Seamanship Skills Course Review (September 2004)

The course was led by Steve Gibbon assisted by Julie Gibbon and Dave Drewery.  Course participants: Viola and Francis Scott, Jack Wilkinson, Vince Hope and Gary Scott .  

Why was I attracted to the ‘Seamanship Skills’ course? It was nothing to do with sailing on the sea at all as I don’t really do much of that anyway. I felt that the syllabus offered an opportunity to develop and build on some fundamental sailing skills and hopefully make me a better all round sailor. The single weekend format was also attractive although it later proved to be a quite intensive experience.  

The Saturday morning arrived with the tail end of hurricane ‘Carl’ threatening to continue the previous two weekends of lively weather. We were not to be disappointed!  

The course was a good mixture of classroom based theory sessions and on the water practical sessions. Although the actual sailing provided the highlights of the weekend I think everyone welcomed the land based sessions as they were usually accompanied by morale boosting cups of tea and biscuits. The first land-based session covered the 5 elements of sailing and how they could be applied to the various points of sailing. Although these skills were covered in the RYA level 1 and 2 we were warned that they were going to be more rigorously put into practice during the weekend. The pre-course homework (yes, you do get some!) was also reviewed.  

Then without further ado, we were out on the water sailing our triangular courses with frequent stops to practice heaving to. Steve had forewarned us that during any particular manoeuvre we should always have an escape route planned in advance should anything go wrong, however, when he appeared immediately in front of our Wayfarer in the rescue boat and cut his engine it still took me by surprise. I am not sure my sluggish reaction time nor my wild course adjustment would have averted a collision had Steve not sped away at the last second. If nothing else, it served to focus my mind on the fact that every-day sailing situations present potential dangers with equal speed. So it is best to be prepared.  

The rest of the first morning was spent practising man-overboard. It always surprises me just how difficult it is to deliberately slow down a boat sufficiently to perform this action efficiently. We were all having to concentrate hard, the extent to which, was only apparent afterwards when Steve informed us that the wind had been gusting to force 6 during the exercise and none of us had appeared to notice.

Saturday afternoon saw us all learning to sail backwards, both from off the jetty and out in the middle of the water down a line between two markers. Its quite enlightening to discover the sort of speed you can achieve going backwards in a Wayfarer in a force 5. This was followed by a theory and practice session to demonstrate the knack of approaching and leaving a lee shore in a controlled manner and not the more usual heart-stopping, frantic last second U-turn I have been used to performing in the past. We finished by practising approaching jetties. Although it would have been useful to be able to spend more time practising these manoeuvres the syllabus required a huge amount of stuff to be covered. I realise though that the course was really only meant to lay the groundwork. The real onus is on the course participants to get out afterwards and practice these new skills on their own.  

Sunday dawned with wind speeds looking to mimic the previous day and maybe even pick-up as the day went on. Meteorology was one of the theoretical topics covered and part of our homework on both days had been to supply a weather forecast from different sources. The variation – particularly in predicted wind speeds – was quite an eye-opener.  

Sundays’ morning session proved to be one of the course highlights for me. Learning to sail without and centre board and a rudder proved to be quite a challenge. After numerous unscheduled tacks, gybes and going around in circles there appeared brief moments (and I stress the word brief) when the boat appeared to come under control and I made some sort of slalom like headway.  Everyone else appeared to be doing a good job as Steve and Dave afterwards bestowed encouraging praise on all. In particular young Jack was singled out for his outstanding performance of straight-line rudderless sailing.  

The Sunday afternoon practical found us all being towed down to mark 10 and 11 to find some semblance of shelter from the wind in order to practice reefing afloat and anchoring. I had been carrying this shiny anchor around with me in our Wayfarer for about a year without really knowing what to do with it so this proved to be a useful session.  

The final practical saw us all out in the middle of the reservoir battling with a fully inverted Wayfarer. It was testament to the skill of the course members that every pair managed to successfully right their boat first time and in reasonably challenging conditions. Francis and Vince provided après-capsize entertainment by sailing the fully waterlogged Wayfarer back to the shore - quite an achievement in itself.  

Along with sessions on trailers, trolleys and towing regulations the course finally finished on Sunday evening. I think I can speak for all course members when I say that the quality of the instruction and course organisation was excellent. I personally, learned a great deal from the weekend and I have promised myself that when more suitable weather conditions present themselves I shall be out there – minus rudder – practising!  

I would like to thank Steve and Julie Gibbon and Dave Drewery for donating their time and effort to making the course so successful.

Gary Scott

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