• Chicken waterer
• Microbusiness ebook
• Homemade deer deterrent

South River Boat Rentals and Sailor For Hire

In Annapolis, we rented a sailboat from South River Boat Rentals ($400) and hired an instructor (who turns out to be Captain Rich from Sailor For Hire --- $200.)  We'd been looking forward to this experience for months, poring over our sailing book, and getting ready to learn to sail on a real boat.  Too bad it was such a big disappointment.

Griff seemed to be the guy in charge at South River Boat Rentals.  He was the one who picked up the phone when I made my reservation three months ago, the one who assured me all was well when I called to check in a week before, and the one who had a brand new jeep when we came back from our day on the water.  I had explained to him that Mark and I were as raw as beginners get, and I took his advice to rent a 26 foot Hunter, even though I could have gotten a 24 foot Rainbow for $150 less.  I'm still not sure if that piece of advice was greed on Griff's part or was actually based on his knowledge, but the new jeep makes me lean toward the former.

I think that Griff holds some of the blame for our bad day on the water.  Not only did he hire an instructor who turned out to be a dud (more on that later), he also didn't warn us that the wind was really too high for beginner instruction.  When Mark asked for Griff's opinion on what kind of day it was for sailing, Griff said it was a solid 10 out of 10.  In retrospect, I think that Griff is like many young men who like speed and excitement; otherwise, telling people who had never sailed that it was a good sailing day with a forecast of gusts above 30 knots seems like negligence.  On the bright side, Griff did let us take out the 33 foot Hunter at no additional charge --- evidence, perhaps, that he had some idea that it was too rough for us out there?

Enter Captain Rich.  To be fair, I think that Captain Rich might have just been the totally wrong captain for us --- he runs a business as a private instructor, so clearly he must not rub everyone the wrong way.  That caveat aside, he made our first sailing lesson extremely unpleasant.  Captain Rich was clearly tense about the high winds, and he barked orders at us as if we were deckhands rather than paying customers, not giving us time to even follow his orders before berating us.  He also called Mark "Hercules" the whole time, with a bit of a sneer in his voice that got my dander up.

I can just hear you saying.  "Forget whether he was pleasant.  Was he a good teacher?"  Knowing what I know now about the lay of the land, I would have set up the lesson completely differently than he did.  We were docked in South River (more of a bay than a river), which runs down for at least six miles before reaching the Chesapeake Bay.  Although the winds weren't low in South River, they also weren't the absurdly crazy winds we felt when we popped out into the bay...right in the middle of a morass of crab pots.  Captain Rich had to keep the motor on (and yelled at us a lot) to keep the boat from tangling in the crab pots or capsizing in the wind, and in retrospect I wonder why we even went out into the bay?  I suspect Captain Rich would have been bored running up and down South River, but it would have been more our cup of tea --- and I was careful to explain to him at the beginning that we were raw beginners, that our goal was to learn.  Zipping out into the dangerous bay just to take a picture of us in front of a lighthouse proves to me that Captain Rich either wasn't listening to our needs, or didn't care about them.

That lapse in judgement aside, I felt like Captain Rich was too impatient to be a good instructor.  He seemed far less interested in letting us learn to sail than in getting where he was going.  Even near the end when Mark seemed to be getting his sea legs, Captain Rich kept barking orders, grabbing the wheel, and not letting Mark make the mistakes beginners have to make in order to learn.

The real problem was that Captain Rich was a bad communicator, and sailboats require perfect communication between the captain and crew.  Near the end, Captain Rich had finally taken us back into the river, and Mark was at the helm, tacking back toward port.  A bit of harmony began to prevail on the boat, because Mark took the communicator role on himself (although I think it should have been the captain's duty.)  When Captain Rich barked an order, Mark made sure to not only answer that he had heard it, but also to maintain a running dialogue on what he was doing to achieve the desired goal.  Maybe if we'd learned that coping mechanism from the beginning, we wouldn't have been yelled at all day.

I'm ashamed to admit that around the middle of the afternoon, I was done dealing with Captain Rich and I just tuned out.  This was the best part of the day for me --- I closed my eyes, ignored unpleasantness, and just imagined what it would be like to have this sun, wind, and water around me on our own terms.  If it hadn't been for this bit of peace, I probably would be typing right now that I will never go sailing again.

Mark's excitement helped him ignore the nastiness, so he kept sailing.  We were in the South River, and I could tell that Mark was starting to really get a handle on the boat, but Captain Rich spoiled even that.  "We're barely making any headway upwind," he growled impatiently, kicking on the motor.  Couldn't he see that it was a big accomplishment for Mark to be controlling the boat on his own with a 20 knot wind?  Who cares if we were making much headway?

Despite bad weather and problematic instruction, I did get a lot out of our day on the water.  I got a feel for how to jibe, to tack, to pull on the sheets, how to furl and unfurl the jib.  But I won't be going back to South River Boat Rental, and I recommend that other beginning sailors find someone else to teach them to sail.