Ignore the experts

(Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. How many times do I have to tell you?)

NOW AND THEN a sentence in a boating magazine grabs my attention. This one was in an article by Annie Westlund, in the latest issue of Small Craft Advisor. It said: “In flat conditions, keeping the mainsail up helps with economy by about 5 percent when motoring, according to Tom Cunliff.”

Well, my brain cells sat up straight and started paying attention when I read that. I don’t know how much Annie Westlund knows about Tom Cunliffe, apart from the fact that she can’t spell his name, and I don’t know how much Tom Cunliffe knows about the law of conservation of energy, but I have to wonder if he’s ever heard of it.

Cunliffe, in case you’re wondering, is a British sailor and writer who operates from a cottage in the New Forest. Westlund operates from a 17-foot Slipper sailboat in Lake Huron in Ontario. Between the two of them, they have some explaining to do.

Lots of sailboats around here go from island to island under power in summer, when the winds are light or non-existent, and many of them raise the mainsail while they motor. I have done it myself countless times.

But I’ve never kidded myself that it was helping the boat move forward in any way. Let’s face facts: if you motor at 5 knots in a calm, the apparent wind will be from dead ahead at 5 knots. The mainsail will lie back along the centerline and flap uselessly.

You can sheet it in as tight as you like, but it will still billow and empty without providing any forward drive. To keep the mainsail quiet, many of us will move the mainsheet track over to one side or the other, and pin the main down there. In this position it is filled on one side and lies quietly, but anyone with the sense of a fried oyster will know that a parallelogram of forces shows that the force it is creating is directed aft and to the side. There is no forward component at all. In other words, it is making the work of the engine harder, not easier, as the Westlund/Cunliffe combination claims.

What this proves, I have to tell you, is that you can’t believe any darned thing the experts tell you. I’m sorry that this is not good news, but it’s the only subject I could think to write about on a Sunday evening and as soon as I finish this I can go and have another beer. So you’ll have to be brave and figure things out for yourself, as I do, and ignore the experts. Sadly, it’s the only way. Cheers for now.

Today’s Thought
Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question “How?” but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question “Why?”
— Erwin Chargaff, Professor of Biological Chemistry, Columbia U

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb #80
Floating junk. The rule is that flotsam is what remains floating after a vessel has accidentally sunk. Jetsam is cargo or gear deliberately thrown overboard to help save a stranded vessel or one in heavy seas. There is no linguistic requirement that jetsam should float. Furthermore, if you attach a buoy to your sunken jetsam it might better be described as lagan. Yes, lagan. It’s in the dictionary, honest.

Tailpiece
“I notice that Bert’s business seems to be perking up.”
“Yeah, he started taking the pins out of the map and sticking them in the salesmen instead.”