The helping hand of good seamanship

There is this rule in when boating around that is different from when you are driving your car. In driving on the road there is the 'right of way' kind of rule. This also applies in general on when boating around, but there is this one major other rule.

'Apply good seamanship when needed'

Now seamanship is totally something different than 'semen' which most people have a very good understand of :D

Seamenship is referred to when people who are out on the sea must do everything to make sure that safety always comes first.

That means even when you have the right of way and you are entitled to be going first, the first rule is always to make sure an accident doesn't occur. Even if you are right.

In general this means that while being out on the water you have to make a small turn here and there to avoid each other. On open sea that is not a big deal at all.

It gets a bit more tight when you are in a small bay somewhere, or anchored somewhere, or tied up to a dock somewhere.

Example 1

At some point we were anchored in a bay somewhere in Greece where there is plenty of space around you. There is a certain rule of thumb on dropping a right amount of anchorchain to the bottom to make sure you have a good nights rest.

Say there is 2 meters of water below the bow of the the boat, and from the waterline to the dropping point of the anchor there is another 1 meter, which makes 3 in total.

When you drop you anchor and you want the chain flat on the bottom, 3-5 times the amount of depth is reasonable for some chilling and swimming. 5-7 times the amount of chain is good for a nights rest. 10 times feels right when it will storm like crazy. So that means that even in 2 meters of water, you will often drop 15-20 meters of chain.

In this certain bay it was 6 meters of depth, so I took 7 meters of chain as a calculating point and threw out 40 meters of chain. When the wind changes, the nose of the boat will turn to the other side and it means that you are turning in a circle around the point where your anchor dropped.

All noses in this bay were in the same direction and there was a tremendous amount of space between us and the next boat.

In the morning this situation changed as the wind came from a different direction and was also blowing way stronger to 20-25 knots all of a sudden. And also our neighboring boat looked a lot closer all of a sudden.

While we were all looking if our anchor wasn't dragging and if we weren't moving, our neighbor from the other boat stepped into his dinghy and came to us. He told us he had 65 meters of chain out because he was staying long term and that if we wanted to leave we should check together if the anchors would not give any trouble.

I call that a friendly check with each other on what we all are doing. Not waiting for disaster, but pro actively checking what the plans of the other one are.

Love it!

Example 2

After a day of facing a lot of challenges, the day after we just wanted to moor to a town quay quite early in the day. The wind was coming from the side and it isn't easy then to med-moor in a straight line backwards towards the quay. Med-mooring is that you drop your anchor as a start point and use your lines in the back to tie them to whatever point.

Since we were early there wasn't any squeezing in anywhere, there was just open space to moor. About half an hour later later another boat dropped his anchor also from the side and moored back next to us. My first thought in this one. 'His anchor is 100% certain over my anchor and this will give an issue when I want to leave in the morning'

So after the neighbor was installed, we told him that we though that his anchor had crossed our anchor. He didn't make a fuss, he didn't argue. He just asked 'when are you leaving, then we will make sure we will be there to take action if we have crossed'

What a friendly reply honestly, and I get that it doesn't always make sense to immediately fix it. It can also be done later when necessary.

The next day we all had coffee, cheersed for a bit had a chat and we were ready to depart. The neighbor and I both put our marifoon on the same channel so we could chat if needed and we departed.

While pulling up the anchor in the crystal clear water I immediately saw that his chain was over mine and we communicated a bit about it. The neighbor released some more chair to see if I could pull mine out underneith of it, but that didn't work. Then he untied his back lines, came forward until the angle of the anchor chain was good again and I could pull mine out underneith super easy. We were on our way again.

No stress, no harsh words. Just two people wanting the same thing and that is having an easy day without any damage to the boat.

Love it!

I just love this spirit around being on the water and everyone wanting the same thing. It always makes you wonder if there couldn't be a bit more of good seamanship in the rest of the world. We all want the same right?