ALL AT SEA
Sometimes age and experience is not enough and the right qualification can make all the difference
Qualifications and experience go hand-in-hand on the ocean waves
Ihave long been quite sniffy about the real value of qualifications and the importance that they are increasingly given within the outdoors sector in Scotland. Age and experience have always been my watchwords and I am often perturbed by situations whereby a person can be as stupid as they come, but as long as they have the right qualifications they’re ticked off as capable and competent.
So it was in this mode that I approached the RYA Yachtmaster Offshore Skipper’s course. I suspected that those undertaking this qualification had a bare amount of sea time and a lot of ‘clever time’ spent cramming for a test past.
In the realm of the sea and boats I believe there is no substitute for experience. Clearly I was not operating on this principle in 2007 when in the Southern Caribbean, with my young family, I impulsively bought a boat to sail back to Scotland.
At that point I was lacking in both qualifications and sea time. I still remember the open-mouthed alarm of a South American harbour master when I told him my sole qualification was a Day Skipper’s ticket. ‘But what about the nights?’ he quailed. It had struck him – and now struck me with a degree of concern – that is not possible to sail from the Caribbean back to Scotland during daylight hours only.
Fortunately we lived to tell the tale and ten years and many sea miles later, in January this year I decided it was time to get the paper to
prove t he experience. We have t he perfect teacher on our doorstep, James Fairbairn of Tobermory’s Hebridean Sea School. James is the relief coxswain for the Tobermory lifeboat, one of the busiest in the Hebrides, and has no shortage of experience having been around boats and the sea all his life. He is also blessed with a Buddha-like calm and patience, reassuring to a maths-phobic candidate like me.
I joined three other sailors for the one-week build-up to the Yachtmaster theory test before advancing to the one-week practical course, followed by tests at sea.
On the first day I realised that the other candidates had been revising in preparation and that my mind was full of cobwebs.
To stave off panic, I assumed my habitual role as class joker, which served me well at school until exam time. History was repeating itself as everyone laughed while I mentally disintegrated under the strain of working out tidal heights and times in secondary ports.
Next came courses to steer and estimated positioning and passage planning, meteorology, buoyage, light characteristics, vessel lights and shapes, tidal theory, leading lights, anchoring, pilotage, compass deviation and variation. The intellectual shock was so severe that I resumed another habit from school, smoking in my lunch break, which made me feel seasick.
By incredible luck I made it through the theory and the following Monday we began work on James’s boat Bold Ranger, a twin screw boat, significantly different to the single screw engines that I had operated to date.
My fellow students were superb. They were much younger than me, with fresh uncluttered minds which seemed to absorb and retain information in a way that my brain had long forgotten. All of them had a background of working at sea so they knew why they needed to get this qualification.
In turn we all crewed for each other, as one by one we took the role of skipper for the external examiner, including night passages at sea. Sailing after dark was by far the most hair-raising part of the whole operation, especially when James simply turned off the lights and told me to make it back to Tobermory using only the radar. Forget seasickness, my heart lurched so violently when he flicked the switch, it was all I could do to resist the sudden wave of nausea.
Though I am still a firm believer in sea time over qualifications, I have, however, found it useful to solidify the seamanship and navigation skills which remain in daily use in this ancient zone of the sea.
I am secretly very proud of my certificate, despite having poo-pooed such qualifications previously. Now where to hang it…?
‘Sailing after dark was by far the most hairraising part of the whole operation’