A temptation to resist

A PRIVATE MOORING BUOY is always a great temptation to a skipper who is obsessed with the need to find a safe, quiet berth after a hard day’s sailing.

The temptation is vastly increased if that enticing buoy also happens to lie among closely anchored yachts where there is no room to allow a decent scope for the anchor line.

But it’s a temptation to be resisted.

In the first place, you can’t know the condition of the underwater components of the mooring. You also probably won’t know what size of boat that mooring was designed to accommodate. You might get away with it if the weather is calm, but if the wind rises and the waves get up you might break the mooring and put yourself in a very dangerous position. Furthermore, where will you go if the owner of the mooring comes back in the middle of the night and kicks you off?

No, steel yourself to another half-hour of anxious circling and searching for the anchoring spot that will provoke the fewest fierce glares from those already settled back on their rodes. You’ll be a lot safer at anchor.

Incidentally, in congested anchorages, you can usually get away with a scope of 3-to-1 if you use an all-chain rode, and if the weather is calm.

Today’s Thought

Joy, shipmate, joy!
(Pleas’d to my soul at death I cry,)
Our life is closed, our life begins,
The long, long anchorage we leave,
The ship is clear at last, she leaps!
She swiftly courses from the shore,
Joy, shipmate, joy!
— Walt Whitman, Joy, Shipmate, Joy!

Tailpiece

Some people are like Slinkies — not really good for anything, but they bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.

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Unpronounceable boat names

WHAT IF YOU HAD a boat name that couldn’t be pronounced?  Not merely because it was difficult to pronounce, but because it consisted totally of letters that were silent. How would you send a Mayday message, for example, if you couldn’t tell anybody what boat you were on?

You might not realize it, but there is a chance that the name of your boat is silent. Polyanthus is a silent word, for instance. You cannot say it aloud. Callipygian is another. Impossible to vocalize.

Imagine that the latent anarchist within you wants to name your boat Pigshyt.

“You can’t call it that,” the club commodore tells you gruffly. “It’s unheard of!”

“Precisely, Mr. Commodore, you can’t say it. That’s why it’s unheard of,” you point out. “The P is silent, as in psychiatrist. The I is silent, as in bait. The G . . . they’re all silent. The whole word is silent.”

As a matter of fact there are 17 letters in English that have two or more pronunciations, at least one of which is silent. That’s more than half the alphabet, including all the vowels. See here:

Silent      As in

Y              say          

P              psychiatrist

B              plumber

G              gnome, sign

S              island

O              phoenix

E              pole

H              honest

A              cocoa

C              scent

I               bait

T              castle

K              knife

L               talk

U              guitar

W             wrap

N              hymn

 

So be very careful when you choose a name for your boat, otherwise you may not be able to tell anybody what it is. They say silence is golden, but it’s not always the best form of communication in an emergency.

Today’s Thought

To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of men.
— Marcel Marceau

Tailpiece

I have to laugh when I hear owners of Toyota Priuses and Honda Civic hybrids arguing over who uses the least gasoline.  Christopher Columbus got the best mileage ever — he averaged several thousand miles per galleon.

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The credit that never was

I SUSPECT I HAVE turned into an old grump. What made me grumpy today was a letter addressed to me personally from Cruising World magazine. On the front, in heavy black capital letters it said OPEN IMMEDIATELY.  And in the address pane, cunningly visible just above my name, it said: “Credit Adjustment - $151.64.”

Had I been a few decades younger and more naive, I would have shouted “Woo-hoo! They’re sending me some money!” But I have been around the block a few times.  I am not easily taken in any more. I can spot a scam when I see one.

This is scurrilous behavior for a magazine with the reputation of Cruising World and it makes me mad that it would descend to such depths of depravity in order to sell a few subscriptions.

When I am ordered to open an envelope immediately, I deliberately make it wait. I send it to the bottom of the pile immediately to teach it a lesson for being so rude, and I open it hours or days later, by which time the people at Cruising World will, with any luck, be turning purple with frustration.  There are some repetitive letters that I recognize from past experience, and I don’t open them at all.  They go straight into the waste-paper basket, savagely ripped in half.

But this time, when I judged the folks at Cruising World had turned the right shade of purple, I did open the envelope. As I thought, there was no check for $151.64 enclosed. No, sir. Credit means something else to these people. This is how they figured it out. Because they were offering me a three-year subscription to their magazine (36 issues) for $28, they calculated they were giving me $151.64 because if I’d paid the full cover price I would have spent $179.64.

