It's not an
easy question to answer, unfortunately, because it all depends. It depends on the person's physical fitness,
strength, experience, nautical cunning, and determination.
Nevertheless,
there are two definite limiting factors that can help a person decide how big a
boat he or she might be able to handle with safety and confidence.
The first
factor is the anchor. Ask yourself if you can raise the heaviest anchor on
board without the help of a winch and manhandle it onto the foredeck. In ordinary circumstances, you wouldn't have
to do this, of course, but it's still a good indication of your strength and
ability.
The second
factor is whether you can reef, hand, smother and get gaskets around the
largest sail on board in all kinds of weather. That sail will probably be the
mainsail because it's safe to presume that most large headsails will be roller
furlers these days.
If you feel
confident in your ability to manage these two things, you're probably
physically able to singlehand that particular boat. There are many other
factors to take into account, of course, not the least of which is your mental
ability to withstand solitude on long ocean passages and the ever-present
prospect of having nobody but yourself to relay on, even if you break a leg or
have a heart attack.
Exceptionally
skilled sailors are racing around the world singlehanded these days in boats of
50 feet and more, but the average sailor would be wise to build up experience
in boats of no more than 40 feet overall, and preferably quite a lot less. There is some truth in the fact that a bigger
boat provides a steadier working platform in heavy seas, so that dousing sails
in squalls might well be easier for a singlehander on a 40-footer than one on a
30-footer, but I have to say that as I get older I set my sights lower.
I have
always loved sailing dinghies, and they're probably the only vessels I've
really felt totally confident about handling in all conditions. The sails are small enough, and the forces on
sheets and helms low enough, that my limited muscle power can cope
adequately. So what it boils down to
increasingly for my singlehanded aspirations is a dinghy with a lid on and a
fixed ballast keel. There's no comfort
in a boat like that, of course, but there is a great safety factor in its
smallness when one person has to provide all the operating power.
Today's Thought
I never found the companion that was so
companionable as solitude.— Thoreau, Walden: Solitude
Tailpiece
There's many
a young go-getter, who, later, is sorry he go-gotter.(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)
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