Let’s just say seamanship was not her strong suit…My friend Anna learned to sail the San Juans by buying a 35′ Beneteau. NO there are no tests on boat handling in Washington State. If you can buy a boat, you can sail it, period. Legally, if you operate an engine 15 hp or over, you are required to get your boater’s education card. UNLESS you were born before 1955. Age limit or not, the reality is that there are boaters out there who’ve never cracked open Chapman’s Small Boat Handling, or Sailing for Dummies, much less the Red Cross First Aid handbook OR the boater’s education handbook or website. Yes, there are suggestions everywhere for us all to take the Washington State boater education course (which by way does not take more than a couple hours and costs $10: https://parks.wa.gov/442/Mandatory-Boater-Education). So…like in your car, always practice defensive driving.
A dear friend and I crewed on Anna’s boat in Friday Harbor on a busy summer Saturday, and it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. It wasn’t just the two near misses with other sailboats we had exiting the harbor. Nor was it the float plane’s aborted landing to avoid a collision with our boat. It was the time she rounded the corner behind Shaw Island and…you guessed it! She was within 100 feet of the ferry boat that was attempting to exit the terminal. Was it the four long blasts or the shouts of the passengers on deck that convinced Anna to steer away from the ferry? Not sure but she was laughing and my other crewmate and I were wetting our pants…from the inside out!
Because it was her boat and she was, obviously, the skipper, Anna did not take direction from us. A few times we gently said things like, “Well he does have the right of way in this case,” or “Legally we do not have right of way in the ferry lane.” But our captain knew best 😉 That was the last time I cruised with Anna. And thereafter my friend and I refer to Skipper Anna as “Captain Ahab.”
Salish Sailors 