You don’t have to be an Einstein to spot the fault in their logic, which is that I’d never fork out $179.64 for 36 issues of Cruising World when I can get it for $28. I may be an old grump, but I’m not crazy.

When they start charging 77 cents per magazine, which is what $28 for 36 works out at, the question arises: why not just give the darned thing away? There are plenty of publications out there that make a living on advertising revenue alone. Why not Cruising World? They could fire their whole subscription department for a start, and save a lot of money.

That would make me a lot less grumpy, too.

Today’s Thought

As for editorial content, that’s the stuff you separate the ads with.

— Lord Thomson of Fleet

Tailpiece

Scottish police have found an effective way to break up rioting in the streets of Glasgow. They send in constables armed with collection boxes.
 
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It's no longer a death sentence

I’M GLAD TO SEE that the hysteria over osmotic blistering of boat hulls has greatly died down over the years. There was a time, early on in the fiberglass era of boatbuilding, when a diagnosis of osmosis was considered to be the equivalent of a death sentence. But since then the truth has seeped in gradually — like cancer in humans, osmosis in boats isn’t necessarily fatal.

Osmotic blistering of the hull, or what used to be known as the dreaded boat pox, affected about one in four boats, although fewer modern boats are affected now. It’s caused by the migration of water vapor through the gelcoat into the laminate of glass fibers and polyester resin that we call GRP, or glass-reinforced plastic. The blisters usually manifest themselves in the outer one-tenth of the GRP.

Blisters come in all sizes, but luckily most of them are fairly small. Consequently, most cures involve nothing more than drilling out the blister site with a conical bit, letting the hole dry out, and then filling it with epoxy and filler.

If you’re really unlucky and have a more severe case of blistering, the gelcoat will have to be removed — peeled off by a professional, usually. The hull must be dried thoroughly, often for several months, and the gelcoat must be replaced by coatings of epoxy or vinyl resin.

Bad cases of osmosis are comparatively rare but they are expensive to fix — often amounting to 50 percent of the boat’s value or more — so the resale value of an affected boat is low.

Although we now take a more casual approach to osmosis, it’s best not to let things get out of hand. Examine the underwater hull every year for osmosis. Catch it quickly, while the blisters are still small and fix it.

Today’s Thought

Build me straight O worthy Master!
Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel
That shall laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle.
— Longfellow, The Building of the Ship

Tailpiece

A grateful importer wanted to show his appreciation to a Customs officer who had smoothed the passage of a large consignment of  exclusive French perfume.
“Here, I’d like you to accept a large bottle of our most expensive scent,” the importer said.
“Sorry, sir, but the regulations don’t allow us to accept gifts.”
“No problem,” said the importer. “Tell you what. I’ll sell you this bottle for 25 cents.”
The Customs man looked at him thoughtfully. “In that case,” he said, “I’ll take a dozen.”

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It's really a very safe sport

IT’S INTERESTING TO THINK THAT sailing is one of the safest sports practiced in the U.S.A. In fact, more people die in their baths every year.

The sea is actually not as dangerous as you might imagine. Most of the famous singlehanded circumnavigators of the mid-20th century sailed without lifelines around the deck, and without safety tethers.

For many sailors, lifelines represented false security. “Better learn to cling like a monkey,” Bernard Moitessier once told me. He has a point. I suspect that if I fell from atop the house of a medium-sized sloop while she was well heeled, I would fall right over the lifelines without touching.

It’s impossible to know if the lifelines now so popular on small boats have added to safety at sea, but  I don’t think anyone can seriously say the death rate in the old days was any greater than it is now.

Perhaps the sea just seems more dangerous because we live in a society obsessed with safety, our own and others’. We are ordered to belt up in cars, wear helmets on bicycles, put on sunscreen, and swallow vitamins. Old-timers accepted responsibility for their own safety and relied on common sense rather than constant and irritating adjurations from so-called authorities.

I have reservations about lifejackets, too, especially inflatable ones. I cannot imagine how I’d get back on board most small boats if I were hampered by the bulky inflated bladders. Perhaps that’s why there’s always advice to carry a small knife attached to your lifejacket, along with a flashlight, a whistle, a personal locator beacon, a rescue mirror, a waterproof VHF radio, a rescue mirror, and lord knows what all else. You could stab the bladders, I suppose, before attempting to pull yourself on board. You could also stab yourself accidentally and die from blood loss and shock instead of drowning.    

