Dear John:
My wife is threatening to divorce me if I spend any more money on the boat. Can you help?
--Desperate Dan, San Diego
Well, Dan, I’m sorry but I don’t think I can help. There are too many unknowns. How much work does your boat need? How much money have you spent already, to make your wife so mad? Has she made this threat before? Did it worry you? Did she back down? Will she back down next time?
Political correctness demands that I advise you to quit spending money on the boat and start patching up your marriage. But logically, the first question should be — which is more important to you, wife or boat? If you can’t have both in good working order, which one would you choose to spend the rest of your life with? Only you can answer that. (Hint — Whose picture do you have in your wallet next to the West Marine card?)
Have you considered taking your problem to Dr. Phil? His national audience of voyeuristic landlubbers might be fascinated to know how much it takes to outfit a boat in a half-decent wardrobe of sails and running rigging. Yachtsmen are all too often portrayed as filthy rich and incurably snobbish but you could make the case for the rest of us, the great majority of male sailors whose financial states compel them to hide from their wives the bills from the boatyard, the sailmaker, and the engine repair man.
Meanwhile, the only advice I can offer is that you should bone up on stuff like cooking supper, washing clothes, darning socks, and fixing buttons. Just in case.
Today’s Thought
What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.
— George Levinger
Tailpiece
“I see Old Moneybags finally got hitched to that chorus girl he’s been chasing for so long.”
“Yeah, he spent a fortune on her, so he had to marry her for his money.”
November 29, 2009
November 26, 2009
Propellers made easy
A FEW DAYS AGO I was editing an article for a forthcoming issue of Good Old Boat magazine. It said:
“When you select a propeller, you should match every dimension of that propeller to the hull and the engine driving it to attain maximum efficiency. This makes propeller selection and calculation very difficult for those of us who are not naval architects.”
Well, that’s not completely true in my opinion. The experts in too many fields, such as navigation and splicing rope, like to spread the word that it’s more complicated than it really is.
There are two ways of selecting a propeller: theory and practice. And even naval architects often have to resort to trial-and-error after they’ve tried their best with theory.
Let’s say you’re not satisfied with your boat’s performance under power, and you suspect the propeller is the wrong size. First check the diameter. Go to page 45 of my book, The Boatowner’s Handbook, where there’s a handy little graph. Lay a ruler between horsepower and prop shaft revolutions, and see where it crosses the column marked “Propeller diameter.”
On page 47 you’ll find another graph that shows you the pitch you need. This points you in the right direction for your prop. It’s about as good a result as the naval architect will get with all his complicated calculations.
So much for theory. Now we come to the practice. This doesn’t hardly need any brains at all.
Make sure your boat’s propeller is free of barnacles and the hull is reasonably clean. Take her for a run in calm weather. The ideal propeller will allow the engine to reach the manufacturer’s top-rated revolutions per minute (and therefore full power) with the throttle opened fully. And at this stage, your boat should be achieving full hull speed.
Now, if your engine starts to lug, or emit black diesel smoke, before it reaches top-rated rpm, you’ve probably got too much pitch. It’s like trying to ride a bike uphill in top gear.
On the other hand, if your engine reaches top revs too easily — that is, before your boat reaches hull speed — you probably need to increase the pitch. You’re riding downhill in low gear and your little legs are whizzing around but you’re not going very fast.
A propeller shop can alter the pitch of most auxiliary sailboat props a couple of inches, at a fraction of the cost of a new propeller. For boats with the usual 2-to-1 reduction gearbox, a decrease in prop pitch of 2 inches will increase engine revs per minute by about 300 to 400.
It’s unlikely that you’ll need to change the prop diameter, but you might like to know that for roughly equivalent performance, if you decrease the diameter 1 inch, you should increase its pitch 2 inches.
You don’t need to be a naval architect to check your propeller’s actual performance this way. It’s as much art as science — plus a bit of grunt work to get the damn prop off the shaft to which it clings so determinedly.
Today’s Thought
An expert is somebody who is more than 50 miles from home, has no responsibility for implementing the advice he gives, and shows slides.
— Edwin Meese 3rd, White House counsel
Tailpiece
A pessimist is a person who builds a castle in the air and then locks himself in the dungeon.
An optimist, on the other hand, is a person who fixes your eyes.
“When you select a propeller, you should match every dimension of that propeller to the hull and the engine driving it to attain maximum efficiency. This makes propeller selection and calculation very difficult for those of us who are not naval architects.”
