From: jfh@cs.brown.edu (John F. Hughes)
Subject: Re: Inexperienced boaters
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 10:25:11 GMT

In article <1685FA570.EPLUS17@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu> EPLUS17@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu (Richard Engelbrecht-Wiggans) writes:

> [Bought a used banshee (sailboat)]
>
>Back to my stupidity.  It takes me at least 15 minutes to launch.  While I
>have practised backing up my car with trailer in an empty parking lot, I
>still launch by walking the trailer and boat into the water, and reverse
>the process later.  I only sail on weekdays; this typically means that no

If only a few others practice like this, ramps would be a lot more pleasant.
You might try taking the (empty) trailer up and down the ramp 35 times some
afternoon (after sailing), just to get good at it (same way you did with 
round-the-buoys practice below). 

>one (absolutely zero) else uses the sailboat launch site that day, and
>there very few others--mainly stationary fishing boats near the shores--
>out on the water.  So far, I only sail in wind under about 10 knots; more
>wind than that, and I windsurf.  Still, I have capsized the boat while
>getting in, while jibing, after getting tangled in the main sheet, when
>trying to adjust the vang (or whatever that thingy that pulls down on the
>boom is called), while getting out, etc. etc..  I still use my daggerboard
>as a depth finder--or should it be, a "shallows finder?"--more often than
>I would with a more expensive boat (eg. the QEII!).
> 
>I may be deceiving myself, but I don't think that I am endangering anyone
>in all of this stupidity.  I do have some sailing experience on bigger boats

Hell, no! You're getting experience, and you're getting it cheap. Nothing could
be better. A lot of the *good* sailors out there are the ones who spent child-
hood playing around in small boats, getting in abd out of trouble, using the
c'board as a sounding device, trying to "jump" sandbars in their sailboats, etc.
There's nothing better than messing with a small boat to teach you stuff.

>(and quite a bit on sailboards.)  I wear a lifevest and a helmet.  With the
>adrenalin pumping, I can swim two miles in just under a hour.  Right-of-way
>questions don't even come up.  And the water and air are about 80 degrees.
> 
>I have tried to improve myself.  In addition to the obvious--reading, courses,
>etc.--I have, for example, anchored a couple of empty Clorox (r) bottles
>about 50 yards apart and spent a total of more than a dozen hours practising
>tacking and jibing around them (1 hour = about 100 turns).  Also, I practised
>righting my boat in deep water several times on the pond behind my house
>before going out on real water.  But I still qualify as "inexperienced."

This is tremendous. Not only is this guy making the effort to learn, but he
*knows* that he doesn't yet know. If only all the rest of us could so honestly
assess our knowledge.


>Repeatedly being told that a REAL boaters don't wear their lifevests (let
>alone a helmet), 

Tell this to the folks at the top of the Contender fleet, many of whom wear
helmets all the time --- even in light airs. The folks who say "lifevests are
wimpy" are the same studs who "can survive an auto accident without a seatbelt"
and "don't need ropes when rockclimbing." Screw 'em.

>                 don't walk their boats and trailers to and from the water
>(even if it is more than 100 feet to where the water gets knee deep?), or
>capsize repeatedly (even when trying to learn to turn right at the mark?)
>grates.  OK.  So I am a sissy and a clutz.  But we all had to start somewhere.
>And no amount of bashing inexperienced boaters is going to change this.

Indeed. I think that the bashing that's gone on is partly bashing of
inexperienced *and careless* boaters who are reckless. It's true that 
inexperience at the ramp is a close correlate of recklessness (according to
some), but the two are no more causally linked than motorboating and rudeness,
as others have noted here in the last few weeks.

By all means, keep up the good work. If more sailing schools took the approach
that you have done for yourself, there'd be lots more competent boathandlers
on the water. 

-John
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