Small boat survival at sea

IT WAS ALWAYS a source of regret to me that my seagoing sailboats were never big enough to carry a sailing dinghy. I always thought a small wooden dinghy would make an ideal lifeboat if the yacht sank, and I always thought I could sail a small dinghy across an ocean if necessary.

By force of circumstance, we always ended up with a rubber duckie that could be deflated and stowed in a cockpit locker; but the problem with an inflatable dinghy (or an inflatable liferaft for that matter) is that most of them are incapable of sailing anywhere, so you just have to sit there and pray that a ship will come your way and rescue you. Nothing deflates morale quicker. People have been known to die in days because they despaired of ever being rescued, whereas others endured long-lasting hardships simply because they were in charge of their own fate, making progress toward land, however slow, and therefore generating hope.

Because we never had a small wooden sailing dinghy, I never had to do much thinking about the practical aspects of how you survive storms on the open ocean in a small dinghy. It was only years later that I read Frank Dye’s book about his extraordinary voyages from Scotland to Iceland and Norway in his open, wooden, 16-foot, Wayfarer centerboard dinghy.*

On the passage to Norway, Frank and his male crew survived four capsizes in a Force 9 gale in the frigid Norwegian Sea. But ordinary gales never bothered them. The way they dealt with ordinary gales was this:

— They lowered the mast in its tabernacle until the upper end of the mast rested in a boom crutch a few feet above the transom.

— They fastened a cover from gunwale to gunwale over the mast, enclosing all the open cockpit.

— They streamed a parachute drogue from the bows.

— They lay flat on the floorboards to keep their ballast weight low.

The effect of the cover and the drogue was to keep the boat automatically facing into oncoming waves. In fact, the cover, being higher at the stern than near the bows, acted in the same way as a trysail would on a keelboat.

“Under the cover it was difficult to realize that a gale was blowing outside,” Dye remarks in his book with typical British sang froid. The Wayfarer rode well with a slight snatch as the drogue pulled her over each breaking crest. There was a rattle of spray on the cover and an occasional jump sideways as a cross-sea caught her. And in these conditions Dye and his crew even managed to get some rest.

The Wayfarer is a remarkable boat, of course, stable, fast, responsive, and seaworthy. And Frank Dye was an equally remarkable man.

I am grateful to him, because now that I know how to sail a small dinghy across an ocean if necessary, I fervently hope I never have to.

* Ocean Crossing Wayfarer, Second Edition, by Frank and Margaret Dye (Adlard Coles Nautical, London, 2008).

Today’s Thought

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

— Billy Graham

Tailpiece

“Why did they transfer your boy friend from that submarine?”

“He has a habit of sleeping with the window open.”

Small dinghies on open sea

RECENTLY I MENTIONED that if I had to, by force of circumstance, I could probably sail a small open dinghy across an ocean to safety. That imprudent statement elicited the following comment from Jurriën, who lives in Holland:

Although I know impressive journeys can be made in a dinghy, personally I would not recommend them for intercontinental transport. The two major advantages you mentioned, staying afloat and keeping the crew alive are correct, but a substantial problem is that these small boats must be looked after constantly. This means, one moment of inattention and the cockpit is filled with water. In stormy circumstances, you’ll never be able to drain the cockpit; therefore your boat won’t sail properly anymore. Sailing a dinghy in heavy weather is very tiresome; I do not think many people can stay concentrated perfectly for more than an hour or so in these circumstances (wet, cold, frightened). In my experience (never left the North Sea, so don’t take me too seriously) the best you can do is set your storm jib if you have one (otherwise tie a knot in the genua in order to reduce surface), run downwind and hope for better weather!

No Jurriën, I wouldn’t recommend dinghies for your everyday intercontinental transport either, but sailing at sea in a dinghy is perhaps not as dangerous a business as you might think.

In the first place, a small dinghy is easy to steer. She’s very light on the helm, and dinghies can usually be well balanced because you can move a pivoting centerboard fore or aft to change the center of lateral resistance.  If you were serious about it, and were able to plan in advance, you could get a dinghy to steer herself with twin jibs sheeted back to the tiller, or with a sheet-to-tiller system such as one of those suggested in  Lee Woas’s book Self-Steering Without a Wind Vane.

In the second place, decent dinghies do not capsize all that readily. Most of them will heel a long way over before you have to spill wind to let them recover. They have a lot of reserve stability. Yes, they certainly can capsize, but the smaller the dinghy, the easier she is to right from a capsize.

The kind of dinghy I’m thinking of has plenty of built-in buoyancy. The 11-foot Mirror dinghy, for example, has four large flotation tanks. I have seen a Mirror dinghy plowing along nicely through the water, under perfect control, in a gale of wind, with four adults sitting in a cockpit brimming with water after a capsize. They could easily have bailed out that cockpit with a bucket, but they were having too much fun to bother. They sailed her home, right up to the launching ramp, like that with big smiles on their faces.

Frank Dye capsized four times in Force 9 gales in his 16-foot Wayfarer on the way from Scotland to Norway. He had one crewmember, and they managed to right her fairly easily each time. His method of dealing with heavy weather was to hinge the mast down, tie a tarpaulin over it to make a shelter, and lie down on the floorboards to keep the weight low. He unshipped the rudder and let the dinghy lie bows-on to the waves behind a large parachute sea anchor.

That American adventurer Webb Chiles, who singlehandedly sailed his open, 17-foot, Drascombe Lugger, Chidiock Tichborne, almost all of the way around the world, sailed his flooded boat for days on end on one occasion but managed to bail her out eventually when the weather settled down.

The point is, if you have a dinghy with built-in buoyancy, she won’t sink.

Jurriën, I am fairly sure that you, like most of us, are not planning to sail a small dinghy across an ocean any time soon, but for your own interest you might want to read the following books on the subject:

Ø Ocean Crossing Wayfarer, by Frank Dye

Ø The Open Boat: Across the Pacific, by Webb Chiles

Today’s Thought

Seamanship, in its widest sense, is the whole art of taking a ship from one place to another at sea.

— The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea

Tailpiece

“Would you like red wine or white wine, sir?”

“Makes no difference to me, my good fellow. I’m color blind.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)