LESSONS LEARNED
The first lesson is about navigation; doing it properly and thoroughly and leaving as little as possible to guesswork. The second is about human behaviour and endurance.
My father’s omissions in not fixing a starting position, nor streaming the log at two crucial times were serious. It meant that when they lost visibility they could not plot an estimated position with any accuracy. They had to hope that they were on track and that new visual clues would emerge – but they didn’t. Getting the tidal calculations wrong by misreading the chart led to a near fatal outcome.
Could these errors happen today? We can all still misinterpret charts, electronic or otherwise but GPS allows us constantly to know where we are and tells us if we are off track. Our chartplotter will even alarm if our cross track error is too great.
But what if, mid-passage, you had a power failure or GPS went down? Are you confident navigating without electronic aids?
In contrast to the massive changes in electronic aids to navigation since 1962, the demands that being at sea makes on us as human beings have changed little. Clothing has improved, managing sails is generally easier but sailing, especially in harsh conditions is still physically and mentally hard.
When my parents set out from Tréguier they were perhaps too relaxed. They failed to fix their position before the mist arrived. They became anxious as they failed to find Guernsey, had a horrible night and arrived off West Bay in no condition to make difficult decisions.
One mistake compounded the next so that in the end they just had to carry on but in retrospect I wonder if, the previous evening, they would have been better off returning to Guernsey for the night. Trying to attempt too much is something which can happen today despite, or even because of, our electronic aids.
I am very grateful that my parents returned safely that June. We owned Priscilla for another couple years but I don’t think the fear engendered by those 38 hours ever really went away and my parents took up golf instead!
Priscilla however is still going strong, having been lovingly restored by her present owners, Nico Dekker and Elyn Nierop.