Captain Chris’s actions onboard Blue Wander were gentle lessons on how to live comfortably aboard a vessel.
In need of East Coast mariner knowledge, we hired Captain Chris Caldwell. He’s famous in boating circles for his YouTube channel, Ask Captain Chris. He’s the calm, reassuring voice behind the camera, imparting his boating know-how to his viewing audiences on topics ranging from docking tips to vessel maintenance. He and his wife, Alyse, teach classes at cruising conferences and out of their home in Vero Beach, Florida. As new boat owners, we needed onsite help, so Captain Chris came to us for a four-day seminar at our boat slip in Brunswick, Georgia. Captain Chris is over six feet tall, and his presence matches his encouraging voice. He tailored his material not to overload me, a landlubber trying to find her sea legs, while keeping Joe engaged and interested. His beard is sprinkled with a little more salt than what is visible on his website headshot, but he won’t be auditioning to play Santa for at least a decade or more. He opts out of cleaning his silver-framed glasses and accepts his water-spotted vision as part of the job.
On our first day of class, Captain Chris crawled over our Nordic Tug from stem to stern, checking out our safety equipment and looking over our boating systems. Captain Chris arrived with his own lifejacket – a double-duty item that also serves as a winter coat with highly visible, reflectivephotoluminescent stripes.
He started his equipment review with our life jackets, and we received an education. Only two of our six PFDs (personal flotation devices) were approved by the US Coast Guard. Two were designed for use on sailboats with a clip for a line to tether the sailor to the boat and only counted as PDFs when worn by a sailor with a tethered line. Two of our PDFs were British. We ordered those lifejackets from England during the COVID-19 supply chain shortages, so they carried markings from the International Standards Organization and would not be counted as PDFs by the USCG.
When Captain Chris pulled up all three floor panels in the pilot house to access the engine compartment, I tried to step back. But he said, “Jenny, poke your head down here and take a look.” He used a laser pen to point out and discuss what I think of as the guts of the boat: the engine, oil filter, generator, air conditioner units, water tank, battery banks, electrical lines, etc. There was so much to look at, my eyes couldn’t find a familiar place to rest and give my brain a break. I’d been trying to stay out of the way as I thought the guts of the boat belonged to Joe. Captain Chris taught me that operating our vessel is a two-person job, and I needed to expand my comfort zone to include the boat systems.
On the second day of class, we stood next to Captain Chris’ van as he pulled out broken boat parts and showed us what can happen to operating systems if you skip routine maintenance. I furiously scribbled notes as Captain Chris discussed impellers, clogged plumbing lines, and how seawater cools the engine. Joe, who worked as an auto mechanic in high school, absorbed the information like a sponge. As for me, I’m still sorting through all the new concepts.
After two days of shore school, we went out on the water. Four feet of water is what we needed to keep our boat moving and not lodge the keel, or bottom of our vessel, in the mud. I was at the helm when we motored into the Jekyll Cut during a falling tide. When the low water alarm went off, Captain Chris asked me, “Would you like Joe to take over?” It was a relief to step away from the helm and the beep, beep, beep of the low water alert. Joe, directed by Captain Chris, found deeper water and reset the low water alarm to match our keel depth. So, when the alarm beeps now we are in four feet of water.
Captain Chris took us into Jekyll Cut to teach us the importance of paying attention to tides. A cut is an engineered ditch that lacks a natural water source and fills and empties with the tide. We learned it’s a channel that should only be navigated during a rising tide. Seeing the number zero pop-up on the screen for water depth under the keel is a lesson we won’t forget.
With Captain Chris on board, we practiced anchoring the boat, using hand signals to communicate while deploying and pulling in the anchor. He also helped us work on communicating with vessels when we were underway and utilizing the water rushing by channel markers to judge current strength. As the first mate, my favorite lesson was how to double back the lines so I could cast off the dock while standing on the boat instead of the dock. Whew! I no longer worry about being left behind. On a windy day, the boat can be pushed away from the dock faster than I can step back on.
At the end of our first day on the water, we stood at Blue Wander’s bow, discussing line management and keeping a tidy walkway. One of our dock neighbors was wheeling a cart of supplies to his boat. He heard us chatting, stopped in his tracks, looked at Captain Chris, and asked, “Is your name Chris?” When Chris nodded yes, our neighbor said, “I recognize your voice from your YouTube videos.” The two men chatted amiably about our neighbor’s boat, an all-metal sailing vessel aptly named Heavy Metal, and his Bahama-bound cruising plans before Captain Chris pointed to his cart overflowing with multi-roll packs of Charmin and asked, “Do you flush that in your marine toilet?”
“Nah, we bag it. It’s the only paper my wife will use.”
I understood the decision. Living onboard is a balancing act, requiring boaters to determine which luxury items they are willing to dedicate storage space for and what provisions they can live without. I’m not a Charmin girl, but an extravagance I always find space for is a bottle of French perfume.
Captain Chris’s actions onboard Blue Wander were gentle lessons on how to live comfortably aboard a vessel. His teaching style could be summarized as “Show, don’t tell.” After eating, he’d compact his trash by crushing his beverage bottle before placing the item in the waste bin. Leading by example, Captain Chris showed us the importance of conserving resources. Finite space for trash does limit our ability to anchor out for extended periods.
If we had a question about a component on our boat and Captain Chris lacked an answer, he’d call the manufacturer and find a solution – an invaluable move we copied two months later when electrical gremlins invaded our systems. He demonstrated how and where to seek help, and he gave us the confidence to set out on our first cruise. Without Captain Chris’ lessons, we’d likely be stuck in the mud or be a tow boat service’s frequent customer. We are grateful for his time and his talents. If this was still the era of speed-dial phones, he’d been in our number one slot. Throughout our first cruising season, we reached out to Captain Chris again and again for advice on trip planning and maintenance issues. We hope to take another series of classes offered by Captain Chris and his wife, Alyse, at a 2024 Trawlerfest. Until then, thank you, Captain Chris, for picking up the phone every time we call.