Well, that’s not completely true in my opinion. The experts in too many fields, such as navigation and splicing rope, like to spread the word that it’s more complicated than it really is.
There are two ways of selecting a propeller: theory and practice. And even naval architects often have to resort to trial-and-error after they’ve tried their best with theory.
Let’s say you’re not satisfied with your boat’s performance under power, and you suspect the propeller is the wrong size. First check the diameter. Go to page 45 of my book, The Boatowner’s Handbook, where there’s a handy little graph. Lay a ruler between horsepower and prop shaft revolutions, and see where it crosses the column marked “Propeller diameter.”
On page 47 you’ll find another graph that shows you the pitch you need. This points you in the right direction for your prop. It’s about as good a result as the naval architect will get with all his complicated calculations.
So much for theory. Now we come to the practice. This doesn’t hardly need any brains at all.
Make sure your boat’s propeller is free of barnacles and the hull is reasonably clean. Take her for a run in calm weather. The ideal propeller will allow the engine to reach the manufacturer’s top-rated revolutions per minute (and therefore full power) with the throttle opened fully. And at this stage, your boat should be achieving full hull speed.
Now, if your engine starts to lug, or emit black diesel smoke, before it reaches top-rated rpm, you’ve probably got too much pitch. It’s like trying to ride a bike uphill in top gear.
On the other hand, if your engine reaches top revs too easily — that is, before your boat reaches hull speed — you probably need to increase the pitch. You’re riding downhill in low gear and your little legs are whizzing around but you’re not going very fast.
A propeller shop can alter the pitch of most auxiliary sailboat props a couple of inches, at a fraction of the cost of a new propeller. For boats with the usual 2-to-1 reduction gearbox, a decrease in prop pitch of 2 inches will increase engine revs per minute by about 300 to 400.
It’s unlikely that you’ll need to change the prop diameter, but you might like to know that for roughly equivalent performance, if you decrease the diameter 1 inch, you should increase its pitch 2 inches.
You don’t need to be a naval architect to check your propeller’s actual performance this way. It’s as much art as science — plus a bit of grunt work to get the damn prop off the shaft to which it clings so determinedly.
Today’s Thought
An expert is somebody who is more than 50 miles from home, has no responsibility for implementing the advice he gives, and shows slides.
— Edwin Meese 3rd, White House counsel
Tailpiece
A pessimist is a person who builds a castle in the air and then locks himself in the dungeon.
An optimist, on the other hand, is a person who fixes your eyes.
November 24, 2009
Thoughts on Thanksgiving
(Hop aboard every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a new Mainly About Boats column by John Vigor)
DAMN. IT’S COMING UP THANKSGIVING. Gotta write a blog, and it’s Thanksgiving tomorrow. What has Thanksgiving got to do with boats, for Pete’s sake? Think, man, think. What’s the connection? Scratch head. Pull finger out of earhole and type, dammit.
Well, okay, I suppose some of us should be grateful for boats. If it weren’t for boats I couldn’t have written articles and books about boats and got paid for it. On the other hand, if there were no such things as boats I might be better off. I might have been a plumber, as my mother suggested, instead of a pretend writer, and I might have earned a fortune instead of a pittance.
I could be sitting in my villa in Nice or Monte Carlo right now with my own plumbing all done in pure 22-carat gold, drinking pink Moët de Grand Excellence champagne out of chorus girls’ slippers and tossing euro coins to the dull-witted writers begging in the street below.
So I don’t know that I’m very grateful for boats.
Mind you, I suppose there’s a fair chance that if it weren’t for boats there would not be any white folks in this country. We’d all still be in freezing-cold Merrie Bloodie Englande painting ourselves blue and trying to invent fire and Oprah Winfrey. There’d be no Thanksgiving, either, of course, and this country would be overrun with swaggering, cocksure turkeys. Ugly buggers that they are.
It’s true that Christopher Columbus used a boat — but he didn’t land in North America, even though most Americans think he did. So there’s no reason to be grateful to Christopher Columbus. If he had found America we’d all be speaking Spanish with bad accents by now and I wouldn’t be able to earn a living because I speak only English. Well, and Afrikaans. And a bit of Zulu and Fanagalo. And a smattering of French and German. And two years of Latin, with several canings for not doing homework. And nine months of lispy Castellano, which I don’t remember any more. Oh, and one sentence in Polish. Don’t know any Greek, though, apart from alpha and omega and ouzo.
