Narrow boats are safer boats

EVERY NOW AND THEN, someone who has become imbued with the idea of going cruising asks me: “Isn’t a wide boat safer than a narrow one?”

The answer is “Not necessarily,” but it’s difficult to explain this to a newbie, who, just by looking at it, must justifiably conclude that a wide hull is more difficult to capsize than a narrow one.

Furthermore, a wide hull offers a lot more accommodation down below for the same overall length, which is something the yacht brokers like to emphasize.  Without stretching the truth too far, they can also tell a prospective buyer that a wide boat has tremendous stability.

But that’s only part of the truth. A boat that is excessively wide has a wonderful amount of initial stability, certainly, but what an ocean-going cruiser has to consider is ultimate stability — the ability of a boat to right itself after having been knocked upside down by a breaking wave.

The point is that a very wide boat is perfectly happy to stay upside down; and while it’s inverted water may pour in everywhere — perhaps enough to sink it in a short time.

The narrower the hull, everything else being equal, the quicker and more surely a boat will right itself from complete inversion. It’s very unstable when it’s upside down, Of course, if you’re looking around for a boat capable of crossing an ocean, the yacht broker is not likely to introduce the subject of capsize in extreme conditions. But that’s precisely what every would-be cruiser should plan around.

Everything on deck and down below should be designed and built with a 180-degree knock-down in mind. The chances of it happening to you are, admittedly, remote. But if it does happen, and you planned for it, the chances of your surviving are increased immeasurably.

Today’s Thought

He that will not sail till all dangers are over must never put to sea.
— Thomas Fuller

Tailpiece

“Help, there’s a creature destroying my garden. I think it escaped from the zoo.”
“Try to keep calm, madam.  Can you describe the animal?”
“Well, it’s big and gray, with large ears. It keeps picking my cabbages with its huge tail — and I can’t tell you where it’s putting them.”

 

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

Chinese puzzle that's hard to swallow

DID A FLEET of Chinese junks discover America in 1421, long before dear old Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue?  Did those junks complete a circumnavigation of the world in 1423, almost 100 years before Magellan’s expedition claimed the honor?

Gavin Menzies is quite sure they did.  He’s the author of 1421, The Year China Discovered America (Harper, Perennial).  I’m not quite so sure they did, but I have nothing to base my opinion on except the kind of hunch a sailor gets when he reads an unproven hypothesis involving boats and navigation.

In his book Menzies offers a little hard evidence and a wealth of circumstantial evidence. Perhaps too much circumstantial evidence. It almost seems as though he seeks to convince us by smothering us with a mountain of possibilities and conjecture.

He maintains that a enormous armada sailed from China in 1421 to circle the globe. At the center were “the great leviathan flagships, surrounded by a host of merchant junks.”  Surrounding them were squadrons of warships. By the time they reached India, the fleet consisted of more than 800 vessels. He says.

The flagships themselves numbered more than 100 huge junks, each about 480 feet in length and 180 feet in beam. “Great sails of red silk, light but immensely strong, were furled on each ship’s nine masts,” Menzies declares.

Whoa! Let’s pause there for a bit.  Silk sails?  Enough for 900 masts on 100 480-foot junks.  How many silkworms does it take to spin that much silk?  And why silk?  Why not canvas made from flax like everybody else? Did the Chinese have that much money to burn?

And now, before our amazement makes us forget, isn’t 480 feet rather large for a wooden boat?  Did the Europeans ever build a wooden boat that big?  The Great Republic was 335 feet long and 33 feet wide. Caligula’s giant barge was about 341 feet long and had a beam of 66 feet.

And what about the alleged beam of the alleged Chinese junks?  I have a hard time even imagining one with a beam of 180 feet, especially a flat-bottomed boat with a transom bow.

Apparently each of these enormous junks was built in separate water-tight sections, 16 of them in all, each one bolted to the next with what Menzies says are brass fastenings.  I find it hard to believe they’d use brass, which has practically no place at all on a sea-going vessel except maybe for the ship’s bell.  Iron was a lot cheaper, stronger, and readily available.

