Exercises for elderly sailors

ONE OF THE PROBLEMS for people who spend a lot of time aboard boats, especially those who permanently live aboard or those who are long-distance cruising, is getting enough exercise.  This is particularly true for deep-sea voyagers in sailboats, who need upper-body strength more than anything, to handle the helm, the sheets, the halyards, and the reefing gear.  As you get older, the problem becomes more acute, as many of you will have found out by now.

Luckily, however, there is a system of muscle strengthening that might well have been designed especially for boaters.  Here are the basics, which you can practice at home before a voyage starts and even while you are under way:

Exercises for sailors over 50

Begin by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of room at
each side.

With a 5 lb potato bag in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides and hold them there as long as you can. Try to reach a full minute, and then relax.

Each day you'll find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer. After a couple of weeks, move up to 10 lb potato bags

.
Then try 15 lb potato bags and then eventually try to get to where you can lift a 20 lb potato bag in each hand and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute. (I’m at this level right now.)

 

After you feel confident at that level, put a potato in each bag. 

 

Today’s Thought

I get my exercise running to the funerals of my friends who exercise.
— Barry Gray, New York, 19 May 80

Tailpiece

A little 5-year-old girl was heard swearing like a trooper in a city park.  Somebody reported her to the park keeper who went up to her and said:  “I hear there’s someone in the park who’s using very naughty language.”

“Who told you that?” demanded the girl sharply.

“A bird whispered it in my ear,” said the park keeper.

“I’ll be damned,” said the girl.  “And I’ve been feeding the little bastards.”

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

The making of fiberglass

A READER IN WEST VIRGINIA, who says he’s new to boating, wants to know how fiberglass boats are made.  He has already discovered for himself that they’re not made from molded plastic, as he first thought.

Well, where to begin? Let’s stick with the hull.  Most production-run hulls are solid fiberglass built of this laminate: Alternating layers of chopped-strand fiberglass mat at 1.5 ounces to the square yard, and woven glass fiber roving at 24 ounces to the square yard.  These two layers are called a ply, and each ply is about 3/32 inch thick.  All the fiberglass is thoroughly saturated with polyester resin, which also glues the layers together into one solid mass.

This standard laminate weighs about 94 pounds a cubic foot and the glass fibers account for about 35 percent of the total weight.  It’s the glass fibers that add strength and flexibility to the laminate:  polyester resin on its own is not particularly strong and its rigidity tends to make it crack easily.  Together, the fiberglass and the resin combine their best qualities in a boatbuilding material that has stood the test of time.

Now, the glass fabrics most commonly used by boatbuilders are cloth, woven roving, and chopped strand mat.

Ø Cloth is thin and strong. It’s used for sheathing wood or as a finishing layer on a fiberglass laminate because it leaves a smooth finish.  It is not usually used to build up the hull laminates.

Ø Woven roving has a loose weave with a rough finish. It provides strength but is usually topped with cloth or mat to make it fair.

Ø Chopped strand mat comprises short strands of glass fibers laid flat in random fashion and held in place by a sizing that is soluble in the right kind of resin.  It’s the weakest of these three fabrics, but it bonds well.  In repair work, chopped strand mat is the fabric first applied to old fiberglass, to ensure a good strong bond between the old and the new.

In a way, resin and fiberglass are the marine equivalent of bricks made of mud plus straw, or concrete plus steel reinforcing bar.  The resulting product shows characteristics greater than the sum of its components taken separately.

There are many tricks and wrinkles known to those who work with fiberglass on a professional basis, of course, but for beginning sailors in West Virginia, this is about all they need to know for now.

Today’s Thought

The glory of a workman, still more of a master-workman, that he does his work well, ought to be his most precious possession; like the “honour of a soldier,” dearer to him than life.
— Carlyle, Essays: Shooting Niagara

Tailpiece

People who think they know everything seldom seem to realize how much they irritate those of us who actually do.

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

A 10-point overboard plan

EVERY NOW AND THEN someone falls overboard. What happens after that — whether they’ll live or die — depends on a lot of different circumstances, including the time of day or night, the state of the sea, whether or not their disappearance was noticed, the temperature of the water, the number of crew available for rescue, what the victim was wearing in the way of safety gear, and so on.

Every episode of a person overboard is so different from every other episode that it’s impossible to drew up a fixed set of actions to deal with the situation.  Clearly, the crew remaining on board will have to make a lot of spur-of-the-moment decisions, and just as clearly, there will be a lot of luck involved in a successful rescue.

Nevertheless, there is a basic crew-overboard procedure that can be applied and adapted as necessary, and one of its chief functions might well be to avoid the panic and inefficiency that quickly assumes lethal proportions when there is no coherent emergency plan with which everyone on board is familiar.

