My wife took the all-day class at Moultonborough last week to earn her license and last night took us from Hanson Cove to Ambrose Cove Marina to fuel up, Winter Harbor to swim, Alton Bay for dinner at Pop's, back to Alton Bay to ride out the storm (!), and back home.
Two thoughts:
1. There are a lot of nuances they don't (can't?) teach at the class that one can only learn with experience AND someone to teach during that experience.
2. The nuances noted in #1 make it difficult to avoid "mistakes."
Example: when approaching a marker, it is important to pay attention to other boats approaching from the other direction. Though there are no "lanes," hugging a marker can force another boater to a. stop or b. into an inconvenient/unsafe situation. This happened a couple times early on, one of which was with someone pulling a tube. Because she came in tight to a marker on her left, she forced the boaters to cross her bow, slowing both them and the boats behind us.
My wife wasn't "wrong" but she wasn't "right" either, which made me wonder just how many "mistakes" on the lake are a result of people not being educated beyond the basics.
Overall, she did great, even navigating us across the broads and docking twice on a pretty choppy day.
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