Competent Crew

December 2001

Mike found the boat he wanted in one of the hundreds of sailing magazines he’d spent his idle hours drooling over. It was berthed in Majorca and though he hadn’t actually seen it - a Hallberg Rassy and therefore, in his opinion, the Rolls Royce of sailing boats - he put in an offer which was accepted. He then flew out to Palma to view and arrange a survey all of which, quite extraordinarily, went according to plan. I remained behind, again, and finished off the sale of the pub. I packed and posted to Palma what few items we could take with us, sold a little, binned the rest or sent it to charity (the village hall fund raiser did very well out of us that year) and then headed down to Southampton to do a five day ‘Competent Crew’ sailing course.

That was a load of laughs. I was the only woman on the course, sharing a small boat with five energetic male stoics. I felt very feeble. Actually I was very feeble. Not remotely stoical, I whined and whinged constantly about the cold. This was December in the Solent, fergawd’s sake, there was no heating at all on the boat and I nearly froze to death. Being the only woman I was given a small side berth, rather like a refrigerated coffin. The instructor, also our captain, took the other side berth which he valiantly claimed was quite snug. The four remaining men shared the main central cabin which also served as sitting cum dining room. By the time we all bunked down for the night a nice fug had built up and their combined breathing and snoring kept it relatively warm all night. Stumbling through to the head in the dead of night it took all my willpower not to crawl into bed with one of them. Had I still been a cute young chick I might just have risked it, but being the oldest person on board I judged it wisest not to.

Only two of us were at the competent crew level, the other three blokes were taking the Yacht Master course and the instructor naturally devoted most of his efforts to these worthy gentlemen. They were good guys, good sailors and happily they all passed. Me, I don’t think I really learned much except a few basic knots and how to make endless mugs of ‘Cup-a-Soup’.

We did many ‘Man Overboard’ manoeuvres – an important skill for any sailor, especially in those freezing waters. The instructor would hand control of the boat to each aspiring Master in turn then fling an old fender bound up with ropes over the side shouting “Man Overboard”! The appointed captain would allocate various jobs to each of his crew and I invariably got the easy job of keeping my eye on and pointing to the hapless m.o.b. When we’d circled round and come up on our man in the water, it was then my job to lean over the side clutching a boathook and hoist him back on board. They all thought it rather droll that I always got to ‘pick up the buoy!’ This job was relatively easily done in calm waters with five crew members, the ‘man’ being a rubber buoy with a convenient loop of rope attached. It would be a very different story if I were the only crew member left on board in heavy weather and the man in the water weighed 12 stone like Mike and was either injured or, worse still, unconscious.

I mentioned this to the instructor and he agreed soberly adding that, statistically speaking, if you did have the misfortune to fall overboard your chances of survival are very slim indeed. The most difficult part is getting the man out of the water and more than one sailor has drowned whilst his crew mates struggled to pull him back onto the deck. He went on to note that most dead bodies later retrieved had their flies undone indicating that the poor chap had been taking a pee over the side of the boat at the time he fell in. Women don’t seem to come into the statistics much, there not being that many women sailors, I guess. Even less that pee over the side.
Anyway, the moral of the story is: don’t fall overboard in the first place. Yup.

When I informed my fellow crew mates I was going sailing round the world with my husband, they asked what boat and when I said it was a Hallberg Rassy they all said “Aaahh – nice”. When I added that it was a 35 footer their smiles faded a little and the one said “snug”. It’s all about size with men.