Since everyone else is offering their two cents I might as well offer mine. I took my completely non-sailing/non-boating wife last year to the BVI. I have sailed quite a bit several years back and have done the ASA bareboating course but it had been a while since I had been sailing. We chartered a 32' mono from Sunsail (the baby boat as all the staff affectionately called her <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" />). A few things that worked for us and a few that were a bother:
Man overboard: You will be basically singlehanding the boat so don’t count on her coming back to get you! Don’t fall overboard. I taught her to throw a flotation device in the water, release the dinghy, start the engine, drop the sails and use the VHF. Interestingly I just took the ASA 114 course late last summer after our trip so I could be prepared to drive a cat for our next trip. The captain conducting the course and I were having discussions about MOB drills and talking about my last trip with my wife. I mentioned that I told her to release the dinghy and drop the sails. He looked at me and said you know after 30 years of sailing I never thought of that. You have a highly visible motorized Type IV flotation device…
Mooring and anchoring: Everyone is different but we found it much easier for her to drive and for me to pick up the moorings. She can drive the boat no problem and she should be just following your signals, slow, left, right stop. Just point the boat hook at the mooring ball and have her go where you point, hold your hand up to stop, down for reverse. We grabbed moorings everywhere we went and didn’t miss a single one. In fact she was very proud of herself the first one we picked up at Cooper the first try.
The only issues we had was trying to get the boat out of the slip at Sunsail where it was wedged between a large mono, a cat and pylons with the dinghy in between all of it. I think the staff there thought we had everything under control and didn’t offer much assistance but we managed and we didn’t break anything.
The autohelm went out the second day. Normally not a problem but raising and lower the main was a little bit more work with my wife driving. “Now Sweetie, I need you to keep the boat pointed in to the wind for me while I go up next the mast and raise the main. See that house over there on that island? Just keep the wind in your face and the boat pointed at that…” I’m up on the top of the boat raising the main, trying to keep it out of the lazy jacks and wondering why the wind is now coming from the port side. “Sweetie…could you please turn back left so that we are pointed at that house I mentioned? It will make my job here a lot easier….”
Any way…we had a fantastic time!!! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/circle.gif" alt="" /> The best sail we did was to Anegada and that really was no problem. We did go in June since I knew the winds/seas would be easier to work with and we took it easy the whole way. Liked enough to have already planned our next trip on a much bigger cat with two other couples.
