Confessions not told

[sailorboy1]

I was out on a bike ride the other day with my mind wandering. I have been out of boating a few months now and had a thought for a topic I felt would be a good thread for here.

But then my years and experience here kicked in! In my mind I could literally write the posts a couple of the members here would probably write in response. The topic would be out of their experience really, but I am 99% sure they would rise to the occasion to go off at me. I would then want to battle back, but of course not really allowed to and all that would happen is that I would end up with a warning/strike/ban.

So a cruising confessional story with I feel lots of lessons will not be written here.

I wonder how many here just aren't putting to put themselves out here.

[Love2 boat]

So Sailorboy1 you caught me in this web.


I have always been told and completely understood do not be in a hurry when you are boating. It will catch you when you least expect it. I have too many stories to tell but this one almost hurt the most.


My wife and I were on the way up from Palm Beach FL to NJ. The trip should have taken 10 to 12 days but we were pushing for 8 days. That should have been my first warning but I did not pay attention. We got to the Chesapeake on the 6th day and had to rest - got in the upper bay in a slip at about 2am that night. I was worn out and could not go any further. Got up the next day and I knew a storm was brewing - I learned it was actually 2 storms coming together but the plan was to get to Cape May NJ - wait for a weather window and shoot up the coast.
I looked at the buoys outside of the Delaware River and it was 7 footers. I thought ok stay in the Delaware and wait in Cape May. I am very good at checking the weather - I had my wife on board. What I did not do - was check the mean direction of the waves. Maybe I was tired, maybe I was distracted but it never entered into mind. We got up into the C&D canal and all was great. Top of the Delaware was about 1 foot and we were cruising at 16 knots. I figured a few hours and we would be in Cape May with a nights rest and then up the coast of NJ. Half way down the Delaware I was seeing less boats than at the top now the chop was about 3 to 4 feet. Second warning I dismissed but thought what the heck how bad can it be. I called the marina and told them I was about 1.5 hours away and I would be in before closing. The gal on the phone said ok but be careful weather is really getting rough. Never dismiss a dock hand or a marina employee - they know what they are talking about and are trying to tell you subtly without offending the captain. Third warning I dismissed. What took my wife and I about 3 hours to get to the marina should have been less than 30 minutes.
We were in 6 foot seas at the bottom of the Chesapeake every 6 seconds. The frig opened and spilled the contents. She piled it back in the frig and had to sit and endure a 1.5 hour trip on the floor. As I looked out my starboard side window there were no boats and strings of crab pots. All I could think is if I catch that on my prop Coast Guard is not going to get here soon enough to pick us up. I would push the engine to get us up the wave and then hit idle to slide down the back side. 45 minutes into this my wife says we need to turn around. My only answer was we can't if we try I can't do a 180 fast enough and we could end up capsizing - it took 4 more hours in this crap.
So needless to say - our boat is a tank and got us to the marina. But I learned a lesson - mean direction of those waves I did not want to take in the open ocean - were heading right where I was in the funnel of the Delaware. But in my plan I overlooked the direction of the 7 footers...
Never again - my boat is better than I but I do not want to be in that position again. With my wife and stuck in a position where forward is the only option was not fun and very stressful. There were too many warnings and my plan disregarded all of them because I wanted to make it in 8 days.

[thinwater]

On one of my early cruises with my daughter I lost an anchor due to ... stupidity. She was only ~ 12, but she wrote it up and got it in a sailing magazine. Pretty public.

[servus]

Ad: Not to be in a hurry....

My boat is what one English yachtie who saw her on the dry in Greece described as a "good bad-weater-boat and bad good-weather-boat", long keeler, small cockpit with bridge deck etc.

Due to the scarce cockpit space I sometimes take off the wheel when safely tied up in a marina or similar.

So we were moored stern to in a small Greek harbour on the outside of the main pier, when some friends glided by in the prevailing zephyr and hailed us to follow them to so-and-so bay for a fish grille.

I was on the fore deck at that time, my wife in the companionway, I called her to start the engine, I cast off the forelines and rushed back to undo the stern lines, leeward first ... then it struck me that something was missing...

The downwind box was empty, our steel bow with a sizeable Rocna would miss the outer mooring post and swing freely, difficult to fender off, into the soft topsides of the glass fibre made gin palace lying in the next box; or possibly not because the stern of our boat would grind into the concrete pier, the boat being kept in place by the one remaining mooring line.