In one place, the author explains that these junks were hopelessly inefficient at getting to windward.  (That’s easy to believe.)  So they had to plan their routes by running downwind with the prevailing winds.

And yet he claims: “Reinforced bows enabled the vessel to smash through the waves . . .” Ahem.  What waves do you have to smash through when you’re hightailing it downwind all the time?  And it gets weirder:

“ . . . at either side of the bow were channels leading to internal compartments. As the square bow pitched in heavy seas, water was funnelled in; as the bow surfaced above the waves, the water drained out, modifying the pitching motion . . . in a storm, semi-submersible sea anchors could also be thrown overboard to reduce rolling. Even in the roughest weather and sea conditions, pitching and rolling were greatly reduced by these ingenious modifications.”

I’m sorry. I don’t buy it. This is too much for me to swallow. What size sea anchor would you need for a 480-foot junk?  How many men would it take to deploy it?  And, how would it stop rolling?  If Menzies is thinking of giant flopper-stoppers, even if they were feasible you wouldn’t be able to use them at sea.

I’m not alone in voicing doubts about the veracity of Menzies’ claims of course. Some minds far greater than mine have beaten me to the draw in that respect. But the great unwashed public, the hoi polloi who don’t care about the beam of an alleged junk, are falling over themselves to shove money into the author’s hands. New York Times bestseller. Ka-ching!  I guess that’s all that really matters. 

Today’s Thought

In reporting with some accuracy, at times we have to go much further than the strictly factual. Facts are part of the perceived whole.
— Alastair Reid, WSJ, 18 June 84

Tailpiece

The woman who thinks no man is good enough for her may be right. But she may also be left.

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

   

 

They're not all perfect

THERE IS SOMETHING in common between a woman who knowingly marries an imperfect man and a sailor who knowingly buys a boat with bad weather helm. Both are under the impression that they can change things for the better. Both are likely to be disappointed.

Owners of yachts suffering from weather helm are a tight-lipped lot when it comes to discussing their boat’s fault, though they’ll participate quite happily in any critical review of someone else’s problem.

Weather helm is the amount of rudder needed to counter the boat’s tendency to round up into the wind. Anything greater than 4 degrees slows down your progress and generally makes for heavy, unpleasant work at the tiller.

There are many causes of weather helm, most of them interrelated, and there are several things you can do to lessen it, including adding a bowsprit or moving the mast forward, but most skippers resign themselves to suffering in silence.

It’s almost impossible to know at the design stage whether a hull will suffer from excessive weather helm, so those sweet boats that lack it are usually the result of pure luck on the naval architect’s part. There is almost nothing in this world that is perfect. Why should we expect our boats to be perfect?

Incidentally, a boat with bad weather helm should be reefed early and sailed as flat as possible.

Today’s Thought

So who’s perfect? . . . Washington had false teeth. Franklin was nearsighted. Mussolini had syphilis. Unpleasant things have been said about Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde. Tchaikovsky had his problems, too. And Lincoln was constipated.
— John O’Hara

Tailpiece

Confucius say it is better to have loved and lost than to do homework for six kids.

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

An arrangement too good to last

A FEW YEARS BACK, when I was visiting the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena, I came across two men working on a small fishing boat down at the town wharf.

Dougie was in his mid-30s, friendly, open-faced, easy to talk to, and polite. Like many Saint Helenians, he added “sir” when speaking to foreigners.

He was about to add some resin to the bottom of a leaking bait box.

“Do I have to add fiberglass, too?” he asked me.

I had a look and thought it really didn’t matter what he did because the resin wouldn’t stick for long. He really needed epoxy resin, not polyester, the kind he was using. More importantly, he should first have cleaned out the water, oil, and grease before applying the resin. In fact, the right way to do it was to grind down to bare, clean fiberglass. But I didn’t tell him that. No point. He didn’t have a grinder, anyway.

As I watched him and his friend working on the boat we talked about many things, including the magic of the GPS satellite navigation system, which, his friend said, was now even installed in cars in England.

