The fourteen-dollar reef

PERHAPS THE QUESTION most asked by newcomers to sailing is: “When is it time to reef?”

The best answer was given by Thomas Fleming Day in his book On Yachts and Yacht Handling, published in 1901. Day was then the renowned editor of one of America’s most successful yachting magazines, The Rudder.

So, when is it time to reef?

“It is always time to reef when you think it is,” declared Day. “The moment you would feel easier and your boat handle better by having less sail spread, is the time to shorten down. Never mind what anybody else is doing or what anybody else tells you. It is your boat, not some other boat that is worrying you; and you yourself, and not some other person, who is in charge.

“Never carry sail for the sake of carrying it; the ignorant may praise your recklessness and pluck, but the experienced man will call you either a lubber or a fool.

“Never let the action of another guide you in this particular, unless the action agrees with your own judgment. It is very common for young sailors to reef or not reef as they see some other man, and consequently to carry sail much to the risk of their vessel and lives.

“You must remember that these remarks of mine have nothing to do with racing. In racing, a man cannot reef when he wants to, but when he can; therefore, he frequently carries sail when he would give a good slice of his daily income to have it off, and often keeps in his reefs when he would like to shake them out, but does not for the same reason. Then, again, in racing, boats are always in company, and if an accident happens someone is close aboard to give assistance; but in cruising this is not so, and many a life has been lost for want of a reef in time.

“When I was young and fresh I had an idea that if anyone could carry sail on a boat I could do the same. One day I had a lesson that made me think, and partially cured me of the habit.

“I went with a clever old boatman across the Sound to bring home a new cat. We each took a crew, and, to return, he sailed the new boat, and I the one we had come over in. Halfway across it came on to blow very hard, and it was all I could do to keep my boat on her feet. My crew wanted me to stop and reef, but as the new boat kept on I insisted upon following her, being afraid that the old man would laugh at me. In plain talk, I was afraid of being thought a coward, and for this I jeopardized my own and the lives of the other boys.

“When at last, after a struggle and half full of water, we reached port, the old man met me with a torrent of invectives, calling me a fool and several other hard names for not reefing.

“’But you didn’t reef,” I protested. ‘Reef!’ he exclaimed. ‘No, for I couldn’t; but I’d have given fourteen dollars if I could have got that sail down. Do you think I was carrying whole sail for fun?’ It seems that the halliards, being new, had jammed, and they could not get the sail down, so had to lug it. This taught me a lesson, one that I have never forgotten; and oftentimes when I see a man struggling along under too much sail, I wonder if he, like the old boatman, wouldn’t give fourteen dollars if he could get that sail down.”

 Today’s Thought

We accomplish more by prudence than  by force.

— Tacitus, Annals

Tailpiece

A friend who spotted an attractive woman at a party went up to introduce himself. “Gentlemen prefer blondes,” he said.
The woman blushed. “I have a confession to make,” she told him, “I’m not really a blonde.”
“That’s wonderful,” he said. “I also have a confession to make. I’m not really a gentleman.”

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The origin of Little White Lie

IN AN EFFORT to impress the Idaho girl who was to become my bride, I used to carry with me a small white pebble. I told her it was precious to me because it saved my life. I explained that I was swimming one day in a little cove in the sleepy village of Simonstown, the naval base 30 miles south of Cape Town, when I spotted something white on the sandy floor and dived for it. It turned out to be nothing more exotic than a stone, so I dropped it. But as I did so a large shark that had been coming straight toward me lunged down toward the stone instead, and I took the opportunity to scramble out to safety on the rocks.

I went back the next day, made sure the cove was free of sharks, and picked up the white stone. Always thereafter I carried it with me for good luck.

Regrettably, there wasn’t a word of truth in that tale, and it was several years before I confessed.  Meanwhile, the lady concerned had become my wife. She apparently decided I was worth keeping, despite my blatant falsehood, and mentioned casually that she had never been quite convinced that an attack by a large and ferocious shark could be staved off by an insignificant pebble.

Nevertheless, a few years ago I went back to that charming little cove in Simonstown. I wanted to show my wife the place that gave me so many wonderful childhood memories.  To my dismay it no longer existed. It had been filled in, paved over, and incorporated into the adjacent naval dockyard.

It is almost always a mistake to go back to a place you remember from your childhood.  Even if it still exists, it’s always smaller, duller and less exciting than it seemed before.  In some strange way connected with this feeling, I have always wanted to sail my own boat to the Galapagos Islands — and always not wanted to, at the same time.  My fear has always been that they will be spoiled by the time I get there, that nature in its most pristine state as Charles Darwin found it in the 19th century, the timelessness and innocence of the place, will long ago have been sacrificed to Mammon and the gods of tourism. My fear is that after all the effort it takes to get there, I would be disappointed, as I was in Simonstown. Another fear I have harbored is that there is no point in sailing around the world any more.  All the good spots have been despoiled in one way or another.

