Master under God?

I was sitting in my cockpit the other day, on the mooring that I rent in Matauwhi Bay, when a small charter boat came in. There are about a dozen boats available for hire, from a lovely outfit called Great Escape, based here in the Bay of Islands. Although they run a sailng school, a lot of their boats are chartered out as bare boats. Although they have a few 30/31ft boats, most of them are around 25ft and they often come to spend an afternoon, or a night or two, on the mooring directly inshore of mine.

I would say that most of the charterers are inexperienced: indeed, I suspect some of them have just spent a few days at the sailing school and are out on their own for the first time. Picking up a mooring in a crowded mooring field is rarely straightforward; this one actually has a fair bit of room round it, because it’s close to shallow patches (which these wee boats don’t need to worry about), but it’s still a bit nervewracking for the novice sailor.

That being so, I am always astonished that in the overwhelming majority of cases, when the boat is being sailed by a couple, the man is on the helm and the woman on the bow. For a start, if the person on the bow needs to communicate by voice, a man’s voice would be easier to hear over the engine noise than a woman. But even more to the point, the average man is usually both taller and stronger than his female companion. This is a real consideration with novices, who are likely either to not go quite close enough to the mooring, or to get there with too much way on. A man’s longer reach might make all the difference between snagging a mooring and missing it, and his extra strength means that he is more likely to be able to hang on for that extra 10 seconds, until the boat loses way.

But no, nearly every time – and I mean 99 times out of 100 – the man is on the helm. He approaches the mooring; his mate tries to guide him closer, but he is still too far off. She leans out wildly waving the boat hook and misses by only a few inches. So round they go and repeat the performance, often missing again. In the other instance, our Master approaches with panache and only puts the engine out of gear when his hapless mate reaches down for the mooring. As I mentioned, these are small boats and probably only displace about a ton; even so that takes a bit of stopping. The woaman grabbing the mooring is hampered not only by their boathook which, with no proper toerail on the boat, will fall over the side should she put it down, but by presence of a pulpit, with a vertical bar adjacent to the bow roller, makes it very difficult for her to get a turn around the cleat, even assuming she can bring the buoy over the bow. (Both these features are the norm on a production boat.) Usually in fact, she gets it off the boathook and is then dragged backwards along the side deck, letting go when she comes up against the shrouds. Let’s try again.

I have watched either or both of these happen more than half a dozen times in a row (I usually disappear discreetly below, out of sight, after the second time). Tempers are getting frayed, voices are being raised. He is losing patience and instead of going around and trying again, head to wind, he’ll try to put the engine in astern to grab the buoy, or turn round on the spot and miss by miles. Somtimes they give up in disgust (I assume) and steam off again. I’ve hardly ever seen the man offer the helm to the woman so that she can have a try.

Why is this? Is it an ego thing? “I am master of this ship and we all know that you can’t have two captains”. Does he not trust a woman, who can drive a car at 100 km/hr and park it safely in between two other cars, to steer a boat at a couple of knots and stop it in the vicinity of a mooring? Is it a fear of losing face should she succeed where he has failed? Regardless, this way of doing things is stacking the odd on failing: my advice to sailing couples is to put the brawn on the foredeck and – dare I say it? – the brains on the helm!