But I digress. It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow, remember? Okay, well, despite everything, I guess I have to be thankful for boats. One brought me safely thousands of miles across the oceans to my nice new home in America and others continue to fascinate me and brighten my life. So I take it back. I am grateful to boats.
Here’s to boats: I’ll drink to that. Kindly hand me my bottle of Moët de Cheapskate.
Today’s Thought
Maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantly … is having to accept it.
— William Faulkner
Tailpiece
“How much is a bottle of brandy? It’s my nephew’s birthday and he likes brandy.”
“Well, madam, it depends on the age. Seven-year-old is quite reasonably priced. Ten-year-old costs a bit more. Twelve-year-old can be quite expensive.”
“Gee, that’s terrible. My nephew is 25.”
DAMN. IT’S COMING UP THANKSGIVING. Gotta write a blog, and it’s Thanksgiving tomorrow. What has Thanksgiving got to do with boats, for Pete’s sake? Think, man, think. What’s the connection? Scratch head. Pull finger out of earhole and type, dammit.
Well, okay, I suppose some of us should be grateful for boats. If it weren’t for boats I couldn’t have written articles and books about boats and got paid for it. On the other hand, if there were no such things as boats I might be better off. I might have been a plumber, as my mother suggested, instead of a pretend writer, and I might have earned a fortune instead of a pittance.
I could be sitting in my villa in Nice or Monte Carlo right now with my own plumbing all done in pure 22-carat gold, drinking pink Moët de Grand Excellence champagne out of chorus girls’ slippers and tossing euro coins to the dull-witted writers begging in the street below.
So I don’t know that I’m very grateful for boats.
Mind you, I suppose there’s a fair chance that if it weren’t for boats there would not be any white folks in this country. We’d all still be in freezing-cold Merrie Bloodie Englande painting ourselves blue and trying to invent fire and Oprah Winfrey. There’d be no Thanksgiving, either, of course, and this country would be overrun with swaggering, cocksure turkeys. Ugly buggers that they are.
It’s true that Christopher Columbus used a boat — but he didn’t land in North America, even though most Americans think he did. So there’s no reason to be grateful to Christopher Columbus. If he had found America we’d all be speaking Spanish with bad accents by now and I wouldn’t be able to earn a living because I speak only English. Well, and Afrikaans. And a bit of Zulu and Fanagalo. And a smattering of French and German. And two years of Latin, with several canings for not doing homework. And nine months of lispy Castellano, which I don’t remember any more. Oh, and one sentence in Polish. Don’t know any Greek, though, apart from alpha and omega and ouzo.
But I digress. It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow, remember? Okay, well, despite everything, I guess I have to be thankful for boats. One brought me safely thousands of miles across the oceans to my nice new home in America and others continue to fascinate me and brighten my life. So I take it back. I am grateful to boats.
Here’s to boats: I’ll drink to that. Kindly hand me my bottle of Moët de Cheapskate.
Today’s Thought
Maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantly … is having to accept it.
— William Faulkner
Tailpiece
“How much is a bottle of brandy? It’s my nephew’s birthday and he likes brandy.”
“Well, madam, it depends on the age. Seven-year-old is quite reasonably priced. Ten-year-old costs a bit more. Twelve-year-old can be quite expensive.”
“Gee, that’s terrible. My nephew is 25.”
November 22, 2009
The perfect sailing hat
I HAVE BEEN SEARCHING for the perfect sailing hat for years. Still haven’t found it, but I’ve come close.
I lost my hat the very first time I sailed in a keelboat. I was just a kid, a cabin boy, standing up in the forward hatch of a beautiful Knut Reimers wooden racing sloop called Viking, owned by Fred Smithers, a lawyer who lived in Cape Town. We were crashing into a black southeaster near Cape Point when the afterguard decided to tack. The jib swept over the deck, brushed against my head, and wiped my hat off. I saw it floating away to leeward and knew instinctively that no-one was going to offer to go back for it.
Since then, I’ve tried many different hats, from knitted black watch caps to a bright red fisherman’s sou’wester, but none of them has fully met my requirements, namely the need to be lightweight, waterproof, windproof, and irresistibly attractive to ladies.
I notice that some famous cruisers such as Larry Pardey let themselves be photographed in wide, shady, straw hats that look pleasantly goofy but I know for a fact they can’t wear them when they go up forward to douse the jib in anything over 10 knots of wind.
