Ready to charter? (4)

ARE YOU READY to charter? Here’s Part 4 of our five-part quiz series:

Rules of the Road

Question 7. You are under sail on a northerly course. You need to charge the batteries and cool the fridge, so you have the motor running and in gear. On your port bow, at a relative angle of about 45 degrees, you spot a fishing boat steaming toward you. She’s coming back from the fishing grounds with her catch. Do you:

(a) Change course and/or speed to keep clear of her, because sailboats must keep clear of fishing boats?

(b) Hold your course because, when two power-driven vessels are crossing, the vessel that has the other on its starboard side must keep clear?

(c) Hold your course because power-driven vessels must keep clear of sailing vessels?

Navigation

Question 8. Where would you most likely hear someone mumble “True virgins make dull companions — add whisky”?

Would it be:

(a) In a disreputable sailors’ bar?

(b) At a meeting of Male Chauvinists Anonymous?

(c) In the wheelhouse of a small and smelly fishing boat?

ANSWERS

7(b). Remember, the collision rules don’t talk about fishing boats. They refer to vessels “engaged in fishing.” Fishing boats that aren’t engaged in fishing are regarded as ordinary power-driven vessels (or, though not very likely these days, ordinary sailing vessels). Remember, too, that a sailboat using her auxiliary engine in gear is considered to be a power-driven vessel, whether or not she has any sail up. (If she does have sail up and is also being driven by an engine, she should display a black shape at the bow.)

In any case, in our example we have a simple case of two power-driven vessels crossing.

8(c). You might also hear it at the chart table of a knowledgable charter yacht skipper as he or she uses the traditional navigator’s memory aid for the headings to convert true bearings to compass bearings, or vice versa: True-Variation-Magnetic-Deviation-Compass (Add Westerly).

Today’s Thought
It must not be forgotten even in the finest weather that there is no such thing as “playing at sailors” when at sea.
— C. E. Seth-Smith

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #122
Beware of lee helm. Lee helm not only adds resistance to forward progress (far more than weather helm does) but it is hard on the helmsman. There is something very unsettling about steering a sailboat with lee helm. It’s also dangerous in heavy weather, tending to make the boat constantly fall off the wind until she jibes and jibes again. So the rule is simply this: don’t live with lee helm any longer than you have to.

Tailpiece
“Man, but that big guy over there is dumb.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He just failed his blood test.”

Ready to charter? (3)

HERE’S PART 3 of the 10-question charter quiz for your amusement and delight. Are you ready to charter yet?

Fuel tank range

Question 5. You’re cruising in your trawler-type power cruiser. Your proven-accurate fuel gauge says your 40-gallon diesel tank is two-thirds full.

You know your 36 hp engine uses 2 gallons an hour at your present cruising speed of 10 knots. In the absence of headwinds, currents, and waves, is it reasonable to assume that you:

(a) Could power non-stop to a port 125 miles away?

(b) Would need to carry 13.3 gallons of extra fuel in containers to make that same port?

(c) Should reduce speed to 5 knots to halve fuel consumption and double your cruising range?

The painter again

Question 6. Despite your very clear and calm orders, your dumb crew has allowed the dinghy painter to become entangled in the propeller as you power astern to set the anchor. What is the first thing you should try to do to untangle it?

(a) Shift gear to forward and give the motor a quick burst.

(b) Shift gear to forward and turn the motor slowly by hand with a crank or with a very short jab at the starter motor after activating the compression release.

(c) Shift into neutral and pull like hell on the end of the painter?

ANSWERS

5(a). Two-thirds of 40 gallons is 26.6 gallons. So, consuming 2 gallons an hour, you can steam for 13.3 hours at 10 knots. That’s 133 miles. In theory, you’d make it. In practice, you’d want to top up the tank before leaving, or carry 10 gallons of extra fuel in jugs, just to be safe. And just in case you didn’t know, halving your cruising speed will add to your range, but it certainly won’t double it.

