The price of standing headroom

IT’S GENERALLY ACCEPTED that full standing headroom in a boat is 6 feet 1 inch, but few sailboats under 27 feet in length can provide it without resorting to a tall and ugly cabin trunk.

There are several troubling aspects about a high deckhouse, besides the aesthetic shock. It creates wind resistance, for a start, which is particularly disadvantageous when you’re sailing against the wind. It’s also more prone to damage by large waves.

Furthermore, it’s dangerous to work at the base of the mast when handling the mainsail because you’re poised comparatively high over the water for the width of the boat. If she’s sharply heeled you could fall overboard without touching the lifelines.

Heavy-displacement boats can get away with lower, sleeker cabin trunks because their cabin soles extend farther below the waterline, but there is no alternative on a light-displacement hull (if full headroom is required) than to build upward.

But you really only need standing headroom when you’re not sailing. Under way, you spend your time mostly sitting down or lying down. And, as Uffa Fox famously pointed out, you can always go on deck. Plenty of headroom up there.    

Incidentally, good sitting headroom is 4 feet 9 inches. Anything between that and full standing headroom is truly a pain in the neck.

Today’s Thought

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only  not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

— H. D. Thoreau, Walden

Tailpiece

A friend says he never realized how short of living space the world has become until he arrived home early one evening and found a strange man living in his wife’s wardrobe.

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

The cure for wanderlust

I SUSPECT MANY PEOPLE suffer from wanderlust without knowing it. My barber is one of them. Every time I go to get my locks shorn she gets that look in her eye and starts to talk about boats.

She actually lived on a sailboat for a while a few years ago, before she found her true love and had a couple of kids. Now she is shore-bound and fully occupied with looking after them, her man, their house, an old VW van, and a bunch of customers with unruly hair.

Wanderlust hits most of us sooner or later but it affects some worse than others. It can start off as a vague, nagging longing for new sights, and new people. It can grow into a search for new forms of beauty in our lives; different thrills and untasted pleasures that we suspect are waiting somewhere out there if we can only find the time and opportunity to seek them out.      

The business of bringing up a family can involve years of selfless commitment with no chance of scratching the bits of you that are itching to travel. Sometimes there are things that help ease the incipient wanderlust. Some people get piercings and tattoos. Some take to drink. But nothing works in the end except the experience of wandering.

And, as my barber knows, a seaworthy sailboat is the ideal vehicle in which to commit wanderlust. You can even take the kids with you if you’re young and very brave. A sailboat has all the essentials needed by somebody suffering from a bad case of wanderlust. It’s a home from home for a start, in which you find the comfort of knowing exactly where the teaspoons are kept and where you’re going to sleep tonight. But it’s also a box filled with adventure on all sides. There’s hardly anything you can do on a sailboat that doesn’t involve the all-important adventure that wanderlust calls for.  Even the simple act of anchoring in a pretty cove for the night can lead to a series of adventures before dawn. Not all of them are necessarily pleasant, but they’re all needed to keep wanderlust at bay.

I suspect my barber knows all this already. She and her man spotted a used yacht for sale the other day, and enquired about the price. It was too much for them to manage, but it demonstrates that they both share the urge to wander. And, sure as eggs, one of these days they’re going to end up on a boat, sailing off to goodness knows where with big smiles on their faces, until the wanderlust wears off. If it ever does.

Today’s Thought

Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.

— Charles Kuralt, On the Road

Tailpiece

You need only two tools on a boat: WD-40 and duct tape. If it doesn't move and should, use the WD-40. If it shouldn't move and does, use the duct tape.

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

Are life rafts really necessary?

SOMEONE WHO READ my last column was moved to ask if there was a reason why any deep-sea sailor would prefer an inflatable dinghy to a dedicated life raft. Well, all I can say is this: Before you rush out and hand over thousands of dollars for a life raft, ask yourself a simple question: What are the chances of a tiny, fragile life raft surviving a storm that sank a much bigger and more seaworthy boat?

Not all that good, apparently. In a famous storm during a Fastnet Race off England in 1979, seven sailors lost their lives because of what an official board of enquiry described as “failure of the life rafts.” The board noted further: “Life rafts clearly failed to provide the safe refuge which many crews expected.”

In the Queen’s Birthday Storm off New Zealand in 1994, the only three sailors who took to a life raft were lost and never seen again. Others who stayed with their crippled, sinking yachts were rescued.

Even if a raft survives the ordeal of launching in a storm, its occupants then have to sit and wait to be rescued, which is catastrophic for morale. Psychologists say many people will die within three days if they perceive they are in a hopeless situation. They are far more likely to survive if they can make organized progress toward land, as they might in a hard dinghy or an inflatable dinghy.

