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Boating School - Seamanship

Seamanship is an art and is, specifically, defined as the art of operating a boat. A sailor has to be qualified in many different fields before he can progress in seamanship and these range from subjects like navigation and international maritime law to fire fighting and how to deal with dangerous cargoes.

Fortunately, today, instead of spending many years being apprenticed at sea, sailors can attend boating school and qualify in seamanship in a relatively short time. As the field of seamanship is extremely broad, the available training programs have been grouped into several areas of specificity, which would include such seemingly unrelated areas like Fundamentals of Damage and Claims Survey, and Government and Corporate Contracts.

A typical course in seamanship is the Yacht and Small Craft Surveying program in terms of which the student would learn how to prepare appraisals of seagoing vessels, place a value on a vessel for insurance purposes and draft and complete insurance ‘to-do’ lists. This is the ideal qualification in maritime surveying and should be strongly considered by anyone wanting to get ahead in this field.

The Career Development and International Maritime Organization (IMO) Compliance program is a great way to propel a career forward. Registering for this course at your boating school will ultimately qualify you to become a deck officer and will give you a firm grounding in areas such as bridge resource management, basic safety training, able seaman training and marine radio operators permit training. The Professional Mariner Training program, on the other hand, is aimed at qualifying you for career opportunities in the pleasure and commercial yacht industry and can be taken by beginners and experienced seamen.

Another option would be the USCG (United States Coast Guard) License Training course, which is specifically aimed at those mariners who have had plenty of experience at sea but who have not yet received any certifications. Once a student has completed this course, he or she will be ready to seek licensing in the Operating of an Uninspected Passenger Vessel (OUPV). Finally, the Fundamentals of Damage and Claims Survey program teaches one how to assess and report on yacht damage while the Government and Corporate Contracts course teaches the basics of maritime contracts on a local, state and federal level.

If you want to get ahead in boating, one obvious way would be to go to boating school and obtain a seamanship qualification.

Think about when you were getting your driver’s license, who did you practice driving with? Now imagine starting to drive without any of that on-the-road practice, having only studied your states required textbook and never getting the “feel” of a car. In my mental picture I cause an accident involving an eighteen wheeler loaded with chickens. The importance of spending time in a boating school classroom to learn about boating cannot be underestimated, however the skills, experience, and knowledge that make up what we call good seamanship can only be obtained on the water.

Good seamanship in many ways can be directly related to good common sense. Now I know you are probably thinking how does common sense teach me to tie a bowline, something any seaman worth his salt should be able to do? The answer is it does not, but there are many aspects of good seamanship taught at boating schools that directly relate to good common sense.

Most people attending a boating school are looking for the tools needed to go out on the water and have a good time, however as a skipper of any vessel you must always remember that being on the water is a dangerous place and you are responsible for the safety of your crew and guests. The old adages “discretion is the better part of valor”, “always err on the side of cautiousness”,  “A danger foreseen is half avoided”, “Better to tie off than to fly off” and a million others like them all come back to good seamanship and common sense.

In any difficult or dangerous situation that arises on a boat (and after a while of boating you will begin to realize that these situations inevitably arise at 3am, in the dark, just after it starts raining) you must first turn to common sense, and then your training. In fact, if you use common sense you may be able to avoid the situation all together.

One story that comes to mind is when a fellow boater (who will remain nameless) anchored his boat for the evening near a lee shore. A lee shore is when the wind is blowing from the land out over the water. He pulled in nice and close to the beach, dropped his anchor and allowed the wind to blow him back away from the shore while paying out the anchor line. When he felt he was a safe distance from shore, and had an appropriate scope (the ratio of the length of the anchor line to the depth of the water) he cleated the anchor line, had a lovely BBQ dinner with his family on board, checked to make sure his anchor had not dragged, and turned in for the night confident that he would have a good night’s rest.

Needless to say, the wind shifted in the night and blew his boat, with his family sleeping aboard in to the rocky shore. With the wind shift the strength of the wind increased and the waves quickly built to very uncomfortable heights putting himself, his family, and his boat in real danger. My friend in the story escaped unscathed with his family, but his boat had some major damage and was expensive to repair. The moral of the story? If he had used good seamanship skills (and a little common sense) he would have realized the potential for the wind to shift and anchored farther from shore.

Learn good seamanship at any of the WindPath Boat Club’s nationally accredited boating schools.