News from the transit lounge

AN E-MAIL FROM Ivor Tungin-Cheaque, chairman of Vigor’s Silent Fan Club, says:

O Honorable Lord and Master:

Greetings O Wise and Wonderful One, and allow me to convey certain news items that will undoubtedly be of great interest to you.

I am writing from the transit lounge of Moscow International Airport,  having learned that Edward Snowden is threatening to reveal the identities of billions of members of Vigor’s Silent Fan Club. Apparently, U.S. government security agencies have been collecting data about the biggest club of its kind in the world.

As you in your infinite wisdom are well aware, members of your Silent Fan Club are forbidden to contact you or praise in any way your unmatched intelligence and unrivalled literary skills. Membership is automatic, of course, but it ends with immediate effect if a member is found guilty of admiring your literary skills or trying to contact you with paeans of praise.

I mention this because President Putin popped in yesterday to see if he could persuade Snowden to expunge his name from the Silent Fan Club records. Like other members of the fan club, he is sworn to secrecy and would never praise you in public. He wouldn’t want it revealed  that he is a fan of yours, and thereby earn the public disgrace of being expelled. That would be too damaging to his political career.

But at the same time, he IS an ardent fan of your magificent prose and saintly behavior, which makes things very difficult for him. As a compromise he has refused to admit to Press that he is a Silent Fan and says anyone who reveals that he is, will spend 20 years in the salt mines.

Your eminence will appreciate the delicacy of the matter when I add that Snowden himself is a fan of yours, never having praised you in public, so there is a good chance that he will accede to Putin’s request and remove the Russian president’s name from the Silent Fan Club records.

In return, Putin may allow Snowden to remain in the Moscow transit lounge until Iran grants him asylum and an honorary ayatollahship.

But I am not well versed in the complicated matters of high diplomacy and I am tired from many hours of travel. I need rest and a stiff whisky.

Nevertheless, I am proud to have been of service to you in this manner.

I close with admiration for your sage-like utterances, your ready wit and charm, the subtle thrust and parry of your sparkling repartee, and the wisdom, Solomon-like, that graces your princely brow.
Yours Humbly and Obediently,

IVOR TUNGIN-CHEAQUE (Chairman, Vigor’s Silent Fan Club)
PS: I hope this all makes sense. Frankly I wonder sometimes if it’s even worth chewing through the restraints.

Today’s Thought

The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.

— Charles de Gaulle, former President of France

Tailpiece

“Do you know that in some parts of Africa they get rid of ghosts by stabbing a politician at midnight?”
“You mean, a human sacrifice?”
“No, no, only a politician.”

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

Boats that hold resale value

WHEN I RAN INTO Old Wotsisname recently he was idly wondering what his ancient concrete boat is worth.

“Thinking of selling?” I asked.

“Just wondering,” he said vaguely. He plays his cards very close to his chest.

I didn’t dare venture an opinion of how much someone might be prepared to pay him. He doesn’t take bad news too well.

The fact is that the market value of some boats drops quicker than others, and his is one of the quick-drop ones. This often comes as an unwelcome surprise when it’s time to sell your boat.

Here are some of the things about sailboats that give them good resale value:

Fiberglass hulls; first-class workmanship from reputable manufacturers; white hulls; conservative rigs; good sails; expensive fittings; clean diesel engines with low hours; sweet-smelling cabins and lockers; dry clean bilges; good ventilation; pretty sheerlines; low coachhouses; and bronze seacocks.

Here are some of the things that lower a boat’s resale value:

Hulls of steel, concrete, or wood (with the exception of modern wood/epoxy construction); one-off racing hulls; blistered gel coat; flimsy construction; a reputation for weather helm; hull colors other than white; experimental rigs; blown-out sails; cheap fittings; neglected gasoline engines; musty smells down below; worn upholstery; dirty, wet, oily bilges; lack of ventilation; unknown designers; ugly deckhouses; in-mast or in-boom reefing; centerboards; unusually skinny or beamy hulls; gate valves instead of seacocks; rust anywhere; and smelly heads.

