NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Teaching seamanship
From: Jim Thompson
Date: 2004 Oct 14, 06:31 -0300
From: Jim Thompson
Date: 2004 Oct 14, 06:31 -0300
Doug, I agree -- there is a world of difference between recreational and professional navigation. But recreational boaters are just that -- in it for the fun, on leisure time. So we need to find the "right" level of detail: enough to be safe, but not too much to be overwhelming for our purposes. Recreational courses, although they contain a lot of information, are "licenses to learn". Hence the concern about "getting the word out" to lands-persons who can buy a boat with a credit card, and then go to sea. On our Squadron website we quote a grizzled Coast Guard bosun: "You can't never know enough about the sea". We are planning an educational evening this winter with professional skippers who run the Strait routinely (harbour pilot, tug captain, ferry captain, and fishermen), for exactly that reason -- to give our members an opportunity to learn from the professionals about cruising in these waters. The Power & Sail Squadrons in Canada and the USA initially were energized by professional sailors, mainly military I think, and PS operational manuals are deeply steeped in military and commercial shipping traditions. Both organizations went through huge development stages after both world wars, as veterans came home loaded with experience and training. But over the years there are fewer of those kinds of members. I joined this list in part because there are professionals like you and Stacey and others on it. There are few places where we can connect with such experience. Keep your insights coming. We do drills on our 30' family power cruiser. And by necessity the family works on evolutions like undocking/docking, anchoring, mooring, etc. Most serious boaters that I know are more or less similar. As Lisa said, it's fun and informal, but obviously with a serious purpose. That kind of ongoing, post-course activity is promoted in CPS courses. Jim Thompson jim2@jimthompson.net www.jimthompson.net Outgoing mail scanned by Norton Antivirus ----------------------------------------- > -----Original Message----- > From: Navigation Mailing List on Behalf Of Royer, Doug > The differance between what the two groups are taught is as night is to > day.Even the most serious in depth recreational courses don't > come close to > what is taught,nor the subjects covered as in depth,as is taught to > proffesional personnel.This at best can only be considered as > "entry level"