Bluewater Planning: The Right Crew

Each crewmember doesn’t have to be an RYA Yacht-master or 6-Pack captain—I have sailed across an ocean with a complete novice. My wife was concerned about what might happen if I got ill so I signed up an intensive care nurse as crew—they were not a novice sailor by the time we reached land.

However, there are a number of things that need to be done to make a successful ocean passage.

The boat needs to be sailed and maintained—yes, you will be doing regular checks and repairs on passage even if it is just swapping a line that got chafed. Sails need trimming and maybe changing. You need to plot a course and maybe do some weather routing. You need to get regular weather forecasts. Everyone needs food and rest. You need to keep the boat clean and organized.

Task Division

Then there are things that can go wrong.

I don’t mean that you sink and have to take to the life-raft but people get seasick or slip and sprain something. Dealing with all this stuff takes a team effort. A good crew will know the boat and divide the work between them so everyone has their particular area of responsibility. For example, the navigator will also be responsible for ordering and managing charts and maintaining the navigation gear. Someone should take charge of ordering, stowing and checking the galley stores both before sailing and underway.

Try and divide tasks evenly in a way that draws on each person’s skills. That does not have to mean that you have a full-time cook who does nothing else and nobody else is allowed in the galley. It is more about someone being responsible for that area and bringing any problems to the skipper’s attention.

Skipper Role

It is equally important that the skipper is not overloaded. As skipper your job is to manage the boat and you are responsible for the safety of your ship and everyone onboard. It is important to talk with the crew, but ultimately it is the skipper who makes decisions. A boat at sea is no more a democracy that an army on the battlefield is. As skipper, it is vital that you lead your crew and have their trust, which is something you have to earn!

Normally the skipper will be the most experienced person, which helps. The mark of a good skipper is someone who can calmly, quietly and competently organize the crew to meet whatever happens safely and efficiently. Good skippers lead, they don’t dictate or shout orders. If the boat arrives at her destination in good order with a happy crew and enough supplies for another week or two you did your job well. Give yourself the credit you deserve, it is a tough job!

Watch Keeping

This is a big difference with ocean sailing. On a coastal passage even lasting a few days, the watch order can be pretty informal, but once a voyage lasts weeks, you need a watch system—that means everything gets done without the crew becoming overtired. How do you do that? A great deal depends on the passage and the boat. The watch pattern for a 50-ft. boat with a crew of six on passage from California to Hawaii will be very different to a 40-ft. boat with a three-person crew doing a west to east crossing of the North Atlantic. A fast cruiser with lots of sail that wants to fly a spinnaker downwind will need a very different watch pattern compared to a heavyweight cutter set up for solo sailing. See “Sleep Routines for Long Passages.”

Here are some points to bear in mind:

Number of Crew

The collision regulations state that “all ships should keep watch at all times by all means available.” Does that mean someone has to be on deck scanning the horizon with binoculars 24/7? That might happen on a navy cutter but not on most sailboats!

These days most ocean-going boats will have pretty comprehensive electronic gear which makes the deck watch less crucial. Note the term “less crucial,” not redundant. However good your electronics are, never rely on them exclusively. At a minimum, somebody should be awake and responsible for the boat 24/7. In reality, that means a crew of at least three. Yes, I know lots of boats sail with a crew of two and I frequently sail solo but after 16 hours dodging fishing boats, I sometimes wonder if it is a good idea!

Sleep

In order to maintain our health and performance, most of us need about eight hours of sleep a day. We also need one sleep block of at least three to four hours. Sailing solo, you still have to sleep and that means relying on the electronics and alarms. With a crew of two you are effectively taking turns to sail the boat solo and if someone is sick you are back to solo. With a crew of three, you can do 6 x 4 hour watches or 4 x 6 hour watches and each person has eight or 12 hours between watches for eating, sleeping and other stuff, which is both more relaxed and safer.