According to the experts, the resale value of the average 10-year-old steel boat declines by about 50 percent, and ferro-concrete hulls slightly more.

The same experts maintain that you can increase a boat’s value by 10 percent when you want to sell by moving all your personal gear off and scrubbing everything spotlessly clean.

Today’s Thought

If you don’t sell, it’s not the product that’s wrong, it’s you.
— Estée Lauder

Tailpiece

Television is the device that acquaints you with all the things going on in the outside world that you would be part of if you weren’t sitting inside watching television.

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

Tracing the source of leaks

IF THERE WERE any justice, a fiberglass boat wouldn’t leak. After all it’s built like an eggshell. How could water get in?

All too easily, apparently, because there IS no justice. The trouble is that fiberglass hulls have holes in them. In most cases, the number of holes is comparatively small — dozens or scores — but in others it can be in the hundreds.

Most boats have large fittings that let fluids pass right through the hull, in and out. The engine cooling water comes in that way, for example, and water for flushing the head goes out that way when the Coasties aren’t watching. The galley sink drains that way, too.

The through-hull fittings are bedded in compounds to prevent leaks, but as boats age, the compound shifts, oozes out, or becomes more brittle, allowing water to enter. Old seacocks often leak, too.

All boats have holes through the deck and cabintop for various fittings, and some have hundreds of holes for screws holding down strips of teak decking. In theory, all these holes are sealed. In practice, many will leak when it rains or when spray hits the deck. And if you have a cabin liner, or ceiling boards on the cabin sides, tracing the source of a leak is notoriously difficult.

This may sound a bit whacky, but the best way to find where the water’s coming from is to seal the boat and pump in air at low pressure. Brush soapy water over the superstructure and watch for bubbles.

You can use duct tape and butyl putty to seal the hatches and ventilation holes temporarily, and the air pressure doesn’t have to be high. A few pounds per square inch will do it.

Today’s Thought

Where least expected, water breaks forth.
— Italian proverb

Tailpiece

I want to know
How fireflies glow.
Do they carry
Little Exides
Slung beneath
Their tiny bexides?

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

We can't get enough of it

BOATS NEVER CARRY ENOUGH fresh water for the likes of their crews. Water is simply too heavy and bulky to waste on daily showers and washing clothes. Only really big vessels have sufficient tankage for those purposes, so we lesser mortals have to struggle along with a lick here and a spit there, getting smellier by the nautical mile.

There are machines that make fresh water from the sea, which would seem to be the answer, but they’re beyond the resources of most of us, simply too expensive to buy and maintain.

Many long-distance cruisers manage to catch enough rain to keep their tanks topped up. Some collect rainwater in a bucket where it runs in a stream off the mainsail at the gooseneck. Others plug the cockpit drains and siphon the water into the tanks below. If you carry a dinghy upright on deck it could also be an extra catchment area.

You should let the first few minutes of a rainstorm wash away the dirt from sails and decks before you start collecting, of course, if you need drinking water. Otherwise, you can use slightly tainted water for showers or washing clothes.

And, incidentally, you can often scoop fresh water off the surface of the sea after really heavy rain in calm conditions. It floats on top of the denser salt water. Just don’t dip too deep.

Today’s Thought

Rain hangs about the place like a friendly ghost. ... if it’s not coming down in delicate droplets, then it’s in buckets; and if neither, it tends to lurk suspiciously in the atmosphere.
— Barbara Acton-Bond, “The Anglicization of Me,” CSM 21 Jul 82

Tailpiece

I’m told that Orville and Wilbur Wright, those pioneers of flight, were notoriously diffident about speaking in public.
Nevertheless, at one lunch they attended, the master of ceremonies called upon Wilbur to say a few words.
“There must be some mistake,” he stammered.  “Orville is the one who does the talking.”
Orville dutifully rose and announced:  “Wilbur just made the speech.”

