jordanbasset
regular
Reged: 31/12/2007
Posts: 240
Loc: Shropshire
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Agree, what you say makes sense to me - Neil
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"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza."
Edited by jordanbasset (21/04/2008 17:02)
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Captainslarty
regular
Reged: 12/08/2007
Posts: 2012
Loc: Currently La Coruna Spain
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Again, thanks all for the very interesting and varied responses.
I am not saying the YM etc is a waste of time, far from it, but it is basic (Both Jayne and I stopped at CS practical with YM theory..)
The 2500 miles is a misnomer, many people NEVER get to actually skipper the boat in a realistic situation without a handholder present... many qualifying miles are simply as rope pullers or ballast... but, the intention of the thread is not to decry the basic level of training offered..
Abigail ?, I dont know why you are getting upperty re other experience and skills ?.. they are part and parcel of what you need. Like all things, when the excrement hits the rotary oscillator, thats when the skills count. We are talking also re liveaboard cruising, I would suggest that at some point most people need to do a reasonable length offshore passage.
Yes, you could hire, beg etc for crew, you could hire proffesional skippers (DO check their frull cv and ask for references though please !).. but, that is, imho, the exception. If you havent got certains kills, then you should get them, however you do it. Otherwise its only yourself and crew you are letting down. Sending a mayday as learnt on the vhf course is not much use offshore, learning to 'pad pressure and elevate' a cut, is not much use in a serious fracture etc.. changing an impellor is not much use if the injector is malfunctioning.. bypassing a regulator on an alternator with a lightbulb is better than having no charging. Jury rigging extra strength to a rig is better than abandoning the boat due to a cracked chainplate.
People, again imho, learn all the basics they need at CS level, no need for the YM practical.. the money and time after that is better spent learning other things.
I am not a great fan of sailing books, some, yes, absolutely, but many are just revamped ideas from someone else. But it would be hard to find a serious book aimed at liveaboard cruising that does not state, quite rightly, that you need to be a jack of all trades.
Another example that beggard belief for me is the lack of understanding of basic weather interpretation both from what you actually see around you, and from professional forecasts (Synoptics if distance sailing). I am not talking of some one off bod producing his own forecasts.. I am talking about met office and similar info that is freely available. the amount of people that cannot intepret a synoptic chart is staggering - ym or not - the amount of people who do not understand frontal system progression is again quite worrying. People travelling offshore without SSB is another example - no, its not needed most of the time, but the ability to communicate can make a major difference to safety.. a sat phone can act as a substitute to a certain degree though.
Another area of concern for me is the new influx of liveaboard cruisers with husband wife team or similar who do not have complementary skills, often the little woman is along for the ride. Surely the better thing is to advance both parties skills as and when possible.. so many times we here "he does all the boaty stuff, I just do the cleaning / cooking / shopping".. ah well.
At the end of the day its personal choice, of course is it... but for me, as an example, I wouldnt sail with a skipper who did not have a thorough understanding of the systems on the boat and how to fix or do without them in a controlled way.
Joe
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PM me for info re SSB's etc. Bought, sold, repaired, fitted and optimised.
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Lemain
regular
Reged: 31/01/2004
Posts: 5973
Loc: Fiumicino canal (Rome, Italy)
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Quote:
I wouldnt sail with a skipper who did not have a thorough understanding of the systems on the boat and how to fix or do without them in a controlled way.
Very, very few skippers have a 'thorough understanding' of the systems on the boat or know how to fix them. How many here can fix their radars, GPSs, plotters, etc.? How can they 'do without them' if they are not carrying paper charts? (Which now seems the fashion). The best most skippers can hope for is to be able to check supplies, fuses, connections, etc. on electrical gear and commonsense stuff on the mechanical stuff. You cannot do much serious engine repair work at sea even if you carry the tools and have the skills so you have to get into harbour - then you can as easily pay a motor or electrical bod to carry out the repair.
Like you, I can and do do all my own stuff but it isn't essential and I wouldn't want people to be put off. In any case, people pick up a lot of it as they go along.
Sailing, nav and seamanship, however, is vital for the skipper. Being able to repair an SMT microwave head amplifier in a radar scanner half way up the mast is not part of 'seamanship'.
