Cautionary tale to all newbies

[Island Time O25]

https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/n...il/7602665002/

[Fore and Aft]

Island Time I could tell you stories like this all day. The last 18 months has motivated so many dreamers to get afloat and "learn" as they go. The whole concept of learning seamanship has gone the same way the paper charts have.
Cheers

[boatman61]

Covered here...
https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ml#post3424673

[Island Time O25]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Covered here...
https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ml#post3424673

Didn't see it until after I posted. May be mods can merge the threads?

[MicHughV]

As the above poster sez......

That story just happened to make the "news'.....there are likely countless similar stories that didn't end well.

My own almost 40 years on a sailboat started with equally narrow escapes and dumb things I did and frought with things I should have done...but didn't....or things I did do, but shouldn't have done...

I'm pretty sure every sailor out there has experienced a "learning curve" of one sort or another..

[DanielI]

Newbie here. Not sure what caution you would like me to take. Don’t be stupid? Don’t be irresponsible? Don’t leave messes for other people to clean up?

I already knew those things.

[DanielI]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

My own almost 40 years on a sailboat started with equally narrow escapes and dumb things I did and frought with things I should have done...but didn't....or things I did do, but shouldn't have done...

I disagree. This was not even dumb.

You need to have some sort of a clue as a baseline. THEN you can do dumb things relative to your knowledge level. And you can learn, and we can learn from you. But “don’t go sailing if you have no idea what you are doing,” is not a useful lesson: anyone who needs it won’t listen, almost by definition.

[Island Time O25]

Going solo at night in unfamiliar area in new to him boat without the benefit of at least a few day sails is not a learning curve but a suicide mission.

If he has taken some ASA courses I'm pretty sure he'd have at least one other fellow student or even a more experienced sailor to invite as crew at least until the next scheduled harbor. If he thought that much about this Maine to Bahamas sail.

[hpeer]

Well I purchased my first sailboat, 33’. I had an hour of instruction. I took off single handing up the coast of Nova Scotia. I was about tuis huys age and had never sailed before.

That does not mean I was as unprepared as he is made out to be. I had a life time of other experiences that gave me a “baseline” to fall back on. We really don’t know this guys baseline, the news media is notoriously bad at reporting anything factual. And he may be as bad as made out, perhaps worse. Frankly my thought is he has some mental or developmental issues.

Like so many things that make the “news” this is a singular story, not a whole lot to generalize about here.

Who knows how many folks do “go now” successfully, you don't hear about them because they were successful. Or at least more successful than this poor bugger.

2¢

[Creedence]

Crawl (for a few months)... walk (for many months to a year- or even a few years)... run (far more subjective). In my flying days we had a saying: You have 2 bags; one (full) is luck, and the other (empty) is experience. Try your best to fill the empty one before the full one is emptied.

Everyone has done things that in hindsight were probably not as well thought out as we felt they were at the time, and we expended some luck, but learned from those mistakes. That process never ends.

The problem is when beginners (it happens to experienced people too) make a fatal flaw in judgement by not taking the time to evaluate, understand, and successfully mitigate the risks.


I sold my first “big” boat to a guy in Hawaii years ago. Really nice, middle-aged guy who had never sailed, but dreamt of sailing the islands. I offered to take him out a few times, but before we could get our first sail scheduled, he decided on a quick day sail with his girlfriend. He left at 1:00 and told me that he’d be back in an hour or two.... I called the Coast Guard When he hadn’t returned as night fell. 2 am, the coast guard calls me and tells me he’s off Diamond Head waving at the helicopter they had out looking for him (he wasn’t aware that the VHF radio onboard was a thing). 4 am comes and I get another call. He ran up on the reef off Waikiki Beach. The boat broke up after a few minutes and he and his passenger swam to shore. Similar outcome to this story- he made the news, state fined him $100k for reef damage and salvage.

From an armchair you could find a million things that went wrong on that excursion, but just taking the time to ease into this stuff would have paid dividends then- as I assume it would have here.

Our boats afford us a license to dream, but the risks are real, and the liability we expose ourselves to can be unimaginable if not managed.

By all means, get the boat now if that’s the dream- but there are no prizes for being the first to cast the docklines.