Preparations, June 2006

If only Poole harbour always looked like this!

Someone asked us to write down what we did to prepare for the trip, what was useful and what was not – this is what we think so far….


We started sailing a 17’ wooden Lysander that took 7 hours to reach the pub if you got the tides wrong. We learned a lot about epoxy -  I  learned about thinners, having spent the day upside down under the yacht with a pot of epoxy dripping up my arms the wrong way – then finding that Stuart didn’t have the thinners/cleaners – so I just had to strip my skin off with the epoxy attached.

We raced a great big overpowered Osprey sailing dinghy together  - taught us how to sail (and race) through too much wind without an option to reef the main….

We sailed a 24’ plastic fantastic Beneteau. Great boats, but not comfortable IMHO. Even in the English Channel I didn’t feel safe, even though smaller heavy displacement  boats were happy to cross when we stayed in port. However it taught us what to do when we were overpowered and in seas that didn’t feel comfortable, and when to leave the boat behind and get the ferry to be at work on time on Monday morning.

We sailed a 32’ heavy displacement Sovereign. Like most yachts with a long keel, it did not go astern in a predictable fashion. This yacht taught us to assess every berthing situation carefully with a view to an escape plan, and taking all factors (tide, forecast, berth position) into account. The boat was not so heavy that we could not get ourselves out of the poo when we got it wrong. It was funny however, to be instructed by a young harbourmaster in St Malo on how to exit the long run of pontoon berths under the Old City, in reverse. We did as he said (didn’t have much choice) to much hand-wringing, exasperation, and fending off – he had clearly been brought up on plastic fantastics.

We cut our teeth on situations experienced on these boats, before coming to own and operate a Rival 41; I’m not saying we haven’t made mistakes since then, as you can see – but we are willing to learn from our mistakes in the hope that we will be prepared for when we do them again!

Oooops!

More experiences:
We spent our winter months doing the Dayskipper, Yachtmaster, and Ocean Master(whatever the equivalent is now) shorebased exams. The Yachtmaster we even repeated, as we thought we needed an update. Unfortunately after many years the RYA still hadn’t brought it up to date with some good GPS questions. I’m sure they’ll catch up eventually. The teacher must have been the only one in class not to own a GPS!
The Ocean-master was fascinating, although completely obsessed with celestial navigation (which I admit I found extremely absorbing) at the expense of spending a bit of time discussing the practical aspects of planning an ocean voyage – for example, knowing how much beer to take….

Other more recent courses we decided to take:

Steph – I did the Short Range VHF cert with GMDSS to understand how to ask for help, especially when you need to turn off the red button after someone’s charming child has activated it for you.
Steph – I then did the Long range cert, as we have an SSB on board and need to know what it does – seems really useful for information nets about local places, transmitting to vessels in a wide radius, and with email software and modem can transmit your yachtblog worldwide given the right conditions.

Stu – did the Ships Captains Medical Course – which was incredibly useful for me so that he has a chance of saving me in unfortunate circumstances.  I did not do the course, as it was quite expensive (though I don’t debate worthwhile) and I have Accident and Emergency experience and can read the Ships Captains Medical Guide and understand what it means. The qualification means that Stuart ( as skipper) can obtain medicines chest that would otherwise require the prescription (and therefore, the payment) of a local doctor, and can communicate effectively with a Cruise ship or Navy vessel as to what medicines we carry on board.

We both did the Sea Survival and ISAF/Offshore Crew course at KTY yachting in Warsash.  Since going on this course, I don’t believe anyone should buy a liferaft without taking the sea-survival course. Even in a swimming pool we learned the effectiveness of a life jacket without a spray hood, and immediately paid over our pennies for the upgrade. IMHO if you haven’t practiced getting into a liferaft in  a swimming pool, you would be very lucky to survive a hostile situation – injured crew, overturned liferaft, you need a well equipped, well thought-out grab-bag to consider survival –the whole course gave food for thought, but the second day gave us an opportunity to see how inadequate our provisions would be for cutting down the rig if dismasted, for surviving in a liferaft without prior planning, right mental attitude, basic knowledge of emergency first-aid – and much more….well worth the money and time…


And now we feel totally unprepared for what is to come …..….