When to call for help

ONE OF THE THINGS that most worries newcomers to boating is what to do when a medical emergency strikes the skipper. I’m referring to a situation in which there are only two people aboard, and the one who always does the steering and navigation is suddenly taken ill.

I have a friend who recently became the mate on a sweet 30-foot tugboat. She is very conscientious and is trying to learn everything at once—all you need to know to take charge of the vessel and get quick help for the skipper and keep the boat clear of dangers and find the way home and dock it safely and . . . well, to cut to the chase, she is driving herself crazy with all the responsibility. In short, she is attempting to learn all the tricks of the trade that most of us take years to absorb.

Despite the tension that this generates, she says she thoroughly enjoys her time on the boat, but it would be nice if there was a list of things she should learn first, a priority list, so she could tackle one thing at a time.

My advice to her was simple. If your skipper is suddenly stricken while you’re out cruising, don’t even attempt to take over the responsibility of running the ship. You’ll need to accumulate a lot more experience. For now, simply concentrate on what you can do in the way of first aid, and wait for help to come.

So the first things to learn would be:

1. How to put the engine(s) in neutral, and

2. How to call for help.

The idea of putting the engine in neutral is simply to avoid running blind, that is, without someone at the helm.  It’s better to keep the engine(s) running rather than shutting it (them) down, because there are many different starting procedures that might be a mystery to you.

The ability to call for help means you should master the simple rules for emergency messages on the ship’s VHF radio.  You should know how to send a Mayday call on Channel 16, or any other channel that seems appropriate, and what information to give.  That includes your exact position, which you can get from the GPS if it’s running,  or an approximate position, such as “about six miles south of Mudguts Harbor” or even “the middle of Simple Simon Bay.”

As a backup, there should be a portable battery-powered marine VHF radio on board and you should be very familiar with that one as well.

The advantage of a Mayday call on VHF is that it is broadcast to all vessels in your area, some of which may be close enough to come to your aid very quickly. The Coast Guard also monitors Mayday calls on Channel 16 and will take charge of your rescue.

Alternately, use your cell phone if you’re within range. Call 911 and ask them to tell the Coast Guard about your situation. The Coasties will call you back by phone and arrange to get help to you.

If you explain that you know nothing about handling the boat, everybody will be very understanding. Calling for help is the most sensible thing you could do, and nobody expects anything else. 

Today’s Thought

After the verb “To Love,” “To Help” is the most beautiful verb in the world!

— Baroness von Suttner, Ground Arms

Tailpiece

A Polish immigrant went to the licensing offices to apply for a driver's license. He had to take an eyesight test.

“Can you read this?” the clerk asked, showing him the letters C Z W I X N O S T A C Z.

"Read it?" the Pole replied. “I know the guy."

 

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

Safer singlehanding

SINGLEHANDED SAILING can be a wonderful experience but there is one thing that often frightens off beginners. It is the thought of being stuck at the helm while running downwind in increasingly heavy weather, when you dare not leave the helm because the boat is already overcanvassed and likely to broach-to and throw you overboard if you don’t take every approaching wave exactly stern-on.

Not being able to leave the helm to take in sail is (as somebody once put it) the maritime version of wearing a ball and chain. It turns an enjoyable sail into an adrenalin-fueled fight for your life. 

The situation arises when you’re running before a stiff breeze that gradually strengthens. It’s very difficult to detect a dangerous increase in wind speed when you’re on the run, and even expert helmsmen can be taken by surprise this way. The old advice is to shorten sail at the same wind speed off the wind as you would on the wind. But that’s easier said than done. All too often, you realize your peril only when the boat starts misbehaving. The helm becomes heavy. She becomes slow to react to the rudder. The waves start threatening to break over the transom. There’s no crew to reduce sail. And you dare not move from the cockpit. How long before you succumb to cold and exhaustion?

There are a couple of things the neophyte singlehander can do to avoid this nasty situation.

First, invest in some sort of self-steering. An automatic wind vane is expensive but worth its weight in gold to the singlehander. Alternatively, an electric autohelm will do a fine job as long as you have sufficient battery power aboard. Either of these devices will give you a chance to drop the mainsail while the going is good, before things start getting out of hand.

Secondly, learn to heave to. The time to heave to is when you first wonder if the wind isn’t getting a bit strong. If you’re beating, there’s no problem. Just go about without unsheeting the jib. Give the main sheet some slack when you’re on the new tack and fix the helm down so that it counterbalances the backed jib.  If you’re on the run, watch for a chance to round up on the same tack, then pull the jib aback and fix the helm down. Your boat should ride like a duck on a pond, five or six points off the wind and forge ahead at 1 knot or so.

Now you have all the time in the world to reef or change sails and a much steadier platform to work on. You can also take the opportunity to make a warming cup of coffee or pour something a little stronger.

Life suddenly becomes more enjoyable, not to mention safer, when you find yourself in control of the boat, instead of the boat being in control of you.

Today’s Thought

I hear the wind among the trees

Playing celestial symphonies;

I see the branches downward bent,

Like keys of some great instrument.

