An old saying, there bold sailors, and there are old sailors, but there are no old bold sailors comes to mind as I read Rod Stephens excellent manuscipt kindly provided by S&S and posted on the Dashews site. The manuscript shows every bit as much commonsense and good seamanship as you would expect from someone with Rods depth of experience, spanning 75 years or so. The lessons contained are hard earned ones, and timeless, and clearly shows why Sparkman and Stephens has such a great reputation.
I am always amazed at the amount of stuff I can learn by listening to experienced older seamen (and seawomen...). Some of what they say might not be in current fashion, or may not conform to the latest scientific ideas, but it often confirms to the hard rules of seamanship and commonsense. And many time quotes from old timers have come back to me in the light of some situation and suddenly make perfect sense. Of course make sure of the credentials of the person you are listening to, there are always plenty of armchair experts...
Also local knowledge is fantastic, I always try to ask the locals about their area, even the newbie boat owner knows much more about the area they sails in than I will. And it is a great way to meet local people. I have had alot of luck talking to the local fishermen, many are often surprised when I ask them about the area (being more used to yachties snubbing them) and their knowledge of the local coast and weather is often incredible. I take a pen and paper for drawing mud maps, and writing stuff down.
Of course I need to be careful of blindly accepting everything at face value, sometimes it is wrong, or more frequently the info is right but I may have interpreted it wrong, but I usually get some really good useful info, and make some friends as well.
Fair winds
Ben
Ben, It's not just sailing. When I was sixteen and learning to fly, I learned as much from some of the guys in the hangars as I did from my instructors. The right guys were the ones with older airplanes and limited technology. They were Airmen not just pilots. I quickly learned the difference. Chris
ReplyDeleteHi Chris, interesting how much we can learn from flying, you guys have my respect, at least at sea we just drift if we have a problem!
ReplyDeleteThe Marine Industry is slowly playing catch up with the aviation industry, makes interesting watching as the changes slowly filter through...
Edited post to remove the male chovanistic bias that the english language encourages(that's my excuse anyway). Serously we do have a problem with this at sea, and it's not just semantics. It's just such a male dominated feild, but I have meet some incredible seawomen out there...
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