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Friday, 16 April 2004 -- Cleaning Frenzy!!! The Bavaria is now ship shape. A long day cleaning and fretting about the exam.... Definitely more than a little cranky, testy and tense going in to tomorrow... Saturday-Sunday, 17-18 April 2004 -- RYA Exam... The first part of the exam was docking. I thought I had it down, guess not. I didn't do it well. I choked. That's all I have to say about it. Actual update from Jim.... The exam was an absolute f@#$%&*ing nightmare for me. I did nothing right except my blind navigation exercise: they send you below and you pretend you're socked in by fog, vis is down to 50m.... get us home. The examiner tells you what can be seen; you sweat over the chart, watch the clock, navigate furiously and pray. It's an exercise intended to mimic fog. My asshole examiner had me doing 6.9 kts over ground! When I said I would slow down in fog, he said "No, we have too much to do today. You have to keep at this pace"! I finally whinged enough that he relented and I dropped to 5.9kts. Fact is, this skipper would never EVER do more than 3kts in dense fog. Nonetheless, I excelled at that part of the exam. The rest I well, and truly, sucked at. Everybody on the other boat got Yachtmaster (YM). The other 4 on my boat got partial YM status (they needed to demonstrate improvement in key areas, notably Man Over Board ("MOB") stuff). I got nothing. Monday, 19 April 2004 -- Frustrated but dealing... The exam was not a good experience and I'll be re-sitting it soon. We're taking the Bavarias to CPT today, I'll work on things there and redo the entire exam next weekend down there with a different examiner. I'll be spending the week popping Pepcid AC tabs, pulling my hair out and drilling, drilling, drilling for the exam on Saturday. Tuesday, 20 April 2004 -- Groundhog week??? Kind of tired today and not really in a writing mood. So here are today's highlights: Spoke to Janice early in my morning (0200) after arriving CPT. Slept in til 0830 - an amazing luxury these days. Spoke briefly with Phil, our instructor about the exam and what I needed to work on. From 1000-1300 spent time practicing my docking. I suck less at it than I did at 0959. Still not good enough, but better. A quick run to the RCYC for fuel, return to the V&A, a bit more docking a called it a day. I'm tired from the stress of the weekend plus the run down here. I need to rest and really be at my best; 3 days of practice left. I'm sure I've left lots out of the last 2 weeks of updates - the days have run into each other... Wednesday, 21 April 2004 -- Nothing like letting loose... Today was a long weird day. We hit the water about 1000 as we did yesterday. I started with a bit of docking. It's coming along - the docking of yesterday sunk in and I was ok. As long as it does not blow too fiercely I should be fine. The new examiner has a reputation of asking you to do docking early in the morning - before the wind builds. The last guy had us wait until it was really blowing. That's what upset my equilibrium and led to the disastrous slide into incompetence last weekend. Then a bit of MOB work. I struggled. John & Steve were nailing it (frustrating but helpful to watch). I was not bad, just not making the progress I wanted. I'm close but need to focus on getting the right feel/touch for these boats. They really are pigs... comfy living but sloppy sailing. My plan is to nail MOB tomorrow, do some light prep work Friday and kill on Saturday. We headed back to the dock... I pranged (hey, it's a word in Africa!) the stern a bit on the 1st attempt in. Oops! "The throttle is your friend, it give you way and way give you steerage... use it!" So, after another stressful day on the water - I've got myself pretty worked up about the exam - it was time to relax. Fintan, Pete and Jeffie are leaving soon, Serge has already gone. Actually, Jeffie is leaving really soon - like tomorrow. And his birthday is Saturday. One last excuse for a blowout. Jose Cuervo made an appearance... need I say more??? The boyz in all their glory... from the left - Geoff, Steve, Vagabond, John, Fintan, Pete, Chris and Rolie
