Drop anchor and lower the lake

 I HAVE A BRAIN TEASER for you today. It comes courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation, but it has nothing to do with broadcasting. It concerns boating:

Imagine a boat floating in a lake, and a heavy object such as an anchor (but without a chain) is dropped off the side. What happens to the water level of the lake?

Does it: a) Rise; b) Fall; c) Stay the same?

Answer b) is correct — the water level falls!

The explanation
When it's in the boat, the anchor displaces a volume of water with the same weight as the anchor itself.

When it's submerged in the water, the anchor displaces an amount of water equivalent to its own volume.

Because the anchor — made of steel, say — is heavier than the equivalent volume of water, it displaces more water when it's in the boat. Submerged, it only displaces its own volume, and all else being equal, the water level falls.

Test it at home

You can easily test this yourself in the kitchen sink, using a sandwich box as the boat, and something like a paperweight as the anchor.

Put an inch or two of water into the sink (enough to easily cover the paperweight later). Then put the paperweight into the sandwich box, and float the box on the water.

Once the water has settled, mark the water level in the sink with a felt-tip pen. Now take the weight out of the box, and submerge it in the water.

When it's settled again, you'll see that the water level has indeed fallen (the bigger the paperweight, or the less water there is, the more the water level will fall).

Today’s Thought

Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question “How?” but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question “Why?”

— Erwin Chargaff, professor of Biological Chemistry, Columbia University

Tailpiece

Contrary to popular belief, sex is not hereditary. If your parents never had it, you won’t have it either.

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

Keeping advertisers happy

PEOPLE HAVE BEEN ASKING why we don’t ever conduct a reader survey like everybody else. Well, what they don’t know is that we engage a reputable firm to do surveys for us every year. This way, we can find out who our readers are and collect their e-mail addresses so we can sell them to advertisers.

Here, as a matter of interest, are the salient results of our latest survey conducted on the first day of this month:

Where our readers live.  All over the world, actually. Google Analytics notes that we have readers in 79 countries from Russia through Europe, Africa, and Australia to North and South America — even one reader in Cyprus. (Hope you got your money out of the bank, sir.)

How many readers do we have?  At last count, approximately 25,189 1/2 readers. All of them what Google calls “unique,” especially the half reader, Mr. Hamba Kahle, of Timbuktu, who commented:

“Me no boat. Me learn speak English good your blog.” 

Yes, well, thank you Mr Kahle.  One day you make good English speak, maybe you get nice boat, too.

What gender are our readers? As it turns out, 85 percent are attractive blonde women aged between 19 and 29, and the rest are handsome moneyed men aged 25 to 50.  This audience is an advertiser’s dream.  Okay, we did get three of indeterminate gender but they all came from San Francisco so it doesn’t count.

We asked readers what they’d like to see more of in this blog. Here are a few replies:

Ø “I’d like  to see more poetry. There’s never enough poetry.” — Pansy Thwortleduff, La Jolla, Calif.

—Okay, Pansy, here’s our favorite piece, specially for you:

I wish I was a fairy prince,

And if it came to pass,

I’d climb up all the rocks and trees

And slide down on my . . .  hands and knees   

We can also do The Tale of Sonia Snell and I Had a Hippopotamus and The Little Sparrow Wot Flew Away to Spain and also Eskimo Nell  by request.

Ø “Why don’t you give us more destination pieces?” — Titus Aduxass, Methel Treadwheat, Bucks, UK.  

—Because we don’t like destination pieces and we’re the boss around here so you’re not going to get any destination pieces.

Ø “I don’t like the way you pick on magazine editors. You have a reputation for scurrilous attacks.  What makes you do this?” — Hurt Magazine Editor, Floundering, Texas. 

—Scurrilous magazine editors.

Ø “What about more good news and less bad news?  In fact, more news?” — Fred Fernackerpan, Woollamoolla, Australia. 

—Listen, buster, we can’t afford to pay reporters AND drink beer. Where are your priorities?

Ø “What about quality articles from professional writers, journalists, and authors, written in good English, rather than the illiterate ramblings of anonymous bloggers who just want to see their names in print?” — William Weatherby, Sidney, British Columbia.  

