How to club haul your square rigger

ANY SAILOR with an enquiring mind will probably know what it means to club haul a ship. I’m afraid I did not; not, that is, until my copy of The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea fell out of its bookcase. It lay there, stranded on its back on the floor, open to the Cs. The sidehead “Club Haul” stared me in the face.

Well, well, what do you know. To club haul a ship is a method of tacking a square-rigged ship in a narrow space, according to the battered Companion. You accomplish this by letting go the lee anchor from the bow. But you lead the anchor line aft and stop it on the quarter as soon as the wind is out of the foresails.

“As the ship gathered sternway, the pull of the anchor brought her head around on the other tack, and the anchor hawser was cut,” says the good book.

“This method was only used in an emergency in heavy weather and when the ship was embayed. The most famous example of club hauling a ship was in 1814 when Captain Hayes extricated HMS Magnificent, a ship of the line, from almost certain capture by the French at the Basque Roads.

“It was blowing a full gale and, with the lower yards and topmasts struck, Hayes found himself trapped between two reefs. He got to sea again by club hauling the ship, and was known as ‘Magnificent Hayes’ from that day on.”

The Companion seems compelled to point out that you shouldn’t try this at home. “It is not applicable to a fore-and-aft rigged vessel, which does not normally gather sternway when head to wind while tacking,” it says.

Well, I don’t know. It might be fun to try. If you can afford to kiss your anchor goodbye, that is.

Today’s Thought

Good seamanship involves recovering  from a dangerous incident at sea. Great seamanship consists of avoiding dangerous incidents at sea.

— Anon

Tailpiece

"I'd like to see General Bloggs, please."
"Sorry, sir, but General Bloggs is ill today."
"What made him ill?"
"Oh, nothing in particular, sir, just things in General."

Lucky find in the wilderness

WHILE SEACHING for my car keys in a little-used kitchen drawer the other day I came upon my old Leatherman. I welcomed it with a yelp of joy. I didn’t question why it had been hiding there in the dark for the past year, I was just happy to have it back in its little pouch on my belt. It has always been my sailing knife and I always feel naked without it.

Of course, it’s more than a knife. For those who are not familiar with the Leatherman, I should explain that it is a multi-tool after the fashion of the Swiss Army knife, and equally able to open a bottle of wine or a can of beer.

However, to compare it with the Swiss Army knife is a little misleading. The Swiss Army knife is a rather pale and flat-chested multi-tool. Admittedly, it is aesthetically pleasing, very fashionable, and much in vogue among the eager young bankers of Zurich. But in fact it is fit only to free a stubborn paper clip from a wad of euro bills.

A Leatherman on the other hand, is a master mariner of an implement, a rugged seaman’s tool of solid stainless steel whose main feature is a cunning pair of articulated pliers, macho enough to extract  giant hooks from sharks’ mouths.

I found this one near an ancient Native American midden on a beautiful sandy beach in the shadow of the foreboding Brooks Peninsula on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, a true wilderness area. There are no roads on this great rugged slab of mountainous land poking out into the Pacific Ocean, so the Leatherman must have got there by sea, probably accidentally dropped by another yachtsman.

My wife and I had sailed our Cape Dory 25D into a gorgeous little natural harbor called Columbia Cove. We dinghied ashore and found a faint trail leading through the woods, banging big stones together occasionally to warn the cougars and bears of our presence and hoping that they weren’t hungry, hoping that they would be repelled, rather than attracted.

The trail ended at one of the prettiest beaches in the whole of the Pacific Northwest, and there we sat in pristine surroundings, eating our sandwiches and thinking about the Indians who gathered and ate their seafood there in ancient times.

Just as we were leaving, something glinted in the sunlight at the edge of a midden covered in long grass. It was the Leatherman.  We accepted it as legal treasure.  I don’t know who it belongs to, and I’m not giving it back in any case. The statute of limitations has run out. It’s mine, I tell you, mine, all mine, by right of possession. And I wouldn’t swop it for the best Swiss Army knife in the world.

 Today’s Thought

The Swiss have an interesting army. Five hundred years without a war. Pretty impressive. Also pretty lucky for them. Ever seen that little Swiss Army knife they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there. Corkscrews. Bottle openers. ‘Come on, buddy, let’s go. You get past me, the guy in the back of me, he’s got a spoon. Back off, I’ve got the toe clippers right here.’

