LEARNING FROM OTHERS

Fort Lauderdale, FL

Every once in a while, I "entertain" myself by reading about all the recent disasters at sea.

"Why do you do that?" Chip asked yesterday, a fair and relevant question.

It all started when I was reading a cruiser's book, and they wrote, to paraphrase heavily, "don't let not knowing how to sail keep you from cruising. We knew dick squat, and we didn't die."

That attitude gets me all riled up. Number one, I think it's completely irresponsible to go offshore with that cavalier attitude. When you get into trouble, somebody has to risk their life to come help you. Number two, it's even more irresponsible to encourage others to do the same. Certainly, we all have to learn offshore sailing by, yes, sailing offshore. But doing that without first sailing inshore -- a lot -- is foolish.

Then a few days into stewing about that book, Island Packet posted this article and a haunting, really haunting photo of a fully intact Island Packet 380, exactly like Cara Mia, adrift, ghosting alone in the Atlantic.
About six months ago, the owners of that drifting 380, a cruising couple not much older than we are, got caught in a dreadful storm during a rally between Rhode Island and Bermuda. The woman was swept overboard, her body never recovered. The man was rescued from the boat by a passing ship.

Then yesterday I saw this article written by one of the surviving crew members on the ill-fated Low Speed Chase, a racing sailboat that was tossed on the rocks during the Farallones race out of San Francisco. Seven of the eight crew members were swept off the boat by an enormous rogue wave. Three survived, one body was recovered, the other four assumed dead.

I let myself read these disaster at sea stories about once a year, and there are two reasons. I like to stoke my respect for the sea, and I want to learn the lessons that come from these incidents.

The fateful tales no longer make me fearful like they did a few years ago, when I wrote this blog post. Instead I'm much more in the thoughtful-consideration-of-safety-at-sea mode. Even back then, I did learn lessons from reading those articles. The fatality in the Bahamas was my first lesson about respecting Bahamian inlets.

This article from Practical Sailor about the Island Packet
http://www.practical-sailor.com/blog/rethinking_rally_concept-10665-1.html
is a sound discussion of the pros and cons of rally mentality and/or buddy boating (traveling with other boats). With only one exception, we have not made crossings with other boats. We like to keep our own counsel. The one time we did allow the nervous get-going agitation of other boats to make us leave earlier than we planned, it was not a good experience. We should have waited. Nobody knows more than we do about our boat and our crew. We listen to what others are thinking but gather our own information and keep our own counsel.

The article linked above about the Low Speed Chase incident is a beautifully written account of how the accident happened followed by some healthy discourse about lessons learned and safety measures onboard. Well worth reading.

Among other good points, he says this:
"I'd reached a level of comfort where I'd only tether at night, when using the head off the back of the boat, or when the conditions were really wild. It's simply a bad habit that formed due to a false sense of security in the ocean."

None of us can afford a false sense of security.

Yesterday, I picked up Triton, the local yacthing newspaper. They too have a theme this week: Disasters at sea, but hey, it's time for this sailor to stop with the disasters before nightmares commence.

What I take away is this:
--continued and perhaps heightened respect for our beloved oceans
--the understanding that neither I nor my boat are ready to make a major passage (the details would be a good topic for another blog post)
--zero bravado about not being ready to cross an ocean.

I read once that world cruising gods, Lin & Larry Pardey, cruised for more than five years in the Caribbean before feeling competent to cross an ocean.

As another world cruiser says:

Don't ignore conventional wisdom: it's formulated by people who didn't drown. — Cap'n Fatty Goodlander