—Are you nuts?  How can an anonymous blogger see his name in print?  Thank about it, man, think about it.  But in any case it’s our policy not to have to pay for writing of any kind when we can steal it from the Internet or con bloggers into parting with it for nothing.

Ø”Hey, how about more eye candy, man? Why don’t you publish pictures of hot girls in bikinis and sailor caps?”  — Arthur Wurtemann, Las Vegas.

—Arthur, it’s just not worth the trouble we get from Emily Pankhurst’s girls. Nag, nag, nag, we never hear the end of it. Anyway, we don’t believe in looking and getting all excited if we can’t touch.

Ø “Do you accept bribes for product placement?” — Montagu Smith, Maine. 

—Don’t know what you’re talking about. If you mean that can of Coke and the Nike seaboots in the painting of Christopher Columbus’s flagship, we can truthfully say we have not received any payment yet.

Ø “I suggest more stories about what cruisers do in the bushes with other cruisers’ wives during evening beach potluck parties in Baja California.” — Interested, Cabo San Lucas, BC.   

—Okay, finally a good idea.  We’ll see what our man in Cabo can come up with.

Ø ”I’d like to see useful tips on where best to sell hot items like 2 hp Honda outboards or small Avon inflatables that fall off the back of a truck.”  — Jan Smithers, Seattle, Wash. 

—We have a friend in LA who takes care of stuff like that for us. He’d like to hear from you. We can’t publish his name but his initials are Spider Gomez.

Ø “How about a wine column for weekend sailors?” — Meredith Blotchett, Toronto, Canada.   

—Take port, Meredith, just port. It travels well. That’s all you need to know. 

Ø “What you need is a doggie column, you know, pets on boats sort of thing, where to poo at sea, etc.”  — Bert Bentwhistle, Miami, Fla.

—Bert, if you must have a pet, get a damn parrot.

Ø “ Please do some articles on How to Please She Who Must Be Obeyed.” — Mike  Falglitch, Little-Mudglop-by-the-Ditch, Kent, UK.      

—Forget it, Mike. It’s impossible. Sail singlehanded.

(And so it goes on. In summary, we’d have to say that this year’s survey was just as useless as ever and a complete waste of time. But it keeps advertisers happy. Apparently they like editors to keep in touch with readers. We’ll have to get an advertiser some time, and see if that is true.)

Today’s Thought

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.
— Emerson, Journals

Tailpiece

In-depth research undertaken in Britain has revealed the following stages of progress of a new high-tech project:

1 — Wild enthusiasm

2 — Disillusionment

3 — Panic

4 — Search for the guilty

5 — Punishment of the innocent

6 — Reward of the uninvolved

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

Have clippers, will travel

 MANY MORE PEOPLE would be sailing around the world if they could figure out a satisfactory way of earning money as they go. One of the suggestions that comes up quite often is to write about your experiences for yachting magazines and book publishers.

Well, all I can say is this: Don’t sail away with the idea that you can write your way around the world before you’ve done some thorough research. Lin Pardey, one of the best-known modern cruising authors, once told me she reckoned you’d need six or seven books in print before you could live modestly off the proceeds.

If you write a book that sells for $15 you’ll likely get publisher’s royalties of about 10 percent. A boating best seller in the USA is generally taken to be one that sells 10,000 copies or more. So the most a new author is likely to make, over a number of years, is $15,000. And remember, the field is very crowded with would-be authors willing to accept less than you, just to get their names in print. With the help of the Internet, every sailor and his mate can write a personal blog, and e-magazines will happily publish them without giving you any payment at all. In fact, everyone with a PC, laptop, tablet or smart phone now expects to get everything in the way of news and entertainment from the Internet for free, so there is little public support for professional writers who complain nobody wants to pay real money for their products any more.

Even writing for the well-established print magazines is a total crapshoot. I have sent articles to two of the largest sailing magazines in the United States and waited more than a year for a reply in each case. The payment magazines offer for an article of 2,000 words with pictures varies from $100 to $1,000, depending on the publication’s prestige, circulation, and bankroll.

So if writing is a write-off, what else can you do while cruising? Well, marketable skills more likely to produce a cruising income are the ability to repair diesel engines, fridges, watermakers, SSB and satellite radios, computers, and electronic instruments, together with general yacht repairs, yacht deliveries, sailmaking, varnishing, and — says cruising author Don Casey — cutting hair.

