Good seamanship in traditional utility boats. Responsibility - competence - safety - training

Abstract

Good seamanship used to be something one grew into by living everyday life on an exposed coast. At the same time, it was something one needed to strive to develop in play with a boat, weather and shipmates. Now there has been a break in the transmission of knowledge, procedures and abilities. Not everyone "knows what they are doing." Mistakes and accidents tend to lead to a demand for close regulation of details and formalized training. Within the coastal culture movement, we rather believe in raising awareness of the captain's responsibility and of the competences and abilities that must be acquired through practice. This is not a textbook on sailing utility boats, and neither is it a curriculum for captains-to- be. It is a contribution to the work being done with traditional utility boats. We want to invite those interested to participate in a discussion of what good seamanship in traditional utility boats means. We wish to contribute to a discussion of what competence it would be reasonable to require of a captain. We want to identify some of the basic procedures that in a concentrated form contain hundreds of years of experience with these boats. We want to present a blueprint for how one can conduct systematic training and development of knowledge and abilities related to the use of the boats.