So I was more than reassured when I read a blog by Aaron and Nicole, a Seattle couple[1] who have just started to cross the Pacific on their 33-foot cutter-rigged Hans Christian sailboat. They have recently arrived in San Cristobal, the former Chatham Island of Darwin’s time, where they are having a wonderful time. Their blog expresses delight in the way the Ecuadorian authorities are managing the natural resources of the islands, and their enthusiasm reminds me that things were not exactly delightful when Darwin was there, and Yankee whalers slaughtered hundreds of whales and giant tortoises with no regard whatsoever to conservation.

Perhaps it is my perception that is at fault. Perhaps there have never been any new places to explore on this earth. Perhaps there are only new and happy ways to perceive them.    

[1] <http://www.svbellastar.com/2013/03/san-cristobal-galapagos.html>

Today’s Thought

It is the fate of most voyagers, no sooner to discover what is of most interest in any locality, than they are hurried from it.

—Charles Darwin

Tailpiece

The nice thing about kleptomania is that if you’ve got it, you can always take something for it.

 

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Something you pay dearly for

THE TINKLE OF ICE in a tall glass is an entrancing sound. It’s especially delightful when you’re safely at anchor in a pretty cove after a hard day’s sail. But it takes a surprising amount of power to make ice on a small boat.

Weekend sailors mostly make do with ice-boxes, but long-distance cruisers often opt for on-board refrigeration.

The two most common methods are engine-driven compressors feeding supercooled fluid to metal holding plates in an ice-box, and modified household fridges running on 12-volt motors. Holding-plate systems are expensive to start with, and require you to run the ship’s engine for about two hours every day. Fridge systems cost about one-third less, but the electrical draw is heavy and constant.

Your 12-volt batteries will need to provide about 4 amp-hours of power for every hour of refrigerating—almost 100 amp-hours a day—in hot climates. That’s a lot for the average cruiser to replenish, even if the auxiliary engine is running an extra-large alternator. And then there’s the noise of the fridge motor cycling on and off all day and night.

One way or another, you pay dearly for ice.

So learn to maintain your system. There are no repair shops at sea.

Today’s Thought

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

— H. D. Thoreau, Walden.

(I think Thoreau got it wrong. He surely meant dispensable, not indispensable. — JV)

Tailpiece

“May I recommend the cold tongue, madam?”
“Certainly not, waiter. I couldn’t possibly eat something that came out of a bull’s mouth. Just bring me an egg instead.”

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The greatest test of patience

BOOKS WRITTEN FOR PEOPLE who want to cross oceans in sailboats usually have a good deal of advice about how to prepare for storms, and how to handle a yacht in heavy weather. But very little is said about another problem that sometimes crops up on ocean crossings, and that is how to handle calms.

Calms are the greatest test of a sailor’s patience and unfortunately some people are not psychologically equipped to deal with them well.  They are often quite shocked at their response to calms.

I was once at sea in a 33-footer with three friends when we ran into a giant high-pressure system in mid-South Atlantic. This was real doldrums weather, where the sea resembled a constantly bulging mirror, and not even the slightest ripple creased its face.

After three days of rolling with limp, slatting sails, one of our crew, a young, vigorous civil engineer, was at his wits’ end.  He was used to being able to make things happen, usually on a big scale. The calm had a terrible effect on him because this was the first time in his adult life that he hadn’t been able to do anything to change his situation.

Eventually he pleaded with skipper to retire from the race we were in.  He said we should use our precious supply of gasoline to motor about 100 miles to the nearest shipping lane, where we could flag down a passing freighter and load our yacht on board. He was even prepared to pay to have the yacht shipped home again.

Listening to him, it was easy to believe that we would be stuck out there forever. We could see ourselves running out of food and water.  We’d never be heard of again.

You’d be surprised how realistic this seems to a crew stuck in a dead calm for three days.

But at the end of the third day the wind filled in gently.  We started moving toward Rio de Janeiro at a steady three knots.  Our civil engineer was transformed.  You’ve never seen a happier man.

The way you react to calms obviously depends on your personality.  I confess that I just love calms.  I prefer a calm to a storm any day. Calms give you time and opportunity to study the ocean you’re sailing through. The truth is that we know comparatively little about the deep oceans and what hides in them. I love hanging over the side and seeing what’s in the water. I have spent many happy hours examining the contents of buckets of seawater.