I rather like the look of some European yachting hats, the kind you see them wearing at Cowes Week or when the Queen comes to inspect the fleet or say howdy to the members of the Royal Yachting Association or whatever. And those Greek skipper’s caps, which look so very dashing, have undoubtedly helped lure many an innocent maiden into the nether regions of floating gin palaces; but the trouble with all of them is that they won’t stay put in any decent wind. Besides, you need a lot more chutzpah than I’ve got to wear a cap adorned with captain’s gold braid when you’re only the skipper of a 26-year-old, 27-foot sloop like mine. The hat should fit the vessel as well as the man.
And it should fit the weather, of course. For example, around here last week it was blowing 60 and gusting 80 miles an hour. Just a few miles up State Route 20, in the Cascades, they were expecting 20 inches of snow overnight. And down here on the coastal plain of Puget Sound, it was all solid rain and inside-out umbrellas.
We hear a lot about hurricanes on the East Coast but they don’t even know we have hurricane-force winds on the coast here every winter, regular as clockwork. We don’t whine about it. We just tie our hat strings tighter around our chins.
Anyway, to cut it short, I eventually found that the most practical headgear for my part of the world was a good old baseball cap underneath a hood attached to an anorak or a foul-weather jacket. The hood should have strings under the chin, of course, so you can adjust its tightness and prevent the baseball cap from escaping.
Now you have a waterproof, windproof hat with a peak that keeps the spray off your glasses and the sun out of your eyes; a hat that won’t get knocked off when you lurch against the shrouds; a hat that can’t be brushed off by the jib when some fool decides to tack without warning.
It’s almost ideal. It certainly fits the vessel. The only problem is that it conveys a sort of rumpled homeless appearance, which seems not to appeal to nice ladies, even without the plastic bags around my feet. My aim for next season is to improve the look of this arrangement so as to convey more of a feeling of dashing nautical nerdiness. Any suggestions would be welcomed.
Today’s Thought
Ignorant people in preppy clothes are more dangerous to America than oil embargoes.
— V. S. Naipaul
Tailpiece
“My husband is so careless about his appearance. He just can’t seem to keep buttons on his clothes.”
“Maybe the buttons weren’t sewn on properly in the first place.”
“Oh, you may have a point there. He’s terribly careless with his sewing, too.”
I lost my hat the very first time I sailed in a keelboat. I was just a kid, a cabin boy, standing up in the forward hatch of a beautiful Knut Reimers wooden racing sloop called Viking, owned by Fred Smithers, a lawyer who lived in Cape Town. We were crashing into a black southeaster near Cape Point when the afterguard decided to tack. The jib swept over the deck, brushed against my head, and wiped my hat off. I saw it floating away to leeward and knew instinctively that no-one was going to offer to go back for it.
Since then, I’ve tried many different hats, from knitted black watch caps to a bright red fisherman’s sou’wester, but none of them has fully met my requirements, namely the need to be lightweight, waterproof, windproof, and irresistibly attractive to ladies.
I notice that some famous cruisers such as Larry Pardey let themselves be photographed in wide, shady, straw hats that look pleasantly goofy but I know for a fact they can’t wear them when they go up forward to douse the jib in anything over 10 knots of wind.
I rather like the look of some European yachting hats, the kind you see them wearing at Cowes Week or when the Queen comes to inspect the fleet or say howdy to the members of the Royal Yachting Association or whatever. And those Greek skipper’s caps, which look so very dashing, have undoubtedly helped lure many an innocent maiden into the nether regions of floating gin palaces; but the trouble with all of them is that they won’t stay put in any decent wind. Besides, you need a lot more chutzpah than I’ve got to wear a cap adorned with captain’s gold braid when you’re only the skipper of a 26-year-old, 27-foot sloop like mine. The hat should fit the vessel as well as the man.
And it should fit the weather, of course. For example, around here last week it was blowing 60 and gusting 80 miles an hour. Just a few miles up State Route 20, in the Cascades, they were expecting 20 inches of snow overnight. And down here on the coastal plain of Puget Sound, it was all solid rain and inside-out umbrellas.
We hear a lot about hurricanes on the East Coast but they don’t even know we have hurricane-force winds on the coast here every winter, regular as clockwork. We don’t whine about it. We just tie our hat strings tighter around our chins.
Anyway, to cut it short, I eventually found that the most practical headgear for my part of the world was a good old baseball cap underneath a hood attached to an anorak or a foul-weather jacket. The hood should have strings under the chin, of course, so you can adjust its tightness and prevent the baseball cap from escaping.
Now you have a waterproof, windproof hat with a peak that keeps the spray off your glasses and the sun out of your eyes; a hat that won’t get knocked off when you lurch against the shrouds; a hat that can’t be brushed off by the jib when some fool decides to tack without warning.