—Jerry Seinfeld

Tailpiece

A travelling salesman was held up when heavy rains flooded Interstate 5 south of Seattle.

“It looks just like the Great Flood,” he said to the motel receptionist.

“The great what?”

“The great flood. You know . . . when Noah saved all the animals . . . you must have read about it?”

“Gee, no, I haven’t read about it. On account of all this rain we haven’t seen a Seattle Times for three days now.”

The truth about sail twist

WHEN WIND BLOWS over water there is, of course, friction generated at water level. Some of the energy generated by this friction is turned into wave energy. But what’s more interesting is the fact that the speed of the wind increases with its  height above water level.  Whereas friction slows down the wind at water level, there is nothing to prevent it reaching its full potential speed higher up.

That’s why, when a boat is sailing on a beat, the direction of the apparent wind changes by between 5 and 8 degrees from the bottom of the mast to the top. The actual amount of change will naturally vary according to the height of the mast.

Therefore, the rule of thumb is that the mainsail leech at the head of the sail should lie farther off the wind than the leech near the clew.

The reason for this is that if the true wind speed is higher up aloft, the apparent wind direction up there will be less affected by the boat’s forward speed. It will be nearer the true wind direction. Therefore, the top of the sail does not need to be sheeted as close to the wind as does the bottom.

I notice that your eyes have glazed over. No matter, if you find this fascinating fact very boring,  you don’t have to worry. You don’t have to take any action. Your sailmaker knows all about it, and has built the right amount of twist and camber into the sail for your boat.

There are times when you might be able to increase the efficiency of your mainsail by bowsing down the boom and hauling the leech very tight to remove the twist, but mostly only racers bother about that kind of thing, and they already know the difference between true wind direction and apparent wind direction and VMG and lee-bowing the tide and the meaning of telltales and all that other stuff, so you don’t have to bother your poor little brain with it. Besides, it’s comforting to remember that even if they are highly intelligent and do know it all, only one of them can win the race.  

Today’s Thought

Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.

— Isaac Bashevis Singer. NY Times, 3 Dec 78

Tailpiece

When the admiral retired, he hired his personal orderly of over twenty-five years to come with him. The admiral explained that the orderly’s duties would be exactly the same as they were in the navy. On the first morning of the admiral's retirement the orderly entered the admiral's bedroom and woke him. Then he slapped the admiral's sleeping wife on the backside. "Okay, honey, “ he said, “it's time you got back onshore!"

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

The most wonderful mystery

A PLEA FROM “Ariadne,” of Point Loma, San Diego, says:

“Dear John: I saw a reference in a magazine the other day to ‘the way of a ship in the midst of the sea.’

“Being rather quick on the uptake, I immediately recognized that this was a quote from somewhere . . . but hey, OK, I admit I know not where. Can you help?”

Well, sure, Ariadne. Several years ago I wrote the definitive article about it. But perhaps you were too young to read then. Or perhaps you were unaware of a book called The Bible.  No matter. Here it is again for your benefit. (And give my best regards to Dionysus.)

 

DEAR BRETHEREN AND SISTEREN. My text for today comes from Proverbs 30, Verse 19:

"There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not:

"The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid."

Well, science has made great progress since those words were written. We can explain an eagle’s flight with aerodynamics. Herpetologists now know how a snake slithers across a rock. Dr. Phil understands all too well the wicked way of a man with a maid, and spares us no details. And that leaves the ship in the midst of the sea, the most wonderful of all the mysteries.

Little ships, and especially little sailing ships, conduct themselves in many different ways in the waves of the sea. You have probably experienced them all without giving any particular motion a name or a definition. But one man made a list for us to wonder at.

He is the well-known American naval architect and author, Francis S. Kinney. He held that there were eight motions of a sailboat at sea:

Broaching: Accidentally swinging broadside on to the wind and sea when running free.

Heaving: Rising and falling as a whole with the seas.

Pitching: Plunging and scending, so that the bow and stern rise and fall alternately.

Pitchpoling: Accidentally tumbling stern-over-bow in a half-forward somersault.

Rolling: Inclining rhythmically from side to side.

Surging: Being accelerated and decelerated by overtaking swells.

Swaying: Moving bodily sideways.

