Carey
Guru
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2007
- Messages
- 1,101
- Location
- USA
- Vessel Name
- Happy Destiny
- Vessel Make
- Custom Lobster Yacht
MarinMy guess, is that you, like me, find both satisfaction and concern in the fact that they are usually right. Rather disconcerting, don't you think?Marin wrote:
My wife served in the Navy and although at that time they were not assigning women to ships' crews she had a pretty good exposure to the "water" side of the military. Her father had a small trailer boat he used for fishing in Puget Sound and my wife frequently accompanied him. We started flying floatplanes up the Inside Passage in the mid-80s and between that and what the Navy had taught her about navigation she became very familiar with getting us around the region. She is particularly good with charts and maps.
All this knowledge and experience carried over for both of us when we got our 17' Arima fishing boat. Ditto when we got the Grand Banks. Today she routinely cons the boat. She holds a course more accurately in fog than I do, which is why when we're in fog she takes over the boat. The only thing she is reluctant to do is dock it. She can operate and interpret the GPS plotters and radar. During docking and undocking maneuvers she is in charge of the deck and handles the lines and fenders and, when we have guests aboard who can help out, gives and explains their assignments to them.
When we bought the Arima the first thing we did was take the USCG Auxiliary multi-week boating course at North Seattle Community College. While some of it covered material we already knew, there was a lot of new material ands simply being exposed to all of it was well worth the investment of the time. In this area (at that time) we had heard the USCG Aux course was considerably superior to the USPS course, which is why we chose the USCG Aux course.
Bottom line is that she is as at home on and with the boat as I am.
We have a rule when running either of our boats that I learned from Bob Hale, the publisher of the Waggoner Guide, probably the most popular cruising guide for this area. He explained to me that the rule he and his wife follow is tha whenever they don't agree on a course of action--- which side of an island to pass on, where to anchor, which path to follow through a narrow pass, etc., etc., etc., they stop the boat until they do agree. Given the knowledge and experience my wife has amassed over the years in both float flying and boating, I have found that it is well worth listening to her when she has an opinion on what we ought to be doing. Nine times out of ten, she's right.
-- Edited by Marin on Thursday 16th of December 2010 05:09:05 PM
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