I have been thinking about being a Captain and dealing with baby sailors, newbie crew, lately. This is a stress that can be so immense for us Captains. All the other sailors who are not Captains cannot even begin to imagine it. This is a topic I have nobody to share a conversation with about, that I have decided to voice it here, in the slim chance other experienced Sailing Captains might be able to identify with it.
As I am a girl Captain basically alone in the world who was foolish enough to invest everything she has into a blue water sailing yacht I find myself in a difficult position. I am constantly in need of crew. My crew Brendan recently commented that it seems like every boat has a couple on it out here doesn’t it? An astute observation with a lot of truth to it.
I get that to every bell curve there are outliers but if we stick to the middle of the bell curve on this subject we will find that probably 95% of all sailboats out here have a couple on them, defined as either married man and woman, dating man and woman, or sometimes even gay couple. There is probably another 4.8% that are solo sailors and of those… most did not start out that way. The usual story is that man/woman couple sets out sailing and the relationship fails for whatever reason and the man continues on the boat alone. In my case the girl continued on alone. Of the small pool of solo sailors most of them wish to have a partner with them and the quest for the single woman willing to live on the ocean in a small sailboat has spawned entire websites.
I give to you the next piece from a chosen paradigm to help me explain the following ideas to you, so please don’t waste time attacking the wrongness of the paradigm but rather try to follow the central idea please.
The Captain is the beginning and end of all authority and responsibility on a ship…
PERIOD
If you disagree with this simple tradition feel free, I have met a number of boat owners who feel little to no responsibility for their vessels or crew, but for my purpose I hold them outside the title ground of Captain. Even rich children can own expensive toys.
This idea comes from thousands of years of Naval tradition and when it comes to human and boat against mother nature on the ocean no social explication will negate this reality. Although many grown children pretending to be men will do anything to weasel out of this responsibility.
So assuming this paradigm to be the “truth” we proceed from…
I accept this in my version of reality.
I am the Captain… therefore I hold all authority and responsibility for what happens on my yacht.
When my crew makes a mistake… any mistake… it all comes back to me… it is my mistake. Mother does not care who actually mishandled the line or helm when she comes to punish your yacht. The Captains job is to avoid getting punished by mother, avoid getting anybody hurt or killed, avoid destroying damaging or sinking your vessel. Captains have to be quick in their mind, extremely observant of their crew, and very diligent to the details, lest disaster find them.
Once, years ago in my home port, I had an old experienced charter fisherman say to me… “…. Lexi… you gotta understand… mother nature is a serial killer…. she has killed more people than all the wars combined…. her mood will not stop just because she is killing you… so respect mother’s moods…” he concluded with a swing of his beer.
His truth still rings in my ears even today.
So as the Captain I am always trying to be a good captain… I try really hard not not make too many mistakes out here… keep everyone and my girl WildChild safe.
I have a choice between looking for only experienced crew… or completely novice crew, I have had both. I am still unsure which is best. I often choose baby crew so I can train them my way… and make sure they have a good proper foundation… and they do not come with bad habits.
My life gets easier when my baby crew graduates to just “crew”. This takes about 300+ sea miles and 10+ different sails under their belt to achieve. Until then you have to watch them like a hawk for their mistakes. After they graduate to crew you still have to watch them.
As the Captain though… crew stresses me the fuck out. I am responsible for everything they do. They will screw up things you could never imagine and in ways you couldn’t possibly foresee. It is my job to find and catch these mistakes before they compound into danger. This is extremely stressful.
Here are some fun stories for you… to illustrate my point…
Boat Hook
A boat hook is a simple pole all boats have that has a hook on the end allowing the sailor to reach out and grab things that might either be in the water, on a dock, or a nearby vessel.
So back in November 2020 I have this new baby crew named Alex on my boat. I had been classroom training him for weeks and we finally got the boat launched. As I was motoring away from the work docks out to the mooring field nearby I suddenly found that I did not have full engine control. I had no throttle control. Essentially the engine could only idle and was on the verge of trying to stall itself out. This was a fuel feed problem I found and fixed later.
As we are slowly motoring in calm conditions out to the mooring field I explain to my young crew exactly what we need to do and what we need to achieve. I explain to him that I will do my best to get the yacht, bow first, slowly to the mooring ball, and he needs to use the boat hook to reach down, grab the mooring line and bring it onboard and just get it on the cleat anyway you can. I will then run up an do everything else. This is pretty simple and he confidently says he understands and no problem.
With a slight cross wind, I am unable to go into the wind to get the mooring as would be standard because it was near a wall, I slowly with limited engine control get the bow over the mooring ball and put the engine in neutral. We are now slowly drifting straight into the wall 50 feet ahead. I have no engine control to reverse with. Calm day, calm waters, slight breeze.