It’s almost ideal. It certainly fits the vessel. The only problem is that it conveys a sort of rumpled homeless appearance, which seems not to appeal to nice ladies, even without the plastic bags around my feet. My aim for next season is to improve the look of this arrangement so as to convey more of a feeling of dashing nautical nerdiness. Any suggestions would be welcomed.
Today’s Thought
Ignorant people in preppy clothes are more dangerous to America than oil embargoes.
— V. S. Naipaul
Tailpiece
“My husband is so careless about his appearance. He just can’t seem to keep buttons on his clothes.”
“Maybe the buttons weren’t sewn on properly in the first place.”
“Oh, you may have a point there. He’s terribly careless with his sewing, too.”
November 19, 2009
Getting the tension right
OLD WOTSISNAME IS WORRIED about the rigging that holds his mast up. “It’s tight now,” he said, twanging a wire, “but when I go sailing, the leeward shrouds always feel loose.”
“So what do you do?” I asked.
“Well, last time I just tightened up the leeward turnbuckle to take up the slack. And when I went about onto the other tack, I tightened that turnbuckle up, too.”
“And what happened?”
“Nothing. The leeward shroud is still slack. Always.”
I plucked one of OW’s shrouds. It was as tight as a violin string. “You could play Mendelssohn’s violin concerto on this wire,” I said. “But that’s the good news.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“You’re driving your mast down through your deck,” I said. “The rigging is far too tight. A few more turns on the turnbuckles and your cabintop is going to end up on your cabin floor.”
What OW didn’t realize was just how powerful the turnbuckles are. And how he could overstrain the rig by trying to eliminate the slackness in his leeward shroud.
That slackness is always going to be there. The old rule of thumb is that the leeward shroud should feel slack, but not look slack, when you’re beating in a medium-strength wind.
The reason is that stainless-steel wire stretches. There’s construction stretch for a start, which results from the strands settling into place when the first load is applied. That’s a once-only, permanent stretch. And then there’s elastic stretch, which is temporary, allowing the wire to return to its original length each time the load is removed.
Now the elastic stretch may be greater than you imagined. For example, when a 33-foot stainless-steel 1 x 19 wire (of ANY thickness) is loaded to half its breaking strength, it will stretch 2 inches. That’s why the leeward shroud goes slack. It’s fine. It’s meant to.
“So what should I do now?” said OW.
“Loosen it all and start again,” I said. “I’ll lend you my tension gauges.”
The first thing to do in tuning a rig is to find out the displacement of your boat. Then give the upper shrouds and the backstay a tension of approximately 10 percent of the boat’s displacement. A higher tension will automatically be induced in the forestay because it makes a narrower angle to the mast than does the backstay.
Then tighten the forward lower shrouds or babystay until the mast bows forward slightly, but noticeably, at the spreaders.
Tighten the aft lowers to straighten the mast again.
When you’re out sailing in a moderate breeze, check that the mast is straight and adjust the upper or lower shrouds with equal turns of the turnbuckles on both sides, slackening the port side if you tighten the starboard side, and so on.
That’s all there is to it.
Now, if you’re still awake and you’ve been concentrating hard, you may think that 10 percent is quite a lot of tension to preload into the topmast shrouds, and it is; but it’s about right.
The breaking strengths of all the shrouds on one side of the boat should equal a little more than the boat’s displacement, say displacement times 1.4 for offshore cruisers, times 1.2 for inshore cruisers, and times 1.0 for racing boats and daysailers. When you have double lower shrouds, however, (that is, forward lowers and aft lowers) then you should use only one shroud for this calculation, the thinking being that only one lower at a time carries the load.
I don’t know how much extra load OW was placing on his deck, but I can tell you that the normal compression load on a mast step while you’re sailing is as much as 2.5 times the displacement. Now OW’s concrete barge must weigh 15,000 pounds, so his mast is thrusting downward with a force of 37,500 pounds or nearly 17 tons.
Frankly, I’ve never quite understood how thin-walled aluminum tubes can withstand loads as high as that, but they do it all the time. To me, it’s just another of those bits of magic that make sailing so interesting.
Today’s Thought
Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
— Daniel J. Boorstin, Librarian of Congress
Tailpiece
Four-year-old Janie had been put to bed for the night when her little brother wandered along and tried to enter her room.
“You can’t come in, Jimmy,” she said, “cos Mom says little boys mustn’t see little girls in their nighties.”
