Would you rent your car to a 19 year old?

[steve_cronin]

Well, so long as he has a driving licence then it should be OK shouldn't it?

In that case why is it almost impossible to get car insurance for such a person of that age?

The answer is EXPERIENCE.

And isn't that why the "Learning Curve" article in OCT YM on a weekend trip by a group of inexperienced people to Cherbourg in December skippered by a 19yo holder of a "Yachtmaster Ocean" a classic case of EXPERIENCE being the best qualification?

They do admit to their failures but who here would have continued with a trip with such a rookie crew - ever the Yachtmaster Offshore who penned the article and played second fiddle in this farce admits that " ...during my intensive 4 month course to get my ticket we rarely ventured far from protected waters and never in above force 6" Jeeze! what worth now a YM offshore? Two of the crew were obvious liabilities and the skipper had NO IDEA how to reef a roller genoa in a blow. He was trying to just ease the sheet whilst at the same time wind the sail in on the reefing line. The power would of course still have been in the sail. Anyone with any knowledge would have not been durprised that the sail had "... several long rips in it" . Causing that sort of strain was bound to end in disaster. You can only reef like that in moderate to light winds with a standard RR genoa. He should of course have turned into wind or at least de-powered the sail by letting the sheet right out.

I'm not knocking youth and they did recognise (nearly) all of their shortcomings but doesn't it reveal the limited status of the modern YM "qualification"?

There is more to say either way on this but I havn't the time right now so I'll leave it to others.

Steve Cronin

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[trevor_loveday]

Although not conducted under rigorous scientific conditions, I just turned round to my children and asked them what they would do if they needed to furl the foresail on a roller reefing gear. I did give them the clue that it would strain the sail if they tried to do it with the force of the wind on it, and that the wind was expected to get stronger. It is worth pointing out that my children don't have any more than 50 hours at sea, and have never sailed with roller reefing.

My eight year old son immediately said "Turn into wind". My thirteen year old daughter agreed with this but wasn't so quick off the mark (something to do with being a teenager, I suspect).

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[steve_cronin]

Kids are great aren't they?

My (now 22 & 20yos) sons when they were nine and seven resp. would often "examine" the mooring arrangements of other boats alongside us on a raft-out. I remember #1 son telling a middle aged skipper in Lymmington that his breat ropes were too tight and that his springs were wrongly led around the stanchions (I cowered in thecockpit!) but the boy was right.

I think it is most alarming that we now have published evidence in a very popular and authoritive magazine that the standards of the Yachtmaster scheme are not what we should be able to expect. Whem I mentioned on this forum a year or two ago that this was the case, I attracted a lot of criticism.

I blame the SC um Sail attitude to sail training and charter authorisation:-

1. Got any experience?

No

2. Got any certificates?

No

3. Got any money?

Yes

4. That's OK then.

Steve Cronin

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[jimi]

I read this article and quite simply was aghast at the errors and lack of judgement caused by inexperience. It not what you would expect with two yachtmasters on board .. or even 2 dayskippers

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[ex-Gladys]

The qualifications thing really winds me up. I'm a Senior IT Manager and am fed up with wiping the backsides of people with M(icrosoft) C(ertified) S(ystems) E(ngineer) quals. as far as these and most other quals are concerned they do not teach you to work things out for yourself and to assess the situation you are getting into.

The "new" (me showing my age) MOB procedure where you tack first is complete garbage. Since Adam was a lad I have gybed and then tacked up to the MOB - having done it for real several times in dinghies. It's perfect... SO WHY CHANGE....


(mumble,mumble, mumble)

<hr width=100% size=1>Larry Botheras

Essex

 

[jimi]

Reason for change, as I understand it, was that by gybing you run the risk of having at least one oytherr person in the water .. possibly unconcious. I basically heave to and pull th mainsheet hard in, then go from there.

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[Jacket]

Inexperience, or just plain stupidity?

It wasn't mentioned in the article, but I wouldn't be surprised if the reason they sailed was due to pressure from the crew. 5 students, who'd be paying a fair chunk of their student loan for the charter, were probably pushing hard to go to France at any cost.

I did one trip with my university cruising club. Hated it because of just the same pressures, so gave up on them, sold everything I owned, spoke nicely to my bank, blackmailed everyone I could and brought my own boat. (and then sailed across the North sea in a F7. Some people don't learn!)

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[tome]

Jim

I taught this method to SWMBO and it worked much better for her than complicated tacking/gybing evolutions. For anyone not familiar with the technique, you hard sheet the main midships and start the engine then turn the boat back towards the casualty. On the way back you can furl/hand the jib and you don't need to worry about accidentally gybing the main. Final approach to the casualty is upwind.

Using the engine is sensible and seamanlike IMHO, but you need to emphasise the need to check there are no lines in the water.

Regards
Tom



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[summerwind]

When I read the article I thought it was another pack of bull dust, just like the bloke earlier in the year who reckoned he had similar troubles off Salcombe. My reasons:

When would a 19 year old have had the time to get all the lead up qualifications then skipper the necessary ocean passage to obtain Yachtmaster Ocean? OK, he might, but I have serious doubts.

If he did have Ocean, he would have had enough knowledge and experience to handle the boat in the conditions discussed, but probably wouldn't have gone in the first place. I suspect that he would also have made sure that they had the necessary equipment for the conditions forecast.

