Does Having Crew Make Sailing Safer?

When we set out to cross the ocean, we felt the need to have a third crewmember. This concept came from a few sources: our parents, our friends, and random strangers.

Our parents wanted us to have a third person, preferably someone who has already crossed an ocean, on board for peace of mind. They knew we could sail the boat, and they knew we knew what we were doing, but they were worried that should one of us become ill or injured, the other person would then be single handing. They viewed a third crew as a backup to one of us so that we would never be sailing alone. 

Friends would always ask if we were having a crewmember for the "long stretch". They simply asked because sailing is a lot of work, and the thought of sailing continuously seems like an impossible amount of work! They thought that having a third crew would make life easier while cruising across the ocean. 

Lastly, every random person we met or came in contact with would ask if we were going to have crew on the voyage. This came from people in a grocery store, people in the comments section on YouTube, and people we met along the way. As soon as they learned we were planning to cross an ocean, they would quickly pipe up with "Are you going to have crew?" 

Hearing from so many people for so long that we needed crew made us start to believe that we needed a crew member for the passage!  

We picked up our first crew member in Florida. He was a one armed sailor who talked a big talk. He said his limp arm was not a hinderance, and we believed him! He was a recreational drug user, but said he was not addicted and he understood there would be no drugs, nor drug use, while on our boat. To top it off, he was an amazing cook!  Then we got out to the real world of sailing and it turns out that anything I asked him to do, he would respond with "I can't do that, my arm..." Then it turned out that he didn't even know how to sail! The final straw came when he stole our dinghy and went to shore on a drug run in a storm. So, was he really making us safer? 

As you can imagine, we got rid of him as quickly as we could, even paying for his flight back to Florida so that we would never have to deal with him again. Oddly enough, we thought that we still needed a crewmember to be "safe" so we began searching online through crew finding websites. 

We found a new crewmember. He has a skippers license for the Mediterranean, and he races sailboats, so he definitely knows how to sail! We chatted on Skype as a phone interview and all seemed to be going great. He even had two very strong arms! He flew to the Bahamas to meet us so that we could all sail to the Azores together with the safety of three people. 

Well, it turns out that people aren't always as advertised. His racing exploits were all done on Hobies, which may sound like an exotic boat class in Europe, but here in the states (where they are made) they are considered dinghies for kids to play and learn to sail in. He knows how to sail, that is for sure, but he has no comprehension of the forces involved! In high winds and full sail, he steered through a jibe, causing us to crash jibe! As he was on his way to this unfortunate event, I was telling him to correct the course as he was about to jibe and his response was "I know" with a very nonchalant attitude!  

He was also infatuated with speed, always wanting to squeak out any potential power available. If the winds were light, he was not satisfied with sitting around to read as we waited for the winds to return. He would yell at us (yes, actually yell) until we would put down our books and get out every sail in the locker to put up. The fact is, we have sailed Wisdom for thousands of miles and we know what she does with different sails in different winds. When there is no wind, there is no speed regardless of the sails we fly. To appease him (and to get him to stop yelling at us) we would go through all the sail changes from the working sails to the light air sails, expending a lot of energy and time in the sun to achieve no gain in speed. After a few days of this, he became tired and stopped insisting (by yelling at us) to change the sails. The problem was, we were all very tired and should a storm come up on us, we are now all very tired. 

On one of his early morning watches, the drifter (our light air headsail) was flying. He knew the takedown windspeed for this sail is 7 knots of true wind, yet he kept it up as the winds built. Suddenly it was 25 knots of wind and we were cruising along at 7.5 knots under only the drifter! I awoke to the sounds of gusting winds and rushing waves. When I asked him if he wanted to switch sails, he responded with "No, we are finally sailing quickly!" Lo and behold, the drifter ripped!

Lastly, one night while on my watch, we were full sail as the winds were light and I saw a strong squall approaching us. I went forward to lower the sails and setup the storm sailplan. He heard me working and came up onto the deck yelling at me with fury and rage! He was pissed off that I was changing the sails without "consulting him first". I told him that this is my boat and I am the captain, to which he responded "I will not bow to you!" 

Ha ha ha! Seriously, what is wrong with this guy in his head?! First, this is my boat. Second, I am the captain and he is crew. Third, when he came to the boat we went over the rules (which he agreed to) and one of the rules is that Maddie and I make the choices, he just follows orders.  Lastly, I am on watch and he is off watch; Go back to bed!

So, that argument took place while the squall continued to approach us and the sails weren't getting changed. While this may sound like a lot of complaining, this is only a sampling. Everyday he would do something dangerous (like never wear his life jacket, even alone on night watch, or wait until a squall hits to decide to reef) which made us feel very unsafe anytime he was at the helm!  In the end, we stopped in Bermuda to part our ways and get rid of him! 

