Upstairs or Downstairs

[Gludy]

As a newbie with just a few trips under my belt, I tend to think that the only way I can really boat safely is from the flybridge. How else can I see the lobster pots (often so old as to be black) in a wave? Upstairs seems to be the best place even in poor weather. It also makes coming in and out of the Marina a lot easier.

Based on my limited experience, I think am so convinced about this that I have planned to have the radar/plotter/fishfinder repeated in the flybridge on a single screen. I do not want to do this if, in practice, I find that I will not helm upstairs. I have also bought some heavy weather clothing specially for the job.

So my first question is - in practice what percentage of your time is spent on the flybridge as opposed to the lower helm? Is my lack of experience leading me to wrong conclusions?

My second question is where do you prefer to helm from - on the flybridge? and why?



Paul

 

[Guest]

Downstairs is for wimps, just made a passage from Brighton to Newhaven return ; at night 0. c Flybridge all the way

 

[longjohnsilver]

Not got a flybridge so probably not the right person to ask. However I am not convinced that you will see more from up ther cos if you're anything like me you will get cold even in summer, your eyes will water, it will rain, the spray will occasionally hit you. Cold also means less concentration therefore more likely to miss (ie hit) things. No give me a nice warm wheelhouse any day. In ideal conditions maybe you'll see more up top, but then if you have ideal conditions then you'll also see from downstairs.

Maybe for close quarter manouevres it could be better, but then you need crew cos you're tucked away upstairs.

All that said, on a really nice day when pottering around or at anchor a flybridge must be great. I'll have one some day!

 

[ToMo]

Excuse me, is this the same LJS who breaks the ice just so that he can dive in and murder a lobster or 3? AND THEN NOT SHARE THEM!
;-)
TôMö

 

[longjohnsilver]

Could be, but that's got bugger all to do with boat driving, let's not have any fred drift here!!

 

[byron]

I must be a wimp of the very first order. My flybridge is used solely for docking, passage making is done from inside where I have all my charts and instrumentation to hand.

ô¿ô

 

[coliholic]

Well not wanting to be accused of Fred drifting, the reference to diving reminded me of a story.

Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to Laughline, who was sponsoring a worst job experience" contest. Needless to say, she won.

Hi Sue,
Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realise it's not so bad after all.

Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wetsuit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of shit sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose.

Now this sounds like a damn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is I take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wetsuit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi.

Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my ass started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my ass started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realised what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it.However, the crack of my ass was not as fortunate.

When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into my ass. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with 5 other divers, were all laughing hysterically.

Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make 3 agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling 35 minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my ass as soon as I get in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't shit for 2 days because my [censored] was swollen shut.

So, next time you are having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your ass.

Oh and I don't know anything about driving from a flybridge 'cos I haven't got one (yet)

 

[longjohnsilver]

Superb! Funniest story this year. NM

.

 

[trev]

When I had a flybridge boat I almost always used the flybridge - unless it was raining - for exactly the reasons you state, and found I could navigate quite well from up there with a hand held GPS and a folio of 'small craft' charts. I'm a bit of a fresh air fiend.
However I soon found I was being left out of the party as no-one would join me up there (Ladies don't like ladders), so I changed the boat for a sportsbridge model which is much more sociable.

Trev

 

[ChrisP]

Flybridge every time for all the reasons you said. Even more so now we have a beer fridge up there.

 

[kimhollamby]

Increasingly as years have moved on....downstairs, having experienced my fair share of green water down back of collar on sail and power boats and not needing to know what that feels like again particularly! That said, the kit for flybridges is getting much better and on the current MBM boat we are spoilt for choice with Raymarine Pathfinder plotter/radar upstairs and down and Simrad VHF handset sockets in both places too. It's handy up there when running cruises, being easier to keep an eye on things.

When shorthanded or single handed I actually prefer downstairs; less exposure to the weather (strong sun as well as cold wind, rain and spray) and as a consequence less fatigue. Also less movement as the boat rolls and pitches and a full set of engine instruments to look at. It helps that the F37 is reasonably quiet indoors and has okay visibility in most directions. Engine noise can be v tiring, so if yours howls that can be a good reason for taking the fresh air (crew that go green around the gills on nothing more than the Serpentine being another).