“It tells you which way to go,” he said.

They both paused to consider the impact of that statement. Everybody on St. Helena knew which way to go without the help of satellites in the sky. But it was magic still, they agreed.

Just before I said goodbye it occurred to me that Dougie was wearing a bright orange T-shirt with the large black initials “HMP” on the back. Her Majesty’s Prison.

“What for?” I asked.

It turned out that he’d been found guilty — wrongly, he asserted — of beating up his girl friend. Both of them were drunk at the time. “I gotta drink problem,” he admitted. He added that it was a disease. If you were an alcoholic like him, your body made its own alcohol, he explained.

On St. Helena island, relatively harmless prisoners like Dougie were temporarily released to do some gainful work of their own, rather than rotting in the tiny town jail, and he had been released in the care of his friend.

“I’m responsible for him,” his friend said proudly.

“I hope he doesn’t make trouble for you,” I said.

“Oh no, sir,” said Dougie earnestly. “We understand each other, sir.”

And so I left them and went to find my wife. We understood each other, too. She did the shopping while I loafed around with the guys on the wharf. It was a most satisfactory arrangement, I thought. But, of course, it was too good to last.

Today’s Thought

Whilst we have prisons it matters little which of us occupies the cells.

— Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists

Tailpiece

“I’m sorry to say, Mr Jones, that the last check you sent me came back . . .”
“Well, what a coincidence, doctor — so did my sciatica.”

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

The metrication complication

PEOPLE KEEP ASKING ME to explain the metric system to them, especially as it relates to boats. Well, actually, that’s not quite true.  Only one person has asked me to explain the metric system, and that request was in no way related to boats.

So, you may well ask, why should I devote a column to the metric system when I should be writing about boats? The answer is simple.  Most people who like to read about boats don’t necessarily want to read about boats only.  Sometimes they also want to read about beer or sex or other interests that engage their active minds, including the metric system.

It so happens that I have had years of experience explaining the metric system to newspaper readers, in a biased sort of way.  I make no bones about it.  I don’t like it, and as a columnist I tried to get it banned. I was not successful and that did not make me happy.  I still harbor a grudge against the authorities, the governments and scientific bodies, who thwarted my gallant efforts.

Nevertheless, and I say this with a heavy heart, there are occasions when the intricacies of the metric system need to be translated for the benefit of Americans who have so far avoided contamination by this frivolous method of measuring one thing against another.

So here, for the benefit of those who are luckily not conversant with Le Système International d’Unités , are a few sample conversions that will explain why I spent all that time and effort trying to stamp it out:

Ø  1 Mainsail foot = 5 metric toes

Ø  1 Yardarm = 3 footarms

Ø  1 Backyard = 36 back inches

Ø  1,000 Catalina 30s = 30 megayachts

Ø  1 Inchworm = 2.54 centipedes

Ø  8 Dry pints = 1 parched gallon

Ø  1 Microchip = 2/3 French fry

Ø  1 Foot pound = 16  kilosandals

Ø  1 Lady Giga = 0.5 tinaturners

Ø  1 Fluid Oz = 6 sober Poms

Ø  1,000 painful rpm = 1 hertz-like-crazy

Ø  454 Grams = One pound of grampas

And for the benefit of those of you who are wondering if I’m off my meds again, let me say no, I’m not.  It’s the hot weather. And the beer. And the stupid metric system.

Today’s Thought

 We have become a people unable to comprehend the technology we invent.
— Association of American Colleges, Integrity in the College Curriculum, NY Times, 11 Feb 85

Tailpiece

“You really have an outstanding intellect,”  the lawyer told the witness in a fit of sarcastic exasperation.
“I’m sorry I’m under oath,” replied the witness, “otherwise I’d say the same for you.”

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

Beware of barrier coats

IS A BARRIER COAT a good idea to keep your boat’s hull free of blisters? The advertisements say it is . . . but beware. It may be a complete waste of time and money. It may even make things worse.

