friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Reddit can be a useful knowledge base, but there are certain subject areas where the consensus voice will confidently, clearly, emphatically state something that is simply wrong.

My current irritation is r/sailing, which has a large number of people who have clearly never sailed beyond the yacht club bar, or maybe a small lake, and have precisely zero clue about the interplay between wind and current (because they never experience the latter), spouting off bullshit with authority.

And there’s no point arguing with them, but my god, the extent to which they are smug about being wrong is irritating as fuck.

The Retronaut reshared this.

in reply to Sarah Brown

mastodon - Link to source

Dr David Mills

not reddit, but another sailing forum recently had several posters telling me you can't take apart a furler that way, it totally won't come apart that way in a thread where I was posting how I had taken it apart, with photos.
Deleted the thread and will post as an article to my own website instead.
What you get for trying to help.
in reply to SaraMG, last of her name 🇵🇹

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Sarah Brown

@SaraMG You time your arrival for the current conditions to be amenable. Getting this stuff right is a big part of RYA sailing courses.

In duress, you can burn diesel (the ebb through Portsmouth harbour’s entrance can be a bugger, but that’s only a few hundred metres), or you can drop a hook and wait for the tide to turn or slacken.

@SaraMG, last of her name 🇵🇹
in reply to Sarah Brown

mastodon - Link to source

SaraMG, last of her name 🇵🇹

Oh sure, when all goes to plan I'm sure it's fine, it's more the "in duress" part of your reply I was looking for and... yeah, sounds like about what I'd end up doing.

Could you imagine mistiming the tides though? One minute you're up to your keel in mud, the next you're trudging through it, waist deep, clawing towards the shore... how could that even happen? ;)

in reply to SaraMG, last of her name 🇵🇹

mastodon - Link to source

Alexandra Lanes

@saramg When I was out paddling on the east coast with @thelocalecho we got a bit like that at the end once. Wading through mud didn’t appeal so I hauled myself along in the boat paddlestroke by sludgy paddlestroke up to the rocks. I don’t know whether it was any less effort but I was determined I wasn’t going to wade any more than I absolutely had to!
@Sylvia Knight @SaraMG, last of her name 🇵🇹
Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Sarah Brown

@Piers Cawley My favourite one was approaching Dover harbour once. Dover is where the tide race for Great Britain meets. As a result the tide tables can be … aspirational.

On this one day, it was wrong. The water was meant to be 1st behind us. It was 2-3kts in front instead. Traffic control was trying to slot us in between a couple of Dover Calais ferries (bloody big fuckers), and was getting frustrated watching us on AIS approaching at barely 3 knots.

“Scarlet scarlet, Dover Dover, is that your best speed? Over”

“Dover, Scarlet, unfortunately it is. Sorry. Over”

Meanwhile the poor engine was screaming.

Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Sarah Brown

@Piers Cawley oh, cool! What were you sailing? Some sort of bilge keeler? Bridlington is quite shallow, isn’t it?

My boat currently lives in Portsmouth harbour. The Solent isn’t so bad. Watch the tides, especially around the Needles channel. Wind gets weird around Southampton water in a south westerly. Stay out of the shipping channels in the eastern Solent, and beware the ferries, because half of them are piloted by the marine equivalent of white van man.

⇧