Someone may correct me, but when I went to an academy the answer was No. The mindset of the academy seemed to be that you were being formed for a particular task: Third mate, unlimited tonnage vessel, and most everything you learned was aimed toward that product. It was not envisioned that a third mate would ever use a skiff with an outboard, hence the skills needed for safe skiffing were not taught.
It would have been fairly simple to do so.
And rewarding perhaps. Donāt recall my son getting that type of training other than what I taught him myself on our small 24ā boat. He did do fast rescue on a bit larger boat, but no skiff stuff at the academy. Texas A&M had a good course in that as well as AMO. MSC sent him to Texas for that training. He had a blast and realized the importance. I always welcomed former fisherman, crabbers, hunters, and charter boat guys on my rig that had all their fingers and toes. And cooks without fancy shoes and jewelry.
A key skill today to safely operate a skiff is the care and feeding of 4-stroke outboards.Leaving the dock and having the outboard cut out a mile away is a common problem, and the issue is usually dodgy fuel.
Most of the outboards sold today are 4-strokes, which are very sensitive to gas/ethanol fuel. The fuel goes bad in a month. The resulting āvarnishā plugs the carb jets, and itās time to send the outboard to the repairman.
The key is to add Stabil or Seafoam to the fuel, and even then get rid of the fuel after 30 days. Pour it in your truck. It will work just fine. I fill my outboards with non-ethanol gas and still add the Seafoam, and even then drain it after 30 days (I keep a tag on the motor with the date I filled it).
At the end of the season I empty the tank, and run the engine dry. On the little outboards, I open the carburetor drain screw on the bottom of the power head to get the last tablespoon out (you can guess how much $$ Iāve paid to the repairman over the years). Just to add garlic to the stake driven through the vampireās heart, I pull the sparkplugs and give a spray of Seafoam to the cylinders before I lay up the engine.
Most deck crew donāt know all this. The outboard is tossed on a rack, left unused for a year, and they expect it to work. Another thing many people donāt know is with 4-strokes, if you lay them down on the deck you need to pay attention to the sticker which tells you which side to have up (it differs from maker to maker). If you lay it down on the wrong side the crankcase oil fills the carb. Wonāt start then.
With skiffs less than 20ā long I donāt allow outboards bigger than 9.9 HP. Usual deckhand complaint: But that takes all the fun out of skiffing! My reply: Thatās the point.
My rules are to always have oars and rowlocks in the skiff, and that the oars not be rotted, and that the rowlocks fit their sockets. Also, that the āAB seamanā actually knows how to row. But thatās a different battleā¦
I remember that mushroom starting handle (on a somewhat older Evinrude). Never thought about it much until it came off and my dad replaced it with an oak toggle with no stem. Later that year or the next it fired backwards (only the once in my whole time with that motor) and split the end of my finger open, and thatās how I learned why the stem was there. The scar was visible until just a few years ago.
The one on the next finger over from cutting leather with Dadās Ka-Bar sheepsfoot pattern rigging knife is still prominent. Taught me that when he said āfigure out where the blade will go when you slip, and donāt be thereā he was maybe not so dumb as he looked.
When I attended KP, we had the option of getting a launch ālicenseā. They had a few vertical tiller launches, and we could take a practical test to get one. For the life of me, I canāt recall why I got one, because I never did use it, but it was a break in the routine, so that is probably why. And while the vertical tiller looked odd, it was actually pretty intuitive. . . .
Small boat experience and skills are not respected and credited the way they should be. Experience actually operating a small boat in a variety of conditions is a lot more valuable to the acquisition of seamanship skills and judgment, than sweeping, mopping, chipping, and painting on a vessel over 1600 GRT.
When I was 16 I was running a ātugā that was an old Hatteras 36. I was always mad that the kids selling sodas on the tour boat were getting as much āsea timeā as I was.
If I even got handed a real tugboat I at least have some smaller scale experience with towing things like if you stop, what is behind you isnāt going to stop right away, ease forward until the slack is out of the tow line, and so on.
Depending on the usage too little power can be as dangerous as too much. Lot of skiff/small boat accidents come from people assuming they can make the same speed overloaded that theyāve made before and beat the weather or the weather slows them down and theyāre not able to make shelter with an underpowered boat. Not really applicable to something getting used as a no dock space for the big boat take the skiff in situation. Speed can kill, but when youāre watching 50 knots whip down from the ship after returning safely in the skiff 20 minutes ago you realize it can save too.
It goes back to the same old story. The licensure/exam system is badly broken. The training classes mandated are useless. People die because they are too busy taking badly conceived and conducted training to learn good seamanship in the trade they are in.
As far as what happened to the skiff in the OP, that area has really shifting channels. The deck boss probably had run through that area at full speed before in a previous season/few weeks ago even and ran full bore onto a bar, flipped the skiff and that was that.