Jimmy went outside, closed the door, and was puzzling about this when the door opened again.
“It’s aw wight Jimmy, you can come in now,” said Janie. “I’se tooked my nightie off.”
“So what do you do?” I asked.
“Well, last time I just tightened up the leeward turnbuckle to take up the slack. And when I went about onto the other tack, I tightened that turnbuckle up, too.”
“And what happened?”
“Nothing. The leeward shroud is still slack. Always.”
I plucked one of OW’s shrouds. It was as tight as a violin string. “You could play Mendelssohn’s violin concerto on this wire,” I said. “But that’s the good news.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“You’re driving your mast down through your deck,” I said. “The rigging is far too tight. A few more turns on the turnbuckles and your cabintop is going to end up on your cabin floor.”
What OW didn’t realize was just how powerful the turnbuckles are. And how he could overstrain the rig by trying to eliminate the slackness in his leeward shroud.
That slackness is always going to be there. The old rule of thumb is that the leeward shroud should feel slack, but not look slack, when you’re beating in a medium-strength wind.
The reason is that stainless-steel wire stretches. There’s construction stretch for a start, which results from the strands settling into place when the first load is applied. That’s a once-only, permanent stretch. And then there’s elastic stretch, which is temporary, allowing the wire to return to its original length each time the load is removed.
Now the elastic stretch may be greater than you imagined. For example, when a 33-foot stainless-steel 1 x 19 wire (of ANY thickness) is loaded to half its breaking strength, it will stretch 2 inches. That’s why the leeward shroud goes slack. It’s fine. It’s meant to.
“So what should I do now?” said OW.
“Loosen it all and start again,” I said. “I’ll lend you my tension gauges.”
The first thing to do in tuning a rig is to find out the displacement of your boat. Then give the upper shrouds and the backstay a tension of approximately 10 percent of the boat’s displacement. A higher tension will automatically be induced in the forestay because it makes a narrower angle to the mast than does the backstay.
Then tighten the forward lower shrouds or babystay until the mast bows forward slightly, but noticeably, at the spreaders.
Tighten the aft lowers to straighten the mast again.
When you’re out sailing in a moderate breeze, check that the mast is straight and adjust the upper or lower shrouds with equal turns of the turnbuckles on both sides, slackening the port side if you tighten the starboard side, and so on.
That’s all there is to it.
Now, if you’re still awake and you’ve been concentrating hard, you may think that 10 percent is quite a lot of tension to preload into the topmast shrouds, and it is; but it’s about right.
The breaking strengths of all the shrouds on one side of the boat should equal a little more than the boat’s displacement, say displacement times 1.4 for offshore cruisers, times 1.2 for inshore cruisers, and times 1.0 for racing boats and daysailers. When you have double lower shrouds, however, (that is, forward lowers and aft lowers) then you should use only one shroud for this calculation, the thinking being that only one lower at a time carries the load.
I don’t know how much extra load OW was placing on his deck, but I can tell you that the normal compression load on a mast step while you’re sailing is as much as 2.5 times the displacement. Now OW’s concrete barge must weigh 15,000 pounds, so his mast is thrusting downward with a force of 37,500 pounds or nearly 17 tons.
Frankly, I’ve never quite understood how thin-walled aluminum tubes can withstand loads as high as that, but they do it all the time. To me, it’s just another of those bits of magic that make sailing so interesting.
Today’s Thought
Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
— Daniel J. Boorstin, Librarian of Congress
Tailpiece
Four-year-old Janie had been put to bed for the night when her little brother wandered along and tried to enter her room.
“You can’t come in, Jimmy,” she said, “cos Mom says little boys mustn’t see little girls in their nighties.”
Jimmy went outside, closed the door, and was puzzling about this when the door opened again.
“It’s aw wight Jimmy, you can come in now,” said Janie. “I’se tooked my nightie off.”
November 17, 2009
Northern love affair
I WAS ASKED the other day by someone who has spent a long time in the sub-tropics: “What do northern sailors do in winter?”
Well, some go skiing. Some flee south in RVs. Some go away on cruise ships. These are the dilettantes, the dabblers, the amateurs, the superficial tire-kickers.
And before you accuse me of using big words you can’t understand, let me explain that a dilettante is someone who follows sailing for an amusement, a diversion. Someone who doesn’t take sailing half seriously enough.
The real sailors are reading books of ocean adventures. They’re studying boat plans and looking at ads for Herreshoff 28 ketches. They’re making plans to get time off from their partners, and continue their clandestine affairs with their boats.
