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Hi John,
if your Dad wants to do Bermuda in June which is the best time before the onset of the hurricane season he needs to truck the boat to Halifax or New York. The trip down the St, Lawrence is going to take a few weeks and some ice may be left in the Gulf of St, Lawrence in May. Even without the ice, the Gulf is cold, damp and foggy, not an easy body of water to handle. Therefore, as far as timing goes, transportation directly to the start line is recommended. He should take an extra week for sea trials and get a feel for offshore sailing before he leaves.
If this is the first time he goes offshore then I strongly recommend that he takes someone with him with previous ocean sailing experience. If I were you, I'd discourage him from going alone the first time. This is not a walk in the park.
There are companies in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland that rent out liferafts and EPIRBs. I bought mine because I want to go offshore again, it's not a one-time thing for me.
Send me an e-mail home and I'll attach a list of equipment I had on that trip.
Hats off to you Bill! I totally agree with you although it may not seem that way :-)
My remarks were not pointed towards a particular comment in this thread, but in general to any extreme right or left on this subject.
I have a hard time with the "all traditional" or "all electronic" hard-liners. There are limitations with each of these approaches and one should have a balanced view on this. I realize now I seemed way too much in favour of electronics when I was just trying to defend a balanced view. I also forgot to mention (because it's a given) that I do use paper charts, plotting, DR, bearings, drift, set and everything else considered traditional navigation, and I'm pretty good at it too.
I have been caught in a thunderstorm in the Gulf Stream and to say that I was nervous is an understatement. At that point I was visualizing my boat with hundreds of small holes in the hull, and going fast towards the nearest land, 5000 meters under the keel. Finding Bermuda without electronics might have been a challenge but I'm confident I would have done it on DR only because I keep a log every hour.
I have great respect for your experience Bill, and I apologize if I sounded uncouth in my message. I honestly did not think of any person here in particular, I was just trying to get a point across that there is no black & white approach to sailing.
I sure hope I'll never become an expert, because I don't believe in experts at sea.
And for you Mr. Skippa, as you can see, people get so passionate about sailing that the discussions heat up quickly. Luckily Shannon is here to keep the boys out of trouble.
Best Regards,
Christian
For you sextant nostalgics, or fundamentalists of the old navigation technique, here's the reality.
Some of the most famous sailors alive today haven't taken the sextant out of the box in many years. This is not the "new generation" of the digital revolution, these are old wolves that used the sextant to roam the world 30 years ago.
The digital age is here, and it's here to stay. Even the hard-lined traditionalists embraced the technological progress and are now using it for precision and accuracy.
GPS made our landfalls about 500% more reliable,, EPIRB can bring you help from thousands of miles away, SSBs and satphones give you weather and communication capabilities, radar gives you eyes where yours can't see. What's wrong with that? Ships use it, airplanes use it, space shuttles use it, technology is there to help and we insist on a mirror to bring the sun to the horizon?
Crossing the North Atlantic may give you at times one or two opportunities to see the sun. Your DR will tell you you should see Ireland when you may well be off Iceland. In the meantime, one push of a button will give you a fix with an error of a few feet. What's wrong with that? Who in this case shows more seamanship, the guy that didn't want to spent 100$ on a handheld GPS or the guy with the expensive sextant that he cannot use?
It's all about redundancy systems. I use digital charts on a laptop connected to a GPS, I have a chartplotter as a back-up, and I have 3 handheld GPSs as a third alternative. I also carry a plastic sextant for emergencies.
I like to know exactly where I am at all times. And I wouldn't cross and ocean without these instruments.
Advice:
1. If you have any respect for life, whether it is yours or others' that may risk their lives to get you out of trouble, don't ever go offshore on your own first time. No matter how many cubic meters of books you read, it's nothing like you thought it'd be. Take an experienced offshore sailor with you on your first passage and see how you do, physically, psychologically and emotionally. It's a very powerful experience that can disable you as both crew and skipper.
2. Get a "mentor" to assist you with everything from buying the right boat to equipping it and train on it.
3. This is not an impossible dream, and I admire you for just wanting to throw yourself into something like this, however, the road from dream to reality is long and arduous.
4. Before you sign "Skippa" make sure you put 1000 miles under your belt. Otherwise, what are you going to call yourself after a Transatlantic, Sir Francis Drake?
Yes, it's still for sale. There is a sale pending but the deal is not closed so there's still a chance to get this boat.
Contact me on my e-mail if you're interested.
Posts found: 5