Fences not Ambulances

Not too long ago, I was asked by an inexperienced sailor for a couple of weeks training prior to an Atlantic crossing. He had already bought his boat on the advice of a friendly yacht broker who claimed that it was ‘just right for him’.It was a typical, modern, 44-foot, very light-displacement yacht.

On the face of it, he had done a good deal. The boat builder claimed in his literature that the yacht was suitable for an ocean crossing and it seemed to be good value for money. It had superb accommodation: eight berths, twin heads and the usual luxurious master cabin with a double-bed that you could walk right round. It had roller reefing on the mainsail and the jib and a complex system to bring the running rigging back to the cockpit. Extensive instrumentation provided a state-of-the-art GPS chart plotter system for navigation, with screens at the chart table, on the coach roof and just in front of the wheel.

He knew the boat that he had bought was quite heavy and that heavy-displacement boats are best in bad weather and that was what he thought he had bought. But he had made the common mistake of confusing a heavy boat with a heavy-displacement boat. Displacement is all to do with hull shape. The length and very wide beam of his boat meant that, despite its weight, most of it floated on top of the water, like a dinghy. Heavy-displacement boats have narrower beams (with the drawback of less-spacious accommodation). Because more of their hull is under water, they are much more stable in rough weather. Either the broker knew no better or, eager to sell the boat, chose not to correct his customer’s misunderstanding.

My heart sank. I knew his boat would bob about like a cork in even moderately heavy weather – a most unpleasant and tiring motion guaranteed to make almost anybody seasick. I knew that the rigging – adequate for short coastal hops – would be severely challenged by the Atlantic. I knew that the electronics would work fine as long as all the instruments functioned perfectly but that the maze of interfaces integrating different equipment meant that a single faulty instrument could cause the whole system to fail in a way that only someone with a PhD in Computer Science could hope to sort out.

How could I contradict a broker and a manufacturer and tell my client that the boat that he had bought was totally unsuitable for an Atlantic crossing when three-quarters of new boats - designed to look great at boat shows and expected to spend most of their life in marinas - suffer similar defects?

After two weeks training I advised him not to attempt the trip unless he left in December and took a minimum of two very experienced people with him as crew. He went ahead. The two people who went with him as ‘experienced crew’ proved to have a quarter of the experience that they had claimed. The crossing was arduous and terrifying, all three of them suffered badly from seasickness and exhaustion, the motion of the boat proved to be very uncomfortable and it’s violent slamming when sailing to windward put enormous stress on both the crew and on the standing rigging. The owner has since told me following his return from the Caribbean (by air) that the boat is now for sale in the Caribbean and if it doesn’t sell there he will get a delivery crew to bring it back, I for one wouldn’t want the job!

Another client spent a great deal of money on a rather lightweight 40-foot motor cruiser with stern drives and no bow thruster, he was told by the dealer that the boat didn’t need a bow thruster. He booked two days training with me, but because he had already had some training with me (on a boat with fixed propeller shafts) he decided to take the boat out prior to his instruction with me. Very sadly the boat was almost impossible to handle in a marina even in a moderate crosswind without a bow thruster and he damaged it quite badly by hitting a pontoon, terrifying himself and his wife, and immediately decided to sell it. (I am pleased to report that on my advice he has had a bow thruster fitted and after two days instruction with me his confidence is now restored, the damage has been repaired and he is now much happier about his purchase, and so is his wife!).

Others, with zero knowledge of boating, buy cruisers as fashion accessories to go with the villa on the golf course and the top-of-the-range Mercedes or BMW. For me to advise people after they have bought a boat is starting in the wrong place. What they need is ‘a fence at the top of the cliff not an ambulance at the bottom’. Thus maximising your boating pleasure must start with finding the right boat – and this means confronting some unpopular truths about many of the boats on sale today. Unpopular because boating is about dreams, and people don’t want their dreams to be shattered.

The truth is that manufacturers, driven by competition, are cutting corners to build to a price. Thus many new boats are not seaworthy in bad weather. And, if you look at the whole-life costs (including running costs, maintenance and depreciation), boats that seem to offer incredibly high specifications may prove a very false economy. For many, buying a new boat is as emotional and subjective a decision as buying a new car. We are influenced by advertising, brands, lines and fashion. But buyers need to beware – especially where their or their family’s safety is at stake. Boat manufacturer’s and brokers may not like to hear me say these things, but I am afraid that they will hurt their own market and therefore do themselves no favours over the long term by selling boats with such a high potential to disappoint.

Manufacturers and brokers have been listening to their customers - but the customers do not always know what is best for them. A cynic might recall the old quip about a certain computer company of whom it was said ‘they believed it was morally wrong not to separate a fool from his money – and they were very moral people’. Ultimately it is up to us, the customers, to do a much better job of understanding our own requirements and making sure they are met.