The more I think about it, the more I like Moitessier’s advice to cling like a monkey.

Today’s Thought

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

— John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic

Tailpiece

America is one of the few countries that have too many surgeons and not enough patients. In fact, it has got to the stage now where doctors are accusing people of staying healthy just out of spite.

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Getting to grips with the engine

IT WOULD BE HARD to imagine a worse place for an engine than the aft bilge of a sailboat. The builders bolt down a bridge-deck and cockpit floor an inch or two above it. Then they seal the whole thing off with bulkheads and companionway steps, as if it were leprous. Thus, even if you can remove the steps, you still have no access to some of the most important parts of the engine unless you’re built like a daddy-longlegs.

Sailboat engines are poorly maintained because you can’t get near them. I couldn’t even see the oil dipstick on my engine on a previous boat. It was underneath, around the corner, at the back of the engine in the pitch dark somewhere. I had to grope for it and find the oil level by Braille. Getting the dipstick back into its little hole was a nightmare. I was terrified of dropping it into the bilge under the engine, a little festering hellhole where no man had been before.

I blame yacht designers for this. Few of them give serious thought to engine maintenance. It ought to be possible to use hinged or removable panels to provide access to your engine, even if you have to swing the whole galley over your head or something. Good engine access is vital. It deserves much more attention.

Pacific Seacraft and some other boatbuilders provide a removable watertight hatch in the cockpit floor, which gives splendid access to everything you can reach from the top, but I have often wondered how long the hatch will stay watertight. I guess, though, that it’s not a big worry.  A few drips of water won’t bother a diesel engine any unless they fall steadily on the alternator.

In boats that have quarterberths, it would be handy if you could cut an access panel or two in the engineroom bulkheads. You might have to wriggle head-first into the berth to find the dipstick, which is not great news for those who suffer from claustrophobia, but it sure beats climbing into the cockpit locker or reaching around oily corners for fittings you can’t see.

Today’s Thought

Architecture begins where engineering ends.

— Walter Gropius

Tailpiece

“Now that you’re a famous violinist, tell me — what was your motivation for practicing so long and so hard when you were a little child?”
“My mother.”
“Your mother? How lovely!”
“Yeah, she said if I didn’t practice she’d break my arm.”

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The truth about fuel consumption

IF YOU THINK fuel-mileage figures on new-car stickers are misleading, wait till you to try to find out how many miles you get to the gallon on a boat.

Few boat owners know their fuel consumption to any degree of accuracy because it varies so much with boat speed, headwinds, contrary currents, and the boat’s load. Most owners tend to exaggerate their mileage figures anyway, probably because the truth is so depressing.

Nevertheless, it’s important for any serious boater to know at least roughly how far the boat will go on a tankful of fuel, and a couple of simple formulas will help establish that figure.

Firstly, an inboard gasoline engine will use roughly one gallon of fuel per hour for every 10 horsepower expended. So, if a 40-horsepower engine is running at half speed and expending 20 horsepower, it’s using about two gallons of fuel every hour.

Diesel fuel has more energy, by volume, than gasoline, so a diesel engine needs about one gallon per hour for every 18 horsepower expended. Incidentally, most marine engines expend about 75 percent of maximum horsepower at cruising speed.

Now I have come across many sailors who will challenge these figures. They will claim in all honesty that their mileage is much better than that, and in certain cases, and on certain occasions, it might be. A following wind or a favorable current will certainly do wonders for your mileage. A light-displacement boat with a slippery hull, steaming at slow speed in calm seas might amaze you with the distance it can cover on a gallon of juice. But the gallons-per-hour figures quoted above were calculated by engineers and designers with true-life experience of a wide variety of boats and engines. They deserve respect.

I think the disparity arises because fuel consumption increases dramatically with boat speed and few people realize how little power is needed to move a hull at, say, half the designed hull speed, especially when the water is flat and the wind is either calm or blowing from astern. It’s all a question of horsepower expended.

In any case, here’s another tip the professionals like to pass on:

Plan to use one-third of your fuel on the outward leg of a trip, one-third to get back, and one-third for a safety reserve.

Today’s Thought

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.

— André Gide

Tailpiece

A friend tells me that the professional at his golf club just quit his job because every time he put his arms around a woman to demonstrate the grip, a dog came rushing out of the clubhouse and threw a bucket of cold water over them.

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