Zephyr was the key word, I cast off the last connection to terra firma, put her into gear and we got under way.
The wheel was put on in record time.

The end of the story is boring, because no damages occurred other than my t-shirt ponging a bit more than usual.

I did not tell this one to anyone before!

[Knotical]

On our maiden (delivery) cruise many years ago I underestimated the strength of the current while getting out of the marina and got too close to the docked boats on our SB side, avoided most of them but couldn't avoid a large one and scuffed her bow pulpit with our stern pulpit, nothing broke or bent but I still remember it as a regrettable moment; fortunately, no one was watching that early in the morning and I am not sure if the owner would have heard my "silent" apology in his sleep.

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

I was out on a bike ride the other day with my mind wandering. I have been out of boating a few months now and had a thought for a topic I felt would be a good thread for here.

But then my years and experience here kicked in! In my mind I could literally write the posts a couple of the members here would probably write in response. The topic would be out of their experience really, but I am 99% sure they would rise to the occasion to go off at me. I would then want to battle back, but of course not really allowed to and all that would happen is that I would end up with a warning/strike/ban.

So a cruising confessional story with I feel lots of lessons will not be written here.

I wonder how many here just aren't putting to put themselves out here.

So you are complaining about the potential deletion of rude posts that violate the rules which you and other members might write in fits of pique with each other?

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by Adelie

So you are complaining about the potential deletion of rude posts that violate the rules which you and other members might write in fits of pique with each other?

nope, thanks for you input

[Hoosiersailor]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

I was out on a bike ride the other day with my mind wandering. I have been out of boating a few months now and had a thought for a topic I felt would be a good thread for here.

But then my years and experience here kicked in! In my mind I could literally write the posts a couple of the members here would probably write in response. The topic would be out of their experience really, but I am 99% sure they would rise to the occasion to go off at me. I would then want to battle back, but of course not really allowed to and all that would happen is that I would end up with a warning/strike/ban.

So a cruising confessional story with I feel lots of lessons will not be written here.

I wonder how many here just aren't putting to put themselves out here.

I understand what sailorboy1 means. I have been a member here since 2015. Early on I was dreaming a lot, asking questions and getting a lot of great feedback. Then other things took priority and I didn't visit or participate very much until earlier this year when my wife and I made our minds up that we were going to quit dreaming and start living it. Now I amd researching, learning and read some of the very opinionated and argumentative posts and really just try and refrain from engaging at all. The forum has changed a lot in those years I didn't frequent here.

[philiosophy]

What a great question. Maybe the best ever. So simply perfect for this forum. I'm 70, "Sailed to Cape Flattery turned left until I am too old to do it". Still doing it. I retired from 36 YEARS ON Offshore Tugs and so on and so forth.
Mike O Reily said it best far as I'm concerned. It's a means to an end. I couldn't afford a Power Yacht with the range needed for World Cruising.
I will say I have seen a lot of cruisers in these past years and 10's of thousands miles who in my opinion make a pimple in a Sailors Ass. Whether or not you respect the ocean, learn the skills necessary with proper storm tactics, and maintain your boat and rig in a Seaman like fashion, tells the story. You won't have to say. " Hey, I'm a Sailor". You will just know it's true.

[mvweebles]

I had our boat refit in Ensenada. It was a massive project for an old boat with great bones. The refit went sideways in an awful and expensive way. I knew the skill level was suspect, but totally misread the lack of integrity of the owner. There were some early clues - tiny 'white lies' that I ignored. Given my career was as a contract negotiator, pretty embarrasing. I can make excuses about how Covid interfered and prevented travel, but in the end, I ignored warning signs.

Lessons learned? Listen to the small gut feelings. Trust but verify - make sure pictures are not close-up and you can see the entire assembly. Don't assume anyone knows what the hell they are doing. Make sure you visit every square inch of their facilities - wood shop, welding/machine shop, spray booth, etc. If people only want to meet in the evenings, it means they have a day job. Don't believe referrals and recommendations, especially online ones such as Google users (the owner has packed favorable reviews that I know for a fact are false - I was in the same yard he uses and the boats were never there).

As embarrasing as the situation was, I chose to be very public in my experience (many long posts on TrawlerForum) because I felt staying silent was unfair to the next rube.