Yachtmaster Offshore on board with above said Ocean man - they should have pi**ed it in without the help of the other five crew members. What were they doing all this time - before they got sick of course?

From my experience of teenagers, you won't get them out of bed before mid-day to eat, let alone go to sea in a blanket of fog and half a gale. Having got back into marina to collect fog horn because they were almost run down by a container ship (What a lot of bolix), no teenager or student I have ever known would then agree to turn around and go back out again. The only turning going on would be tops on bottles.

Nah!!

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[Twister_Ken]

Such Cynicism

Gosh. You don't mean that what we read in the papers may not be true do you?

Have you ever worked in the mead-dya by any chance?

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[Mirelle]

Snap!

More than thirty years ago! Some people just don't learn!

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[tcm]

Re: Yes, but

I would lend the car to SOME 19 year olds - but not to others who were even 54. The issues related here wouldn't necessarily have been resolved or made better by the same guy with more experience - he's just be an experienced dolt, instead of a dolt. Surely what you are bemoaning is the safe circumstances in which the skipper achieved YM, when Darwinian rigour requires him to have failed to find the marina at the start of the 4-month course?

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[NigeCh]

Would you rent your business to a 19 year old?

When I was 19 I would take on the world and prove them wrong.

When I was 29 I would still take them on.

When I was 39 I knew that I was wrong.

When I was 49 I knew that I could at last rent Steve Cronin's rentable car.

When I was 59 I knew that Steve Cronin's car was falling to pieces .... and that I really wanted to be 19 again.

It takes guts to have such an article published. If it had happened to me them I wouldn't have offered it to YM for publication.

BUT, I'll say that all people here have just as many horror stories that we don't want to reveal - It's all a learning game .... but what of the fool who chartered his boat (plus the spare parts boat) out .... ???? And how is OUR insurance affected by this?


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[steve_cronin]

If you were 19.....

and caused the death of others by your bad judgement, they'd still lock you up for manslaughter Nigel.

Steve Cronin

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[NigeCh]

ACB, How did you feel when sailing with Tilman?

It's presumed that you being an already experienced sailor wanted to enhance your experience.

Here's a charterer with a supposedly supernumerate crew that failed to know how to use the knife to cut away the sheet.

What's lacking, IMO, in 'advanced' RYA exams are the fundamentals of survival, ie where a sharp knife can be beneficial .... And YM didn't pick it up either !!! (And that's sad.)

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[Jacket]

I'd got sufficient miles (though not necessarily the experience, given I avoid anything above a F6 if I possibly can) for the Yachtmaster Ocean by the time I was 19- the joys of long school holidays and a year out, combined with parents who trusted me enough to let me go off on my own. Remember when you're not working, you can squeeze 4 or 5 years of sailing into a single year.

But the fastrack yachtmasters are a joke- once sailed with someone who did one with BOSS. Took him 7 attempts to pick up a bouy in no wind, no tide conditions.

You've got a very low view of students. All my crew have been students or younger, and we've done plenty of long passages-when you've got a small boat and a slow engine even a relatively short passage requires a pre dawn departure. (Anyway, nowadays a student can't afford to drink and sail. Its one or the other!).



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[NigeCh]

Of course they would ...

And now being a 61 year still pretending 19 ... They would still do the same and lock me up.

The point is that a piece of paper with an exam qualification is meaningless without hard earned experience.

I don't know how many coastal/ocean miles I've sailed, there are more than 4 noughts, but so what? ... All I know is that a crossing to Cherbourg means having to cross Les Casquets TSS ... and at night it's either as easy as pie or an nightmare.


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[Mirelle]

Re: ACB, How did you feel when sailing with Tilman?

OK, good question. I cannot remember if there were YM courses in 1974, I suppose there were, but I never went on one. I had been sailing my own small boats (an 18ft half decker, a very tired and leaky Dragon, and a nice little 18ft cabin boat like a 2 1/2 ton Hillyard) round the Thames Estuary for five years by then, indeed I prided myself on having been absolutely everywhere that such a boat could get to, between Ramsgate and Snape!

Yes, I was definitely wanting to polish my sailing skills and sailing with an expert seemed the best way to do it. It is fair to add that the other crew members were highly capable people - Paul and Alan had taken a Wayfarer to St Kilda and back, and were members of a mountain rescue team at home. David had not done any sailing, but he mucked in and caught on fast.

I should think we were all pretty good at basic survival; but being at sea on an expedition with one of the greatest amateur seamen and climbers of the last century is not the same thing as being at sea on a trip to France with a group of non-sailing friends.

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[Mirelle]

Certainly!

But you haven't seen my car! It's the sort of car usually associated with running a biggish old boat and a young family on a small income!

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[NigeCh]

Point made

But equally there is a case for those wanting to gain experience by going out and doing it themselves.

I gained my experience by a) following Frank Dye and doing nutty things on a Wayfarer and by doing equally nutty things on b) other peoples boats and then c) repeating the excercises on Birgitta [CO26]

IMO, the trouble with today is that people go to school and learn the theory, the following week they take their practical, pass it and get a piece of paper, and then assume that they are sailor.

IMO, this is the greatest failing of the RYA examination system ... It's the doing that counts and not the pieces of paper 'paper' that you have to say that you are qualified to sail.

Bits of paper can lead potential sailors into a false sense of confidence which doesn't accord with either sailing ability, the seas or what the weather will throw at them.

Not one of the RYA examinations addresses this.



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