Now, was it safer having him on board? We ripped our drifter, almost destroyed our mainsail when he was raising it without making sure all the sail ties were untied (it is amazing the noises sailcloth will make as a strong person puts all their might into a winch), reefed many times in the dark with high winds and a pitching deck, and trying to explain to him that crash jibes will break our gear and boat.

Once he was gone, Maddie and I were alone again, and we were able to sail Wisdom the way we like to: safely. We would reef early and with daylight, and we always wore our life jackets while on deck (and we would clip in too!) The biggest weight off our chest came from the lack of yelling that occurred on the boat once he left. His horrible attitude brought the morale WAY down, which made the experience of a lifetime a marathon of sorrows. If the winds were not blowing, he was pissed and made everyone else miserable. If the winds were blowing, he wasn't satisfied with our speed and became angry that we weren't going as fast as he imagined that we should be sailing. Without him, we simply set the sails and watched the sun setting over the horizon. We baked and ate delicious meals while we relaxed and read our books. 

After our experiences with two horrible crew members, we wonder: does having crew actually make you safer? 

Our thought is if you are a cruising couple who is able to sail your boat alone: No.  If you are a racing yacht who is obsessed with performance and speed: Yes. Cuising is a lifestyle, one where you are out there on a boat you are able to manage either alone or as a couple. Adding an extra person only means that you now have less space and use food & water more quickly!

Imagine picking up a stranger and bringing them into your house. Now imagine that you have to live 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for weeks on end! That is what having a third crew member is like on a cruising yacht. 

Reinforcing Roles on a Boat

We will never have crew again on our boat, but if you do choose to have crew on your yacht, it would behoove you to really grind in the roles and rules of the boat. 

A friend of mine recommended that you also have the crew members sign a "contract" which lists all the rules and roles. Out at sea, laws don't really matter when you are dealing with someone who has intense anger issues, but it might help somewhat. 

When a crew gets out of line and you tell them their place in the pecking order, having a piece of paper that they signed might help bring them back down off their high horse. Understanding the roles became an issue for us when our crewmember began thinking that this was "his boat" and that "he was in charge". 

He would frequently yell at us, call us lazy, and say hurtful things that would make Maddie cry. Then he would yell at me for plotting our course without "consulting him first". Weather information, route planning, and sail changes (in his opinion) all needed to be run by him for a final decision. 

Naturally, this is not the case and he was merely having delusions of grandeur. The order on the boat was made very clear to him:  

Herby is Captain and is in charge of making course decisions, looking at and interpreting the weather, and making sail plan decisions. If it had to do with where we were going, how we were getting there, and what sails were flying, Herby and only Herby was in charge.

Maddie is 1st mate (but her true title is Admiral) and she makes choices with me. She can give her opinion on where she wants to go and suggestions about weather and sails, but the final decision is ultimately made by the Captain. 

Un-named crewmember is last on the list. He follows orders, holds the course set by the captain, and is responsible for letting the captain know if a sailchange is needed while on watch. While off watch, he does the dishes and sleeps. He has no say or opinion with regards to sail choice, course, weather planning, or navigation. 

To give an example: say we are sailing from Point A to Point B, and along the way we see a pretty island. Maddie can say "Hey, that place looks cool, lets stop there for lunch!" I as Captain then have to look at the weather and see if we can stop there because of the weather. Next, I check the charts to see if we fit in there and can anchor safely. After all that is done, then I decide if we can pull in or not and stop for lunch. The crewmember, has no say in the matter. If they love islands or hate islands, their opinion has no weight on what occurs.

Now, I feel that we are also all people, so I am very lenient with this rule and will listen to their opinion and try to make them feel like they are part of the team, part of the boat!  

If the crewmember has an interest in learning how to do the functions of Captain, I will gladly take them under my wing and show them everything. They can watch as I look at the sky, check the barometer, take our noonsite, plot our course and check the charts. I am also very happy to teach them how to do all of these functions! I got my first ocean sail on board another boat as crew, and the captain was a wonderful teacher. He showed me everything and taught me how to carry out a lot of the tasks because he knew my next time out in the ocean was going to be on my own boat without any guidance. I would love to return the favor by educating someone new to cruising on how to safely sail across oceans and cruise in comfort. 

The problem is the line between crew and captain seems to have gotten blurred in the eyes of this one crewmember. All of a sudden, he felt that he was captain and making all the decisions. He began yelling at me one day when he saw a text to a shoreside weather person. I texted the shoreside person what our proposed route was and asked him to check for storms along that path. Our crewmember became irate and began yelling at me. 

Crewmember: "How can you have a course plotted?!" 

Me: "I have to have a course plotted, we are crossing an ocean." 

Crewmember: "You didn't consult me on this course! All decisions about this boat need to be run by me for approval!" 