But the biggest 'lesson learned' was to never ever use Niza Marine run by Mario Herrera in Ensenada. My experience was they are incompetent crooks.

On the plus side, I met Guillermo Sarabia of La Costa Boatworks (shown in attached picture at Launch Day) who really saved my ass. Great group who were a pleasure to work with. Not everything went perfectly, but they owned their mistakes and made them right.

[Foswick]

I have found the forum has become more useful and enjoyable when I added a few people to my ignore list. Now, I see that they posted (often several times), but I don't see their posts, and the silence makes me smile.

It's just the nature of faceless interactions. There are people that use the forum to feel important or smart, and they do this primarily by telling others how stupid/wrong they are. Seemingly, there is a new wave of people adding financial elitism to their toolbox - delighting in telling others that they are too poor to enjoy cruising and that their boats are inferior.

Very bad form, that.

I'm as guilty as the next person for reacting poorly to a post that strikes me the wrong way, or for phrasing a hasty post recklessly. But, there does seem to be an undercurrent of a few people whose hobby is just to be the forum curmudgeons. And, once there's blood in the water, other people come out of the woodwork to join the battle over important questions like what's the best color for docklines or whether it is safer to turn to port or starboard.

I understand Sailorboy's point here. Because some people are so willing to find fault, criticize, and condescend, it discourages folks from being honest, creating a real skewed sense of what people are actually doing and what they actually know.

To use an analogy, when I was an EMT, I got to visit people's homes when they were not expecting company. I can't tell you how often the house looked pristine and well-kept from the outside, but inside, the houses were just as chaotic as mine. People spend time and effort ensuring they appear a certain way to neighbors but, in reality, they are just as messed up as everyone else.

So, it's like Facebook (or whatever). People show the image that they want you to see, and as often as not, that image is to compensate for their own insecurities.

It is the same here. Rather than contribute constructively, people try to present themselves as clever, knowledgeable, shrewd, etc. by pointing out how ways that other people are not.

[Foswick]

I would add that, if a person lacks a long list of mistakes, embarrassing stories, and costly lapses in judgment, then they probably lack much real experience. And, if they think there is one right answer to any question, then you should not trust that answer.

[parkstone bay]

When I was actively powerboat instructing in the UK, I used to say to my victims/students "One: there aren't many new mistakes in powerboating; two: your instructors have made most, if not all, of those mistakes themselves".
One time, we were asked to act as a wedding boat for the son and new daughter-in-law of a pal. So, we collect the happy couple, we arrive into our own marina, with all the uncles and aunties and grannies and grampas watching from the club balcony, and I did, (though I say myself) a perfect 5star alongside the visitor pontoon for the bride and groom to disembark; I was like a dog with 2 tails! Then I have to put the boat back into our own berth, which I'd only done about a 1000 times before - ...... I totally misjudged the tide, and landed up hard against the neighbour. Fortunately, he was very well fendered. Pride comes before a fall!

[sailorboy1]

I believe I did a terrible job of typing post 1. But that's OK I guess.

[Ike]

Originally Posted by parkstone bay

When I was actively powerboat instructing in the UK, I used to say to my victims/students "One: there aren't many new mistakes in powerboating; two: your instructors have made most, if not all, of those mistakes themselves".
One time, we were asked to act as a wedding boat for the son and new daughter-in-law of a pal. So, we collect the happy couple, we arrive into our own marina, with all the uncles and aunties and grannies and grampas watching from the club balcony, and I did, (though I say myself) a perfect 5star alongside the visitor pontoon for the bride and groom to disembark; I was like a dog with 2 tails! Then I have to put the boat back into our own berth, which I'd only done about a 1000 times before - ...... I totally misjudged the tide, and landed up hard against the neighbour. Fortunately, he was very well fendered. Pride comes before a fall!

We all make mistakes. If we survive, we learn, and hopefully never repeat them. In my 34 years with the Coast Guard I have seen sailors that are supposed to be masters of seamanship (and usually they are) do some really awful things. Some even resulted in a Board of Inquiry. With my own boat, not a sailboat or a cruiser, an 18 ft. powerboat, I have made some gross mistakes, none of which resulted in injury, except to my pride, and embarrassement in front of my wife. Years ago I put a small sailboat aground right in full view of the Coast Guard Base that I got it from. Fortunately I was able to get it off without assistance.