If your boat is big enough to carry one, an unsinkable fiberglass or wooden dinghy is preferable. If not, a partially inflated inflatable dinghy on the cabintop will suffice. Most boats have room for that.

Finally, whether you have a life raft or not, the overwhelming advice is to stay with your boat until it actually sinks under you. Easy to say, of course. Not so easy to do.

Today’s Thought

My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,

Nor to one place.
— Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice.

Tailpiece

Here’s a question for all you history buffs:
What did Hannibal get when he crossed the Alps with elephants?
Mountains that never forget, of course.

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

Your boat reflects your character

THOUSANDS OF SMALL BOATS make ocean crossings every year — and we never hear of them. They come and go without fuss or bother. They are the safe passagemakers.They create no headlines, no drama, no collisions, no dismastings, no strandings, no snot and tears.

You can tell them apart as soon as they enter port. The gear they carry on their boats tells you what sort of persons they are. And, indeed, you in your turn will be summed up by your fellow cruisers. They will soon know whether you are cautious and sensible, or gung-ho and foolhardy; prudent and frugal, or well-heeled and reckless.

Here is a guide to the gear that gives the game away. There are endless clues that enable you to judge a sailor’s character by the stuff he puts on his boat,  but here are 10 alternatives to get you started.  (I’m presuming that almost all boats have VHF radio these days, and engines rather than sculling oars.)

1. Self-steering wind vane or electric autopilot?

2. Fridge/freezer or icebox?

3. Water maker or extra water tanks?

4. Life raft or inflatable dinghy?

5. Outboard motor for dinghy or oars?

6. SSB for maritime mobile or ham, or satellite phone?

7. GPS or sextant?

8. Roller reefing foresail or dedicated storm jib?

9. Parachute sea anchor or dedicated stern drogue?  

10. Radar or AIS?

You don’t need half of these items to cross an ocean, of course, but your choices will reflect the status of your seamanship and your knowledge and experience as well as your timidity or confidence in your ability to handle anything Nature throws at you.

Today’s Thought

Character is what you are in the dark.

— Dwight L. Moody, Sermons: Character

Tailpiece

A Scottish soldier in full uniform fell asleep on a train from Glasgow to Edinburgh.
He awoke to find a little old lady staring at him.
“Tell me,” she said, “what’s that thing on your lap?”
“It’s my sporran,” he said.
“Oh, thank goodness,” she said. “I’ve been trying to feed it doggie treats for the last half-hour.”

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

Boats are full of hidden mysteries

YOUR newly acquired boat may look perfectly normal on the outside. But as soon as you start lifting hatches, opening lockers, pulling drawers, and peering into the engine compartment, an enigmatic new world will emerge.

It can take you months to discover how all the systems work, where all the seacocks are, and why the masthead light only comes on if you plug in the cabin fan as well.

 

Boat owners are a meddlesome lot. They can’t resist adding or altering things in their constant quest for perfection.

The engine compartment glows eerily with pale LEDs the previous owner failed to explain. They dimly outline a puzzling forest of pipes, wires, and levers. Under a companionway step, a lump of something grows a white fur coat with startling orange spots. Deep in the bilge a loose copper wire terminates in a halo of virulent green fuzz.

A bikini top lies insolently at the foot of the quarterberth and a sticky drawer delivers a crumpled receipt for repairs to bottom blisters you weren’t told about.

Even if you make notes while you sit down with the previous owner and go through everything from stem to stern, there are certain to be things that both of you forget to mention in the excitement of the moment.

But gradually, one-by-one, you will solve the mysteries. You just need patience.

Today’s Thought

If you go directly at the heart of a mystery, it ceases to be a mystery, and becomes only a question of drainage.
— Christopher Morley, Where the Blue Begins

Tailpiece

An acquaintance who lives in one of the tougher areas of Detroit tells me his kids are now going to a really old-fashioned school.  They have to put up their hands before they can assault the teacher.

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

Where the waves get started

WAVES ARE FASCINATING. If you’re out on the water, they’re all around you; waves everywhere. But how do they start?  What kick-starts a wave into motion?

Well, if you blow on a saucer of water, your breath will make a little dent. If you keep blowing, the pressure of your breath on the back of the dent will move it forward. It looks as if the molecules of water are trying to get away from you. But that’s deceptive.  In fact, the water in a wave just moves up and down, or in a slight circular motion. The wave you have created is in fact simply moving energy through the water, just as you can make loops snake through a length of rope. The rope itself doesn’t move forward.

Waves are visible energy, but they don’t move water forward either — at least not until they reach shallow water near shore and trip over their own feet. That having been said, a minimal amount of water moves forward when a whitecap breaks out at sea.