Today’s Thought

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

— Samuel Johnson, (Boswell, Life 1776)

Tailpiece

“Darling, the bank has returned our check.”
“Oh, wow, that’s great. What shall we buy with it this time?”

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

Tough times for magazines

THINGS SEEM TO BE RATHER TOUGH for yachting magazines these days. I’ve noticed a couple of them lately that have been begging for help from their readers. They’re conducting “surveys” in which they ask people what articles they would like to see more of, what different things they might like to see emphasized, what changes would induce them to like the magazine more, and so on.

I hate to see these surveys. They are nothing more than disguised pleas for help. Long experience has taught me that there is no point in asking people what they want. It all evens out in the end and comes to nothing. Some will say this, some will say that, some will have no opinion — and the worst part is that the magazine owners are pleading for help from people who already read their publications, not the people who don’t — the latter being the ones they’re supposed to attract. They’re preaching to the converted, not to the great unwashed hoi polloi with money to spend on magazines.

Every time I see one of these surveys I’m reminded of what the 19th-century French politician Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin is reputed to have said:  “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”

A knowing editor doesn’t ask people what to put in the magazine.  He or she tells them what they need, offers it up, and refuses to go down on his knees to get them to read it  It was Harold Evans, a famous editor himself, said some of the attributes of a good editor were keenness, conscientiousness, and ruthlessness — rightly used.  You may notice that these, possibly not coincidentally, are also the attributes of a good skipper.

In the same way that a good skipper does not seek democratic opinion on a boat, a good editor should never be wishy-washy. Most of us are pretty wishy-washy already, even-handed and ready to listen to a reasoned argument from the opposition. But deep down, being pack animals at heart,  what we really crave is a firm leader, a despotic leader if necessary, a benevolent dictator.  We’ll always follow a charismatic leader who exhibits a definite direction, so we don’t have to guess where we’re going or how we’re going to get there. 

Democracy is by definition wishy-washy and at odds with nature, which demands the survival of the fittest by any means.  Democracy is also full of compromises and concessions to the weak of mind and muscle. It’s the domination of the household by the nursery. That’s why we have such trouble getting any political work done in America.  Our so called leaders are being too nice to the bunch of gun-toting nasties they’re trying to govern.

A good editor needs to be a “character” and to have strongly felt opinions (based on thorough knowledge, both practical and theoretical) and not be shy about espousing them.

Tom Day, former editor of The Rudder, was a good example. He was outspoken, pragmatic, and firm of opinion. He admitted he could be wrong — but that wouldn’t necessarily change his mind. He wasn’t scared of offending people — and he turned The Rudder into one of the most successful sailing magazines this country has ever known.

If you were starting a new magazine or trying to prop up an ailing one, what would you need to think about? Two things spring to mind.

1. What vacant niche are you trying to fill?  What audience are you aiming at?  What kind of boater? You can’t interest them all. You have to make choices right from the beginning, and stick to your guns.  What niche do you want to compete in? DIY? Sailboats? Flashy big new ones, or small shabby old ones? Powerboats? River boats? Fishing boats? Or any of a dozen other categories.  You should become the expert in this restricted field.

 2. What is your advertising policy? The editorial niche you’re trying to fill will, to a large extent, determine what kind of advertisements you can attract. Will you lure advertisers with promises of editorial write-ups? Or will you treat advertising and editorial as completely separate entities? There are serious ethics involved here, and too many  magazines ignore them. But I have always believed that intelligent readers know when they’re being conned with effusive, over-enthusiastic editorial tied to paid advertising. 

There is lots more I could say on this subject, but let us dwell a moment on this final thought: Did the author of the Ten Commandments ever conduct a survey to establish what the people wanted?   And in this same vein it is well to remember that the Pope, unchallenged leader of a billion Catholics, never pretends to espouse democracy.  He’d probably make a good editor.

Today’s Thought

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

— George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutions

Tailpiece

“Did you hear about Bob’s terrible operation?”
“No, what happened?”
“His father cut off his allowance.”

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

It's the unvarnished truth

IT’S SPRING TIME around here, and in the spring a sailor’s thoughts lightly turn to thoughts of varnish.

