Be Prepared

I had an experience recently that really made me think about preparedness, one of the most important aspects of sailing any kind of boat.

I’ll start the story at the end: we were three dripping wet people, all face-palming about losing those valuables around which so much of modern life is centered. Thankfully no one was hurt, but in the drink somewhere near somewhere near Sippican Harbor were a pair of new shoes, three pairs of sunglasses, three cell phones, a purse, two wallets, medicine, and a set of keys.

How do you manage to lose all of those important personal affects in one fell swoop? Hubris, sure. But lack of preparation was the biggest factor.

We had taken a first-time sailor out on a Vanguard Nomad, a family-friendly 17-footer that is supposedly hard to flip. Sailing home downwind with the spin up and night falling, we proved that theory wrong. Next, we watched the masthead blimp float away and the boat turtle.

Nothing was secured. And the Nomad is equipped with trunks into which everything could have been stowed. We just didn’t anticipate going for a swim. In fact, we were completely sure we would return to land bone dry.

Hours of discussion went on after the event about what we could have done differently (besides stowing our valuables); the spin could have been blown faster, but that certainly wasn’t to be expected of our competent, if completely inexperienced trimmer. I could have blown the jib. We could have turned down sooner, before the rudder cavitated and made it impossible. We could have gotten off the gunwhales faster instead of relying on the masthead float to prevent the boat from turtling. On an on the list went.

But primarily, we could have just thought ahead. Hell, we weren’t even wearing life jackets.

In the end, the boat was righted with relative ease, and we sailed home tallying our losses, wet tails between our legs.

My friend Lenny recently told a similar story. The nut that holds the ball onto his trailer hitch had somehow fallen off. He drove 40 miles to the boat ramp before discovering that, by some miracle, gravity had held it in place.

Imagine the repercussions of losing your boat while traveling full speed down the highway. Besides personal loss, the possibility of an accident is high. Consider how easy it is to double-check these kinds of problems before they occur.

Preparedness is one of the most important qualities of a good sailor not just because it prevents the kinds of embarrassments that Lenny and I experienced. Prepared sailors are also the ones that win races.

When I asked Ken Read what the best piece of sailing advice he’d ever received was, he responded, “Races are won and lost before the first gun even goes off.”

This advice echoes exactly the advice Luther Carpenter gives in his article Sail Like a Veteran Today. He writes that veteran sailors are up-to-date on the weather conditions for the upcoming days of an event; they assess starting line conditions (size and favored side) to assess their strategies in advance; they gather local knowledge; they use time en route to the course to determine the conditions. In short, veterans are prepared to win before the starting cannon.

And perhaps it’s an obvious point, but competent cruiser captains are prepared above all things. Weather, spares, food, foul weather gear, etc. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong on a cruise. For the safety of your crew and yourself, it’s absolutely essential to be prepared before a cruise of any length.

Whether you race or cruise or just go out for a few hours with no purpose or destination, you must have had experiences where rushed decisions or overzealousness put you in a tight spot. And so I implore you: take a minute to do those last minute checks. Make a list of things you could be doing better. Trophies, personal items, your boat, and even the lives of your crew could be at stake.

A better-prepared sailor is a better sailor, period.