Boat Handling - Day 1

This course just keeps getting better and better. As good as the other days have been this was the best yet. We had an hour or so in the classroom this morning doing navigation, chartwork and IRPCS (the rules of the road of boating). After that we were sent to get kitted up and meet on the pontoon for ten am. We were assigned our boats and we had to kit them out ourselves. Ben, Martin and I were assigned to a boat with Nevs as our instructor. We were on the water before half ten and had a little bit of time around the marina so that Nevs could check out our basic boat handling. After that I got to take the boat out from the marina, through the harbour into Poole bay.

Once we were out there we had to replicate what we had done in the classroom by finding points on a chart, working out bearings between them then calculating a heading and distance between them then using that to work out a duration for each leg at 30 knots. Once that was done we each had to sail a leg we had planned using only the compass and a stopwatch to see how accurate our plotting was. We did pretty well for our first time if I do say so my self only being around 50 - 100 metres out each time over legs between five and seven minutes.

After that that we went back to the chart and worked out some triangulation hear Old Harry's rock. From there we were going to do some more boat handling manoeuvres before lunch but we got tasked to a family in an inflatable off Swanage bay. They must have got a bit of a fright when they spotted four separate lifeboats come tearing towards them from different directions.

It only took one boat to sort it out of course so the rest of us met up with the big boat that was out with the ALB crew members and had our lunch on that.

After lunch we headed round to the cliffs near Old Harry's rock to do some veering down. I've been lucky enough to try this a few times on exercises back at my station already. It's a technique we'd use if, due to weather for example, it's too dangerous to sail in to get a casualty. We deploy the anchor, then put the boat into reverse and pay out anchor line anywhere between one and ten metres at a time to allow us to approach in a controlled fashion. It's good fun, but it takes it out of you, especially on warm days like today. I'm just glad we never had the baking heat that Megan from my station had when she did her course a couple of weeks back to contend with.

Once we'd finished that the waves had picked up a bit so we got a spot of rough weather driving techniques, where basically you come off the revs slightly going up a big wave then accelerate again as the bow starts to drop at the top to make the journey a wee bit smoother.

After that it was time to come home and I got to drive us back towards Poole. Once we got into the shelter of Poole bay it was a bit calmer so I was able to go flat out right up until just before we hit the speed limit area. Inside the speed limit area we had a shot practicing using emergency steering, so steering with a tiller rather than the steering wheel, which was quite interesting.

All in all it was a packed day, which was finished off with a decent dinner then a few of us headed into Poole for a couple of beers.

I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings now.