Associate Publisher ybw.com websites kim_hollamby@ipcmedia.com

 

[Deleted User YDKXO]

Always flybridge for close quarters manouevering but on passage it depends on a lot of different things. If you're not confident about helming from below then dont but, in time, you will get fed up freezing your b******s up there, getting drenched, having no-one to talk to and arriving at your destination in full wet weather gear when its blazing hot.
Trouble is, most lower helm stations are not well designed for visibility, the wipers are usually useless and the screens mist up easily. On the other hand, you have comprehensive engine instrumentation and the nav gear controls at the lower helm plus the chart position. On some boats you may find yourself shuttling between lower and upper stations to use the VHF, adjust the radar or peek at a chart.
Personally, I helm from below on longer trips and particularly if there's a lot of spray about but then I'm a big wuss

 

[paulineb]

Depends on weather and speed

If it's hot then upstairs but if it's cold, downstairs or if we're going fast, it's downstairs cos it messes up my hair ;-)

Pxx

 

[Guest]

If you live where I do in the Frozen North there are no options unless you want to have some kind of heated space suit designed by NASA to sit on the flying bridge in anything other than the nice summer days of which there are generally about three!. Downstairs has advantages:

a) You can wave your whisky and dry at the passing (frozen) yachtsmen
b) You can increase speed and hence engine noise when in conversation with the wife
c) The cocktail cabinet is handy
d) If you upset someone with your wash, you can't see then shaking their fist at you for the "blind spot"
e) The wife does not like getting a friction hairdo and invariably travels downstairs. This means that if you are downstairs she is much more available to shout berthing instructions at - you know "Not that warp stupid!" "Hurry up!" "Jump!, Its only three feet!"

Incidentally, for all those who feel they require the flying bridge for berthing, why is it that you seldom see same on pilot boats, fishing boats, workboats, many lifeboat designs, etc. Fundamentally, its there for posing in port and Mediterranean climates. Its nice to have but not essential.

Nick

 

[miket]

I am definitely in the whimp camp.

When I had a Fairline Turbo 36 we were upstairs on fine days. I was OK, being close to the screen, but everyone else was in windproof/ waterproof gear on all but the hottest summer days. Any sign of rain and/ or spray we were all off to the warm and comfort of downstairs.

Since then I was banned from buying another flybridge boat, which does rather limit replacements.

We now travel in the most civilized environment - a Broom 37 Command bridge. 25 knots and the wife's hair remains perfect. Still plenty of nice posing space on the rear deck seating!

 

[david_steward]

Re: Upstairs...

Rain or shine. There is nothing like having fresh air rammed up your nostrils at 25 kts. If its rough I have to helm on the flybridge coz I am a bit of a puker.

Only go downstairs if its foggy coz thats where the radar thingy is.

Went from Ramsgate to the Medway last Sunday and most of the time we couldn't see a boat length ahead. The rest of the time I couldn't even see the bleedin' anchor.

Ho hum

Dave S

 

[Scubadoo]

Brilliant, thanks (NM).

NM.

 

[Scubadoo]

You beat me to it (NM).

NM.

 

[hlb]

Now I thought I'd cracked the answer to this one last summer.
After us both having had years of experience and done the courses and everything.

now of course upstairs is best, but then the radar and radio are downstairs and its also alot warmer.

So anyway, we're cruising along and it starts getting foggy and theres loads of yachts about. So with massive brain wave. Sends Tut's downstairs to watch radar whilst I stayed upstairs cos I could see a bit but not very much, on the other hand we could have slowed down but, oh well!

Now all would have gone ok exept Tut had been talking to second son some months before and for some reason they'ed got round to port and starboard. So son who's hardly ever seen either boat we've had. says Ports right and Starboards Left! I'm stud there and opens gob. But of course any input from me must be wrong and others always right so money for course up the swanny and ten years of practice down the drain.

So forgoten all this and back to the fog.
Now we've got an intercom, so it should be easy.
Boat to port, says Tut. so I goes starboard.

I'll leave all the rest to your imagination!!


Haydn

 

[Guest]

After dinner speech

Thats just the story for the BSAB, British sub aqua club after dinner speech, could put leaners off for life, nearly as funny as Dave Stewards story about presumeably Ellen Macarthur, it was one of the first post that I read when first coming onto this site, great work keep it up.

Paul js.