Offshore Explorer with Scott Dodgson

I sailed into Marmaris, Turkey in late spring. Marmaris Bay is nearly enclosed by land. When you reach the mouth of the bay you smell the rich loamy soil of Asia. There is a modern marina and boatyard near the old market of Marmaris. Big hotels dot the shoreline. They added an airport several years ago which has spurred tourism and development. Once you walk off the beaten path, you are back in rural Turkey.

I was directed to a slip by my old friend Omar. Omar was a big burly man with a sweet disposition. We met ten years before, and he has been my agent in Turkey for all those years.

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A Sailor’s Point of View

Foreword

Oceanic travel by passenger ship began ending when the airline Pan Am announced regular transatlantic flights in 1945. Travel by plane changed the very essence of the traveler’s psychology and the fundamental experience of a different place. We travel to learn and grow. Curiosity drives our quest to see the next port, to look around the bend, to climb the mountain top, and sail to the edge of the horizon. Our travel experience informs our understanding of our place on earth and the relationship of places in ourselves. Traveling provides the contrast to our normal. A different place makes this place, your place, your home understandable. How we are prepared to experience our travel has fundamentally changed since flying became open to all who could afford a ticket. We have lost the benefits of preparation and thus lost the ability to comprehend the nuanced aspects of travel both interior and exterior.

With air travel, we no longer wait in a heightened state of anticipation over discovering that distant place. Honestly, the wait is about discovering that far-off place in our soul. No long evenings on the deck of a massive ship watching sunrises and sunsets, where the only entertainment is playing shuffleboard, conversing with fellow travelers to glean inside information about the best restaurants, reliable drivers, clean hotels, crime, shopping, history and a variety of other subjects needing to grasp the contours of the new place. Our vanity demands a world-weary appearance to cover our innocence as if locals will sanction us for our lack of experience. Air travel excluded the long periods of wonderfully anxious and sumptuous anticipation. Waiting is something we sailors do well as we have no choice given the speed at which we travel. Some travelers are pressed for time, limited by funds, limited by vacation time from work, wanting to skip the first big step and get to the heart of the vacation. The casual traveler wants to be transported from his comfortable chair at home to the steps of the Roman coliseum as seamlessly as changing channels on their flat screen television. No sweat. No hassle. No experience? Seen it. Ate it. Hiked it. Slept in it. That will do, thank you very much, but I have to be back at work tomorrow. The experience of place washed away within days of returning home, leaving little or no impression of that place on their minds or souls. What is the point of travel if you are not willing to be fashioned by the place even a little?

Sailing to a place involves an entirely different psychological and physical dynamic for the earnest and open traveler/sailor. Passenger ships and cruise ships offer a hint of the maritime experience. Modern cruise ship experience has been so honed to entertaining the passive traveler it is hard to see how getting off the ship at a port of call has anything to do with the authentic experience of travel other than to pry dollars from your hands for trinkets. Trinkets you use as a reminder of having been there. There is no dynamic experience, no moment of realization, no conversation with your soul or reminders of your place in the continuum of humanity. You are left with sad little trinkets and a reminder of a lost opportunity.

Sailing is a physical and mind-altering experience of dimensions rarely understood, even by local sailors. Lauded through time, a sailor’s experience informed the homebound. Travel changed their being. Regardless of education or age, they wore their foreign experience like so many tattoos, a traveling corporeal pictographic. The sailor is a portal to the world.

What I am describing is very real but largely forgotten. Travel by sail is a unique experience that prepares you in wonderful ways to enter a world, unfamiliar in culture, language, and custom, yet to find an honest kinship with the inhabitants because of your confident awareness. The physical and emotional preparations inherent in sailing across the ocean make you different. The sailor’s point of view was once a common entity that allowed one to see the world and be in the world at once with a sublime understanding. The sailor's experiences, the history, the people and their customs, their art, their industry, their desires, likes and loves all become vividly apparent as the sailor immerses himself or herself in the sea of life.

I am that sailor and here are the stories, large and small from a sailor’s point of view.

What is the sailor’s point of view? How does one achieve that awareness and perception?

Sailing slows the perception of time, allowing the mind to be in the present tense. There is nothing a sailor can do about the past and the future is a waypoint in the dis...

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The first time boat buyer will meet a maritime professional for the first time in the form of a surveyor.

Why? How to use it? And the reasons to follow the surveyor closely and take notes.

Maritime regulations are there to make you safe, prevent pollution to the environment, and provide suitable working standards.

Training is very much apart of regulations.

If you are buying a 27 ft sail boat with an outboard engine to 160 foot mega yacht all of what I’m going to discuss is important to some degree, but mostly it is important for the captain’s confidence and calm state of mind.