6(b) If you’re safely at anchor, this is the recommended method. Yes, it’s tempting to try a reasonably hard tug on the painter but it’s usually in vain and could actually tighten up the snarled line. Speeding the prop in forward gear is almost guaranteed to make matters worse. Even if it does clear, the painter will probably tangle up again immediately. Your last resort, of course, is to dive with a very sharp knife. The dumb crew, I mean, not you.

Today’s Thought
Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of non-knowledge.
— Isaac Bashevis Singer

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #121
Lateral plane as a percentage of sail area. Lateral plane area is what stops a sailboat slipping sideways in a beam wind. Sail area is what tries to make it slip sideways. As a general rule, the relationship between the two can be expressed thus:
— The total lateral plane (including the rudder) of full-keeled boats should be between 12 and 16 percent of the sail area.
— The area of a fin keel (only) should be about 7 to 10 percent of the sail area.
— The lateral plane area of a centerboard (only) may be as little as 5 percent of sail area.

Tailpiece
“What are those marks on your nose?”
“They’re from my glasses.”
“Well for Pete’s sake why don’t you tilt your head back more?”

Ready to charter? (2)

HERE'S PART 2 of the 5-part, 10-question quiz for would-be charterers.

Weather

3. You’re on a beam reach under full sail in open water with plenty of sea room when you notice a line of fast-approaching, low, rolling cloud. It looks dark, almost black, but you can see sunshine and calm sea behind it, so you know that whatever it is, it definitely won’t last more than 10 or 15 minutes.

Should you:

(a) Furl the foresail and double-reef the main?

(b) Hold your course and, if it starts to blow, spill wind from the mainsail for the duration of the squall?

(c) Hold your course and run dead downwind for the duration of the squall?

Signals

4. In open water you spot a disreputable-looking sailboat about two miles to windward. You can’t make out whether there’s anybody on board, but you think you hear a gunshot. Sure enough, about a minute later, you hear another. And about a minute later (but not exactly a minute) definitely another gunshot.

What’s going on?

(a) They’re drug runners warning you to keep well clear.

(b) It’s a family squabble and you’d do well not to get mixed up in it.

(c) They’re in distress and asking for your immediate assistance.

ANSWERS

3(a). This is a line squall, capable of blowing very hard and doing a lot of damage in a short time. Spilling wind could allow the mainsail to flog and rip. Running downwind could result in a wild uncontrolled broach or dangerous jibe. Always play it safe and keep the boat under tight control.

4(c) It’s the very first distress signal listed in the international and inland regulations for preventing collisions: “A gun or other explosive signal fired at intervals of about a minute.” (It could also be a family squabble, of course, depending on the neighborhoods you frequent, so be cautious if you approach to lend help.)

Today’s Thought
After the verb “to love,” “to help” is the most beautiful verb in the world!
— Baroness von Suttner, Ground Arms

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #120
Reading the tropical waters. Dark blue water means deep water, 20 fathoms or more. Vivid blue-green is the color of the coral sand covering a flat expanse of reef with 4 to 6 feet of water over it. Dark brown indicates coral heads. Brown or yellow indicates reefs with 3 or 4 feet of water over them. White means beach sand. You’re probably already aground.

Tailpiece
Two inmates of a mental home were strolling in the grounds with a nurse when a passing pigeon dropped something white on the coat of one of the men.
“Wait here a minute,” said the nurse, “and I’ll fetch a tissue.”
The man turned to his friend. “She’s nuts,” he said, “by the time she gets back that pigeon will be miles away.”

Ready to charter?

I NOTICE THAT SOME PEOPLE are happy to swop boats with others in distant cruising destinations, so that both parties can have boating vacations at little or no cost. But I couldn’t do that. Sharing my boat would be like sharing my wife. It may be very old-fashioned of me, but I can’t do that.

Like most people, I prefer to charter. Sometimes, however, the charter companies are fussy about your experience of handling boats. So, what do you think? Are YOU ready to charter yet?

Here are the first two questions in a 10-part quiz I prepared to test your skills. The answers are below, so be careful not to peek before you’ve answered the questions.

1. Anchoring

Your chosen night anchorage is a charming little cove protected from the prevailing wind by a high, steep hill. The holding ground is good but when you arrive there your find it’s crowded with charter yachts.

