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This is generally a pretty friendly forum but hardly immune to controversy...not that I'd know anything about that...but some scary things are taking place. The scariest one for me personally is that I find myself starting to agree with the Portagee.
Here's how I see it. We seem to have a spate of recent posts on the order of; I don't have a boat yet, but..., I've never sailed offshore, but..., I've never crossed an ocean, but... and so forth.
Now those are all normal preambles to posts here and they often result in interesting threads. What is different though is that, when certain misconceptions are corrected, these posters are howling in agony because they feel their sacred right to their opinion has been infringed upon. I'm reminded of the old saying that it is better to be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.
Lest I appear too judgmental, close-minded, arrogant, condescending, or be convicted of taking a superior tone; I'd mention that the most convincing and helpful of posts made, in any thread, are of the nature, "here's what I did" or "in my experience". Let's face it, we come here for those with first hand experience in our areas of interest. Most of us do not care what you think, we're interested in what you did, be it fix your gel-coat or sail through Pentland Firth. Few of these prickly posters are going to find themselves in the company of AFOC's as a certain willingness to admit that one might be wrong is a requirement for membership. Far from even seeing that they might be wrong or misguided they alternatively seem to think that they should be respected even if they are wrong. What is up with that? The only redeeming fact in the whole imbroglio is that they've not even bothered to try to figure out whom they are lecturing. I'm reminded of a certain Ordinary Seaman who complained that the AB was allowed to leave the helm on the Iron Mike while he was required to hand steer. The fact that the AB knew how to steer seemed irrelevant to him. (g)
I'm speaking only of the sailing forums, of course. You can say any foolish thing you want in Off Topic as far as I'm concerned.
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