— Longfellow, A Day of Sunshine

Tailpiece

A young woman went to the doctor complaining of aches and pains. “I think I’ve got the swine flu,” she said.

“Swine flu nothing,” the doctor said. “That’s Egyptian flu — you’re going to be a mummy.”

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

My career as greasers' peggy

FOR A BRIEF PERIOD of my life I was a professional seaman. At least, I was a member of the seamen’s union. Catering Department, actually. I was the starboard watch greasers’ peggy.

The greasers were close to the lowest form of life on the liner — just slightly above the gooseneck barnacles that festooned the hull. As I understood it, they worked down below in the engine room and squirted oil on the pistons as they went up and down. There were six of them in the starboard watch and they were a rough lot. They wore dirty blue overalls and thick black boots. I was their slave.

I changed their bed linen. I cleaned up after them in the heads. I brought them their meals in the tiny greasers’ mess up near the bows. When they had finished, I threw their dirty dishes overboard through the porthole. I learned that trick from my oppo, the greasers’ peggy on the port side.

As a matter of fact, I was regarded as a sort of hero by the port-side greasers’ peggy because I had been spoken to by the Captain Himself. He came around one day on an official inspection when we were near the equator and reprimanded me for putting wet cutlery away in the drawer.

“Must put it away dry,” he said gruffly. “Fearful health hazard, wet cutlery. Specially in this heat, what?”

I did my best to look contrite. “Aye, aye, sir,” I said in my best toady fashion.

“Cor!” said my fellow peggy afterward in admiring tones. “He don’t usually bovver to speak to the likes of us. He must like you.”

I decided then that if I were going to be bullied by the Captain, I didn’t want to be a greasers’ peggy any more.  If I ever went to sea on a big passenger ship again, I wanted to be an officer, and have dinner (etc.) in a nice white uniform with the pretty ladies.

So when we reached port (and having discovered how much work you had to do before they’d let you become an officer)  I decided that writing for a living wasn’t so bad after all, and I’ve been doing it non-stop ever since.

Today’s Thought

A month of days, a year of months, 20 years of months in the treadmill, is the life that slays everything worthy of the name of life.

— Roy Bedicheck, Adventures with a Texas Naturalist

Tailpiece

An elderly man put a five-dollar bill into the Salvation Army kettle. Then a thought struck him.

“What happens to this money?” he asked.

“I give it to the Lord,” the young woman replied.

“And how old are you now, Miss?” the old gent asked.

“I’m 21,” she said.

“Well,” he said, taking his five dollars back, “no need for you to bother. I’ll be seeing Him long before you.”

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

When things go really, really wrong

THE GEARBOX on a Westerbeke engine I once owned was controlled by a small lever that stood straight up when the gears were in neutral, and leaned either backward or forward when the appropriate gears were engaged.

 This lever was joined by a long cable to the remote gear control lever in the cockpit; but on one occasion, as we were coming into our marina slip, the cable slipped off the gearbox lever out of sight down below. This left the gearbox in forward gear, of course, with no way of getting it into neutral or reverse.

I moved the now-useless cockpit lever into reverse to halt the boat in the slip and revved the engine. Nothing happened to the actual gearbox, so, instead of stopping, the boat leaped forward and broadsided our dinghy, which was moored across the head of the dock. There was a loud crunching noise and lots of confusion before I had the sense to shut the engine down.

A similar thing happened to a famous boat called Tzu Hang, a 22-ton ketch sailed by Miles and Beryl Smeeton with their crew, John Guzzwell. The incident forms one of the funniest episodes in Guzzwell’s book, Trekka Round the World (Fine Edge), largely because of the behavior of Mrs. Smeeton, known always as “B.” She was a very strong-willed lady, physically as tough as nails but loving and generous to her husband and friends.

The incident occurred within sight of a posh yacht club in Auckland, New Zealand, when the Smeetons were offered the use of the commodore’s personal mooring buoy. Not wishing to make fools of themselves, the crew of Tzu Hang drew up a battle plan. Here is Guzzwell’s description of the scene:

‘ “The Commodore’s buoy is painted white,” explained Miles Smeeton. “It’s down here amongst a group of moored yachts. I know which one it is, so I’ll go off in the dinghy and leave you two to bring Tzu Hang over . . .”

‘B. got the engine going and I went up in the bow and began cranking the anchor chain aboard with the windlass.

‘I saw Miles had reached the mooring, and as the anchor came aboard he gave the signal to B. that we were all clear. She pushed the gear lever forward and Tzu Hang began to gather way as we turned downwind to approach Miles.

‘Unknown to us, below the deck, the gearshift lever became disengaged from the transmission, with the engine still in gear turning the propeller.

‘I saw Miles cup his hands and shout, “Take her out of gear, B.” as we approached him.

‘From aft I heard B. ask: “What did he say?”

‘ “He says to take her out of gear,” I relayed from the bow, standing ready with the line I was to pass to Miles.