Periodic surveys and inspections of ships are carried out to ensure the safety and seaworthiness of vessels. With maritime laws becoming more stringent with each passing year, sea-going vessels have to go through a series of inspections to meet minimum requirements to continue sailing.

Annual surveys by classification society are a vital part of a ship’s trading eligibility. Thus for a vessel to continue trading, various periodical surveys and certifications by classification society are mandatory to ensure its continued compliance with International regulations and endorsement.

Various certificates require annual endorsement after the class surveyor verifies that the conditions, functioning and operational and maintenance requirements of the vessel are complied with.

After the class surveyor verifies the same, he endorses the certificates for the annual survey. Annual surveys are namely Safety equipment survey, International oil pollution prevention certificate survey, International air pollution prevention certificate survey, and Safety Radio Survey.

Before all these surveys, the companies appoint independent servicing agencies, which are approved to conduct annual servicing and maintenance of equipment such as fire extinguishers, fixed fire extinguishing installations, annual foam compound analysis for fixed foam fire fighting installation, annual servicing and maintenance of lifeboat equipment and launching appliances.

Your flag and the rules and regulations. Annual servicing and inspection of equipment systems can be performed by various institutions such as accredited laboratory, service company, maker or manufacturer trained personnel, shore-based maintenance provider, class approved service applier, and service personnel authorized by the flag.

The criteria for inspection are being laid by classification societies acting as recognized organizations on behalf of flag states so that requisite certificates are revalidated or issued in line with international regulations.

Every flag has streamlined its requirements, and thus accordingly, the classification society develops checklists of inspection programs to harmonise the same.

Hauling out your boat before the sale. What is the surveyor looking for?

A safety construction survey will be focused on the structural strength of the vessel. It will be assessed for any excessive corrosion of deck or hull, along with the condition of watertight doors, bilge pumping and drainage systems, fire protection equipment, and fixed and portable fire fighting equipment.

Fire contraol

International shore connections fixed firefighting equipment.

Training Prerequisites for Operator of Uninspected Passenger Vessels (OUPV/”6-Pack”)

The National OUPV license is limited to uninspected vessels, of less than 100 gross tons, operating on U.S. domestic waters ONLY. Also limited to carrying six or less paying passengers. You must meet all of the requirements established by the USCG National Maritime Center in order to apply for this license. The USCG checklist of requirements is located here on the National Maritime Center website:https://www.dco.uscg.mil/nmc/checklist/. Under National Officer Endorsements for Deck, click on National OUPV Less Than 100 GRT.

Important sea service requirements for OUPV:

• Must be at least 18 years old.
• Must be able to document 360 days of experience on a vessel, of which at least 90 days must be on Near Coastal/Ocean waters otherwise license ...

I can see several points where my life voyage has made important turns. Certainly, learning to sail as a young boy with my grandfather set me on the sailor’s way. Buying my first boat, Steppenwolf, which I’ve documented in the Casket Salesman Episode # 6 podcast. My military experience. Time away from the water while I went to school, married, divorced, etc. etc. etc. I was a domestic tragedy. The inflection points in my life as a sailor started as I document in My First Captain’s Gig Episode #4 podcast. It was later in the voyage of my life, that I wrote a couple of films, made some dough that I was ready to wander the seas.

It was 1976. I was running a cruise boat in New York Harbor. I had a full boat of 141 passengers, plus 30 waiters and chefs, and four actual crew. It was the Bicentennial Celebration, and I was positioning the boat in the middle of the Hudson River to watch the fireworks. I was surrounded by hundreds of boats in the middle of the river. I was very busy maintaining my station running from port to starboard steering stations. I saw the fireworks reflected in the glass of the world trade centers. I loved my job. I loved writing as well. And here was the tension. Write, which was very inconsistent money or captaining which was consistent. This tension is something that every sailor has to deal with unless of course you have plenty of money or you are retired with plenty of income. If you are young and in your prime working years, the tension between the alure of the sea and the grind of the paycheck cause problems. At his time in my life the job of captain was the grind. I didn’t want another day go by with out traveling. I made the decision that night that I wouldn’t be the supporting cast in someone else’s movie. After all I only have one life to live. Later that fall, I delivered a sailboat to the Caribbean only to return to America 26 years later in September 2001 a different man with a different outlook on life.

I was back working as a Captain and writing for Hollywood until I just wrote for films and television.

There is a time when a boat owner assesses his boat and his situation. A lot of factors go into this important decision time. As many of you know after listening to my podcasts I often delve into the meaning and symbolism of the sailing life. I like to draw lessons that I have learned for the listener to ponder and maybe act on, I also believe stories can open a many faceted portals to understanding life.

However the fact remains you need to earn income while traveling by yourself if you want to sustain that life. I chose to start a charting business. That decision was an inflection point that lasted for 26 years.

Here is how it started.

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