Boat Type

You then need to consider the boat. Back to that fast cruiser flying her spinnaker. Can one person manage that? Maybe if the weather is ideal but you should probably have two people either on deck or ready at a moment’s notice. Calling “all hands” to handle sails three times a night is not going to make the off watch happy. Assume it will be blowing 20 to 25 kn and plan to have enough crew on deck to manage the boat under those conditions. If you are running three watch teams a day, the off watch can do things like cooking and cleaning up but that won’t work with two teams.

Weather Flexibility

Plan the watch schedule in advance, write it in the log and start it as soon as you leave port. It is tempting for everyone to be up and about for the first day, but you need to insist that those taking the first night watches have at least had some rest and quiet time. Also have some flexibility. What are you going to do in bad weather? A six-hour watch may be fine on a balmy tropical night watching the stars but when the wind is howling, the rain lashing and you need to be on the tiller because the autopilot is struggling, six hours becomes an Everest of time.

Plan how to switch up the changes to three hours or even less and decide beforehand at what point it is better to just hove to, lock her down and get everyone below. Believe me, in a full gale you are fare better off below monitoring the AIS and just sticking your head out of the hatch every 10 minutes than trying to maintain a deck watch. That does of course assume that your boat will hove to nicely. If not, you may be doing 20-minute sessions on the helm as you hurtle down the waves trying to avoid broaching.

Essential Skills

In this last part of talking about the right crew, I want to talk about the essential skills the crew needs to have between them in order to cross an ocean in reasonable safety. As I said at the start, everyone does not need to be a master mariner but between all of you, you need these skills.

Skipper. Every boat must have a skipper and everyone needs to agree who it is. If you as crew don’t trust the skipper, stay on the dock, simple as that. A yacht club might be run by a committee, but a boat offshore is not.

First mate. Every boat also needs a first mate—unless you are solo. They are there to take over if anything happens to the skipper. They don’t need to be an experienced skipper but as a minimum they should be capable of conducting a MOB drill (in case the skipper goes overboard) and navigating the boat to land and into a port during daylight. They must also be fully familiar with how to instigate a Mayday call and get help in an emergency.

Watch leader. If running watches with two or more crew, each watch should have its own watch leader.

First aid person. Every boat should have a designated first aid person and a second crew member with at least basic competency in case the main first aider is injured. Ideally, all crew members should have basic first aid and firefighting abilities. They should at least have practice using a fire blanket and fire extinguisher.

Emergency drills. Every boat should have established drills that the crew has practiced for emergency situations including MOB, fire, abandon ship and a medical emergency. See “Person-Overboard Retrieval Techniques.”

Technical Skills

There are then some highly desirable skills that you want on board. You need a crew member who can do:

• Basic electrical repairs
• Plumbing
• A bosun to repair sails and keep the rigging in good ordering
• A diesel mechanic capable of routine engine maintenance and repairs to the fuel and other mechanical systems

Ideally, this would not be just a skipper who can do all those things. It is important that these people also know that particular boat. It does not matter how good an electrician you are if you are faced with a system failure, all the lights have gone out and it is blowing hard and that is the first time you have looked at the electrical system on this boat, you will struggle. Give people time to get to know the boat’s systems before you leave the dock and support them with good documentation such as up to date wiring diagrams. For information about selecting crew, see “How to Select Crew for a Passage or Delivery.”

Conclusion

In conclusion, while I may be being a bit idealistic here, think of this as a target to aim for. There is a horizon out there waiting to be crossed. If you wait until you have the perfect boat, the perfect crew and it is the perfect time you will probably never set off. At the other extreme setting out with a poorly prepared boat with an inexperienced crew who don’t know the boat and you could be taking a helicopter ride back to shore with the coast guard.

Like most things in sailing finding the balance is they key. If you have done some passages out of sight of land for a few days, sailed in 30 kn of wind and have a boat you trust what are you waiting for?

For more information on bluewater planning, check out the rest of this series:

Bluewater Prep: Boat Design Factors

Bluewater Design: Weight and Dynamic Stability

Bluewater Planning: Proper Preparation