‘ “OK, I’ve got her out of gear,” said B., moving the now-useless lever back to the neutral position.

‘ “Give her a touch astern,” directed Miles from the dinghy, looking a little anxious.

‘ “What did he say?” B. asked me from aft.

‘ “He wants you to give her a touch astern,” I called as the distance to Miles decreased rapidly.

‘B. moved the lever to the astern position and revved the engine. Tzu Hang surged ahead and I heard Miles shouting, “No! Astern, B. Go astern!”

‘ “What’s the idiot shouting now?” asked B., a steely note to her voice. “I’ve got her astern,” and she increased the power as Tzu Hang headed directly for the figure in the dinghy who was now waving his arms and yelling,

“Astern B.! You’ve got her ahead!”

‘B. was quite angry now, and she did not like being shouted at when she knew perfectly well what she was doing. She had moved the gear lever to astern and done what she was told. She was not about to listen to Miles or anyone else now. Tzu Hang was now making 7 knots and a respectable bow wave as we bore down the last few yards on Miles and rammed him square amidships. In a split second he managed to transfer himself to the bobstay below the bowsprit. He was still shouting, ”Astern, B., go astern!”

‘I looked aft at B., not sure what to do.

 ‘ “Did I get the bastard?” she demanded in a cold voice. “Oh, good!” she said with satisfaction as the upturned dinghy disappeared astern.

‘I looked ahead to see us rapidly approaching a large motor yacht that we were going to hit in the next few seconds unless we were very lucky. I quickly let go the anchor, and the chain came rattling out of the hawse pipe and whipped past Miles, still clinging to the bobstay.

‘Closer and closer we came to the motor yacht, and there was no doubt in my mind that we were about to sink her, too. Twenty-two tons of teak, bronze, and lead were not to be denied. I closed my eyes and was suddenly jerked off my feet as the anchor grabbed something and Tzu Hang sheered away at the last possible instant. We proceeded to go round and round in a circle, just missing the motor yacht each time.

‘I  helped Miles up over the bow and he rushed aft and cut the engine. We slowly came to a halt and I thought I saw the flash of binoculars from the balcony of the yacht club.

‘When I went below, B. was sitting very quietly in the saloon, knitting, the sounds of the needles unnaturally loud. Miles and I knew when to shut up.’

Today’s Thought

Chaos is come again.

— Shakespeare, Othello

Tailpiece

“Did you have that man-to-man chat with Jimmy, dear?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Was it successful?”

“Well, I tried to explain about the birds and the bees, but he kept switching the conversation back to girls.”

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

The earth's biggest wilderness

IN THIS ERA of discernible climate change there has been a lot more talk than usual about wilderness, and how best it may be preserved. But one thing that mostly escapes attention is the fact that the earth’s greatest wilderness is the sea.

When we talk about wilderness, of course, we think of it as unspoiled nature.  And what makes it unspoiled is the absence of human beings. Most people think of wilderness as little pockets of the earth’s surface that we want to preserve just as they are. But the problem is that besides preserving them we want to see them and experience them. That means our presence, even our temporary presence, causes the wilderness to be despoiled. We affect it; we change it with our jeeps and all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes, rumpling the land and fouling the air with their exhausts.

So far, though (apart from the great dumps of plastic in the ocean gyres) we haven’t managed to change the sea to the same extent. None of mankind’s endeavors has left any permanent monuments in the oceans, such as crumbling pyramids or rusting Eiffel Towers. There is  no Great Wall of China at sea, no Taj Mahal or Mt. Rushmore. The sea erases all signs of man’s presence as soon as we pass over it.

If fact, when you’re on a small boat in the middle of the ocean it’s easy to believe that you are seeing something that no human being has ever seen before, and never will again, for the surface of the sea is constantly changing. It’s never the same from minute to minute.

And beneath the surface, out of sight of passing man and largely unknown to him, the sunlit ocean is very busy, teeming with life of all sizes from microscopic bacteria through tiny animal and vegetable plankton to the giant squid, intelligent beings about which we know so little, and the world’s biggest mammal, the blue whale.

As a matter of fact, scientists in New Zealand are now getting a rare look at a sea creature with tentacles like fire hoses and eyes as big as dinner plates.

A colossal squid known as an Architeuthis, weighing 770 pounds and as long as a minivan, was hauled out of an Antarctic sea several months ago. The rarely observed animal was frozen until recently, when a team of scientists got a chance to thaw and inspect it at a New Zealand museum.

I have often wondered on a calm night at sea whether any of these fearsome and highly intelligent creatures could see my boat silhouetted against a moonlit sky and, if so, if they would be tempted to attack it as the ancient krakens were reputed to do. At times like this I have had to remind myself that I’ve read no reports of giant squid smothering a small boat in their tentacles and dragging it down into the underworld. On the other hand, boats (and ships) do disappear mysteriously at sea from time to time, and who knows why? And who knows how many giant squids there are in any given stretch of ocean and who knows how large the biggest of them is?

