If you have joined or participated in some of the social media groups dedicated to sailing, cruising, boat buying, marine electronics and more, you\u2019ll know that there are a lot of new sailors and cruisers out there who have been hooked by the lifestyle during the pandemic. And, for good reason, since sailing and boating in general is a great way to get out with your close friends and family in a socially distant environment. Plus, cruising is a great way to have a manageable adventure. The groups and forums offer a good way for newcomers to seek advice and information from what some call the \u201chive mind\u201d of the group. Topics and questions range from the most elementary to some quite complex issues. It\u2019s the responses to these questions that interest and often concern me because the opinions offered by members of these groups range from excellent and well informed to just plain dead wrong, without any way for a newcomer to know the difference. If you really don\u2019t understand the difference between series and parallel wiring in a boat\u2019s battery bank, you shouldn\u2019t be offering advice on the subject to someone who also doesn\u2019t know. The result could be disastrous. But that doesn\u2019t stop some from offering uninformed advice anyway. These social media groups are a great way for us to interact with our community of sailors and cruisers and can be very helpful. But, newcomers to sailing and boat ownership, need to maintain a deep skepticism about technical advice offered and even when a consensus solution to a problem builds, it is still vital to confirm that solution with a marine professional with years of experience. In my view, the \u201chive mind\u201d gets it wrong just about as often as it gets it right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you have joined or participated in some of the social media groups dedicated to sailing, cruising, boat buying, marine electronics and more, you\u2019ll know that there are a lot of new sailors and cruisers out there who have been hooked by the lifestyle during the pandemic. And, for good reason, since sailing and boating in general is a great way to get out with your close friends and family in a socially distant environment. Plus, cruising is a great way to have a manageable adventure. The groups and forums offer a good way for newcomers to seek advice and information from what some call the \u201chive mind\u201d of the group. Topics and questions range from the most elementary to some quite complex issues. It\u2019s the responses to these questions that interest and often concern me because the opinions offered by members of these groups range from excellent and well informed to just plain dead wrong, without any way for a newcomer to know the difference. If you really don\u2019t understand the difference between series and parallel wiring in a boat\u2019s battery bank, you shouldn\u2019t be offering advice on the subject to someone who also doesn\u2019t know. The result could …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":38060,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1875],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38073"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38073"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38074,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38073\/revisions\/38074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}