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My daily blog on the current financial crisis is at:- http://davidscompass.blogspot.com No PMs for now ybw1.20.lemain@spamgourmet.com
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grumpygit
regular
Reged: 29/07/2007
Posts: 44
Loc: York, England
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I think someone is going from the sublime to the ridiculous with their interpretations of trying to prove their point: "Sailing skills" as within the wording. If at sea and something goes awry with the boat systems, whether it's rigging, plumbing, electrical and so on, being able to rectify the problem is what, to my mind, should come under "sailing skills". I am sure pulling up your sails, pointing the sharp bit West and sitting back till something goes wrong in the middle of the Atlantic is not a skill. Who are you going to ring then? As for a skipper going up a mast to do detailed electronic work, barmy! Any self respecting engineer would expect it on a work bench anyway. But if you cannot take the Radar down yourself I very much doubt you can do a rigging repair either. Radar I can do without but a Main jammed with a storm coming, I think being able to sort that comes under "sailing skills" 
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KellysEye
regular
Reged: 23/07/2006
Posts: 759
Loc: Bonaire
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>How many here can fix their radars, GPSs, plotters, etc.?
My answer to that is: I wouldn't try to fix a radar, to us it's an optional extra. GPS - get the sextant and tables out. Plotter - don't have one, don't want one.
However, likely breakages on long passages are many and varied: broken rigging: alternator failure; torn sails; broken goose neck; spinnaker pole track torn off; mainsheet track torn off; autopilot failure; broken jammming cleats; starter motor failure; pump failures; float switch failures; winch failure and more. We know boats who have had to deal with all those problems at sea and we have had six of them ourselves.
Before we left we made a list of everything on the boat and went to the manufacturers and asked them what would break. Needless to say some were very coy about it but all answered in the end. We then bought the service packs and other parts they said would break plus tools for everything. We also bought sail repair kit, rigging wire/staloks, rivet gun etc.
After about 6,500 miles we had used around a quarter of the spares. Fixing most things is usually fairly easy, often the problem and time consumer is finding the fault.
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Lemain
regular
Reged: 31/01/2004
Posts: 5973
Loc: Fiumicino canal (Rome, Italy)
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Quote:
My answer to that is: I wouldn't try to fix a radar, to us it's an optional extra. GPS - get the sextant and tables out. Plotter - don't have one, don't want one.
Not all cruisers spend their time crossing oceans. A sextant isn't much use in the Chenal du Four (well, not for astro, anyway!) and in bad viz the radar is not exactly optional - in fact I would say that an attempt to transit the Chenal du Four in bad viz without a radar and a GPS would be lacking due diligence.
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My daily blog on the current financial crisis is at:- http://davidscompass.blogspot.com No PMs for now ybw1.20.lemain@spamgourmet.com
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KellysEye
regular
Reged: 23/07/2006
Posts: 759
Loc: Bonaire
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Entirely agree.
My idea of getting dressed for sailing is to put on some suntan cream, you will never see me anywhere near the Chenal du Four. And aren't we talking about liveaboard cruising boats - most of whom are either in sunny climes, or looking to go there?
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QuestGirl
regular
Reged: 15/04/2008
Posts: 56
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Quote:
Quote:
I agree with Tamara, the only way to get experience is to actually do it.
Forgive my ignorance, but doesn't YM standard still imply you must have 'done it', that is gained a fair bit of independent practical experience? At one time it was 2,500 sea miles logged, a certain proportion as skipper, on longish passages, on night passages? That was certainly a pre-requisite when I did it, has it been dropped? I appreciate that its possible to fudge this requirement for exam purposes if you are foolish, since its not done under close scrutiny. But by speaking of 'YM standard' are we not assuming someone with this sort of legitimate practical experience as a minimum?
People often talk here of bar-room YM's who couldn't be trusted in a rowing boat on the Serpentine. My experience though is that people with the YM sailing qualification are invariably capable and can be relied on - and what is most important, aware of their own limitations at sea.
As you've gathered, like Grehan I'm an admirer of this training programme. A late convert, having sniffed at paper qualifications most of my life until I was persuaded to get one.