I found the best way to resolve my feelings about this was to go below at the end of my watch, take a generous nip from the rum bottle in the medicine cabinet, and curl up in a tight ball in a nice warm bunk.

Today’s Thought

Not only is the sea unspoiled and without artificiality, there is a primeval quality, a purity surrounding its environment. Maybe you appreciate the sea because when you are lost upon its vastness your life is not jammed up with the trivia, the meaningless detail, and the foolish stuff of civilization.

— Hal Roth

Tailpiece

Exhaustive intensive researches

By Darwin and Huxley and Hall

Have conclusively proved that the hedgehog

Can scarcely be ravished at all.

And further industrious enquiry

Has incontrovertibly shown

That this state of comparative safety

Is enjoyed by the hedgehog alone.

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

Equinox and a trusty compass

ONCE AGAIN I HAVE FAILED to write a book about the equinox and putting one’s faith in a compass. It was an idea that rattled around in my head briefly a few years ago and it seemed like a good plan at the time. But I regret to say it was an idea that escaped, like so many others, never to be captured again.

I did, however, write a short piece to serve as a sort of story skeleton, a bag of bones, which, suitably clothed, could turn into a minor masterpiece. So here, by way of compensation, is the short version of my unwritten magnum opus: 

A JUG OF WINE, A HAND BEARING COMPASS, AND THOU

The cedars in the back yard were twinkling with cool gray mist this morning, a sure sign that the autumnal equinox is almost upon us.

For years, when we lived on Whidbey Island, Washington, my wife June and I used to make a short pilgrimage on the date of the equinox. We went to a grassy little west-facing hillside in a quiet state park. We took along a blanket, a bottle of Vouvray, some cheese and crackers, and maybe a baguette. And, of course, our hand bearing compass from the boat.

On the evening of the equinox we watched the sun go down into the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and checked the accuracy of the compass. This is one of only two days in the year when the sun rises exactly in the east and sets exactly in west. Otherwise, it’s always either north or south of true east and west.

At that magic moment when half the blazing red sun was hidden beneath the sea horizon, I checked its bearing with the compass up to my eye. Every year, the compass proved accurate to within one degree. And at that moment I was flooded with a wonderful feeling of trust.

Cruising under sail is built on trust in so many ways. You trust that the mast won’t fall down, you trust that the engine will start, you trust that the waves won’t be big enough to sink your boat, and, of course, you trust that your compass is telling the truth. (The way you know whether your main steering compass is telling the truth is to check it against your hand bearing compass, now proven accurate by the sun itself. Trust, but verify, as it were.)

We always stayed long after the sun sank into the strait. We went home cold and happy and damp from dew, and slightly woozy from the wine, holding hands, with our trust in our compass and our boat restored for another year.

And every year I think to myself what a wonderful metaphor this is for life. And I tell myself I must nurture that nascent thought and expand it into a living philosophy and write a fascinating book about it and make a lot of money and get famous and appear on Oprah. But I never do. Restoring trust is easy. Writing a book is hard work.

Today’s Thought

A man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts.

— Harold Macmillan, NY Herald Tribune, 17 Dec 63

Tailpiece

“Dad, what’s horse sense?”

“It’s one of Nature’s little safeguards, son. It’s what keeps a horse from betting on people.”

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

On sailing like a gentleman

ON THE NEWS YESTERDAY I heard a recording of a man calling 911, reporting in a remarkably calm voice that there was a “gentleman” pointing a gun at people in a Wal-Mart store.
It struck me then that we’re losing all sense of what a gentleman is.

It also made me wonder what kind of boats gentlemen sail. But maybe it’s easier to mention the kind of boats gentlemen don’t sail. For instance, I can’t imagine anyone calling the Coast Guard to complain about being rocked by an enormous wake caused by a “gentleman” in a MacGregor 26 with an 80-hp outboard motor.

Gentlemen don’t sail Flickas either. At least, the people who run the Flicka 20 sailboat blog aren’t gentlemen. One large headline reads: “Vigor is an idiot.” This is followed by a drunken rant from a San Francisco architect  complaining about a chapter in my book Twenty Small Sailboats to Take You Anywhere. Not only was he drunk, by his own admission, but he patently hadn’t read the book, since he misinterpreted my estimation of the Flicka’s seaworthiness. If the Flicka people had any decency they would delete that libelous and ungentlemanly rant.

In general, gentlemen sail Folkboats and all boats by designers such as Herreshoff, Fife, Nicholson, Uffa Fox, Alberg, Crealock, Atkin, Chapelle, Lyle Hess and their peers. And it’s not true that gentlemen never sail to weather, as the popular saying insists. Any lady will tell you that gentlemen frequently sail close to the wind — but they’re careful  never to pinch.

I have personally known some real gentleman sailors, such as Hiscock, Gau, Bardiaux, Guzzwell and Moitessier, although, come to think of it,  I’m not too sure about Moitessier. He didn’t behave like a gentleman when he sneakily and illegally massacred all those seabirds’ eggs on Ascension Island.