To this I laughed, which only set him off even further. I thought he was delirious or just joking around, but it turns out he was very serious about this matter. 

Me: "I am the captain, I don't have to ask you about anything. I make the choices and you carry them out. I go over the weather and course with you as a courtesy because I think it's nice to let you know what we are doing and where we are going, but you are not involved in the decision making process." 

Crewmember: "You are not in charge, you are not in command of this boat." 

At this moment, I realized that he was not joking and I had to put him in his place, which led to more arguing until I told him to go back to his bunk and start the day over again without yelling. 

At this point, when he was having delusions of being a captain on his own boat, and a written & signed contract would have been helpful to remind him of his place in this boat.

The Value of Effort

Sport sailing is all about getting the most out of every puff of wind. Coastal sailing is about getting from one place to the next as quickly and comfortably as possible. Ocean sailing is about making it to the other side.

While the goal in all three types of sailing involves getting somewhere, and quickly, the first two categories can be viewed as sprints where the latter should be viewed as a marathon.

Ocean sailing is an endurance sport, there is no way around it. Every action you take requires energy, and you have to be able to keep up that pace for the entire ocean! This leads to different decision processes as to sail selection and trim, as well as course.

If the winds are light, but you have clouds building around you, you are presented with a few options:

Option 1 would be to take down the working sails and put up the light air sails. When the winds change, then take down the light air sails and put the working sails back up.

Option 2 would be to grab a book and wait for the stronger winds to reach you so you can keep sailing with the sails you already have set.

This choice came up on our third day of ocean sailing, when our crew member got frustrated that we were ghosting along at 2 knots on a broad reach under mainsail and staysail. He suggested that we swap the sails out and put up the drifter. I attested that this would require a lot of energy and that it would be the same result in the end: we would move slow.

Being how he is rather Type A and in a rush all the time, I told him that we would do it as a learning exercise, to see when something is worth the work.

I was relaxing and reading my book as we ghosted along at 2-3 knots and recommended that he do the same. Instead, we all got up, sleepy and tired since we just finished our night watches, and swapped the sails over. The entire conversion took about 15 minutes to complete and a fair amount of effort. The light air filled the drifter and we began moving along once again, at 2-3 knots.

So, was it worth all that effort?

Reefing When Ocean Crossing

The biggest distinction between ocean crossing and coastal sailing is the lack of help. If something breaks close to shore, there are plenty of people around who can help you. They will tow you back to a marina where an army of skilled labor exists to get you back out there sailing! In the ocean, if something breaks, you better know how to fix it yourself with the supplies you are carrying on board your yacht because no one is coming to help you!

This lack of aid is precisely why you should reef early. If you see a storm coming, don't wait for it to hit you to then start adjusting the sail plan! Reef now and wait for it to pass over. Once it has passed and completely cleared you, then shake out the reefs! This will ensure that you and your gear are exposed to minimal risk during the ocean crossing.

Maddie and I sleep in the V-Berth up in the bow and our third crew member sleeps in the quarter berth. At night, we rotate watches accordingly. Maddie has first watch from 9 to midnight. I have second watch from midnight to 4:30AM and the third crew member has the morning watch from 4:30AM until we all get up. Since we are up in the bow, we hear the sound of the stem cutting through the water, and we can also feel how much we are heeling over. I have frequently poked my head out of the forward hatch to see dark and stormy looking clouds all around us and notice that we are full sail! I assume that the crew member on watch is keeping an eye on them and tracking their movements with the compass. A storm that is not coming at you is not a storm you need to worry about. Then we pick up speed and begin to heel over to an extreme angle and I hear a desperate cry from the helm.

"It's time to reef!"

Yes, it is time to reef, and it was time to reef a long time ago! The two of us run up to the mast and begin taking in the sails while Maddie works the sheets and helm to keep us safe. I quickly tuck in a few reefs in the main while he lowers the jib entirely. After all of this, he will usually say something like, "We reefed at the perfect time" and I don't understand what he is talking about.

Now, he knows how I reef. I track the storms on the horizon and if I find one that is coming at us, get ready to reef. I will also reef if everything looks fine but the temperature just dropped significantly. I will reef at the first hint of anything getting stronger, and the reefing is so easy to do!

The boat is stable, the winds are light and manageable, and I easily tuck in a reef or two in the main without really needing the winch handle. The jib is easy to pull over the deck by tugging on the lazy sheet and releasing the halyard. There is no fuss about it, this is the perfect time to reef!

Once we are reefed, we wait for the storm to strike and when it does, nothing happens! We do not heel, we do not panic, and most of all, we do not risk ourselves or our boat in the process.

Sport Racers Adjusting to Ocean Cruising

Our third crew member is a racer at heart. Everything he does is for the sake of speed and performance, and he believes there is always something more that could be done!