Out there, it’s the wind that dents the surface of the water, and the wind, as we know, is caused by unequal heating of the earth’s atmosphere by the sun’s rays; so we can safely say that waves are actually caused by radiation from the sun.

That still doesn’t explain how a little dent in the surface tension of a sheet of water can grow into a wave large enough to sink big ships. What’s going on here? How do little waves become big waves, and then swells?

Three phenomena make waves grow:  1. Wind speed. The harder the wind blows, the bigger the wave it forms. 2.  Wind duration. The longer the wind blows in the same direction, the larger the waves become. Roughly speaking, the biggest waves form after the wind has been blowing for the number of hours equalling the wind speed in knots. For example, a 20-knot wind needs to blow for 20 hours to form the biggest waves it’s capable of. And the maximum height of a wave in feet is roughly one half of the wind speed in knots. 3. Fetch. For waves to grow to their maximum size, a fetch of at least 600 miles is needed. (A fetch is a stretch of deep water with no intervening land masses.)

It seems to me that waves also grow bigger by eating other waves. Big ones bite and swallow little ones, but, as you’ll know if you’ve ridden out a gale at sea, the little ones don’t disappear. They ride along on the backs of the bigger ones.

It reminds me of what the Victorian-era mathematician Augustus De Morgan once wrote:

“Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,

“And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

“And great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on,

“While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on."

­ Eventually the wind will die down, but the energy in the waves will carry on. The waves flatten out, round off, and turn into what we call swells; and swells can travel for thousands of miles from the areas where storms created them. Thus, what started off as a tiny ripple in a calm sea can turn into a pack of energy capable of upsetting stomachs on ocean liners and cruise ships far, far away.

Incidentally, if you have any questions about waves, the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) has some answers for you:  

http://wwwcatsic.ucsc.edu/~kudela/OS101/LectureNotes_07/OS101_020907/OS101_020907_notes.pdf

Today’s Thought

The waves came shining up the sands,

As here today they shine;

And in my pre-pelasgian hands

The sand was warm and fine.

— Frances Cornford, Preëxistence

Tailpiece

There was a young lady of Natchez
Whose garments were always in patchez.
When comment arose
On the state of her clothes
She drawled: “Where Ah itchez Ah scratchez.”

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

How to secure the bitter end

I WAS RECENTLY WATCHING a dramatic video* of two men trying to board a 60-foot ketch left unattended at anchor on a lee shore on Pitcairn Island. There was a storm blowing and the ketch was throwing herself  around in a fine old fashion.

The plan, apparently, was to weigh anchor, motor around to the protected side of the island, and anchor again in calmer water. As I watched, I kept thinking: “Even if they do manage to get aboard, how are they going to get the anchor up?”

No anchor winch is designed to take the strain that ketch was subjected to.  Perhaps if they could motor forward, and their anchor chain ran through a stopper to prevent it running out when the bowsprit made a leap for the sky, they might have a chance to recover their gear before they were blown ashore.

But the obvious way out of this pickle was to dump the anchor rode as quickly as possible — to buoy it and come back to recover it when the weather had improved.  (Presuming that they had a second anchor and rode, as any cautious cruiser should have.)

And then I wondered how many cruising boats would be able to slip their cables for a quick getaway from a lee shore. How would they be able to find the bitter end of the rode in the chain locker, buried as it would be under fathoms of chain, and unshackle it while the bows were flinging themselves violently up and down?

Then I remembered a tip I learned while sailing on an old gaff rigger as a teenager.  The skipper told me always to make the bitter end of the anchor chain fast to a length of nylon line.  That line should be long enough to reach from the eyebolt in the bulkhead of the chain locker, up through the deck pipe and onto the foredeck.

In an emergency, therefore, when you needed to dump your anchor and line with utmost speed, you could simply let run all your rode and cut through the nylon line with a knife on deck.  If time and circumstances permit, you could also attach a fender or buoy outboard of everything to act as a recovery float.

Frustratingly, the video I was watching ended just after the first man finally managed to get aboard the ketch after a series of what could have been very serious incidents, so I don’t know how things turned out in the end.  I can only hope they got away safely.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6gMDlTTN6A

Today’s Thought

By experience we find out a shorter way by a long wandering. Learning teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty.
— Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster

Tailpiece

Noah Webster, my favorite dictionary man, naturally had a passion for words. He also had a passion for his secretary.
One day, while the two of them were locked in fond embrace, Mrs Webster burst into his office.
“Oh, Noah!” she burst out, “I AM surprised!”
“No, my dear, you are wrong again,” said Webster. “It is we who are surprised. You, surely, are astounded.”

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