almost every cleat/post on deck, then just to make 100% certain they didn't drift away, they moored up to the jetty in an almost identical fashion!

The neighbours from hell had arrived...children immediately start sprinting across the decks to the jetty and back again, music turned on and up, and despite requests to calm down and turn the noise down, they were not playing ball.

The art of revenge...at 03.00 we woke them up jumping onto their decks making as much of a disturbance as possible without waking everyone else in the area, banged on their main hatch to let them know we were about to leave and did they want us to re-moor them or would they like to do it themselves? Strange they did not seem to enthusiastic about waking up to re-moor and asked us if we could do it for them. We did...practicing an intricate form of weaving with all of their lines around as many cleats, through as many stanchions and openings as we could manage...if you were that boat...I trust you have now learnt some manners!!

www.boatsyachtsmarinas.com

 

[AndrewB]

Re: Dead simple

Quite so. A dinghy is a pathetic deterrent as you just reattach it on his stern and let it annoy the raft behind.

A row of nappies hanging on a washing line used to be recommended as a good deterrent, but risks attracting a yacht that genuinely has babies aboard.

A large sign 'No Mooring By Order XXXXX Harbour Authority', where the name is filled in with spare stick-on letters; is felt by most to be somehow dishonest - not a very British way of saying "B*gger Off", except of course by motor yachts of 20m LOA and above.

So my strategy is to attach a row of large black rubber tyres to the outside toerail, carefully painted white on the inside only so as not to mark my own boat.

And hope no fishing boat comes in.

 

[Trevor_Smith]

Re: Dead simple

Sounds like the lateral thinking of a NigeCH I used to know