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By Dennis Palmer
A very wise martial arts teacher once told me: “You will never learn to perform a physical skill without making mistakes and making a fool of yourself. Therefore, embrace the embarrassment of your mistakes and dedicate yourself to learning.” Not a bad philosophy for learning to sail, eh? As a sailing instructor, I hear some interesting reasons why my students are taking sailing lessons. I usually start each class by asking everybody to introduce themselves, talk about what sailing experience they may have, and what they hope to get out of taking lessons. You would expect the answers to those questions would be pretty vanilla, but sometimes I get surprised. A couple of students told me the reason why they were taking lessons was that they were engaged to be married and had already paid for the charter of a yacht in Croatia for their honeymoon, but they didn’t know how to sail a boat on their own yet. They powered through basic keelboat, coastal cruising and bareboat charter classes and became competent sailors in short order. They had a wonderful time sailing the Dalmation coast, but told me they would have appreciated learning how to do a stern-to Med tie for mooring. Not something we do much here on Puget Sound. One of my students explained that she had landed a job with a major sailboat charter boat outfit in the Caribbean under the pretense that she could handle boats. Could she? Not so much. After a crash course, no pun intended, she was off to sail the warm waters of the Caribbean. I was so jealous. After crewing on a race boat for a few seasons and being told precisely what to do for each maneuver, one of my students had no idea why he was being given those orders and realized he couldn’t sail a boat by himself if his life depended on it. He took lessons so he could anticipate what the race boat skipper wanted and so he could use his sailing club’s boats to take friends out for day sails. Along the same vein, a woman was tired of having to follow orders barked by her husband. She took lessons so she could take action before being told to do so. Captains can marry couples at sea – maybe I should get paid to be a marriage counselor, too. Most yacht charter companies are pretty strict about who they will allow to take out their boats. Their insurance companies are not amused when they pay claims for damage done by unqualified cruisers. An American Sailing Association (ASA) Bareboat Charter or US Sailing Association certificate will satisfy most of the yacht charter outfits around the world that the skipper is qualified to handle their boats. One of my students did not have this certificate, nor had he ever cruised as a skipper. In his eagerness to cruise the Caribbean, he shopped around for a charter outfit that would let him use one of their sail boats if he would agree to only motor and not hoist the sails. Even so, he found himself in situations that he felt to be life threatening, given his limited skills. Though the cruise had some terrifying moments, he became hooked on cruising and took sailing lessons when he got back to Seattle so he could be confident of handling difficult situations. His next cruise was much more enjoyable. The wife of a long-time sailor had cruised in the San Juans for years with her husband. He had a bit of a scare with a heart problem, and she realized that she could find herself suddenly in command of their boat if he became incapacitated. She had never skippered the boat before, and wanted to have the peace of mind that she could get the boat back home if anything happened. When she took lessons, she asked for extra time to practice docking and learned how to use a VHF radio to call for help. In a class I taught last month, a student had recently moved to the Puget Sound area from a landlocked northern state, and wanted to be able to take advantage of being able to get out on the water here. One guy had found his dream sailboat, and had already signed an agreement to buy it. Just one problem–he didn’t know how to sail. Lessons fixed that. My wife and I saw him at a marina a couple of months later when we were taking a cruise in our boat, and he was having the time of his life. A young couple was considering buying a sail boat, but didn’t want to take the plunge until they were sure boating was something they would enjoy together. They took the Basic Keelboat and Coastal Cruising classes, which qualified them to use a sailing club’s boats so they could try a variety of different boats for day sailing and cruising to see what kind of boat was best for them. There are lots of reasons why people take sailing lessons, but it boils down to one thing — Fun! The more you know about sailing, the more confident you are handling a boat. Your enjoyment increases in direct proportion to how well you know how to sail. Dennis Palmer is a USCG 50 Ton Master and a professional, ASA certified sailing instructor at Seattle Sailing Club www.seattlesailing.com ...back to 48° North title page.
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