There is an amazing variety of stuff out there, including the tiny creatures of the  sea, the odd creatures, the things that look like plastic coins tilted at odd angles, and the things that walk on water. Thousands of miles from land, you will come across minute insects that skate across the surface, dimpling the water with their tiny legs. You can see them only in calms, of course, and I have no idea where they go when the wind gets up and the seas start breaking.

There are spectacular light shows to be seen, too, not just phosphorescence, which is showy enough in its own right, but also large discs of light that flash brilliantly a few feet under the surface as you drift slowly by.

These are secrets that Nature reserves for those who dare to go to sea, and who have the patience to drift in calms.  For me, the quiet sea is a source of constant fascination. I am never bored by calms.

Today’s Thought

There is a third dimension to traveling, the longing for what is beyond.

— Jan Myrdal, The Silk Road

Tailpiece

“How did your date go on Saturday?”
“It was a bust. Not only did he lie about the size of his yacht, but he made me do the rowing, too.”

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Windlass problems

ONCE WHEN I was working for Sea magazine a distressed sailor called me from Mexico.  He wanted to know how to stop his anchor chain jumping off his windlass.  Apparently he’d been caught on a lee shore with a reef close behind and he’d had a very bad night watching the reef grow closer.

The wind died down before his boat struck, but he was concerned that his anchor winch wasn’t working properly because when he tried to weigh anchor in order to re-anchor in a better spot, the chain just kept slipping off the winch.

I found out that his chain made only a quarter turn on the wildcat before dropping through the pipe into the chain locker below.  This is a fairly common arrangement, but it is far from satisfactory if the strain on the anchor chain is excessive.  Then it will tend to jump the cogs when the bow rises to a swell.

The answer is to fit a chain stopper to the foredeck or the bow roller.  It’s a simple pawl that clicks into a link of the chain and jams it when the chain tries to run backward out of the roller.

The manufacturers of anchor windlasses do their best to warn people not to expect too much from them, but that doesn’t stop many sailors from abusing them. Windlasses are designed to lift only the weight of the anchor and its line. They aren’t meant to drag a heavy cruising boat up to her anchor in choppy seas against a strong current or heavy wind. But it happens all the time.

The makers try to salvage their reputations by advising us to choose much bigger windlasses that we really need, so we won’t wreck the machinery before the warranty runs out. Nevertheless, the windlass slaughter continues.

You may do your pocketbook a favor by taking the strain off your anchor rode.  Use power or sail to move forward over your anchor and simply let the windlass take up the slack. If you do this, you can get away with a much smaller and less expensive windlass.  And if you have a manual windlass, your arms and back will be very grateful.

Today’s Thought

Better lose the anchor than the whole ship.

— Danish proverb

Tailpiece

When a man and a woman marry, they become one. The trouble starts when they try to decide which one.

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Do you need a life raft?

MOST CRUISING BOATS are their own best lifeboats.  That’s the conclusion I came to once, after a lot of thinking about whether I could afford a life raft and all the fuss, bother, servicing, and money that goes with it.

The best plan is to forestall problems that might lead you to abandon ship, rather than the retrograde step of simply providing a life raft in the event that something goes wrong.

Therefore, you need to give a lot of thought to safety gear that will keep the boat out of trouble in the first place. Strong construction, strong rigging and good design are essential safety factors. But there is another factor that is just as important, but often overlooked, and that’s the need for a fit and mentally agile crew — that is, a crew able to work the boat and make intelligent decisions.

So do whatever is necessary for crew shelter and comfort. Provide hot food, dry beds and plenty of sleep. And take especially good care of the navigator.

Buy heavy ground tackle. No makeshift picks on dental floss rodes, please.  And good, bright navigation lights, plus a powerful strobe light, either with self-contained batteries and hauled up to the spreaders, or connected to the ship’s 12-volt supply and permanently mounted at the masthead.  Don’t worry about the legality of it. The international rules allow you to attract help in any way you can.

A good radar reflector, correctly mounted in the raincatcher position, is a must.  A radar detector and an AIS receiver/transmitter are among other safety devices that are helpful if you can afford them.

An auxiliary engine is something almost all cruising boats are equipped with these days, and while it’s undoubtedly an important safety feature, you should try very hard never to place yourself in a position where the engine is your only hope. On any boat that can sail half decently, it is a last resort, and I mean a last, last resort.