And there are others I have read about — Roth, Knox-Johnson, Adlard Coles, Miles Smeeton, and so on. So I know they’re out there.Finally I would observe that nobody who anchors too close to you is a gentleman; and neither was Tristan Jones.

Anyway, next time you’re in Wal-Mart and someone starts waving a gun around, please remember to tell the 911 dispatcher that it’s a man behaving badly. Gentlemen simply don’t do that.

Today’s Thought

A gentleman is simply a patient wolf.

— Lana Turner

Tailpiece    

A limerick packs laughs anatomical

Into space that is quite economical.

But the good ones I’ve seen

So seldom are clean,

And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

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The urge to build boats

EVERY NOW AND THEN I feel the urge to build a boat. This has been going on all my life from the teen years onwards. Mostly, I am able to keep the feeling under control but on a few occasions I have succumbed.

I sometimes wonder if other people feel the urge, I mean ordinary people who don’t even live near water and normally have nothing to do with boats. There might be a quite a lot of them. They might get the urge and not know what it is, apart from some vague feeling of unease or some suspicion of a life mission not completed.

Scientists tell us we came from the sea. There is salt in our veins. So I would guess there is some vestigial desire to build something that can float on the sea, not only to enable us better to catch fish but also to allow us to indulge in that other great human urge to explore the world, most of which is covered by water.

I have never shown any great talent for boatbuilding. My first experience came in my teens when I helped an older friend build a small Harrison-Butler carvel-planked sloop.  I was the gofer and the one who held the heavy dolly on the head of the copper nails fastening the planking to the ribs. He was the one inside the hull, fitting the copper rove collar and clipping off the nail short before riveting it tight with swift light blows from a ball-peen hammer.

My next outburst of boatbuilding came many years later when I helped a friend build a 33-foot light displacement sloop. She was strip-planked, and each plank was through-nailed and glued to the ones beneath. I remember thinking at the time that she was virtually a copper mesh surrounded by wood. It certainly made her very tough, but I hated to think how complicated it would be to repair a stove-in plank at some later date.

Both those boats were wooden, of course, and wood is still the finest material for small boats, as far as I’m concerned. You can, of course, build a fiberglass boat if you wish, but it’s a very messy business and quite full of stress as you wonder if one layer of glass fibers saturated with resin is really going to stick to the last layer. Or did you leave it too late, so that the resin has already cured sufficiently to lose its stickiness? I wouldn’t like to think about that in a storm at sea.

And the killer for me is that you have to have a mold to build a fiberglass boat, or at least some kind of lattice work or framework in the form of the finished hull. Normally, that means you have to build a wooden boat first, to form your mold, which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.

Many wooden boats, perhaps the great majority these days, are covered with a sheath of fiberglass in any case. This not only waterproofs them, but also prevents the bitey things in the water from burrowing into the wood and eating the hull from the inside out.

There were occasions when I build a string of four small racing dinghies from kits, but that doesn’t take much skill, just patience and a lot of time to get a decent finish. I only had one major disaster, in the early days before I properly understood the technique of stitch-and-glue to join the seams of a plywood boat. The resin supplied with the kit was of the kind used for building up several layers, which I did, before and after applying the fiberglass tape. Nobody told me that this kind of resin would never cure hard unless you excluded the air from the last layer with a plastic covering, or sprayed on a chemical to exclude the air.

So, yes, the resin stayed sticky and nothing I could think of doing would make it set. In desperation I painted over it anyway, called the boat Messy, and deliberately dabbed ugly splodges of paint over the hull to make it seem like one big joke.  I have to say that she did, in fact, hold together, and after a few years her seams appeared to have cured somewhat, but it was a long, hard lesson for me.

I dreamed the other night that I was crafting a lovely sleek 14-foot clinker-built Whitehall rowing boat with two rowing stations and a sculling notch in the transom. I knew all the time that it was far beyond my shipwrighting capabilities, of course, and I did wonder if I shouldn’t be building something simpler, such as an Irish curragh; but in dreams nothing matters except the emotions and sensations. That’s how I got to win the Finn class in the Olympics — but that’s another dream.

Today’s Thought

Unpinned even by rudimentary notions of time and space, dreams float or flash by, leaving in their wake trails of unease, hopes, fears, and anxieties.

— Stephen Brook, The Oxford Book of Dreams

 Tailpiece

Anything unrelated to elephants is irrelephant.

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

When to fly code flags MEG

A MESSAGE from someone who signs herself “Anne Who Was There” says: “I saw a lot of flags flying at half-mast on Thursday in memory of the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York and it reminded me that you once wrote a blog lamenting the fact that not enough yachts fly flags these days. Could you dig it out and republish it please?”

