Coastal Passage Making (CPM)
In 2019 I completed Coastal Passage Making (CPM) which is part of the US Sailing certification program.
As taught at Club Nautique, it is a fairly elaborate program. Graduates can take suitably equipped club boats out the Golden Gate as far as the US borders.
Prerequisites include Bare Boat and Coastal Navigation, which I first learned in High School.
Students must pass in each role; crew, jr nav, navigator and skipper. The final step is the tag cruise which involves organizing a boat and crew (you need a competent navigator) and following a class boat all weekend, keeping within 2-5 NMi. Thus the minimum number of trips is five. Further at least one must include sailing through the night.
The usual trips are over a weekend, and limited to about 60 NMi, the destinations are usually south to Half Moon Bay or north to Drakes Bay. The prevailing weather makes Half Moon Bay by far the more common destination.
A couple of times a year though there is a five day trip, which allows traveling further afield. These longer cruises allow passing two roles.
I did a five day cruise in June. Every student on that trip was up for jr navigator and navigator. Our plan was to sail to Monterey, but deteriorating weather caused us to cut it short at Santa Cruz to ensure we could get back inside the Gate before the weather became unsafe. I was navigator for that rush back to the bay. We added a trip to Benicia, on the way back the ebb current in the Carquinez strait was impressive. We had to stear at about 45 degrees to our track to stay in the middle of the channel and avoid the bridge piers.
Rafting up
This is one of the skills to be demonstrated during the skipper and tag cruises, once as the anchored (host) boat and once as the guest. With two 40 foot boats in close proximity, there is plenty of scope for mayhem if the evolution is botched.
One of the key considerations is to avoid the rigs tangling as the boats roll, thus it is imperative to keep the spreaders of the guest boat behind those of the host.
The original instructions the school provided struck me as sub-optimal with respect to the order of lines to be tied, so I raised a question suggesting the correct order should follow the standard sequence for a side tie (from The Annapolis Book of Seamanship); after spring, stern, bow and then forward spring lines. My instructor (and if I recall correctly, the school) agreed. The after spring - from the midships cleat to the dock or othe boat near the stern is the one responsible for maintaining that vital separation of the spreaders.
From the perspective of the guest boat, rafting up is little different from a side tie (except the "dock" is not stable) and is approached in the same manner - at an angle with a turn and reverse at the end to remove way.
One difference to a normal side tie, the guest boat passes loops to the host boat - to drop over their cleats, and the guest boat takes care of snubbing them. This is similar to doubling lines so they can be cast off from the boat. The fenders are rigged much higher than normal too, since it is the gunwales of the boats that would otherwise be in contact.
On my tag cruise, there was an extra complication thrown in. The host boat had anchored near a mooring field, and there was a great big mooring float about 5 meters directly behind her. Of course the situation was not static; the host boat was swinging about its anchor and I had to time my approach for when the mooring ball was out of the way, it made no difference which side of the host boat I planned to approach, the mooring ball was in the way much of the time. It took several attempts to get a clean approach - sail boats have relatively low power motors and are thus sluggish in their responses, so darting in is not on the cards.
| Author: | sjg@crufty.net /* imagine something very witty here */ |
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