A few years back I decided to take all the old bottom paint off my 1983 Cape Dory 27.  It consisted of numerous layers of hard epoxy anti-fouling and I had the impression that this job had never been tackled before.

I had a shoulder injury at the time, but I hauled her out and started removing the old paint in small sections, about 5 feet by 2 feet every day.  I used a chemical stripper and a hand scraper. It took me several weeks of hard labor to get down to the gel coat all over.

Then I washed the whole hull down carefully and applied Interlux’s Interprotect barrier coat system, following the instructions to the letter.  I did alternate coats of white and grey epoxy and then I painted the bottom with two coats of Interlux Ultra antifouling.

It all looked very splendid and I was pleased that I had taken the extra trouble to put on a barrier coat, having taken all the old paint off anyway.

But two years later, when I had the boat hauled out for repainting, the bottom was covered with hundreds of small blisters under the barrier coat.  I could have cried. A marine surveyor who looked at it for me just laughed.  It wasn’t a structural problem, he said, just cosmetic.  He advised me to sand right down to gel coat again.

“What made you apply a barrier coat?” he asked.

“I just thought it was a good idea.  Having done all the hard work to get the old paint off, it seemed like an ideal opportunity to protect against blisters.”

“Did you have any blisters before?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“So she has spent more than 20 years in the water without forming any blisters,” he pointed out.  “What made you think she would suddenly get blisters now?”

“Advertising,” I said.  “The adverts say it’s a good idea.”

After a while, we both had a little chuckle at that.

The lesson I learned is that the fiberglass hull must be absolutely dust-dry before you can apply a barrier coat.  I don’t mean just surface dry.  It has to dry out for months.  If there’s the slightest suspicion of any moisture trapped in the fiberglass it will simply form blisters beneath the barrier coat.

Since then, I have read about many others experiencing the same problem.  “It seems the marine industry is always trying to sell us something,” said one boat owner.  “For some boats, a properly applied barrier coat might be beneficial.  As for the vast majority of boats, I would say if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  I never imagined the prevention I thought I was providing would become the problem.”

I regret to say I know exactly how he feels.

Today’s Thought

Any man may make a mistake; none but a fool will persist in it.

— Cicero, Philippicae

Tailpiece

“Did you buy that new book on schizophrenia?”
“Not yet. I’m in two minds about it.”

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

Mildew in the overhead

A FRIEND OF MINE who keeps his boat in a sub-tropical climate recently removed the overhead in his thirty-footer. It was a disgusting mess, he said, full of old dead cockroaches and mildew.  Cockroaches, okay, but who would have thought mildew would thrive up there in the dark?

Well, I’ve said it many times before, but mildew can eat almost anything anywhere. These voracious fungi will actually slowly consume the gel coat on the deck of a boat under the right conditions, leaving it pitted and weakened. Down below, in dark, damp, stagnant air, they will reproduce at an astonishing rate, wreaking havoc on furnishings, sails, plastic fittings, and bulkheads alike. Mildew can even etch the glass in binoculars.

About the only thing mildew can’t digest is metal. On anything else, it excretes enzymes that convert complex molecules into soluble compounds capable of passing through its cell walls.

Mildew prefers sub-tropical conditions, but is highly adaptable to colder climates and actually creates its own warmth as it grows, leaving behind that typical musty smell.

Direct sunshine, dry air, and chlorine bleach are the best defenses against mildew. Most commercial mildew removers contain sodium hypochlorite (household bleach). But the best long-term protection is good air circulation throughout the boat to keep ambient humidity low. That means plenty of Dorade boxes, louvered drop boards, and solar-powered vents to keep air passing through and out of the boat.

One last tip: Open all locker doors and bilge hatches before you leave the boat for any amount of time, and prop up bunk mattresses so air can circulate underneath.

Today’s Thought

Nothing which we can imagine about Nature is incredible.

— Pliny the Elder, Natural History

Tailpiece

“And is your punctuation good?” the editor asked a would-be cub reporter.
“Yes, sir, it is,” he said. “I’ve never been late for work in my life.”

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