Nowadays I would be very wary of checking actual experience as Skipper of anyone who claimed to be a Yachtmaster. Exiting a marina via lock on our delivery trip, we had a school boat tie up behind us. From the instructions being given out by the instructor skipper and the confused reactions to most of them (including the guy at the helm nearly hitting the lock wall on the way in and at least 3 members of crew not being able to do a figure of 8 round a cleat on a floating pontoon in the lock!!), we assumed most of the crew were doing their day skipper or even competent crew. To our absolute horror, once everyone was safely tied up and waiting for the lock to empty, the instructor informed us that all of the crew were "zero to hero" yachtmasters in the making on their last sea trip i.e. the rest of the course would be shore-based.
There is no way I would have trusted any one of those students to go ashore with a line from my boat without supervision, let alone skipper it. So no, a YM qualification most definitely does not imply experience, sea miles or competence (unless several of these guys end up failing the practical part of the exam, which we will never know).
For the original question by Captain Slarty, I would say that confidence in your ability to manage your vessel and maintain it to ensure your own safety and that of your crew is critical. Whether you achieve that purely through experience and taking on board advice from others, or whether you use RYA and other courses to get a grounding, I wouldn't put sailing skills as low as 15%.
I firmly believe that many skills can actually be acquired as needed if you are capable of reading a decent manual and are prepared to have a go, though it's often quicker and easier if you have a trained instructor on hand to point out your mistakes or give you handy hints.
If I had significant equipment failure whilst at sea, I would prefer to have better sailing skills to get me safely to shore than perfect electronics skills that I wasn't able to apply because I was getting seasick down below in rough seas!
And it's all horses for courses anyway. If you're doing a circumnavigation mainly hopping from marina to marina and planning to come home in 2-3 years (as per Bumfuzzle), your required skillset is going to be very different from people who set off with no intention of coming back and who won't see the inside of a marina unless they have a major crisis or are visiting someone else 
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Grehan
regular
Reged: 11/06/2001
Posts: 1168
Loc: Inland France
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I can but reiterate that my direct personal experience in a crisis situation was that the Yachtmaster (female) actually had very good practical experience (gained as part of the YM practical course) in difficult conditions, including dealing with an equipment failure simulation, that was more than sufficient to be calm, confident and completely and impressively competent.
And the 'man of experience' (experience alone is enough, courses are pretty much a waste of time) actually proved to be of lesser real competence, a poor team player, and made the problem situation worse, much worse.
Maybe I was with a particularly good YM, who had received particularly good YM training (theory and practical). (I do know the school she went to).
I dunno, I can only say as I found.
I seem to recall that (my hero  ) Ellen did some RYA courses as part of the process of learning to sail. Good for her.
Please don't get me wrong. Practical experience is naturally, crucial - whether sailing, or fettling the engine, or using the radar. The more the better. But it is all too easy to sneer at 'courses' and 'book learning' when (I think) they can provide a good foundation, a lot of enjoyment and encouragement to go further. I am sure, for example, that however competent I am now at operating the radar or dealing with the engine is a result of doing a little 'course' (with a good teacher/instructor), and reading the instruction manual, coupled with actual hands-on, real life, possibly slightly pressured (!), experience.
If just going out and 'doing it' is enough, what need for websites like YBW that enable people to learn from other people, by reading? Which is great. In my book.
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___ Grehan :: French Waterways information ___
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Chris_E
regular
Reged: 13/11/2003
Posts: 4702
Loc: Lymington
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I have to say that this thread seems to be polarising into the YM is great or YM is crap route, so nothing new there then. Just a couple of points then I'll sail away:
1. I think that QuestGirl there must have some misunderstanding with your 'dodgy lockers' as the crew would not have become YMs if the rest of their course was shored based, as the YM exam is the last part of the course. So I'm a bit confused about that.
2. A lot has been made of experience being important and I agree to a point that it is. However, some live with a very narrow comfort zone and never get the wider experience that makes for a rounded sailor. YM practical is a vehicle for this, as is owning your own boat, setting off round the world, etc. But I, for one, wouldn't necessairly trust an 'experienced' person any more than a 'qualified' one.
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It ain't necessarily so.
Botton Village
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