I have to say that the drunken phone call I got this afternoon was from a relatively happy Jim. He didn't seem nearly as stressed as he did last night - maybe a good party with the boyz was all he needed... :) Thursday, 22 April 2004 -- Experience the hangover!!! Sometimes you're forced to get silly. All I really remember is that the night involved shots of tequila (at least 4), a Springbok (creme d'menthe & amurula, the local equivalent of Bailey's -- YUCK!!!) and several Windhoeck beers. I knew it was time to go home when I kept seeing 2 Fintans. One is bad enough. A nasty headache today to say the least... Lots of water, light on the food and a few pepto tablets. On the water this morning it was much like yesterday. My docking showed improvement again. My MOB was lacking the progress I want. We came in for lunch. Then back out. Suddenly I was nailing the MOB every time. The confidence and touch are returning! Thanks for sending me the good jujus!! A bit of sunburn and even worse panda eyes than before the day started.... a light meal and retiring early should help me with the passage plan tomorrow... Friday, 23 April 2004 -- Passage plan again... I used the same plan. Funny how it wasn't good enough last week yet was fine today! Saturday, 24 April 2004 -- Yachtmaster??? A different examiner makes all the difference! My docking was still weak, my MOB under power was ok, I completely nailed MOB under sail and blind nav, I did some stuff the other guys never had to do -- I dropped anchor under sail; I checked the deviation card (card that tells you how messed up your compass is...) by checking transits ("ranges" to us Yanks). I did all of them pretty damn well! I'm now a Yachtmaster Offshore! ("Licensed" to sail up to 60 miles offshore.) Sunday, 25 - Friday, 30 April 2004 -- Starry eyed... This week we're sitting in the classroom learning Celestial Navigation. It's pretty damn cool. With that under my belt and some practical experience with the sextant I'll earn Yachtmaster Ocean. YMOc = credentials to go anywhere! After my exam Saturday, I collapsed. Sunday was just a jumble of frayed nerves trying to reform themselves into a sensible (and kind) human being. It did not work as well as I might have wished for. Monday at 0800 we were in class to start Yachtmaster Ocean Theory....that would be Celestial (or is it Astro?) Navigation, meteorology, and passage planning. Our instructor was Anthony ("I do not like my name abbreviated, if you must call me something you can call me Anthony"!) Astro Nav is this weird, could be horribly complex, is frequently tedious, and kind of neat thing. You start by assuming that the Universe is spherical and has no real "depth" - it's just a big planetarium ceiling above us. Then you use your sextant (Janice gave me a sextant for Christmas -- how friggin' cool is that!) and start measuring the angle above the horizon of Celestial bodies. That combined with a rough guess where you are (your "Dead Reckoned" position), a pencil or two, some paper, some special paper ("plotting sheets"), a faculty to do arithmetic (or in my case, a calculator), and 2,000 pages full of little numbers will tell you exactly where you are. Well, exactly that is if you consider that a 1 nautical mile (1852 metres, ~1.15 statute miles) error is good enough to be deemed "exact". The guy on our boat who joined us in Cape Town (remember, the guy who proved himself to be easily and universally disliked....) is a GPS junkie. He was constantly making cracks about the supposed inaccuracy of Astro Nav. Then he learned that most hydrographic surveys are sooooooo old that they have the continents in the wrong place. Turn on your GPS in Cape Town's Table Bay and it looks like you're 3nm inland. What's wrong here: is the land moving or is the precision of the GPS fix over-running the accuracy of the embedded charts? Plus, in the middle of the friggin' ocean, where the nearest land based, danger is frequently so far away you won't worry about it for days (or weeks!)...1nm can be deemed "exactly". So here's my perspective: see land? - use land and AToNs (Aids To Navigation: buoys etc.) for navigation ("ahhh, Jim, please!, try to keep Africa on the left!"); can't see land, but know it's just over there a bit? - GPS rocks here; ain't got nobody but albatrosses to keep you company -- pretend you're the ancient mariner and use a sextant. When you're that far from land you need things to fill time so a few minutes doing it the old fashioned way has some intrinsic value over the press a button approach. The table look ups are numerous and easy to cock up. The plotting of your position can be goofy and tedious. But the exercize is fun in the end. Plus you get to throw terms like PZX ("pee zed ex" not "pee see ex") Triangle, Azimuth, Zenith Distance, Spherical Trigonometry and so on around. Hey, how cool is that...another way to intimidate with a nautical terminology. Most sights use the sun. The Moon is OK, when it's visible. The stars and planets are tough...hell, who can actually identify Deneb, Dubhe, Arcturus, Polaris, Capella (ok, that one's easy!) (see, I love to intimidate with nautical/celestial terminology -- who among you knew this star names!), Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and so on these days. The sun is easy to pick out - even through clouds, shows up every day, can be readily identified, and give great data. Looks like I'm going to have to actually wake up during the day sometime. |
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