So here’s a 10-point plan that could form the basis of a crew-overboard procedure. It should be learned by every member of the crew.  I realize that that is a tall order, because not many sailors will bother.  Nevertheless, the skipper should insist that everyone under his command at least becomes familiar with it.  There’s little point in printing it out and handing copies to people when an emergency occurs because usually there won’t be time or opportunity to study it, but at least crewmembers who have read it in advance will recognize the steps being taken and perhaps use their own initiative when the skipper is too busy to give individual orders to everyone. It is, after, a list of common-sense moves. This is how it goes:

1.  Shout “Crew overboard!” to alert the crew.

2.  Throw overboard horseshoe lifebuoys and anything else in the cockpit likely to provide flotation or mark the spot. Heave a Lifesling buoy overboard.

3.  Detail someone to point at the person in the water and keep pointing, no matter what.

4.  Press the button on your GPS that saves your present position and allows you to track back to it.

5.  Note your compass course, then turn the boat on a reciprocal course as quickly as possible. It is very important not to stray too far from the victim.

6.  Approach the victim cautiously from leeward and be prepared to cut power to avoid propeller injuries.

7.  In one end of a suitable line, tie a bowline to slip over the victim’s head and shoulders. This will probably not be needed if you use a Lifesling and the victim is correctly attached.

8.  Haul the victim up out of the water any way you can — into a dinghy, onto the deck, or into the cockpit, with a halyard, block and tackle, or sheer muscle power. On a calm day, you might be able to lower the mainsail into the water and roll the victim aboard in the bunt.

9.  Treat the victim as necessary for water inhalation, shock, hypothermia, or heart failure.

10. Radio for medical advice or broadcast a Mayday call if warranted.

Today’s Thought

Who can hope to be safe? who sufficiently cautious?
Guard himself as he may, every moment’s an ambush.
— Horace, Odes

Tailpiece
“Would you prefer red wine or white, sir?”
“Shucks, it makes no difference to me young feller, I’m color blind.”

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

Ten rules for anchoring

WHEN YOU OWN a cruising boat, anchoring becomes one of your favorite forms of entertainment. The art of anchoring is science combined with mystery. You can’t see what’s going on down there, unless you’re in the gin-clear waters of the tropics. Even then, it’s unusual, and even the professionals admit that after dropping the anchor they wait in suspense to see what the result will be.

And to tell the truth, just about every boat afloat will drag its anchor at some time or another, for some reason or another, and often it’s not because of any ignorance or mistake on behalf of the skipper or crew.

When Thomas Fleming Day was editor of The Rudder a century ago, he wrote a lot about the art of anchoring.  In fact he drew up 10 rules for anchoring, which newcomers to the boating world will find useful to this day. Here they are, together with Mr Day’s warning that “these rules are not fixed laws, and as such do not bind you to do anything against what judgment, experience, or a present difficulty may suggest.”

1. Never drop an anchor until you have first examined it.

2. Never drop an anchor stock-down.

3. Never drop an anchor from the bows while the boat has headway, except for the purpose of preventing her going ashore or into something.

4. With the wind and sea ahead, give any amount of scope.

5. In a tide-way, give just sufficient [scope] to hold, no more, unless the conditions of wind and sea oblige a long lead; then watch your hawse when she shifts tides.

6. When getting under way in a strong wind, do not shorten [the rode] too much before everything is ready aloft; same when surrounded by other vessels.

7. Be sure when you make fast, that you make fast. Always weather-bit your hawser before turning in. Don’t make fast over an old set of turns when you shorten hawse. Always keep your riding-bits clear of everything but the hawser.

8. Always examine the gear before leaving the yacht or turning in. If she is riding hard, feel if she is fast or dragging.

9. Keep your hawsers or chains leading free of the bowsprit rigging. Look out for chafing and freshen the hawse frequently.

10. Never anchor on rocky bottom without a trip line.

Today’s Thought

Remember this: that the first and all-important thing in anchoring is SCOPE.
Thomas Fleming Day, On Yachts and Yacht Handling

Tailpiece

Overheard at the yacht club bar:
“How did the divorce go?”
“We had a 50-50 property split. She got the house and I got the mortgage.”

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Nothing so much worth doing

IT TOOK A WATER RAT, in conversation with a mole, to reveal one of the great human truths, which is that “there is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

The famous quote comes, of course from Kenneth Grahame’s dearly loved classic, The Wind in the Willows. When Mole shyly revealed that he had never been in a boat before in all his life, Rat, who had offered to scull him across the river, was open-mouthed with astonishment. He was moved to ask: “What have you been doing, then?”

Mole didn’t answer. He was experiencing the bliss, the quiet rapture, that grips many humans also upon their first encounter with a boat.

Rat, undeterred, continued to espouse his love of boats. “In or out of ’em, it doesn’t matter. Nothing seems to matter, really, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular, and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do ...”

There’s no doubt about it. If you must have an obsession, boating is better than most.

Today’s Thought

Great Estates may venture more,

But little Boats must keep near Shore.
— Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard

Tailpiece

“I promise you, I’m never going to work for that rotten so-and-so again. Not after what he said to me.”
“What did he say to you?”
“You’re fired.”

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

Watch out for boat pheromones

I WAS WATCHING a question-and-answer show on Canadian TV the other day when the question of pheromones came up. Apparently, living things emit pheromones in an invisible stream as a form of automatic communication. They don’t have any smell, but they seem to be able to affect our physical reactions and emotions.

