What Happened to Teamwork? (Phyllis, 2007)

Ten years ago I met John and started scaling the voyaging learning curve. Since I was starting from scratch, it often seemed to me that the learning curve was vertical. Boat handling and maintenance are only part of the cruising package. Don’t forget learning to live in a small space, dealing with isolation from friends and family, coping with a constantly changing environment, and so on. There’s no way to learn it all before going cruising, even if you start from a much more advanced position than I did.

A few years back I wrote an article for Cruising World that they called ‘My Apprenticeship at Sea’. In the article I wrote about my frustration and lack of confidence in my own abilities due to the accepted wisdom that everyone who goes cruising has to know everything about handling their boat to be safe. ‘What happened to the idea of being a team?’ I asked.

We rely on teamwork in many aspects of our work and shore life; for instance, we don’t expect to know how to drive a city bus even if we take it to and from work every day, and we regularly commit ourselves into the hands of the driver of the car we are a passenger in without thinking too much of what might happen if s/he has a heart attack at the wheel, even though the ramifications of such an event will most likely be much more severe much more quickly than if the same thing happens on a boat at sea.

We posted my article as ‘A Prairie Woman Goes to Sea’ (see below) and I just got an e-mail about it the other day. Lydia writes [edited for brevity]:

My husband and I purchased our "Dream" off shore cruising schooner in May...It gave me some piece of mind to read your article and know that to start out I do not need to know how to replace a starter solenoid or replace a head. The latter of those two I believe I will leave to my loving husband Roger. We are a great team on our 30' Catalina on the lake, but we have yet to get down the dance of off shore cruising…

We wish Lydia and Roger all the best in getting their boat and team ready for cruising and once they get out there.

A Prairie Woman Goes to Sea (Phyllis, 2005)

I was born and raised on the Canadian prairie. When I first met John—a very experienced offshore sailor—late in 1996, my only sailing experience had been as ballast on a day trip in Australia. But when he wanted someone to help sail Morgan’s Cloud, his McCurdy Rhodes Custom 56, from Bermuda to Maine in the early spring of 1997, none of his sailing friends, knowing what early spring conditions are like on this passage, would accompany him, so he had resigned himself to a tiring single-handed trip until I volunteered to go along.

When we left Bermuda early that May, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. Would I get seasick? Would I panic when I could no longer see land? What would it be like to be away from other people for almost a week?

By the time we arrived in Maine five days later, I was in love with offshore sailing—in spite of the rough spring weather, having my sleep interrupted every three or four hours to stand a watch, and my growing awareness that the learning curve to sailing proficiency was going to be a steep one.

In the eight years since that first trip, I have sailed about 30,000 offshore miles on Morgan’s Cloud, including three Atlantic crossings, two via Southeast Greenland. I have met new people and seen new places, and I have experienced a radical change in lifestyle, complete with the challenges and frustrations that a major transformation brings with it.

One significant frustration for me is that I will never, no matter how hard I try, ever be the natural sailor that John and others are that started sailing as children. Anyone who has ever started downhill skiing as an adult knows how discouraging it can be to see a seven year old skimming down the mountain effortlessly and know that you will never manage that level of skill, no matter how many lessons you take. I find it equally frustrating when I think I have the boat moving well and the sails trimmed perfectly and John will come on deck, tweak something an inch or so, and suddenly the boat is skimming along at least half a knot faster than my personal best.

Nor will I ever know as much as John does about the complicated mechanical and electrical systems on Morgan’s Cloud. He started working on small boats when he was young and graduated to more complex systems over the years. I spent my childhood playing piano and reading—not good preparation for maintaining a sailboat.

So it really gets on my nerves when I read sailing articles and books which solemnly pronounce that both members of a couple must be competent in everything involved in handling and maintaining their boat before going cruising, implying that it was foolhardy for me to go on that first trip to Maine and, in fact, that I should still be on land somewhere taking lessons and going day sailing until I am able to manage Morgan’s Cloud on my own.

Safety is always cited as the reason why each cruiser should be able to manage their boat single-handed prior to going to sea, which makes a lot of sense in theory. However, there are many reasons why this may not be a realistic goal for every couple: one person may be unable to master a certain skill, another may have to earn money while his or her partner develops competence with the boat; together, though, the couple may have all the skills necessary to cruise safely. I don’t think they should be discouraged from cruising just because they are a team instead of two single-handers.

Starting with that first trip to Maine, I have learned by doing: during our second trip together I learned how to use the radar and to deal with vessel traffic; during a later passage I started navigating; and so on. John and I thought about possible scenarios that would leave me on my own and developed a plan of action that I could take based on my level of competence at the time. On that first trip this meant that I learned how to use the SSB radio to call for help. Over the years my potential responses have become more involved and self-sufficient as my proficiency with the boat has grown.

Because John is so far ahead in his knowledge of the various systems on Morgan’s Cloud, it would be easy to limit me to chores such as bright work, painting, cleaning, and provisioning which I already know how to do. Though I tend to do these more than John does, by working together on all boat systems during refits we are ensuring that I get exposure to electrical and mechanical jobs so that we can distribute maintenance tasks more evenly. By doing this, I am slowly learning how Morgan’s Cloud is put together, inside and out.

By learning while cruising, I have learned those things that are necessary to sail our boat, in actual cruising situations, in a way that works well for us as a team—something even years of day sailing and sailing lessons would not have achieved. Besides, I doubt very much that there is a cruiser out there who would say that he or she knew everything necessary prior to leaving. Cruising is all about new places and new experiences; it’s about learning as you go.

I still love sailing even though the innocent euphoria of that first passage has moderated as I have learned more about what can go wrong. I love being alone on deck during a night passage with the stars and moon or even the Northern Lights above and the hiss of the sea against the hull. How many people ever get the chance to be alone like that? To have nature determine where they go and when they get there? Or to get to places like the Southeast Coast of Greenland as a result of their own efforts? Despite the occasional stressful and scary times, I wouldn’t trade these eight years of cruising—not even for eight years of free sailing lessons.

I re-wrote this article in 2005 from a piece that I wrote for Cruising World magazine, published in August 2001, called “My Apprenticeship at Sea”.

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