We got to see his true colors when we were sailing from Bimini to Florida. The winds were picking up and squalls were raging all around us. I decided that this would be a good time to see how he handles the situation, since when he is on watch and I'm sleeping, he will be making these same choices.

We were full sail and doing around 6 knots before the winds picked up. The air temperature dropped and I wanted to reduce sail, but I also wanted to see what he would do. He began trimming the sails more and more, raising our speed to 7 knots, then 7.5 knots. The wind got stronger and we started heeling.

His response was to sheet the sails in harder and get our speed up to 8.6 knots. I figured this was fast enough and as the squalls were approaching, he would want to reef. Instead he said "I'm sure there is more in the sails" and he continued trimming.

He managed to get our speed up to 9.7 knots with winds so intense we were heeling over well past 25 degrees. As we were zipping though the water and the squalls continued to gain on us, I waited to hear him say the magic words: "Lets reef" but they never came.

More wind means more speed to a racer, and reefing is the act of slowing down. So I stepped in as captain and declared that we would now reef. The jib came down and two reefs went into the mainsail to balance out the staysail. I was hanging onto the mast and boom as we were violently being tossed in the seas as I cranked on the clew line to tuck in the second reef and create a nice flat sail, all the while thinking "I wish we did this when the weather was still calm."

When I got back to the cockpit, the racer declared: "You reefed just in time, our speed is still 8 knots!"

Maybe this is when a racer reefs, but as a cruiser, I reef the moment I think I might need to reef. This experience taught me that I will have to declare when we reef all the time as he will wait until it's no longer safe to reef before considering the option.

His helming skills are wonderful and he can trim for maximum performance at any moment, making him a wonderful crew member. But as a racer, he always wants more speed!

We are a cutter with a small electric motor, so when it comes to ocean crossing, we consider ourselves to be engineless. Since we rely so heavily on sails for propulsion, we carry an extensive wardrobe for Wisdom. We have a Full-Batten Mainsai, Battenless Mainsail, Trysail, Light-Air Mainsail, Staysail, Jib, and Drifter. I have specially ordered each sail with painstaking detail, so I know which sail plan is best for what point of sail. This means that I also know what speeds we will get out of each sail combination; he doesn't though, and this is just endless trimming potential!

In the beginning of our voyage, we would have sails set that I knew would work best for the conditions we were in and the conditions that were coming. Ocean crossing is an endurance sport, so it is best not to wear yourself out in the beginning! He would come out of the cabin with the navigation software on his phone and declare that we are not going fast enough and demand a sail change.

I would explain that the sails we have up are moving us along at 3 knots, and a sail change would require a lot of work and give us the same speed. This answer was not to his satisfaction and he would argue and argue until sails were changed. I like cruising because I like to listen to the wind and the waves. When someone begins yelling at me, I can't hear the wind and waves anymore.

Since he had so much energy, I showed him our speed on the navigation equipment and told him how to switch the sails over. I let him change the sails over and over and show him that all his efforts in the heat of the day under the blazing sun yielded no change in our speed.

I figured that this was a one time thing, and that now he would listen to me when I said that the correct sails are set for the conditions, but it wasn't. This guy is like the Energizer Bunny, he keeps going and going and going! Everyday, he would poke his head out of the cabin and begin yelling at me that we weren't going fast enough. I would tell him that it's the winds fault (we had very light airs) and he would insist on the same song and dance of sail changes. I quickly learned that the moment he forcefully put his hand on the companionway slats to lift himself up and begin yelling was the perfect time to tell him to go to the bow and hank on a different sail!

This went on for quite some time and I figured that this is just how he is. Every morning, he would complain about the slow speed of the sailboat in light airs. If wind came and we began sailing quickly, he was certain that more speed was available. I even explained to him about hull speed and calculated our maximum speed to show him that we could not possibly move any faster than we are at the moment, but still, he would insist on a sail change for "more speed."

I grew tired of this, and then on the 10th day, he broke! He came out of the cabin with a cup of coffee in his hand and a book. He sat quietly and read and didn't mention a thing! At this time, we actually did need to change sails, but he argued against it. I was shocked!

We were trying to beam reach with the wind just ahead of the beam flying only the Drifter. I said that we should lower the drifter and raise all the sails: Mainsail, Staysail, and Jib. He then told me we are on a broad reach. We both looked at the Monitor Windvane which was set at a close reach as it struggled to fight the lee helm of the drifter with no mainsail.

I looked at the situation and realized: he's tired and doesn't want to change the sails. I just woke up so I didn't want to start working just yet either. So we both just sat back and relaxed. We listened to the wind and the waves and enjoyed ocean cruising. It only took 10 days to reach this point of nirvana.