Having absorbed this complicated information at least partially, it occurred to me to wonder if boats emit pheromones. Wikipedia says plants communicate by pheromones, and there’s lots of wood in boats.

You’d naturally expect boats with wooden hulls and decks to be more powerful in the pheromone department than fiberglass boats. So the question arises:  Do wooden boats, like roses, say: “Look at me, I’m beautiful?”  Would that explain the strange attraction we have for wooden boats, even if they’re more demanding in the way of maintenance and upkeep?

Is this why a mere mortal stands no chance against a gorgeous little wooden lapstrake Folkboat? I’m sure that teak speaks to us. Who can resist all that varnished teak on Cape Dories and Hinckleys?

Do wooden boats really say come hither?  Do they really make themselves look desirable in a man’s eyes? I’m reliably informed that men are not really in control of who they marry. It’s not a woman’s figure or her brilliant mind that drives a man crazy with desire.  It’s her pheromones taking over control of his brain. If those womanly pheromones decide they want a certain man, he’s a goner.

Indeed, there are men, I’m told, who wake up months after the wedding and take a good look at their brides for the first time, and go: “What the heck? What was I thinking?”  Much the same thing can be said about boats, of course.  Such is the mighty power of the tiny pheromone.

And what else might boat pheromones be saying?  “Ouch, the nails hurt.” “My bottom’s dirty.”  “The water’s cold.”  “You don’t care about me any more.”

I wonder, too, if boat pheromones, which are, after all, female, nag?  “My varnish is peeling.” “My seams are coming apart.”  “You never clean my bilge.”

If, through no fault of his own, a man were to fall in love with a boat, would his wife label him as unfaithful?  Perhaps it’s no wonder that so many wives get the hell-in with yachting husbands.  No wonder so many wives develop antagonism toward boats. They sense an affair of the heart and mind, if not of the corpus, in which the man is a stupid, if innocent, dupe.

That’s not quite fair, of course, since men have not yet found a defense against the all-powerful and very sneaky pheromone.

I shall continue to listen to Canadian TV and let you know if the scientists ever come up with an answer.

Today’s Thought

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man’s upper-chamber, if he has common-sense on the ground floor.
— O. W. Holmes, The Poet at the Breakfast-Table

Tailpiece

Writers whose works are shot down in flames should take comfort from the fact that the world has far more statues of writers than critics.

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

Look at the back of your hands

IF YOU HAVE a tiller-steered boat, take a look at the back of your hands. If you see any small patches of dry, scaly skin, you could have actinic keratosis, the precursor of skin cancer.

It took me a long time to figure out why I have a rough-textured spot of skin on each hand, but now I think I know. It’s the result of sitting for hours with a hand on a tiller. 

Actinic keratosis forms on skin that receives lots of sun, and while I’ve mostly been reasonably careful to cover up with long sleeves and broad-brimmed hats on hot sunshiny days, I’ve never worried about the backs of my hands.

I can’t think why.  It seems perfectly obvious now that they’d be sticking out there, all vulnerable, while the sunshine does its wicked worst. I never even considered gloves.  They were too yachty and pretentious for me.  And now I’m suffering for it.

My skin doctor has prescribed for me some powerful chemotherapeutic ointment that will raise painful blisters for four weeks or so, and then take as long again for the skin to get back to normal.  During this time, apparently, I’m supposed to wear gloves, to avoid the possibility of receiving more harm from sunlight.

Now I live in a part of the world that is not renowned for excessive sunlight (although I have to admit we’ve had a marvelous summer so far this year) but all the same I guess I will have to take the precautions suggested.

It’s going to be hard to wear gloves of any kind, but once I’ve got used to the idea (and the questioning looks of strangers) I shall have to decide what kind of gloves will go best with my Northwest outfit of hoodie, shorts, and sockless sandals.  I’m tempted by a Goth look of black leather and maybe a whip to go with them.  Or how about some white elbow-length dude-ranch gloves with those leather fringes and sparkly bits? Nah. Everybody knows a drug-store cowboy when they see one.  On the other hand I might look good in some demure gardening gloves with little pimples on them and pictures of pansies or something.

I know there are some very macho and fashionable yachting gloves out there with little bits cut off so your finger tips stick out daintily, the better to press the buttons on the satellite phone or grip your gin-and-tonic, but I still can’t bring myself to buy them.  I’d rather convert the tiller to wheel steering, and avoid the problem in the first place.

Anyway, the message is simple. Don’t forget what damage the sun can do to a hand on a tiller.  If you don’t wear gloves, slather the backs of your hands with a good sunscreen. And repeat every couple of hours. You really don’t want actinic keratosis.

Today’s Thought

When it comes to your health, I recommend frequent doses of that rare commodity among Americans — common sense.

— Dr. Vincent Askey, former President, American Medical Association.

Tailpiece

Vigor’s Rules on Rust:
1 — On a saltwater boat, stainless steel isn’t.
2 — Rust delays its appearance to coincide with the expiry of the warranty.
3 — Rust erupts. Absolute rust erupts absolutely.

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