They’re poking holes in the shrink-wrap so they can get inside and sit on the saloon couch for a bit, maybe making a cup of coffee on the stove and searching for the half-bottle of rum they hid in the medicine cabinet. Just to fortify the coffee, of course.
They check the bilges for water and crank the motor over half a turn by hand, so the impeller doesn’t take a fatal set. They check that there’s air circulating, to deter mold. They switch on the VHF, listen to forecasts of raging storms, and grin to themselves, snug in their winter refuge.
They read with delight the logs of their past year’s cruising, and dream of those lovely lazy breezes and warm seas. They play back in their minds, time and time again, the peaceful nights at anchor, the early-morning call of the loon, and the shrill cry of a kingfisher carrying breakfast back to a forest of open beaks.
The thing about serious sailors, as opposed to those dilettantes, is that they are in love with their boats. They can hardly bear to be parted from them. They tend and care for them. They talk to them as if they were flesh and blood. They nurture them. They praise their good qualities and pardon their faults.
And in that definitive demonstration of ardour, they look back, long and hard, when they part. That’s what real sailors do in winter.
Today’s Thought
A man nearly always loves for other reasons than he thinks. A lover is apt to be as full of secrets from himself as is the object of his love from him.
— Ben Hecht
Tailpiece
“What’s the special today?”
“Ve got fine zoop today, sir. You like some zoop, mebbe?”
“Zoop? What’s zoop?”
“You don’t know what is zoop? You know what is stew, yes? Vell, zoop is same ting, only looser.”
Well, some go skiing. Some flee south in RVs. Some go away on cruise ships. These are the dilettantes, the dabblers, the amateurs, the superficial tire-kickers.
And before you accuse me of using big words you can’t understand, let me explain that a dilettante is someone who follows sailing for an amusement, a diversion. Someone who doesn’t take sailing half seriously enough.
The real sailors are reading books of ocean adventures. They’re studying boat plans and looking at ads for Herreshoff 28 ketches. They’re making plans to get time off from their partners, and continue their clandestine affairs with their boats.
They’re poking holes in the shrink-wrap so they can get inside and sit on the saloon couch for a bit, maybe making a cup of coffee on the stove and searching for the half-bottle of rum they hid in the medicine cabinet. Just to fortify the coffee, of course.
They check the bilges for water and crank the motor over half a turn by hand, so the impeller doesn’t take a fatal set. They check that there’s air circulating, to deter mold. They switch on the VHF, listen to forecasts of raging storms, and grin to themselves, snug in their winter refuge.
They read with delight the logs of their past year’s cruising, and dream of those lovely lazy breezes and warm seas. They play back in their minds, time and time again, the peaceful nights at anchor, the early-morning call of the loon, and the shrill cry of a kingfisher carrying breakfast back to a forest of open beaks.
The thing about serious sailors, as opposed to those dilettantes, is that they are in love with their boats. They can hardly bear to be parted from them. They tend and care for them. They talk to them as if they were flesh and blood. They nurture them. They praise their good qualities and pardon their faults.
And in that definitive demonstration of ardour, they look back, long and hard, when they part. That’s what real sailors do in winter.
Today’s Thought
A man nearly always loves for other reasons than he thinks. A lover is apt to be as full of secrets from himself as is the object of his love from him.
— Ben Hecht
Tailpiece
“What’s the special today?”
“Ve got fine zoop today, sir. You like some zoop, mebbe?”
“Zoop? What’s zoop?”
“You don’t know what is zoop? You know what is stew, yes? Vell, zoop is same ting, only looser.”
November 15, 2009
Beware of lifelines
I’M NOT A GREAT FAN of lifelines. I suppose they may stop someone going overboard now and then, but mostly they just stand there doing nothing, interfering with the foresail sheets and chafing the mainsheet.
They have to be strung through upright stanchions that landlubbers instinctively grab when they think you’re coming into your berth too fast. And nothing could be better designed than a stanchion to lever the deck loose and open up holes around the fasteners where water can penetrate.
Lifelines inevitably stretch and droop with age because people hang their fenders from them and use them as clotheslines when they’re out cruising. They make it difficult to board the boat without doing a Nazi goose-step unless you add special hardware to make gate openings near the cockpit, and worst of all, they all too often come with a plastic coating that traps moisture inside and hides from view the subsequent corrosion of the wire.
