BEGINNER'S LUCK

There's something about beginners and cruising that defies the rules of logic. Mistakes happen, and more often than not, the beginner sails right on through the crisis, perhaps not even knowing there was one in the first place!

I remember a time in New Zealand. A young man we had met crewing aboard another boat in the Pacific came up to Al, so pleased and proud that he had bought himself a cruising sailboat, and asking if Al could help him learn to use his sextant and some celestial navigation. "Of course," said Al, "but I'm busy at the moment--how 'bout tomorrow?"

"Oh, well," came his reply. "I'm at the fuel dock now, and leaving for Australia this afternoon. I sorta thought we could do it now."

"Right." Al hardly skipped a beat and gave him this "navigation" lesson. "Well, sail north along the New Zealand coast until you run out of land. Then turn left and head west and sooner or later you'll get there. Just remember that there's more of Australia north of us than there is to the south." We heard later via yachtie grapevine that he had made it OK!

Nowadays a beginner has GPS and all sorts of various types of navigation equipment, yet mistakes are still made by beginners and the more experienced alike. Hopefully, the mistakes we all make will not be disastrous, and you can benefit by learning from them.

We asked a few cruisers with plenty of years of water under their keels what they saw as common mistakes being made by people when they first start cruising. Interestingly, the answers came back in general terms, not "how-to" specifics.

1. Learning "all about it" but forgetting about the most basic essential: Sail your boat!

What a wealth of information is available to the wannabe cruisers these days: books, magazines, internet, videos, seminars, clubs, schools--you name it. Lots of great info to sort through and assimilate. Maybe too much in fact, if it keeps you occupied and tied to the dock. Take those tricks of the trade and try them out. Sail and practice what you are learning. Sail at night. Too often beginners stick to fine weather, daylight hours. Lots to learn about your boat at night, about "reading" the sea, about the situations around you in the dark hours.

2. Listening to the "experts".

I guess this is a companion piece to the above. Sailors are an opinionated lot and dispense advice whether it is asked for or not. Experienced sailors do have a lot to impart, and can be an invaluable resource to the beginning cruiser. Just remember, experts don't always practice what they preach--experts make mistakes too! I guess what I am trying to say is this: factor in all the variables and use some common sense about what the "expert" is telling you. Remember the definition of an expert: X is the unknown, and a spurt is a drip under pressure!

3. The "Gotta Have" syndrome.

One well-traveled cruising couple said that they would have been sailing a year earlier, with more money in the budget if they had not felt obligated to have all the neat things advertised in magazines, touted by experts, and pitched at the Boat Shows. Money will certainly be spent on stuff you really don't need and may not even use. All it does it take up space aboard. We've certainly seen a lot of gear and equipment at flea markets and yachtie swap meets that fit into this category. We too are guilty of this. We bought an RDF (Radio Direction Finder--are you old enough to remember these?) It was compact; it was easy to use; it was "state of the art". It sat on the shelf! We seldom used it. The money could have been better spent upgrading our chart portfolio for the area we were in.

4. Taking too much "stuff" on board.

OK. Another companion piece, related to the above topic, but on a more personal level. It's a given that you will fill up all the space you have available on your boat, and then some. Doesn't matter the size--you will fill up the lockers of a 50-footer just as easily as you would on a 30-foot cruising boat. Al confesses his collection of tools could certainly be diminished, and I have this GIANT pressure cooker I haven't used in about 20 years that takes up storage space in the galley. It was a good idea--bottle your own meats and fish, but with an efficient freezer like ours, it's simply not necessary. It's easy to say--bring only the essentials aboard, restrict your hoarding instincts, but in truth, we are all guilty of overload in some way or other.

5. Not paying attention to the small things.

I was reminded of this when a friend told us about working frantically to cross off items on the "To Do" list, one of which was to hook up the compass light. They decided they would do it underway, then in the crush of departure promptly forgot about it. The weather picked up considerably, and by night fall, when they really needed the compass light to steer by, it was too late. A shortened version of the story: they broached in some wild seas in the dark and wiped out a lot of deck gear. Another item about small things tripping you up: a friend was doing some deck work. He unshackled the anchor to move it out of the way and forgot to shackle up again. Have you guessed what comes next? At least he was in clear water, could easily see the pick beneath the boat, and was able to dive and recover it!

6. What other mistakes do we commonly see beginning cruisers make?

Anchoring: not enough scope. Not backing down to be sure the anchor is well set. Contrary to the often seen scenario of everybody up on the bow and looking down--you simply cannot stare an anchor into its set! Anchoring too close to a neighbor--well, obviously, he has the best spot! Dinghies: painter too short. Al feels there's a direct ratio between the length of the dinghy painter and how long a person has been cruising. If you want to look like a veteran, get a long painter! Sails: sunlight is the great destroyer of dacron; cover them up.

Mistakes--we all make them. It's part of the "character building" process that cruisers constantly go through. If you can learn from the mistake, chances are it won't happen again. And really, if you can laugh at yourself when telling your story to a friend, it's a mistake worthwhile.