You notice, however, that there is space enough for you up to windward of everybody else, close in toward the beach and under the hill in about 10 feet of water — plenty for your 5-foot draft, even allowing for the tide.

Should you:

(a) Anchor there?

(b) Anchor to leeward behind everybody else, far away from the beach in 40 feet of water?

(c) Ask someone already anchored if you can raft up alongside them for the night?

2. Maneuvering

At your on-board briefing the charter company representative informs you that you have a right-handed propeller. She asks if you understand this, and you nod wisely. After all, most things are right-handed, right? That’s obviously another word for normal.

So, when you’re backing out of your slip under power, what’s most likely to happen to the stern if the rudder is centered?

(a) The stern will probably tend to swing to port, or your right as you face aft.

(b) It will just go backward in a normal straight line.

(c) It will probably tend to swing to starboard, or your left, facing aft.

ANSWERS

1(b). If you’ve ever tried this, you’ll know why the answer isn’t (a). Frequently a steep hill or cliff will create a backwind for a short distance to leeward. You could end up being sucked in toward the beach and going aground.

It pays to be suspicious. There’s usually a good reason why nobody’s already anchored in what looks to be a prime spot. As for (c), even if you found a willing host, most charter companies forbid rafting up — for good seamanlike reasons.

2 (a). Looking from astern, a right-handed propeller turns clockwise when it’s driving forward. In reverse, it turns counter-clockwise. It also tends to “paddle-wheel” the stern one way or the other, particularly at slow speeds.

So think of the propeller as a paddle wheel moving the stern to the left when you’re in reverse, as seen from behind. Correspondingly, a left-handed prop will move the stern to the right in reverse, of course. Different boats behave differently, but this is what a prudent sailor would reasonably expect and be prepared to make allowance for.

Today’s Thought

It takes several years for anyone to learn to handle a yacht reasonably well, and a lifetime to admit how much more there is to learn.

— Maurice Griffiths

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb #119
Knots and line strength. All knots (and even tight kinks) reduce the strength of a line. Here’s how much the strength of the line is reduced by:
Anchor bend, 24 percent; round turn and two half hitches, 30 to 35 percent; bowline, 40 percent; clove hitch, 40 percent; sheet bend, 45 percent; reef knot, 55 percent.
Note: None of this should worry you unduly because most modern lines on yachts are far stronger than they need be.

Tailpiece
Teacher: “How many times can 2 be subtracted from 10?”
Student: “I have done it 154 times and every time it comes to 5.”

Just a slight panic

SAILING A SMALL BOAT introduces many personal feelings and emotions that must be quite alien to the landlubber. When I sail out to sea, for example, there is always a sudden twinge of anxiety when the land disappears and I realize that my boat is alone on a very wide sea. There is always that sudden sense of worry, of disbelief that land exists anywhere.

No matter how many times I do that, the anxiety always appears on schedule. I feel it in the pit of my stomach until the physical routine of running the ship consumes me once again, and all fear is forgotten until the next landfall — when a different breed of concerns takes over.

There’s another feeling the landlubber will never experience either, and that’s the anxiety, verging on controlled panic, you experience when land should appear but doesn’t.

It happened to me once. After 16 days at sea I was approaching the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, specially chosen as my landfall because of its height and therefore its visibility from a great distance.

But when my calculations showed I was within sighting range, there was nothing but blue sea and sky. Hour after hour went by as I fussed with my navigation and did my sums over again and again. My alarm was contagious. My crew started to worry alongside me. Ten miles to go, and no St. Vincent.

With sinking feelings in our stomachs we wondered out loud. Could the compass be wrong? Were we completely lost? Was the sextant giving false readings? Was our chronometer acting up? Were the charts wrong? Did we have enough food and water to find some land somewhere, anywhere?

Five miles to go. Nothing. Had there been an earthquake? Had St. Vincent been blown off the face of the earth? If so, wouldn’t we see some trees and wreckage? Our minds, urged on by partially controlled panic, ran amok with logical reasons for our worrisome situation.

Suddenly there was a flash of light high up to starboard. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was sun reflecting off a car on a mountain road. We were about to run into St. Vincent. I was so startled, I automatically jibed and reversed our course.

