Back to school

Uncovering the truth about lifelong learning

- Dave Selby

There’s no doubt the sea is an education, but in my experience it’s not long before you know too much and get thoroughly fed up with learning, and that’s why I’ve set up my own sea school.

Ever since I got my Competent Crew qualification at the third resit around 20 years ago I’ve had a yearning to inflict my knowledge on others, simply because that’s what happened to me every time I stepped on someone else’s boat.

I mean, you tie a proper bow-line like you’ve been told to on one boat and you step on another boat and the skipper says: “Oh no, that’s not how we do things on Lady Osmosis Of Romford, we prefer clove-hitches.”

If you spend enough time crewing and being skippered at it’ll get so you lose the faculty to tie your shoelaces.

Things came to a head for me in the Butt & Oyster pub when a skipper who’d spent days interrogating me with those ‘fun’ Rules of The Road flash cards asked me what I wanted for dinner and I said: “I give up, I just don’t know the right answer.” That was the day I decided to exact revenge by setting up a sea school.