I’d be delighted, Anne.  Any request that saves me writing a new column is very welcome. Thanks for asking. This is how it went:

WE DON’T SEE ENOUGH FLAGS flying on small boats these days. Hardly anyone even flies a burgee at the masthead any more, which is a great shame because that colorful little triangle of fluttering cloth denotes pride of ownership and bestows a disciplined liveliness on a boat.
And as for signaling flags, we might as well be talking about dodos, or pterodactyls, or home-based land-line telephones. And that’s another pity, because there is a huge section of the International Code of Signals devoted to the ancient art of sending messages by flags.
You can signal with one flag, or two, or three. There are literally hundreds of coded messages waiting to be sent, and anybody with a set of code flags ought to be absolutely itching to send a few. I mean, imagine you spot some old friends aboard a far-flung yacht in an anchorage — but you don’t carry a VHF radio (because you don’t have to) and you don’t have their cell-phone number because you never wrote it down like you were supposed to. So now what? Well, code flags to the rescue, of course.
Get out the signal book. Look up the right signal and hoist the flags. Simple. There are codes for every occasion. For example, here’s a handy three-flag hoist: MEG. It means “Bowels are regular.” That’s a message your friends are always happy to receive. And relieved to receive, you might say. Of course, that might not always be the case, so the people who drew up the international code cunningly also provided MJD (“Patient has flatulence.”) and MIO (“Patient has clay-colored stool.”) There are other codes describing sailors with other delicate variations of tummy problems, but we don’t need to dwell on that now. You can look them up for yourself in private after dinner.
One two-flag signal of particular interest is XP. It is not clear why the compilers of the signal book thought fit to include this hoist, since it means “I am in thick fog.” But perhaps they needed a belly laugh after dealing with all that sordid stool business. In any case, if you ever come across a vessel flying XP, if you can read it, it’s already too late.
One signal you might want to memorize is SN. It means “You should stop immediately. Do not scuttle. Do not lower boats. Do not use the wireless. If you disobey I shall open fire on you.” Heavens, what a vicious and belligerent message for two little flags to convey. The only reply I can think of is MEG flown in reverse order, which should be read as “My bowels are NOT regular.” Not now, anyhow.
The international code does not deal with flags alone, of course. All other forms of signaling by sea are covered, including the use of the human voice as transmitted by radio waves. It seems that radio waves may sometimes distort the human voice so much as to make it intelligible without the help of the international code. Now I fear very few of my sailing friends practice this, but it’s not sufficient to say “One, two, three and four” over the radio. The code insists that you say unaone (oo-nah-wun), bissotwo (bees-soh-too), terrathree (tay-rah-tree) and kartefour (kar-tay-fower.) In fact, here is the full list, just in case you want to impress the Coasties when they ask to come aboard and inspect your potty arrangements:
Figure spelling table
Figure or Mark to be Transmitted
(Code Word Pronunciation)
0 NADAZERO (NAH-DAH-ZAY-ROH)
1 UNAONE (OO-NAH-WUN)
2 BISSOTWO (BEES-SOH-TOO)
3 TERRATHREE (TAY-RAH-TREE)
4 KARTEFOUR (KAR-TAY-FOWER)
5 PANTAFIVE (PAN-TAH-FIVE)
6 SOXISIX (SOK-SEE-SIX)
7 SETTESEVEN (SAY-TAY-SEVEN)
8 OKTOEIGHT (OK-TOH-AIT)
9 NOVENINE (NO-VAY-NINER)
Decimal point
DECIMAL (DAY-SEE-MAL)
Today’s Thought What harm in getting knowledge even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a mitten or a slipper? — Rabelais, Works
Tailpiece The luckiest man is the one who has a wife and an outboard motor that both work.
(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Introducing Tinder for Boats

MY NEW START-UP is going to make me a fortune. I freely admit that it’s very similar to Tinder, the latest and greatest mobile application for online dating. Tinder, which judges people based on appearance alone, has created a worldwide storm among the legions of lonely hearts seeking love and cuddles, but there is one important difference between Tinder and my app:  mine is Tinder for Boats.

Those of you who use Tinder already, and  know the difference between left-swiping and right-swiping, will want to know a little behind the theory driving Tinder for Boats. Well, to start with, we all hate selling a long-loved boat to someone who, we deeply suspect, doesn’t deserve or appreciate it — someone who is simply not going to look after it in the way we did. Now, you can often recognize this sort of person just by looking at them. They don’t do their buttons up right, they wear non-matching socks, they have splodges on their shirts, and rusty rings through their eyebrows. They don’t comb their hair nicely or carry a clean handkerchief.

But it’s very difficult to deny them a purchase after you have met them face-to-face. I mean, what sort of excuse can you offer? “I’m not going to sell my boat to you because you’ve got snot on your  handkerchief.”?

The buyer, on the other hand, doesn’t want to waste his time looking at a boat being sold by an obvious rogue, one of those with shifty eyes and a cunning mouth, whose ears stick out, and has a broken nose and facial tattoos.You can just tell he has stolen this boat, or left at half-a-dozen boatyards a whole trail of unpaid bills that you will inherit if you’re foolish enough to buy the boat.

So TFB (Tinder for Boats) will show two pictures, the seller and the boat in one, and the prospective buyer in the other.