All boats with cabins and sidedecks seem to come with lifelines these days, probably because society is currently so obsessed with the safety of others and so consumed with doubt that ordinary sailors like you and me are capable of sailing a boat without falling overboard. So if you must have lifelines, and it seems you must, even if only to placate the misplaced concern of the do-gooders, then let them be good, honest, plain stainless steel with no plastic covering.
This overweening solicitude for our welfare was not always present. Fifty or a hundred years ago there were lots of boats sailing around the world without lifelines, some of the greatest, such as Slocum and Moitessier, among them. It was obvious, even then, that you couldn’t definitely, positively, rely on lifelines to stop you going overboard, especially when you were working on the cabin top and the boat was heeled well over. They simply couldn’t be made high enough, or sturdy enough. Indeed, many modern lifelines masquerading as safety features are fit only to catapult you overboard. Sensible sailors never trust them, preferring to put their faith in cabin-top handrails, tethers, harnesses, and jacklines.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that the U.S. Coast Guard is experimenting with rope lifelines, although the stuff they use hardly qualifies for the term rope these days, being constructed of exotic fibers that are actually stronger than steel. They won’t rust, of course, but they can’t effectively be spliced, so they need mechanical terminal fittings. They’re lighter than stainless steel, and naturally more expensive, so they’re more likely to be found on flat-out racing boats whose owners don’t mind spending money as long as it makes the boat go faster. (Or on vessels for which the U.S. taxpayer foots the bill, of course.)
I’m told that such lifelines don’t abrade easily, and are tougher to cut than you might think, but I am conservative enough not to want them on my boat, thanks. Not yet. Maybe in 50 years, when I’ve got used to the idea. Meanwhile, I think it would be hard to find anything better for lifelines than good old stainless-steel wire rope. Without the plastic cover, of course.
Today’s Thought
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.
— Tacitus, Annals XV
Tailpiece
“Didn’t you hear me pounding on your wall last night?”
“Yeah, but we didn’t like to complain. We were making quite a bit of noise ourselves.”
They have to be strung through upright stanchions that landlubbers instinctively grab when they think you’re coming into your berth too fast. And nothing could be better designed than a stanchion to lever the deck loose and open up holes around the fasteners where water can penetrate.
Lifelines inevitably stretch and droop with age because people hang their fenders from them and use them as clotheslines when they’re out cruising. They make it difficult to board the boat without doing a Nazi goose-step unless you add special hardware to make gate openings near the cockpit, and worst of all, they all too often come with a plastic coating that traps moisture inside and hides from view the subsequent corrosion of the wire.
All boats with cabins and sidedecks seem to come with lifelines these days, probably because society is currently so obsessed with the safety of others and so consumed with doubt that ordinary sailors like you and me are capable of sailing a boat without falling overboard. So if you must have lifelines, and it seems you must, even if only to placate the misplaced concern of the do-gooders, then let them be good, honest, plain stainless steel with no plastic covering.
This overweening solicitude for our welfare was not always present. Fifty or a hundred years ago there were lots of boats sailing around the world without lifelines, some of the greatest, such as Slocum and Moitessier, among them. It was obvious, even then, that you couldn’t definitely, positively, rely on lifelines to stop you going overboard, especially when you were working on the cabin top and the boat was heeled well over. They simply couldn’t be made high enough, or sturdy enough. Indeed, many modern lifelines masquerading as safety features are fit only to catapult you overboard. Sensible sailors never trust them, preferring to put their faith in cabin-top handrails, tethers, harnesses, and jacklines.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that the U.S. Coast Guard is experimenting with rope lifelines, although the stuff they use hardly qualifies for the term rope these days, being constructed of exotic fibers that are actually stronger than steel. They won’t rust, of course, but they can’t effectively be spliced, so they need mechanical terminal fittings. They’re lighter than stainless steel, and naturally more expensive, so they’re more likely to be found on flat-out racing boats whose owners don’t mind spending money as long as it makes the boat go faster. (Or on vessels for which the U.S. taxpayer foots the bill, of course.)
I’m told that such lifelines don’t abrade easily, and are tougher to cut than you might think, but I am conservative enough not to want them on my boat, thanks. Not yet. Maybe in 50 years, when I’ve got used to the idea. Meanwhile, I think it would be hard to find anything better for lifelines than good old stainless-steel wire rope. Without the plastic cover, of course.
Today’s Thought
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.
— Tacitus, Annals XV
Tailpiece
“Didn’t you hear me pounding on your wall last night?”
“Yeah, but we didn’t like to complain. We were making quite a bit of noise ourselves.”
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