The seconds tick by… and weirdly I see my new baby crew laying down on the bow reaching over with his hands trying to grab the mooring line with his hands…! My freeboard is 44 inches at the bow so this is a terrible idea. I thought he dropped the boat hook. I start yelling do you have the line… to no response as I realize my yacht is now drifting past the mooring line and the line is nearing my rudder and prop.
Everything was calm and good seconds ago and in a split second we are in danger. We are drifting into a wall 20 feet ahead and the mooring line is about to tangle in my prop or rudder. I put the engine in reverse, still with no throttle control and steer my ass end away from the mooring line then try to go beam to the wind and use it to fall off sideways to the mooring.
When I ask him about what happened… he said he didn’t know what a boat hook was. I had both told him and showed him the day before. He heard in his mind… hook the line with his hands. I never said any such thing. He misunderstood and I did not know he misunderstood such a tiny small simple detail. It was all my responsibility, it was a detail I didn’t catch until too late and almost ended in disaster. It stressed me out.
2 knots
Three months later I had this girl crew onboard Kyndy. She was only with me for two weeks but had just come from crewing on a yucky yucky CAT for ten days in the ICW, not her first time on a boat. I spent a week giving her a good deep sailing foundation and had been patiently training her for 12 days up to this point.
We were coming into a crowded anchorage outside of Jolly Harbour and as we were still a mile out I put her driving at the helm, engine on, as I went up on deck to drop the mainsail alone. Captain always does the hard stuff and tries to only give crew what they are able to handle. Kyndy had been given driving instructions training and experience before, simple stuff. As I was about to go up on deck I told her to just try to keep the yacht’s speed at 2 knots dead into the wind to enable the yacht to be able to steer. You need water moving past the rudder to have any ability to steer effectively. 2 knots is sufficient for WildChild. She said she understood and we worked well as a team to get the mainsail down.
I come back to the helm, I motor very slowly into the crowded anchorage weaving around other anchored yachts looking for a place we can drop our hook. I slow down to 1 knot and go slowly in the protected anchorage until I find a spot. I explain to my baby crew just hold her into the wind as best you can and go engine neutral when I tell you to. She does as instructed and I get the hook dropped. As we fall back and I check our swing radius and position the wind shifts back to normal and I decide we are too close to the yacht behind us. We need to move the anchor 50 feet to the right closer to the cliffs, closer to the shallows.
I explain everything to my baby crew, she says she understands the dance we are about to perform and I go to the bow to lift the hook. Once the anchor lifts off the bottom I tell my baby crew to slowly and gently just bring the bow 20 feet to the right and 20 feet forward, to the starboard stern of the yacht in front of us.
Kyndy suddenly GUNS the engine full throttle and is suddenly driving full speed into the shallows 100 feet ahead of us towards the cliffs…! She rockets past the spot I had told her to gently move the bow to as I am running in a panic back to the helm to fix this before we hit bottom. I save the yacht with some fancy work rushed with adrenaline. Later when I asked her why the hell did you do that…? She replied that earlier I told her to keep 2 knots speed to be able to steer. She noticed we were only moving one knot and she thought she had to hurry and get up to 2 knots before we miss the spot.
In her mind all completely logical to her. Sophistry I could not possibly imagine when I gave her instructions. Sophistry in her head I did not know I had to fix. It seemed obvious to me that when moving your car up a few spaces in a parking lot one would never gun the engine up to 60 kilometers per hour to move 50 feet. I thought I had communicated clearly, go slowly, she had just watched me going very slowly to the first spot, I failed to see her misunderstanding and I failed to correct it. That girl really stressed me out. You never know what baby crew might suddenly screw up.
Baby Crew at the Helm
About a year ago I was sailing up from Grenada with two German crew onboard. Elena had been sailing with me for about 8 months and she had a lot of ocean experience. She knew the details and the rhythm of the yacht well. Young German Mr. Kol had recently come onboard and I had been training him for about a month up to this point. The young man was quick to learn and had both good instincts and good memory for details.
I was begging to let my guard down as the Captain. I had both an experienced crew and a smart young good new baby crew onboard. The theory was that sometimes I could relax and actually rest.
We were sailing along the east coast of Grenada up towards kick-em Genny (the active underwater volcano) and it was a clear calm day with good sailing conditions, shortly after the above picture was taken. I asked mr. Kol if he was ready to take the helm and he was eager for the opportunity. Elena had gone down below but as Captain I stayed close by to babysit my baby crew. I was sitting with my back to the companionway and facing backwards. I was talking with him and asking him questions to paint a mental picture for myself as to what was going on around us and to keep him focused on the right information, keep him paying attention.
