[PUP] Getting experience, was Medical Training

[Scott E. Bulger]

Ken, your question is the perfect opening for something I wanted to discuss.

Often you hear "he didn't have the necessary experience" when discussing
some event after the fact.  Or, you need more experience to deal with these
conditions.

Well, how do you get experience?  You DO it.  Twelve foot seas, never been
in them, well the only way I know to say I have experience in 12 foot seas
is to BE in 12 foot seas.  You can either have them come up when your at sea
or go to sea when the conditions exist.  Then the press release will say "he
was out in conditions beyond his experience".  It's a paradox?

I have some experience with gaining experience.  30 years (and 50lbs) ago I
flew Hang gliders.  There is a procedure called a "Wire Launch" where three
people hold the wires of the Hang glider because the wind is so powerful it
will launch you before your ready.  The pilot tells the wire launchers when
to release and then he or she launches, communication happens from both the
pilot and the wiremen.  You gain experience by starting when you really
don't need wiremen and progressing in increasing winds until you are ready
for the big stuff, which we called an "Elevator Ride", when they release the
wires you explode off the hill straight into the sky, quite fun really.  Ok
enough reminiscing.

So for boating, there are many things I want my wife and I to gain
experience in that I would think others would benefit from.  I'd like to
take my Nordhavn 40 and my Camano 31 out on Lake Washington on a windy day
and practice Man Overboard Recoveries.  This is a potentially dangerous
activity and would benefit by having support personal to assist (and also
learn).  I'm not aware of any class I can take where I will gain this
experience first hand?  Bob Austin referred me to a sailing resource where
they tested MOB recovery systems.  West Marine paid some money and they
evaluated a number of different products.  I have no interest in evaluating
different products, but rather gaining the experience.  So I'm going to
contact the authors of the story and see if they will share their process
and procedures with me so I can benefit from their experience and lessons
learned.  Then I'm going to solicit names of people that would like to
participate in a day long series of recovery attempts and see if we can put
together a collection of people that share the goal of doing this.  I'll
contact the USCG and see if any special approval is required.  If anyone has
done anything like this in the past, please share your experience so we can
benefit.

The second thing I want to do is deploy my sea anchor.  Ideally this is
something best done in big winds, but like the wirelaunch, just doing it in
controlled conditions will be very helpful.  So, after we get the MOB event
done, I'll see if we can do another version for the sea anchor.

Anyone interested please contact me off list at scottebulger@comcast.net

If you would like to share ideas on this please feel free to do so.  Oh, in
case your thinking this should be on the T&T list, here is why I think it's
appropriate for here - We are talking about the kinds of things you need to
do to prepare for passagemaking.  As a coastal boater should I have this
experience, absolutely!  But as a passagemaking boater, the importance of
this procedure is heightened by the fact there are only two people on the
boat and if someone goes in the water, there is likely on one else to help,
so we will use that scenario as the premise for the exercise.  So, it's
decidedly appropriate for PUP!  At least in my opinion!

Scott Bulger, Alanui N40II, Seattle WA