When your sunny Greek charter goes wrong...

[JumbleDuck]

the point about somebody being in charge doesn't mean that somebody makes every single decision. The point is that somebody has overall responsibility and delegates to experienced crew and watch leaders.

That's not having overall responsibility ... that's being the owner!

 

[anoccasionalyachtsman]

If you don't have a designated skipper, who gets sued?

I'm glad you brought that up because it saves me finishing a longer post!

I think that in the absence of a paid skipper the owner or whoever signed the charter agreement would have a very hard job avoiding being in the dock.

 

[Stemar]

Indeed not. The possibilities for doing damage or killing people are far less with a boat and problematic situations arise far more slowly.

Which of course means there's far more time to be scared, panic and do daft things if you're that way inclined.

When things go seriously titzup in a car, there's rarely time to do more than say Oh SHII! before it's all over, and your instinctive reaction either got you out of it or didn't. At that point, if you can add the T, it's OK, at least for a certain value of OK.

 

[JumbleDuck]

Not quite sure what you man here: do you have an "whoever is on the helm is in charge" rule?

Whoever is on the helm makes all the short -term decisions - when to tack, which side of those rocks to go, that sort of thing. All the big decisions - where shall we go, when shall we go - are jointly taken by anyone who wants to be involved in the decision.

As skipper you're responsible for everyone's safety which means watching when people are putting their thumbs between the line and the winch, putting their hands on the traveller, not holding on, not clipped on, not keeping their head down.

I am happy to sleep while other people get on with it.

Moreover if the person on the helm is the overall decision maker, how do you give the less experienced the opportunity to steer?

Same way as you give anybody inexperienced a chance to learn anything. Guidance and supervision by someone who knows how to do it.

You get a jammed furler: What would happen? Does the helm decide whether it's safe to go to the bow, and ask someone to go, come back, describe the situation and then the helm makes the decision how they should steer and how the other crew should fix the furler regardless of how experienced they are?

No, they would make a decision based on how experienced everybody available was.

Do they assign roles and responsibilities if you have a MOB regardless of how experienced they are relative to the others?

What do you do if the skipper goes overboard?

Concrete example of when someone has to make a snap decision rather than discuss it so you need to know who that person will be? You're on a boat with high freeboard, berthing in a tricky crosswind. 3 people jump ashore and there's a couple of others and the helm on board. One of the jumpers falls between the boat and the dock. You have at least 3 people with things which control the boat's position and all have different views (literal and potentially metaphorical). Does everyone always defer to the helm who may not have the best view of what is happening?

Still doesn't mean you need a skipper, just someone supervising the berthing who knows how to do it.

I'll re-state this: A good skipper will always solicit input where there's time to discuss options. The best way for someone to feel happy with a plan is to include them in the making of it. Sometimes though you need a snap decision. Only one person can make that (or you need to discuss whose snap decision to go with) so you need to agree in advance who that will be. If on your boat it's always "the helm" then you *do* have a designated decision maker, although I'll argue, not necessarily the optimal one.

If that works for you, fine. Seems to me that it would be very limiting for longer passages when people need to sleep and puts you at grave risk if the skipper gets incapacitated.[/quote]

 

[JumbleDuck]

I'm glad you brought that up because it saves me finishing a longer post!

I think that in the absence of a paid skipper the owner or whoever signed the charter agreement would have a very hard job avoiding being in the dock.

Which mean that all this talk of skippers, chains of command and so on is really superfluous, because we all know that in 99.9% of cruising yachts it's the owner bossing about anyone who will still sail with him (sic).

 

[doug748]

It all sounds very complex. When I have a crew I normally sit on the foredeck and let them sort it out and only enter their domain if things go badly awry.
Am I the only one?

.

 

[laika]

No, they would make a decision based on how experienced everybody available was.

Still doesn't mean you need a skipper, just someone supervising the berthing who knows how to do it.

The latter case would require you pre-identifying any situation where things could go awry and need a snap decision. I would also guess that you don't in practice nominate a "berthing supervisor". The former would involve a discussion about who had the most experience with potential lack of consensus if you had a couple of argumentative alpha dogs on board. Wouldn't it be easier to simply nominate a default decision-maker (aka "skipper") at the start of the journey?

Being skipper doesn't imply being an autocrat

What do you do if the skipper goes overboard?

You nominate a mate and state in your safety briefing "If anything happens to me, Gertrude is in charge". If you want to come back with "And what if Gertrude is incapacitated too?" (a) it's vanishingly unlikely (b) she can nominate a second mate if necessary and (c) if she doesn't, you're no worse off than when we start with a "no-one is skipper" situation.

I think you're arguing this point for the sake of arguing though and based exclusively on your sailing a small boat with people you know well. Elsewhere you say you normally sail with just one crew who knows what she's doing and presumably if you're taking novices along they've tended to be people who know what they don't know and are happy to defer to the de facto skipper. This wouldn't necessarily work with a couple of "assertive types" with similar experience in a crew of 6 or so. If you have two people shouting conflicting instructions at one novice crew it really isn't a good thing.

I'm certainly not trying to tell you how to sail your boat: your boat, your rules (or lack thereof). A "non-skippering style" wouldn't prevent me coming aboard your boat if invited

 

[JumbleDuck]

I think you're arguing this point for the sake of arguing though and based exclusively on your sailing a small boat with people you know well. Elsewhere you say you normally sail with just one crew who knows what she's doing and presumably if you're taking novices along they've tended to be people who know what they don't know and are happy to defer to the de facto skipper. This wouldn't necessarily work with a couple of "assertive types" with similar experience in a crew of 6 or so. If you have two people shouting conflicting instructions at one novice crew it really isn't a good thing.

It's not just for the sake of arguing, honest. I think there can be more than one effective way of doing things, and writing the cheque for a boat doesn't have to come with a sense of command. The best solution to "assertive types" anywhere is often to reduce the power of assertion rather than setting one person up as asserter in chief.

I'm certainly not trying to tell you how to sail your boat: your boat, your rules (or lack thereof). A "non-skippering style" wouldn't prevent me coming aboard your boat if invited

You are more than welcome, seriously. Let me know if you're on the West of Scotland any time over the summer.

 

[laika]

You are more than welcome, seriously. Let me know if you're on the West of Scotland any time over the summer.

Thank you. If I find myself in scotland you can count on me taking you up on it

 

[Marcushnz]

Certainly looks like an inexperienced crew on a charter with a more experienced skipper, but what do you see as “fairly shocking seamanship”?

True, they had too much sail up as the weather worsened, but many people get caught out by that. I won’t say that is “truly shocking”. They all (except the skipper) put life jackets on. The Genoa furler looks like it jammed so they couldn’t get it away any further and were relieved when it finally ripped. The skipper sensibly headed to the lee of the island and remained well out at sea. The radio procedure left a little to be desired, but then that was clearly one of the inexperienced crew told to send a pan pan by the skipper, and at least he managed to successfully broadcast his position without resorting to three words (sorry, wrong thread!).

Where can this video be found?

 

[Marcushnz]

I see this this amateur video is doing the WWW rounds. Some fairly shocking seamanship going on here but for all of their inexperience, I actually reckon they did alright!

Hi there,
is this video available for viewing. I did see it once before & found it useful as excellent teaching material.