Coastal Theory and Practical Learning

Feels like it’s been a month since I last wrote. Trying to remember all that’s happened over the last few weeks, it becomes a bit of a blur in my head. I left off with working through Personal Roles and Responsibilities (PPR) and getting ready to do Power Boat level II training. Turns out, power boating would be the easiest part of the time that has passed.

We ended up getting some time off of our normal schedule to get the PPR completed, which took the entire week for study and getting the two online tests knocked out. In the end, it was a whole lot of reading, and using group study sessions to get through the pain. But, once again, we all passed and moved on to the next marker.

I mentioned the Power Boat Level II training. It’s a one day course and we took the time during the PPR week to get it completed. During our entire sailing course, I am pretty sure, that’s the fastest we’ll get to go on the water. It was definitely fun and we all had a lekker time running around the bay, trying not to fall off the boat. Much like our sail training, we practiced man-overboard, docking, and undocking while also enjoying the sun and beautiful day on the roughly 15ft center console zodiac.

After PPR and Power Boat were completed, we found a new way to celebrate… Carmen found this great beach side braai at Die Strandloper in Langebaan. It was 10 courses, all cooked over open fire and included seafood, chicken, and curry. It was, probably, the best group thing we have done since we’ve all been together. Of course, it also involved drinking, and with starting with the drinks around 1100 and going through to the next morning, everyone ended up with an eventful night and we were all feeling it the next day.

Somehow, we made it through the weeked and the following week was dedicated to Coastal Theory. We all realized that, at this point, the course starts to get a little more difficult. It’s not that we learn a bunch of new stuff (we did learn a few new things), but it’s where we take everything we’ve learned to this point and put it all together. Now it’s time to take weather, tidal streams, tidal heights, chart plotting, collision regulations, and more and put them into use at the same time. We worked through passage plans and pilotages using all that information to get from point A to point B as safely as possible. Coastal Theory includes 3 different tests. The first was relatively simple, covering a bit of a review of the previous courses. The second test was only 6 questions, used the charts, and took each person roughly 6 hours to complete. The third test was one big passage plan with various questions and plotting throughout. That 25 question test took the entire day with a break for lunch. It wasn’t that the test was overly difficult, it was simply the amount of detail that we put into each answer.

Getting finished with yet another week in the classroom, we headed down to the marina and jumped back on the boats for Coastal Practical week. This ended up being a hectic week with multiple schedule changes and problems that arose. First, one of the boats was still in Cape Town and not complete with maintenance. Second, one of the two boats in Langebaan was still on the hard and we needed to assist with getting it splashed, which took an extra day. Lastly, as we finally got out sailing, we raised our main, just to realize that there was a pretty big tear down the middle. All of those issues along with some strong winds and relatively big waves for the bay caused us to be flexible with our training. At one point during a passage from Langebaan to Saldana, the weather pushed us so much that we continued to tack on the same track, back and forth, not making any distance to our destination. We did get in one beautiful early morning motor sail with a wake up at 0300 and setting sail at 0400. Honestly, with all that went wrong for the week, and mostly because so many things went wrong, we gained a lot of experience and learned some valuable lessons. Just goes to show that the zero to hero courses do come with life lessons and experience gained, even if it’s not over the course of many years. Finishing out the week, we headed back to the crew house for some time on Saturday afternoon through Monday morning before driving down to Cape Town, packing up our long missed friend Natasha, and heading out for the much anticipated mileage building.