Thus, the buyer can inspect a boat with picture of its seller, and seller can take a good long gander at a prospective buyer. If both of these people swipe right, because they like the looks of each other, they can make mutual contact and do a deal. If, however, one or the other swipes left, then there is no contact and no embarrassment on either side.

Of course, we all understand that the real Tinder is to a certain extent driven by sex. Well, actually, quite a large extent. But then, isn’t everything?  So I should warn you that unscrupulous boat owners with broken noses and sticking-out ears might be tempted to hire sweet young things in provocative outfits to pose as sellers on Tinder for Boats. In that case, just be quite sure in your own mind that you know which goods you’re buying.

Today’s Thought

I gotta tell ya, with our $2.4 billion in profits last year, they gave me a great big bonus. Really, it’s almost obscene.

— Lee Iacocca, Time, 1 Apr 85

Tailpiece

“Did I tell you about the cruel blow that fate struck my parents in New York?”

“No — I thought you were born in Seattle.”

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

Fancy duds for fancy prices

AN OBSERVANT READER in San Diego, California, asks why the latest West Marine catalog (“Prices good September 4-21”) concentrates so much on clothing, rather than on bits for boats.  “The main sidehead on the front page says: ‘New Fall Apparel,’ ” he reports. “Is West Marine turning into a clothing store?”

Well now, I’m not getting into this. I recently promised to be nicer to West Marine. I asked God to fill my soul with kinder thoughts for the giant marine superstore, so that I could cut down on the criticism.

On the other hand, and upon more mature reflection, it occurs to me now that my promise doesn’t bind me not to repeat anything I have written on this subject before. So here is a column that was published more than two years ago. It still seems to be very appropriate, except that the prices have probably gone up in the interim:  

WHAT IS THE well-dressed sailor wearing these days? It's a question that doesn't normally occur to me, but it just so happens that West Marine has sent me a brochure listing all the wonderful boating things they have for sale, including what it pleases them to call "yachting apparel."

I must admit I have never owned any “yachting apparel.”  My sailing duds normally come from the thrift store and usually cost $1 for the top and $3 for the pants. This enables me to take off my tee-shirt and use it to mop up spilled engine oil without experiencing a twinge of conscience or a significant diminishment of my personal fortune. My granddaughter also informs me that the holes in my jeans are absolutely haute couture. She says the holes are  actually supposed to coincide with tattoos on my thighs and calves, so people can see them, but as I'm too old to have tattoos she thinks my hairy legs will do instead.

However, we stray. What I was saying is that I have West Marine's list of what you should be wearing if you wish to be admired and respected at the yacht club and on the racing circuit. Here is what they recommend:

Ø Tech sailing hat, $19.99.  It looks like any other baseball cap and has a West Marine logo on it, so they should be paying you to wear it because you are advertising West Marine.

Ø Sailing gloves, $26.99. They look like $5 gardening gloves without the pimples and I dare say you could use them to pull weeds when you're not sailing.

Ø Shoes. Apparently you need SeaRacer+ Sailing Shoes with GripX3, $119.99 They have an "exoskeleton" that "improves grip and protection for the top of your foot." Huh? The top? Go figure.

Ø Boots, $79.95. Not your ordinary boots, of course. These are Gills, and "worn by many of the world's top sailors." If you want to look smart, win races, feel like a top-world sailor, and go bankrupt, buy Gills.

Ø Shirt, $29.99. This short-sleeved, simply styled, classic camp shirt comes in bluestone, ivory, seafoam, and black. Such sweet colors. But it regains macho status from its name: Men's Anchor Shirt. (Not an anchor anywhere to be seen, though.)

Ø Shorts, $39.99. Real sailors wear jeans, but if you must match the rest of your outfit then you need Men's Admiral Shorts in Driftwood Khaki or Oyster Khaki.  There's a 9-inch inseam from your oysters to your driftwood, which should be long enough for most.

Ø Offshore jacket and bib, $409.00. Alaskan crab fishermen face the toughest working conditions in the fishing industry. They wear yellow PVC slickers that cost about one-tenth of West Marine's Musto duds. But what do they know?  Musto will keep you looking smarter and smelling fresher than those dumb crabbers.

So if you add it all up it comes to $725.90. Not bad, really, if you're a 1 percenter.  Or pretending to be.

Today's Thought

Fond pride of dress is sure a very curse;

Ere fancy you consult, consult your purse.
— Benjamin Franklin.

Tailpiece

"How do you like your new beard?" "I didn't like it at first. Then it grew on me."

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

No pictures, thousands of words

THOSE OF YOU who visit this space regularly will know that, strictly speaking, this is not a blog. It’s a column. The word blog is an abbreviation of web log, which signifies a kind of personal diary, a record of your recent comings and goings and happenings and emotions, all published for the world to see on the world-wide web. (All the world that’s interested, that is.)

A column is quite another matter. This a column for readers, and by readers I mean people who can assimilate more than 140 characters at a time — people who can read several contiguous sentences without having to pause to feed their brains on eye candy.

