One of the many hats I wore at Great Harbour was "Charter Coordinator". First thing I would do when someone expressed interest in a bareboat charter was send out the Charter Contract along with the "Charter Experience Questionnaire". You would be amazed at the (lack of) "experience" people assumed would be qualification enough to bareboat a half-million dollar, 31-ton trawler. And those were the honest ones! Others would just cross everything on the sheet off and scribble in that they had a USCG OUPV License and that should be qualification enough on its own! I always warned people to be truthful as I would be testing their competence when they got to the boat. When they arrived at the boat and got luggage aboard, I would first spend an hour or two familiarizing them on systems, anchoring techniques, and the PROPER way to pick up a mooring and build a bridle. We would then untie and take the boat out of the slip to make a few passes around the harbor, backing, turning, stopping and finally doing some "touch and goes" at the fuel dock. If I felt they were not qualified, they had the choice of either staying at the dock for the duration of the charter or hiring me for training. The ones who were absolutely not qualified had usually scared themselves to death at this point and were happy to have me aboard for training! It was the ones who I felt were maybe BARELY qualified and left on their own with the boat that caused me to lose the most sleep over the course of the week.
ERIC