I’m Grumpy! Yacht Skippers, Electronics & Insurance

The advent of GPS and electronic navigational aids has, in my view, lowered skipper standards.

Electronics has also encouraged those without sufficient experience to put to sea.  A social media 40 minute video of a two week voyage, by competent experienced sailors, can also make it seem easy!

Really good radar and AIS, available to very small yachts has made things appear ‘easier’ too.  Note easier is in inverted brackets.

When I was a Commercially Endorsed Yacht Master Offshore it was recognized.  I don’t think it is thought of so highly today when a minimum requirement might be a Master 200 to skipper some yachts.  For the most part in the Commercial World a Master 200 would be a minimum requirement to say skipper a crew transfer vessel.

It did not help when the RYA dispensed with endorsing a ticket as non tidal if obtained in non tidal waters.  According to the RYA, provided Tides are taught in a classroom, that is good enough!  In my view, this was and is, a further depressing development and lowering of the bar.

I was told by an RYA representative that there are tides in the Mediterranean! Indeed there are, but please don’t compare tides in the Mediterranean with the likes of the Pentland Firth or the Alderney Race.  I’ve rounded Duncansby Head several times with great trepidation.

I have first hand experience of both Dinghy Instructors and Dinghy Instructor Assessors being embarrassingly out of their depth when confronted by tidal waters.

You cannot put to sea without understanding tide.  You cannot be a Dinghy Instructor in our rivers and on our coasts without doing ‘the practical knowledge’ of tides and their effects.

A qualified Dinghy Instructor, non tidal, would be out of their depth at our modest sailing club.  Yet, on paper, they are qualified to teach here.

An assessor came to our small club a couple of years ago to put some Dinghy Instructor applicants through their paces.  It was clear the assessor struggled with tides and their effects in our river, where the flood and ebb tide rips past the quay and our slip at a speed which is alarming to the unknowing.

RYA boating certificates and qualifications should still be the pinnacle.

It is probably too late to raise the bar again.  What a pity.

I thank my lucky stars for the thousands of miles I’ve sailed in the Thames Estuary negotiating the many river bars, swatchways, channels, sand banks and estuaries.  So many take offs and landings in shallow waters where the understanding of the tides, tidal streams and currents and how weather effects them is so fundamental to being safe.  This vast experience has allowed me to venture much further around our coasts and beyond.

More people are putting to sea than ever before.

Sooner or later an Ocean Rally is going to be struck by terrible weather and there will be many unsuitable boats and inexperienced crews in a great deal of difficulty.  It is a disaster waiting to happen!

In my view the RYA has become more and more commercially driven.  More people on the water means more fees and income.

A combination of more extreme weather and many more unsuitable vessels and skippers at sea is also affecting Yacht Insurance.

Up until four years ago I could telephone my underwriter and discuss a passage plan.  Mike never said no!

As an experienced offshore sailor himself he was always interested and enthusiastic.  I well remember meeting him for the first time at the London Boat Show.  I wanted to be insured to sail long distance and we talked for about an hour.

“I’ll call you about cover tomorrow” were Mike’s parting words.

I realized overnight that I’d been interviewed and undergone a subtle interrogation.

Mike did call the following day and offered me terms for a vast area.  Nor was there any question that I would not be covered 24/7 single-handed.

“And if you need to sail outside the area, just give me a call!”  And that was that.

I did call a few weeks later and asked if I could sail into higher latitudes that summer.  This amounted to a short telephone conversation, an email confirmation and I don’t remember a surcharge.

The same thing happened thereafter each year including a cruise from Suffolk to Madeira and the Azores and back to Suffolk in 2018.  There was a negligible surcharge to pay for that voyage and the fee was only pro rata for the time I spent outside my area.

I was also trusted to maintain my boat myself.  I did not have to pay a surveyor to tell Mike something that I could tell him myself!

Mike retired and my long distance cruising came to an abrupt stop with Covid.

Finally following Covid and after recovering from ailments I called my Insurance Company and asked to speak to Mike’s replacement.  There was nobody.

I asked if, fitness of crew (me), weather and boat dependent, I could sail to Iceland.  As my insured area included the notoriously tricky Faroe then Iceland would surely be fine.  It would be at the height of the short Icelandic summer.  I had discussed this voyage previously with Mike and he had been very encouraging.

The person I spoke to ominously paused and sounded doubtful.  She would speak to the underwriters.  I was no longer permitted to speak to an underwriter.

The answer was no.

I asked if I could return to the Azores instead.  Something I’d been allowed to do before and again the answer was no!

I was told a voyage would be considered with crew.  I then proposed that an Ocean Yachtmaster Instructor friend join me in Faroe and together we cruised Iceland at the height of the very short Icelandic summer.  The quote that came back was exorbitant!  So even with very experienced crew and a sound boat the Insurers were nervous.

There is no actual logic to insured areas.  I am permitted to sail to notoriously difficult Faroe!  I am permitted to sail Biscay and down the Portuguese coast, but I am not permitted to sail in safety well offshore down the Portuguese coast.  So concerned have I been with that coast in the past I have always given it a wide berth of a few hundred miles.   There is also now an unappealing ‘pissed off’ Orca presence inshore!

As I understand it the insurance companies have had their fingers burnt by the number of unsuitable vessels and crews getting into trouble.  Those boats are out there because of the ease of electronic navigation. The insurers are also concerned about climate change and extreme weather.

There is no evidence of the experienced solo sailor coming to grief any more than a crewed boat.  We are on high alert (and I feel certain I am on a higher alert than most crewed boats) close to land and traffic and HAVE to stop for rest.  We each of us know how long we can coastal sail safely before needing a safe haven.  Blue water routines are different and vary amongst us.  I cheat by having an audible alarm on both radar and AIS.  In the ocean I sleep 15 to 20 minutes every hour 24/7.  I have gone five days without seeing traffic.