While standing at the helm, looking straight ahead, in calm clear easy sailing conditions Mr. Kol almost ran over a local fishing panga…! Like the closest call WildChild has ever had to hitting another vessel. He was awake, alert and watching the ocean in front of us and he drove straight into a small fishing boat 4 miles offshore. The fishing boat had to suddenly start their engine and hurry out of our way to avoid getting run over. Baby crew could still make huge mistakes in the best of conditions. How can I ever relax around baby crew if they can fuck up this badly. We almost killed people that day and it was all my responsibility.
A month later Mr. Kol had more experience and knew the “prepare to go sailing” routine. WildChild does not have a dedicated topping lift and uses the main halyard as a topping lift while at anchor. So to prepare to go sailing one of the easy tasks is to remove the halyard from the back of the boom and bring it up to the head of the mainsail. Mr. Kol had been well trained to do this and had done this dozens of times up to this point.
As we are preparing everything and motoring out of the anchorage I ask Mr. Kol to move the main halyard please. He does. What I do not catch is that he did not bring it between the lazy jacks as per normal procedure he brought it outside the lazy jacks then down thru them to the head of the sail. This is a huge and disastrous mistake. If you try to raise your mainsail thru your lazy jacks it will get stuck… caught up… if not noticed on time and still hauled it will rip out the lazy jacks, possibly damage the spreader or rip the sail.
As we get out and I swing the helm around to come to wind to raise the mainsail I cannot see his mistake because the dodger and bimini obscure my view. Mr. Kol is at the mast about to haul the mainsail halyard to raise the sail staring straight at his mistake and doesn’t see it, we are smashing thru 5 foot waves in 20 knots of wind. I have to get my sails up and my crew back inside before we run out of sea room and hit the shallows ahead.
For whatever random reason, my own super cautious nature and worrier Captain experience I decided to stick my head out to just check that all looked well before I gave the command to haul the main. I noticed the mistake and ordered it corrected before it became a big problem fast. We ran out of sea room and had to abort the attempt and go back for another run at it. Even well trained baby crew can make tiny mistakes in things they know well and should know better than to make. You still have to watch them like a hawk, double check everything. It is very stressful.
Seasoned Crew
Last year WildChild was sailing up the Caribbean chain before Covid. We had anchored in the Grenadines off a little tiny island called Mayreau. As I had two crew onboard and Elena had been sailing with me for a long time I felt relaxed and confident in her abilities. I knew what she could do. She was a seasoned crew with a lot of experience sailing WildChild with me. I felt relaxed and confident in her.
With seasoned crew I could put at the helm this gave me more time and ability to go up on deck and train my new baby Crew, real hands on teaching. As a team we motored WildChild about a mile offshore from the anchorage and then had to turn around back towards the anchored boats to go into the wind to raise the mainsail. This is a common practice as most anchorages are good precisely because they are in the lee of the island, the wind comes over the protecting land.
A mile was more than enough sea room to get the mainsail up even if we went slowly. I put Elena on the helm after I brought WildChild hard around into the wind and told her to just control and watch the boat and yell at me if she needs to fall off if we get close to shallow water. She says she understands. I go up on deck to train my baby crew about raising the mainsail alone. For whatever reason, despite having a lot of instruments at her disposal Elena is failing to hold course dead into the wind. This isn’t hard and she has done it many many times before. The clock is ticking by as she is trying to figure it out.
What I do not see and do not know… but Elena is standing at the helm looking at on the chart plotter and depth sounding instruments… is that she is driving straight into a shallow rocky underwater point. I only see water and a good distance from shore. She dives straight into the rocky shallows and hits bottom. With her eyes open and instruments telling her she was doing so, she kept going and didn’t react to anything. By the time I figured out her mistake from on deck it was too late…. WHAM… we hit a rock and grind past it. I am scrambling to run back to the helm to fix this before we really get fucked here.
When I later asked her… why did you do that…? she replied… well… I don’t know.
It seems that when the Captain has two crew onboard, no matter what their experience level, it is always twice the stress for the Captain… it is twice as many people to watch for twice as many possible errors from. Even seasoned crew can screw up very basic things.
Baby Crew Mistakes Anchoring
It was about two weeks ago that my current Crew Brendan and I sailed here to coco beach in Barbuda. Brendan has been given the same great sailing education that all my new crew gets. I have wonderful diagrams and perfected teaching program I put him thru to make sure he knows what is going on and what to do.
