Background

Dave is a very typical client of White Dot Sailing; he has owned his own boat for many years and is a confident and capable sailor. But when Dave signed up to the ARC, he recognised that there were probably things he didn't yet know about ocean sailing and knew that finding these out in advance would make his first bluewater adventure safer and more enjoyable.

Dave already had a clear idea of some of the upgrades he wanted to make to his yacht, but was also keen to make sure that he wasn't missing anything.

How White Dot Sailing Helped

The team at White Dot Sailing started with a Readiness Assessment, checking through the whole yacht from which we identified around 250 points covering criticial maintenance issues and system upgrades through to cosmetic work and domestic enhancements. 

Not all of these points were critical to Dave's project, and we jointly identified those that were essential for his success and safety and prioritised those. The rest were put 'on hold' for Dave to address in future.

We also conducted informal interviews with Dave and his family and friends who were due to crew on both the westbound and eastbound crossing, creating a skills matrix and gap analysis which would ultimately form a crew training plan which ultimately influenced the choice of training courses and even the watch rotation stystem.

As part of our support, we discussed the project timeline; offering guidance on when to start the training, how long the maintenance period would last, budget expectations, shakedown periods, suggested cruising times and scheduled mainenance periods in suitable ports.

As a result of this, we were able to give Dave a full report on his preparation status as well as lots of guidance and advice on what maintenance, upgrades and actions would be best for him, his boat and his crew.

Dave chose White Dot Sailing to manage all of the discussed remedial work on his yacht and we delivered his Hanse 505 to our base on the Hamble for the yard work.

After completing all of the scheduled jobs, we launched his yacht with time for shakedown sailing and crew training in the English Channel, which included familarisation with the new systems, navigation training and MOB procedures whilst downwind saiing. 

We even managed to train the crew for the return trip who would not otherwise get a chance to sail together prior to the eastbound sail the following year.

Dave set off with a well-setup and tested yacht, fully trained crew and a smile on his face. When Will saw him in Las Palmas at the start of the ARC, he was on board with the crew, beer in hand, looking relaxed.

Dave Says:

“I contacted Will about a year before the ARC. I’d done a lot of day cruising but never anything this ambitious, so I knew there would be things I didn’t know about. It was weighing on my mind because I was taking 3 of my family plus their friends across the Atlantic and I was acutely aware of the responsibility of that, I wanted to feel prepared, but I wasn’t sure what I needed to do to be prepared.

I had so many questions and if you spend time in forums you get as many answers as you have time to listen to, and they don’t necessarily understand you, your boat or your context.

As soon as I met Will and realised he was a Safety Inspector for the ARC, I knew he was plugged in, he has seen what well-prepared looks like. So, talking through my project with him really put my mind at ease. Of course, following his assessment there are a list of things we need to work through, but now at least I know what they are and we have a plan to address them.

Another thing is that White Dot Sailing actually have better buying power than I do, which partially offsets the cost of his services, but also meant he was able to handle some tricky conversations with other contractors such as Allspars.”