In the next few minutes, the whole island revealed itself and we were, in fact, about four miles off, dead on course. Oh, what a relief. You can’t imagine our joy. The island had been hidden by a sea mist that had blended on the horizon to make one seamless view of the blue sea and sky. So much for the pilot books, and their tall tales of how far away St. Vincent is visible.

I have to tell you that we all felt physically drained after the gamut of emotions that had wracked our minds and stomachs for so many hours, so perhaps the landlubbers are, after all, quite happy to be spared that particular experience.

Today’s Thought
“We are lost!” the captain shouted,
As he staggered down the stairs.
-- James Thomas Fields, Ballad of the Tempest

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #118
Knots good and bad. A good knot has three important attributes:
1. It must hold fast under all conditions.
2. It must come apart easily when you want it to.
3. You must be able to make it automatically — that is, your finger muscles should retain a memory of the knot.
In addition, the best of knots can be tied or untied under strain.

Tailpiece
“Who’s the gorgeous girl over there?”
“She’s the village belle.”
“How do you know?”
“She’s wringing her hands.”

Ocean dinghy sailing

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 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 dinghy.[1]

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.

[1] 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

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #117
The knots you need. You can do almost everything you need to on a boat with just two knots, one bend and two hitches — five in all. They are the anchor bend, the bowline, the reef knot, the rolling hitch, and the clove hitch.

Tailpiece
“Why did they transfer your boy friend from that submarine?”
“He has a habit of sleeping with the window open.”

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

Sailors’ worst nightmares

WHAT’S THE WORST THING that can happen to a sailor? That’s what Old Wotsisname and a couple of his pals were trying to figure out the other day as they stood around on the docks dodging rain showers.

OW said the worst thing that ever happened to him was being banned from the yacht club bar for calling the commodore an idiot to his face. But he got his own back. He resigned from the club and moved his boat to another city — yeah, OW really showed them!

However, his pals had other ideas about the worst calamities that can happen to a small-boat sailor, among them:

► Mast failure. Nothing makes your heart beat faster than the sight of your mast going overboard. The seriousness of the situation depends on many things, of course, especially how far away you are from land and rescue services.

► Anchor dragging onto a lee shore. Naturally, this only happens in the worst weather when it will cause maximum harm. Depending on the forecast, and how fast the anchor is moving, and how far offshore you are, it can be white-knuckle time. The answer is to retrieve your anchor and put out to sea as soon as the wind starts blowing hard onshore.

► Engine failure while entering a strange marina. It happens with puzzling frequency. It’s as if engines know when best to punish you. One answer is to have a stern anchor set up and ready to hurl overboard within seconds.

► A leak in the water tank at sea. It really gets your attention when you wake up to find your floorboards awash in fresh water. Whether you die of thirst or not depends on your knowledge of extracting lymphatic fluid from fish, as Dr. Alain Bombard did, and how much moisture there is in those cans of baked beans in the galley.

► Seasickness. For those afflicted, nothing is worse, even death itself. In fact, some in the deepest throes of this maritime misery have been known to beg to be allowed to die. Don’t let them. Force-feed them with dry crackers, keep them hydrated, and give them a steady supply of brown paper bags. And don’t expect any thanks.

► Some other suggestions from OW’s consultation group included:
— Going hard aground at high spring tide in front of the yacht club.
— Turning turtle at sea.
— Complete compass failure at sea.
— Getting too old to sail.

And, rather poignantly, one old salt opined that the worst thing that can happen to a sailor is to lose his or her long-time sailing partner. I thought it better not to ask him how he knew.

Today’s Thought
The true test of seamanship is how a sailor reacts when things go wrong, as they surely will.
— John Vigor

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #116
Winged keels. Wings at the bottom of a keel are an advantage only if you have a draft restriction. They get ballast low and help cut down on induced drag, but most boats could be made equally efficient by using deeper ordinary keels.

Tailpiece
“You quite sure you shot this gator yourself?”
“Yup.”
“Howcome it’s all dirty along one side?”
“Hit the mud when it fell out of the tree.”