Yawing: Lurching and changing direction to either side of a proper course.
I note that the discreet Mr. Kinney refrained from mentioning wallowing and foundering, which has happened in boats I’ve sailed. The foundering in a small dinghy, luckily. Perhaps his designs never did those things. But he might well have included heeling, which is simply deliberately arrested rolling.

So next time you’re out there, take note of what your boat is doing, and at all costs avoid pitchpoling. That’s the most dangerous motion of all.

Today’s Thought I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.

— Harry Emerson Fosdick, “The Mystery of Life,” in Riverside Sermons

Tailpiece

A man rushed into the dining car of a train. “A lady just fainted next door,” he cried. “Anyone got any whiskey?”

Several flasks were offered. He grabbed the nearest one and drained it in one gulp.

“Thanks a lot,” he said, “it always upsets me to see a lady faint.”

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

Planning for calamity

I CONFESS to having impure thoughts. They’ve been going on a long time, on three continents and in practically every city I’ve ever lived in. They started when I was quite young, when I realized that everyone should have an escape vehicle in times of calamity.

Calamities, I knew even then, are rare, but it’s a wise man who recognizes that they can occur and who makes timely provision for his family to flee for their lives. I’m thinking of things like our resident volcano erupting, or the biker gangs going to war with each other in our town, or Sarah Palin being elected president.

My way of escaping is, of course, by sea, and to this end I have always turned my impure thoughts into deeds by choosing a suitable boat berthed in my nearest marina or mooring field. I recommend that each of you who lacks a boat suitable for crossing an ocean should follow suit and generate some impure thoughts of your own.

Let’s get one thing straight immediately. You’re not going to steal this boat when panic sets in. You’re merely going to borrow it to sail to New Zealand, or Tahiti, or wherever it’s nice and safe and peaceful. And when things have settled down, you’ll see that it gets returned to its owner. Honest.

Meanwhile, as you stroll the marina docks, pick out your boat and find out surreptitiously as much as you can about it. What kind of boat is it? Do some research on the internet. How many berths? Does she have a good sail wardrobe? Does the owner keep food and water on board? Does he lock the boat, and if so, what size bolt cutters do you need to buy?

Find out how to start the engine and how to raise the sails. You can do a lot of this by lurking at a distance and making notes but if you can bring yourself to be really impure, you could make friends with the owner and get invited on board. It would mean betraying a friendship when the time comes to borrow the boat, and ordinarily I would never encourage such a thing, but when it comes to survival — and survival is what we’re talking about here — then it’s every man for himself, as Nature intended.

From time to time, you might want to change your planned escape vehicle. Better boats come along now and then, or easier boats to spy on. I am tempted to tell you which boat I have my eye on presently, but it wouldn’t be wise. All I can say is that it’s always known in the family as Plan B. It’s not clever to tell anyone else about it, lest they should take advantage of you and beat you to it when the time comes. Let them do their own homework, I say. Let them have their own impure thoughts, and learn to live with them, as I have to.

Today’s Thought

“The unfit die—the fit both live and thrive.”

Alas, who say so? They who do survive.

— Sarah N. Cleghorn, The Survival of the Fittest

Tailpiece

“Are you Russian?”

“Yes.”

“Do you always drink your vodka neat?”

“No, sometimes my shirt tail hangs out.”

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

Things to know, just in case

THERE ARE THINGS you should know about sailing a boat that you are never likely to put into practice, but which you should know anyway because you never know . . .  Yes, it’s true, you never know. Who can tell for certain what lies before us, at sea as much as on land?

One of the things you should know is whether you can drink sea water to stay alive in an emergency. There are certain stories in the history of the sea that suggest it’s possible to drink sea water for a reasonable length of time. For example, Dr. Alain Bombard, a French physician and biologist, claimed to have crossed the Atlantic in a 15-foot inflatable dinghy with only a sextant, almost no provisions, and no fresh water. He said he drank a limited amount of sea water and used fish as a source of water and food. His claims were later disputed, though, and it was suggested that had actually taken along fresh water and consumed it on the ocean, and that he had also been secretly provided further supplies during his voyage.

It is never easy to ascertain the exact truth about anything in this life, but you should know that the consensus of doctors having experience with castaways is that sea water should not be drunk, except to augment an ample supply of fresh water. In that case, as much as a pint of sea water a day might be acceptable.

