The other day we were sitting on the foredeck when a Sunsail bareboat came into the anchorage and proceeded to tie up to a mooring... Well sorta/kinda.
Maybe I should start with this...
Now, one would assume that a charter company would be a bit leery of giving the keys to someone for a newish 44-foot sailboat worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars and let them sail for a week in the reef strewn Caribbean without the ability to sail or maneuver the boat... Ya think? Apparently if said charterers can prove they have "sailing gloves" there is an exception.
So there we were on the foredeck, doing what we could for the Cruzan economy, and the bareboat was about to take a mooring... With me so far?
It was a nice day with about six knots of wind, no swell and plenty of searoom for the bareboat folk (i.e. no having to thread a crowded anchorage or other trauma producing agents).
Pretty simple you'd think...
Truth be told, it was quite entertaining for the first forty minutes or so as they bravely persevered in trying to tie up to the unattainable mooring. For the first half-dozen tries it was something of an exercise in physics (mainly Newton's first law) that nearly resulted in various limbs being pulled out of sockets... Like I said, FUN STUFF!
I'm really not sure what their second tactic was, but it seemed to involve putting a guy in the dinghy and towing him at speed towards the mooring and then having him grab it on the fly. This not only had the possibility of pulling limbs from sockets but involved the added bonus of someone getting wet or drowning in the process. I mean, you could sell tickets for this sort of mayhem...
When that continued to be fruitless they went back to the first method for a bit with the same result. I took this as an opportunity to go down and find another bottle of sustenance (watching bareboaters flail really is thirsty work) as I had a hint that nothing exciting was going to happen for a bit...
They then stood off from the elusive mooring and had a bit of a half time huddle with much pointing, waving and no small amount of rather interesting profanity. Now all re-enthused and with a "PLAN" they were ready to kick some ass.
One guy got back in the dinghy, two went up forward, and we were in play... Sadly the clusterfuck continued for another fifteen minutes or so until the guy in the dinghy managed to thread a dockline through the pennant and they were secure. Once tied up they apparently tried to "set" the mooring by motoring in reverse at full speed, something all of the Sunsail boats seem to do, which I am convinced is part of the reason we seem to have a case of disappearing moorings here as one after another of the sand screws seem to be pulled out... By my count we have had three moorings go walkies this week!
Seriously scary stuff and frankly I just don't get it. Learning to sail and run a boat is fun. In the USA there are any number of ways to do it through schools, clubs, friends who have boats and even a book and little home study will put you well on the way to avoiding being a doofus or even worse, being a doofus who winds up hurting or killing someone in the process.
Not an hour before the boat I've been discussing came in, another sister Sunsail boat nearly took off our starboard solar panels when they failed picking up the mooring behind us. We had a short face-to-face as I prepared to fend them off our stern the woman driving the boat mentioned that sailing was "hard work" as it had taken them a couple of hours trying to thread the barrier reef into Christiansted harbor. When my better half mentioned that it was easy as all you have to do is follow the buoys in the two clearly marked channels... the woman asked "what buoys?".
We're talking way past scary...
On the lighter side, here is a quick checklist to avoid being taken for a doofus...
- Lose the sailing gloves... Seriously, sailing gloves are the modern doofus indicator and have taken over for the old standby tried and true "yachting hat".
- If you have delicate hands and really must use sailing gloves either buy them used or take off the price tags and distress them by towing behind your car till they look really beat up and experienced (we'll all still know you're a doofus but we will give you credit for the effort).
- While sailing or anchored do not festoon your boat with fenders... If you know what your are doing, sailing is not a contact sport or a bumper car ride.
Listening to Green Day (it seemed apt)
So it goes...