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

The day I said no to a poet

YESTERDAY I WAS READING for the umpteenth time — and trying to understand, with as little success as usual — a book by a former casual friend of mine. It’s called Selected Poems, 1984, and was written by the late Douglas Livingstone. 

And, as usual, I was riven by longstanding guilt for not letting him row my boat.

Livingstone was a brilliant thinker, with doctorates in science and literature. He was a highly respected marine biologist and South Africa’s leading poet, a writer of world standard.  He and his lover, Monica Fairall, a former Miss South Africa, were guests that my wife June had invited to a little party on our 31-foot sloop, which we were preparing for a long overseas trip. Among the other guests, recognized authors, journalists, and broadcasters, was a young woman who had been studying Yeats at university in Ireland.  She was an admirer of Livingstone’s work and beside herself with excitement at the thought of being able to meet him and discuss his work, and poetry in general, with him.

I rowed the guests out to our mooring on Durban Bay in our old Mirror dinghy.  I had to make several trips and go carefully because the screws holding one rowlock had worked loose and no amount of tightening with a screwdriver would firm them up again.

I wasn’t worried about losing the use of one oar completely, because I was an accomplished sculler and the Mirror’s transom had been specially fitted with a rowlock for this purpose. But in fact the day was calm and I managed to get everybody safely on board without having to revert to sculling.

We soon discovered, however, that our poet friend was having a bad day. He turned inward and wouldn’t speak to anybody, much to the disappointment of the young lady studying Yeats. He sat disconsolately on deck on his own, just abaft the mast, and wouldn’t be mollified by talk or consoled with drink.

Eventually, however, he asked if he could go off on his own in the dinghy.  I asked him if he could scull with one oar over the stern.

“No,” he said.

“Then I’m sorry,” I said.  “The damaged rowlock might give way completely and you might find yourself stranded somewhere.”

He didn’t protest. He didn’t say anything. He just glared at me.

 

I went below and tried to inject some jolliness into the somber conversation, but it was uphill going while that brooding presence skulked overhead.  There was nothing June or I could do to save that particular party.

After the party, after we had transferred our glum guests to the shore, I said to June:  “I should have let him take the dinghy. Exercise might have chased away his emotional devils, and he might have come back in a better mood. You have to give some slack to brilliant men like him no matter how rudely they behave.”

“And you might have had to call the police boat to rescue him,” June pointed out. “Besides, we had no other way to get ashore.”

To this day I regret not letting him go for a solo ride in the Mirror.  Who knows what poetic fancies he might have conceived along the way. He might even have written a poem about me. (Maybe he did.  I don’t understand his work very well. It’s way above my fire-make place, as they say in Afrikaans.)

My copy of Selected Poems is signed by Douglas Livingstone and inscribed to June and me “with love.” But I rather suspect he didn’t feel much love for me the day I told him he couldn’t go for a row in my dinghy.

Today’s Thought

I don’t think I am any good. If I thought I was any good, I wouldn’t be.
— John Betjeman, People, 2 Jul 84

Tailpiece

“Did you get the license plate of the hit-and-run driver who knocked you down?”
“No, but I’d recognize my mother-in-law’s laugh anywhere.”

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

Natural tools for boaters

THERE ARE OFTEN TIMES on a boat when you don’t have the right tools for the job at hand. But fear not, there is usually a way out of this difficulty.  I like to think of it as Natural Tools for Yachtsmen (and yachtsladies, of course).

The natural tools I’m thinking of are always readily available. In fact, you’re never without them. I’m referring to the teeth, tongue, toes, nails, armpits, elbows, lips, chin, fingers, and other tools with which nature has kindly provided you.

Here, in no particular order, is a list of the ways in which you might use these tools:

Teeth: Gripping mainsheet; holding a flashlight; cutting twine; frightening noisy kids.

Tongue: Removing jam, tuna, etc. from messy can openers.