Brendan has been a little cocky and confident with “…yeah yeah I know what to do…” , and has been doing such a great job as crew I have let my guard down. As we came into the wide open beach anchorage in calm conditions I decided to bring Brendan up on the bow with me to teach him how to do the anchor locker work when we anchor the boat. I had been teaching him how to raise the anchor but I had not yet taught him how to drop the hook, in itself not a very complicated thing to do.
There were other anchored boats around but this was the first time Brendan had come to anchor with me in a “not crowded” anchorage where we would have some drifting room. This gave me an opportunity to teach him how we drop the anchor on WildChild. Everything was calm and the winds and sea state were calm as we began the procedure. I decided that rather than me doing all the work, (as is my normal habit as it is easier for me to do everything myself than to train my baby crew to do it) I decided to give Brendan the thick leather gloves and have him stand in the anchor locker and drop the hook by hand under my guidance. He is always telling me he prefers to and wants to learn everything by hands on doing it. He dislikes verbal explanations and wants to do it for himself, not watch.
I explain to Brendan carefully and with precise details what to do for each step. How to unlock the anchor restraining line from the bow roller, how to get the chain off the windlass. (on WildChild we do not lower the anchor using the windlass… it goes too slowly… there is little control… and in strong conditions is too much pressure on the deck mounted windlass… sometimes the gypsy drum can come undone… it is safer and easier to control the chain by hand and use the bow cleat) I have him hold the chain in his hands, with the thick leather gloves on, and explain to him how to slowly lower the anchor shank over the bow roller and hang the anchor. Then I say “okay you can drop the anchor here“.
He completely lets the chain go and run completely free piling up on top of the anchor on the bottom….! Like gravity is suddenly pulling all of the anchor chain over the bow roller as fast as possible with nothing to stop it all from spilling out…! (Relax Captains I do have 65 feet of rode at the end securing the chain to the yacht)
It shocks and surprises me. Nobody has ever been foolish enough to do this before. I have explained to him before how to anchor the yacht. I went over with him in great painful classroom detail how we lower the anchor to bottom when the yacht is slowly moving backwards… how we slowly play out the chain so it lays down nicely on the bottom behind the anchor and plays out nicely until we achieve a nice 5:1 scope then we cleat it up and bear down on it.
I went to specific and painful effort to put in his head all the information about how to anchor the boat. He “yeah yeah’ed….” me during the classroom training because it was so obvious and so easy for him to understand.
Suddenly and without warning my baby crew does something so completely unexpected that calm and good turns to dangerous in the blink of an eye. He has given up all control the the chain. I do not have gloves on to grab and catch the chain. He is suddenly piling all the chain on TOP of the anchor, a huge no-no. And the entire chain is running out free! If it tangles the anchor, as it is likely to do now we will drift into the boat behind us.
I am suddenly surged with adrenaline and trying to solve the problem in seconds.
Later I ask him… why did you do that…? He says… you said “drop it” so he literally dropped the chain. He assumed the “IT” was the Chain instead of the anchor. I said drop the anchor, it never occurred to me that I would have to be so extremely precise with my words because he would suddenly empty his mind and be literal to what he misheard, he did drop the anchor as a by product of dropping the whole chain. The anchor did drop too. I had no idea his head was empty and had zero mental understanding of what we were trying to achieve, he was nodding and telling me he understood the whole time.
Yep… my bad… I made a tiny error with the precision and clarity of my words. I thought he remembered and understood the ideas and principals I had just taught him. I failed to imagine creatively enough how he could screw this up. I had no idea he was mentally disconnected.
This is my life as a Captain. I am constantly getting and training different people to be crew for me. Each one them will make many mistakes (which is human) and each of them will make mistakes in creative new ways I have to try and predict and I have to fix before they become disasters. In time they make less mistakes but will still make mistakes.
This is my life as Captain, I am always responsible for everything, all the time, every second, and I am always the one who has to fix the screw ups, it is always my money that pays for damages. What is frustrating is that even if you try to foresee the 50 possible ways your crew can screw things up, and guard against them, they will find amazing and creative new ways to screw up things you never even imagined before. You cannot guard against the million possible ways for humans to misunderstand and fail, but mother will be holding you to account for it.
I see the other cruising couples out here sailing together as a tight knit team for years and I am envious. I wonder what it is like to sail with a full time partner for years, where you each have the time and luxury to learn each other and create a safe routine as a team, where things run smoothly and the Captain gets to relax because they know they can trust their crew…? I wonder what it is like to have good experienced crew to help me.
A luxury I cannot imagine… a luxury I have never known.
I am a solo sailor with constantly changing crew of baby sailors who can stress me the fuck out.
Cheers sailors and fellow Captains out there….
Captain Lexi
… the thoughtful and reflective today ….