This column is called Mainly about Boats, although you’d probably not know that unless you read the small print at the bottom. You will, however, have noticed that this column almost always appears without illustrations, something that is very unusual in the electronic publishing business these days. In fact, if it were a blog it would be a blingless blog, which apparently is not the way to attract traffic. Too bad. I happen to prefer words to pictures.

Words, on their own, are quite tricky enough to manage without having to bother about pictures. When I was editing books for International Marine they came up with a very professional manuscript by Migael Scherer, of Seattle. It’s called A Cruising Guide to Puget Sound. I could find no fault with her copy, except that she constantly referred to those places where small boats are placed in the water as “boat launches.” I knew full well that everybody around here calls them boat launches, but when it came to the printed word I found it confusing, because a launch is a type of boat. Webster’s New World describes it as “an open, or partly enclosed, motorboat” or (formerly) “the largest boat carried by a warship.”

So I changed “boat launch” to “launching ramp” about a million times, after having carefully considered such alternatives as slipway, marine railway, etc.  Migael wasn’t happy about that and wanted me to change a million “launching ramps” back to “boat launches.” But in the end I prevailed, mostly on the grounds that such a classy book deserved language with the highest degree of clarity.  “Launching ramp” might have been fuddy-duddy, but it was certainly clear.

And, talking about that, it is interesting to note how difficult it is sometimes to use clear words to describe the simplest of objects or emotions. On the same page as “launch” in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, is the world “laugh.” Have you ever tried to describe a laugh?

The COD makes heavy weather of it:

“laugh (lahf) v. & n. 1. make the sounds and movements of face and body by which lively amusement, sense of the ludicrous, exultation, and scorn, are instinctively expressed; have these emotions.”

Webster’s dives even deeper into these muddy waters, adding definitions for laugh, chuckle, giggle, titter, snicker, and guffaw.

In other words, it’s far easier to laugh than to describe it.  And it’s far easier to fill a blog with pretty pictures than with interesting words.

Today’s Thought

The words! I collected them in all shapes and sizes and hung them like bangles in my mind.

— Hortense Calisher, Extreme Magic

Tailpiece

“Any Royalty in your wife’s family?”

“No, but she had an uncle who was a Peer.”

“Really? I had an uncle with bladder trouble, too.

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

Don't overdo electronic thingies

A MESSAGE FROM A READER who signs off as “57 Degrees North” says:

“It fascinates me how many people these days are simply terrified of leaving the harbor without GPS, chart plotter, radar, and satellite weather download thingy for their laptops.

“Back in my salad days we used to work offshore in the Gulf of Alaska all the time. This was pre-GPS of course, and while there was Loran-C it was notoriously wonky, and generally no better than dead-reckoning anyway, so many folks didn't bother.
“To get home, you simply steamed a reciprocal heading, which was usually in the ball park. After all, missing the coastline of Alaska would be no mean feat of navigation. Coastal charts and a smattering of local knowledge usually did for the rest.
“One of those odd geographic features is that on clear days the tallest mountains always pop over the horizon first, which gives you a nice visual fix on position. Obviously not as accurate as that electronic thingummy, but plenty good enough for us Neanderthals.”

Yes, it’s an interesting thing, how people have become so reliant on their electronic aids. I can remember when a couple of us went to sea on a 24-foot sloop, a Harrison-Butler Thuella design, with nothing more than a compass, a chart, a pair of dividers and a parallel rule. Oh, and a number 2 pencil, of course.

We didn’t even have en engine. Well, actually, we did, but it was only there for ballast because the hole for the propeller shaft hadn’t yet been drilled.

We set out from the Indian Ocean port of Durban, where my friend Ray Cruickshank had built the boat, bound for exotic Lourenco Marques 300 miles to the north. I was a teenager then, and I was invited on the trip because I knew how to sail, and Ray didn’t. Neither of us could navigate, of course, so we didn’t have a sextant or any form of electronics, not even a radio of any kind.  We weren’t bothered about this. It was the norm, or close to it, for those times, as 57 Degree North has pointed out. All we had to do was keep Africa on the left side and we’d surely get there.

We didn’t get there, as it happened. The Mozambique Currrent, flowing south at up to 4 knots, kept sweeping us back so that every time we closed with the land we had to admit we were hopelessly lost. After almost a week of frustration, we turned tail and sped back to Durban with the current. We didn’t need a sextant or any electronic aid to find Durban, with its miles of bright lights and high-rise beachfront hotels.

I’m not suggesting anyone should try to emulate Marvin Creamer and the crew of his 36-foot boat Globe Star, who sailed around the world with no navigational instruments whatsoever, not even a compass or a watch. On the other hand, it’s reassuring to know that common sense and a normal aptitude for direction finding will supply most sailors with most of the knowledge they need for most of the trips they make.

Today’s Thought

Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you, smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, "Come and find out.”
— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness 
Tailpiece

An old-fashioned sloop pulled in to the dock, and a beautiful woman stepped off with a parrot on her shoulder.
“Where did you get that?” asked one of the dock hands.
“Met her online,” said the parrot.

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