Toes:  Feeling for tools you dropped into bilgewater;  testing the temperature of water before swimming.

Nails: Undoing small slot-headed screws;  picking eyes out of potatoes; slitting open envelopes; cutting off electrical tape; scraping dried varnish blobs off deck.

Armpit: Gripping the jib sheet; holding the tiller while you haul in the mainsheet.

Elbows: Holding down the jib you just dropped on the foredeck.

Lips: Holding small nails or screws; tasting bilge water to find out if it’s salt water, rain water, or holding-tank overflow.

Fingers: Opening shackles; poking into wood to find rot; testing the temperature of beer;  removing wax from your ear.

Ears: Holding pencils and glasses in place; preventing hat from dropping over face.

Knees: Pinning down cockpit cushions in a breeze.

Thumbs: Protecting teak from damage when you’re hammering in nails.

I don’t doubt there are several other body parts that could double as tools in certain circumstances. Eyelids, perhaps? Eyelids must be of some use, apart from fluttering at passing girls. And buttocks? Buttocks are very powerful when clenched.  Could be a substitute for a vise, surely, but you’d need a partner to help with the actual work in the vise.

In any case, there’s no need to despair when you’re caught without tools. There are all sorts of dingly-dangly bits on your body and mine that might be pressed into use in emergencies. Just put your mind to it and select the right natural tool for the job.

Today’s Thought

The human body is the magazine of inventions, the patent office, where are the models from which every hint is taken. All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and senses.

— Emerson, Society and Solitude: Works and Days

Tailpiece

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy it you can do it again tomorrow, and if you don’t, you haven’t messed up another day.

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

Propeller whys and wherefores

WHY ARE SOME propellers two-bladed and some three-bladed? Why are some fixed, some feathering, and some folding?

It’s all a question of compromise. In the sizes, and at the speeds, usually found in auxiliary sailboats with fixed propellers, a two-bladed prop is often the most efficient.

But sometimes there just isn’t sufficient clearance between the shaft and the hull to accommodate those long thin blades. So the load is spread among three broader blades of smaller diameter. Each blade here is working in water slightly more disturbed by its predecessor than a two-bladed prop would be, so it’s slightly less efficient.

But a three-bladed prop is less prone to vibration than is a two-bladed one, and needs less of a hole cut in the rudder, if that’s the way it’s fitted.

A two-bladed prop, on the other hand, can be nicely lined up vertically behind the rudder post and so avoid much of the drag of a three-bladed prop. And so it goes. In the end, the best advice is probably to fit a two-bladed prop if you can, a three-bladed one if you can’t, and stop worrying about it.

A folding prop causes very little drag, but is prone not to open at all if a fat barnacle grows in the wrong place. So folding props are more suited to racing yachts than to cruisers. Folding props can be tricky in reverse and sometimes need a transmission with a higher than normal astern-gear ratio to make them open properly.

Adjustable pitch props require no gearbox or clutch but are quite rare, presumably because the sophisticated mechanism needed to vary the pitch under way is expensive and more prone to malfunction than are a simple prop and gearbox.

An automatic feathering prop, such as the Max-Prop, reduces drag while sailing, but its fine engineering makes it too expensive for most cruising yachts, which happily drag fixed, reliable three-bladed props around the oceans of the world.

Today’s Thought

As when the devilish iron engine, wrought
In deepest hell, and fram’d by fury’s skill,
With windy nitre and quick sulphur fraught,
And ramm’d with bullet round, ordain’d to kill,
Conceiveth fire, the heavens it doth fill
With thundering noise, and all the air doth choke,
That none can breathe, nor see, not hear at will,
Through smouldry cloud of duskish stinking smoke,
That th’onely breath him daunts, who hath escap’d the stroke.

— Spenser, Faerie Queene

Tailpiece

The problem with the person who has an hour to kill is that he inevitably wants to spend it with someone who hasn’t a minute to spare.

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