Choose your skipper with care
The following events are real, but names have been changed to protect anonymity
Skippers generally choose crews according to their individual skills, abilities and availability. However, I’ve not read much about the shoe being on the other foot when crews have a need to choose their skipper.
This is an important issue because choosing a bad skipper could risk putting the crew in danger. My wife and I learnt this lesson when we were invited for a trip aboard another person’s yacht in 1999.
With a bank holiday weekend a few days off and a big Azores high approaching the British Isles my mind started to wander from my office job in Bristol to where we could go sailing the next weekend. Sailing was and still is a regular summertime activity for my wife and me.
She had the answer to my wandering thoughts the moment I walked through the door at home. She’d had a call from Wilma inviting us to crew a large sailing boat to France.
Wilma and her husband, Dick, had been old sailing chums of ours for many years. We both owned our own yachts berthed in Plymouth and often spent summer weekends sailing in company to the various delightful coastal villages within a day’s sail of our home
