Practical Skills
Teaching & Learning the Practical Skills of Sailing and Seamanship
I will be the first to admit that this is not the place to teach practical skills. It is pretty well impossible to teach the practical skills of yachting without actually being on a yacht and doing the stuff in practice.
One of the satisfying things about the sea, and sailing on it in a yacht, is that you cannot argue with it. The only thing that really matters, when you are learning practical skills such as boat manoeuvring, the practical application of navigation and pilotage, or sailing in different wind conditions, is: Does It Work? It may sound simplistic, but broadly speaking if it works it's right (and you may even have discovered a new way of doing it) and if it doesn't, it's wrong.
A good sailing instructor can work with this - and you never have to have any debate or argument, because it is obvious to one and all whether It (the technique, the manoeuvre) is working or not. The key to instructing is to let people learn by their own mistakes, while keeping things safe for the yacht and crew.
Occasionally things happen on a practical course which even the instructor doesn't expect. For the instructor, this separates the Men from the Boys (this metaphor has nothing whatever to do with age or gender, of course).
The inexperienced or insecure instructor will brush over the event, maybe telling the sceptical students what 'ought' to have happened, and then move quickly on to something else.
The good instructor will say "That's interesting. Let's figure out what happened there, and then let's have another go and see if we can find a better way to do it." This is often the best part of the course, particularly if the students are involved in coming up with ideas or explanations.
What This Section Will Offer
I do not intend to teach practical skills on a website, because you can't.
However, when you go on a practical course, the instructor will 'brief' the students before each exercise, and this will involve explaining what's going on - e.g. what is going to happen to the yacht, and why - as well as setting the parameters for the exercise.
An understanding of what is happening is vitally important, and it is the aim of this section to assist with that.
This section is not really started yet - I aim to write it piece by piece.
The subject areas I plan to cover are: manoeuvring, sailing theory, passage planning, pilotage, passage navigation, colregs in practice, night sailing, longer passages and boat systems.
Yacht Manoeuvring Under Engine
A book on this subject has been published by Adlard Coles Nautical.
To buy the book, follow this link:
www.acblack.com/nautical/Manoeuvring/Bill-Johnson/books/details/9781408132111
I have also written an article on '5 Golden Rules for Manoeuvring' - follow this link to see it.
www.ybw.com/specials/529933/five-golden-rules-for-manoeuvring