If you’ve decided to forgo a life raft, you’ll need to plan for a jury rig in case of mast failure. Wire clips or spare terminals, wire cutters, spare stays and jury spars are all things you need to think about. And before you disappear over the horizon, figure out how you’re going to steer if something happens to your rudder.  Are you prepared to sacrifice that expensive spinnaker pole and the beautiful locker door to cobble together a rudimentary rudder? If so, how are you going to bolt them together?  How will you pivot it? Buy the hardware now while you think about it.

Two bilge pumps are the minimum, at least one of which can be worked manually by the person at the helm. Two fire extinguishers are the very minimum, too, and you would also do well to have a couple of galvanized steel buckets handy.

A proper storm jib and towing warps or a drogue are standard safety equipment for riding out bad weather. Add a mainsail reefing system that is strong and easy to work. Slab reefing is fine. Don’t be tempted by roller-furling mainsails. They can be a lot of trouble at the worst of times.

And remember that there are isolated parts of the world where help is limited. You might need to be able to repair your hull yourself if you hit a reef, a whale, or a chunk of floating Japanese tsunami debris. Whether it’s wood, steel, GRP, concrete, or aluminum, take the right bits and pieces. 

The other thing about life rafts is that they have proved less than satisfactory in emergencies such as the deadly Fastnet Race off Britain and the Queen’s Birthday storm off New Zealand. All too often abandoned yachts are found weeks later,  half waterlogged, it’s true,  but still floating, while their crews, who took to life rafts, are never seen again.

Today’s Thought

He is free from danger who, even when he is safe, is on his guard.

— Publilius Syrus, Sententiae

Tailpiece

A cowboy who took up a successful career in politics was heckled one day in the middle of a heated debate in Congress.
A female opponent asked him with a sneer: “Is it true that you used to look after cows?”
“Yes ma’am, it’s true,” he said. “Are you feeling ill?”

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He's tracking you all the time

A DINGHY SAILOR I used to know once confided in me that while he loved sailing, he was afraid of the ocean. He would never get a bigger boat, he said.  He had no desire to go to sea, there to be caught out in a storm and drowned.

I sometimes wonder how many others there are like him, how many whose apprehension rules their lives to this extent.  I suppose we all know people who buckle up every time they drive a car, not because the law requires it, but because they believe it might save their lives.  And there are people who won’t take an elevator, who refuse to ride in an airplane.  But is there any point in all this precaution?  Is the continual worry worth it?

I was reading one of my favorite authors the other night, a fellow now known as Alfred George Gardiner but who in his time, during World War I, was known only by his pen name, Alpha of the Plough. He wrote a column for The Star, a London newspaper, at a time when sudden death from German bombs was all around him.

Here’s what he had to say about those who lived in constant fear:

“You cannot be alive unless you take life gallantly. You know that the Great Harvester is tracking you all the time, and that one day, perhaps quite suddenly, his scythe will catch you and lay you among the sheaves of the past.

“Every day and every hour he is remorselessly at your heels. A breath of bad air will do his work, or the prick of a pin, or a fall on the stairs, or a draught from the window. You can’t take a ride in a bus, or a row in a boat, or a swim in the sea, or a bat at the wicket without offering yourself as a target to the enemy. You may die from the fear of death.

“I am not preaching Nietzsche’s gospel of ‘Live dangerously.’ There is no need to try to live dangerously, and no sense in going about tweaking the nose of death to show what a deuce of a fellow you are.

“The truth is that we cannot help living dangerously. Life is a dangerous calling, full of pitfalls. You, getting the coal in the mine by the light of your lamp, are living with death very, very close at hand. You, on the railway shunting trucks, you in the factory or the engine shop moving in a maze of machinery, you in the belly of the ship stoking the fire — all alike are in an adventure that may terminate at any moment. Let us accept that fact like men, and dismiss it like men, going about our tasks as though we had all eternity to live in, not foolishly challenging profitless perils, but, on the other hand, declining to be intimidated by the shadow of the scythe that dogs our steps.”

I wish my dinghy-sailing friend could have read this. Who knows what oceans he may have crossed and how much he might have profited by it.

Today’s Thought

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

— Carl Jung

Tailpiece

Paddy Murphy was enjoying a pint of Guinness in Bert’s Bar when the bar-keep came along and said: “Here’s a puzzle for you. My mother had a child. It wasn’t my brother. It wasn’t my sister. Who was it?”
Paddy scratched his head and pawed the floor but eventually had to give up.
“It was ME, you fool,” cried Bert.
Paddy thought that was a very good joke and decided to tell his wife when he got home.
“My mother had a child,” he said, “It wasn’t my brother. It wasn’t my sister. Who was it?”
His wife was flummoxed. She gave up.
Paddy was triumphant. “It was Bert over at Bert’s Bar, you fool!”

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