20/03/13 - Day Skipper Course - Kinsale

20th March 2013
Day Skipper - Sovereign Sailing - Michael
3*C - Blue skies & sunshine - F1-2

• Today I want to finish up on a positive note and hopefully get my Day Skipper...after a very long and difficult week with a less than professional instructor.
• I hope to feel happy and competent in all areas of the course and feel confident enough to take a boat out for the day.

Today we got out on the water early because we wanted to get off the water early and on the road back to Mayo!

Liz took us off the pontoon using a stern spring and then she was told to pick up a mooring. She did that fine and then Mike put me on helm.

Liz on helm.

I took us off the mooring and then came around and picked up the mooring again then he asked me to bring the boat on to the pontoon. The wind was coming offshore and the tide was flowing towards us so I decided to bring the boat at a 45* angle to the pontoon just like we had learned earlier in the week. I asked Fionan to call out distances and be on roaming fender. Dave was on the bow line, Liz was on the beam line and Martin was on the stern line. Everybody knew what they had to do and when Fionan said I was 2 metrs away I turned in quickly and then straightened up. I came in a little bit fast and should have come off the power sooner but luckily, my crew were all on the ball and they got all the lines on quickly so everything was fine!! He said that I could have come in a bit slower but that it was good other than that.

Then he asked me to come off the pontoon. So I asked Fionan to be ready at the stern with the roaming fender. I asked Everybody to release their lines apart from Martin on the stern and then once I had the helm hard over to the left, I asked martin to release his line. At this stage, the wind had already pushed the bow off, Fionan had a fender at my stern and I just put the power on to go straight forward to get out! (There was nothing in front of me). However, Mike thought that this was a good point to ask me what I was doing in a sort of 'what the hell are you thinking tone' ...so I stopped. He made me bring the bow back around and put all the lines back on. He said "Come on now Mia...this is simple stuff, we have been doing this all week!" I asked him what I had done wrong and he said that I should have put on a stern spring. 

I explained to him my reasons for not bothering with a stern spring because I didn't need it, the wind was blowing me off the pontoon so I just needed to take off the lines and then as there was nothing obstructing my way, I could just put the power on and get off the pontoon and away. Everybody else agreed that it was a good idea too. However, Mike made me do it his way.

Then he said he wanted me to do the whole thing again the approach, the whole lot and come off the pontoon my way, so I did. It worked perfectly and all he could say was "Yes...you see...that worked too..." and then told me that what I had done wasn't in a very seaman-like-manner! :/

This made absolutely no sense to me because he had taught us that you use a spring when the wind is coming on shore, the boat is pinned to the pontoon and you need to prise it off. In this case, the wind was offshore and already pushing the boat off the pontoon...so I didn't need a spring line.

I was glad I had my sunglasses on because at this stage of the long week with this fella, who was inappropriate and chauvinistic...I cried!

He then asked Martin to bring the boat on to the other side of the pontoon. When Martin had done that, he was back to me. He asked me to go into a really tight section of the marina where all the big expensive boats were moored and asked me to do a 360* turn. I did it, I had roaming fenders EVERYWHERE and I did it...but nobody else had to do it... which I thought was strange.

So anyways...then Martin went on helm again and reversed the boat into a berth next to these fancy boats in the small space. So I thought 'Oh, he's going to get him to do that instead of the 360* that I had to do...but nope...next up was Fionan reversing into a berth and then who was it back to!? Mia.

I don't know why he kept picking on me today...but he did...and it annoyed me. I had done everything perfectly all week. I would love to say that it was good to be getting more time on the helm but it didn't feel constructive at all. If anything, it felt destructive! So I reversed the boat in to the berth and then Liz reversed it in and we all went for lunch.

At this point, I could easily have got in my car and driven home.

You shouldn't feel like that on a course that you have been looking forward to doing for a long time.

After Fionan's epic sandwich making lunch time, we cleaned the boat up a bit so that we wouldn't have to do it when we got back to Kinsale again. So we packed all of our things up and packed the cars.

Awesome sang-ich making by Fionan!

Awesome sang-ich munching by Fionan!

We then went back out and did some wind awareness saiing. Mike asked us to sail to different things and we would have to tell our crew what we wanted to do with our sails, whether we would be tacking or gybing and also tell Michael what you call each point of sail is. i.e Broad reach, beam reach, close hauled etc.

When we had done that, we did some man over board drills. Mike tried to show us how to 'hove to' if somebody has gone over board. But this didn't work and failed as a demonstration. So we just picked up the man over board on motor.

Martin then sailed us in to Sandy cove where we anchored. We dropped the sails and Liz & I went up to the bow to drop the anchor. You should always let out 4 meters of chain to every 1 meter of depth. So if there was 6m of depth you would let out 24m of chain. You release the anchor slowly to avoid swing. Then you put the boat into reverse a little bit to let it bite. You have to take transit points to check you wont drift!

You should also anchor so that you are facing into the tide. If there is no tide you anchor into the wind.

Then we went back to Kinsale! :D

Michael gave us a debrief... short and sweet and let us know that we had all passed.

I was absolutely delighted to have passed but only wish I had a different instructor so that I could have enjoyed the experience more. It felt unfair that he took so much away from my week.