John Voss drank a glass of salt water every day during his circumnavigation and I myself have drunk a small cup of the South Atlantic for 30 days in a row without apparent ill effect (if you exclude minor mental instability). Sir Francis Chichester found that the occasional drink of sea water relieved leg cramps caused by excessive sweating in the tropics. But we were all drinking adequate supplies of fresh water, too.

An eminent sailor and physician once advised me to try drinking half a cup of sea water once or twice a day when I suffered prolonged bouts of seasickness. It wouldn’t stay in my stomach long, he assured me, but the tissues would swiftly absorb the minerals needed to balance the bodily fluids — including the blood, incidentally, which is very similar to salt water in chemical makeup.

All right, then. The odds are that you’ll never need to drink sea water. But you just never know. If the impossible should happen, remember what I’ve just told you. Don’t drink sea water as your only source of water. It will only bring on the madness and hasten your demise.

Today’s Thought

Pure water is the best of gifts that man to man can bring,

But who am I that I should have the best of everything?

Let princes revel at the pump, let peers with ponds make free,

Whiskey or wine, or even beer, is good enough for me.

—Anon. Spectator, 31 July 1920

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 tusks and large ears. It keeps picking my cabbages with its huge tail — and I can’t tell you where it’s stuffing them.”

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

The case of the jiggling chartplotter

I WENT FOR A RIDE in a powerboat the other day, the first in many a year.  It was a smart-looking trawler type, disguised to look like a 30-foot tugboat. It belongs to my friend Jere and his partner Sue, who were taking it for a run after an extensive overhaul.

No expense was spared, it seems — brand new engine and transmission, new wiring, new electronics, and all the bits and pieces that are needed to make a powerboat work.

One of the pieces of electronics in the wheelhouse was a computer screen that could be toggled  to show a color GPS chart, a depthfinder, a radar display, an AIS display and Lord knows what all else. And not only toggled, but overlaid. You could, for instance, overlay the GPS chartplotter with the radar display, just to be sure that the island you saw on the radar was also marked on the GPS chart. Of course, you could also confirm that fact by looking out of the window, but it’s obviously very comforting to powerboat people not to have to depend anything as low-tech as Eyeball, Mark I.

I must say that all went very well. The weather was kind and the new engine purred with a feeling of suppressed power. A mighty wake curled up astern and a big dial in the new teak instrument panel pointed to how many gallons of fuel we were consuming every minute.

There was just one disconcerting occurrence. The new GPS chartplotter rolled with the boat. By that I mean that as the boat rolled to starboard, the electronic chart rolled to port, so that it stayed upright, as if it were somehow on gimbals. Not the whole screen, you note. Just the chart showing on the screen.

Now it’s all very well to have a chart that’s always aligned with the horizon, but it’s a little awkward to have to twist your head, or the top half of your body, to line up with the chart every time the boat rolls one way or the other.

On any boat that I ever owned, the paper chart and the person consulting it rolled together, so that due north and top of one’s head always happily coincided. On Jere’s boat, it was very strange to have to keep twisting one’s neck in order to keep one’s eyeballs in the same relative position on the moving chart. Except that it wasn’t the chart that was moving, of course. It was staying dead upright, just like the galley stove, while my head moved with the rolling boat. I hope I am making all this perfectly clear.

Nothing that Jere could do in the way of pushing or sliding his fingers against the touch screen made any difference to the jiggling chart. I suggested it must have something to do with the radar interface. The external radar antenna is often gimbaled so that it stays level with the horizon. It must be either the radar or the galley stove, I said. But since neither the radar nor the galley stove was switched on, let alone overlaid, my suggestion was not received with great gusto.

Jere is a man of great skill and patience, and I’m sure he will get it sorted out sooner or later, if just for the sake of any susceptible guests who might find themselves going green while watching that jiggling chart. Meanwhile, I’m afraid someone is  going to have to rip the plastic covering off the instruction manual and read the bit about how to cure a jiggling chart.

I know, I know, it’s admitting defeat; but somebody has to do it. Sue is very organized and she can read.  That’s a good start. Maybe she’s the one to solve the problem.

Today’s Thought

What we call “Progress” is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.

— Havelock Ellis, Impressions and Comments

Tailpiece

 “And where have you two been all day?”

“Hi Mom. Daddy took me for my first visit to a zoo.”

“Oh, how nice.”

“Yes, and one of the animals had a full house and made Daddy pay $50 over the table.”

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