just thought I would share this with the ARC community - a month ago my 21 year old son Scott, who is going to be crew on our ARC adventure,informed me that he is staying with the boat when it gets to the Caribbean and he will look after her and can sail her to wherever me an the family wish to cruise (he has just finished his studies and decided it was time for a Gap year) - me and his mother were not too enamoured with the Idea and we decided on a cunning plan.
I told him that would be nice dream but I couldnt let him be in charge of the boat, as although he has been crew on nearly 3000 miles in the last 2 years - he has never been skipper and he is not qualified to be the skipper of a 42" Catamaran. I told him that it had taken myself 6 months of hard slog to get my skipper ticket - and there was no way he could do it in the short time left. I thought that was the end of the matter, how wrong could I have been!!
here we are 4 weeks later and he has done the following:
completed his Yacht master theory
completed his competent crew
completed his Radio course
completed his Skipper course but ran out of time to complete fully due to bad weather
he now has the same course next week to try and finish his Skipper practical
all of the above is a great achievement for Scott in such a short time and he had to do all of the above on a 40" Mono (he had never sailed a monohull before LOL)
anyway hopefully he completes his course next week - he deserves to
note to self: dont give your 21 year old son a challenge that you might regret!