But nobody with any sense scrapes down and revarnishes unless absolutely necessary. For a while, you can get away with patching, or rubbing down a small area and varnishing over it to disguise the injury. Specifically, you can do this for shallow scratches and abrasions—perhaps even for deeper scratches—but you must do it before water, fresh or salt, soaks into the wood.

In the passage of time, you’ll notice darker patches where water has discolored the wood and lighter patches where the varnish has lifted away from the wood because of the action of the sun or the impact of some piece of equipment on deck.

Some defiant owners try to treat dark patches with a mild bleach such as oxalic acid. They sand the white patches down to bare wood and build up several coats. But they know in their hearts that they’re fighting a rearguard action.

Personal conscience is the best guide to when it’s time to scrape the whole darned lot down to bare wood and start from scratch. When your brightwork is suffering from the pox and you can’t live with it a minute longer, your conscience will nag you into action.

Incidentally. here’s an old rule for telling when you need to sand down and apply a couple of coats of varnish to freshen your brightwork for the season:

Wash the work thoroughly to get rid of all grime. Wet a piece of old toweling cloth and drag it, dripping across the surface of the varnish.

If the water left behind forms beads, the varnish is still in good condition. If the water sheets, or lies in flattish streaks, the brightwork needs attention. So get to it, and remember the prophetic words of the poet John Keats: “A thing of beauty is a job forever.”

Today’s Thought

Beauty . . . is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.

— Nikos Kazantzikas, Report to Greco

Tailpiece

Other people think you’re dumb only because you don’t know they things they know.

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

Thoughts to avoid sanding

INTERESTING THOUGHTS come to a man sitting in a cockpit looking for an excuse not to start sanding down the curling varnish on the teak. For instance, I read just the other day that the catamaran Playstation posted a day’s run of 580.23 miles in the Pacific Ocean off New Zealand in 1999.

This got me wondering how fast the actual wind blows around the world — how long, for example, it would take for a molecule of air contaminated with nuclear radiation to travel from Fukushima, Japan, to Seattle Washington. Not that long, if you think about it.

And as the mind wanders along happily, it comes to grips with the word molecule and it remembers once having read that we’re breathing the same atoms of oxygen once breathed by Julius Caesar and the dinosaurs. And then comes the heart-stopping thought that an atom of oxygen I breathed a minute ago might very well have done the grand tour of Marilyn Monroe’s lungs.  I would have liked warning of that to appreciate it more fully.

And then there’s the fact that at least one of the molecules of air filling your sails might also have given Columbus’s flagship a little push across the Atlantic in 1492, or maybe it helped Erik The Red’s Viking longship on its way to the New World even before that. It’s a fascinating thought.

Is this really possible? Well yes it is, according to Dr. Martin St. Maurice, assistant professor of biological sciences at Marquette University in Wisconsin.

“There is some truth to this possibility,” he says cautiously. “The air we breathe is composed primarily of nitrogen gas and oxygen gas with a small amount of other gases, including carbon dioxide. All of these individual molecules are constantly rearranged and recycled through biochemical and geochemical processes, so you aren’t breathing in the exact same gas molecules that dinosaurs and Julius Caesar once breathed.

"The individual atoms making up those molecules, however, have been on earth for a long time – very little carbon, oxygen or nitrogen is lost to outer space, and only the occasional meteor brings a small extraterrestrial source of new carbon or oxygen to this planet. So, every breath you take and every bite you swallow is composed of atoms that have been here for a long time.

"You don’t have to be a stats whiz to see that the chances of you and Julius Caesar sharing an identical atom of oxygen are extremely slim. There’s much less carbon than oxygen on earth and it’s contained over a much smaller volume, so I think you have a slightly better chance of eating a snack that was once a part of Caesar’s toenail (though these chances are still extremely slim).

"Approximately 3.5 billion years ago, there was no oxygen gas in the atmosphere; it developed in our atmosphere thanks to ancient photosynthetic microorganisms. So, while you aren’t likely to ever share exactly the same atom of oxygen as Brad Pitt or eat a cupcake that was once a part of Caesar’s toenail, every breath you take has, at one time or another, been associated with another living organism."

Well, that’s good enough for me, professor. At least I know it’s possible. Me and Marilyn. It’s possible. Which is more than I can say about the chance that the teak is going to get sanded today.

Today’s Thought

Sooner or later every one of us breathes an atom that has been breathed before by anyone you can think of who has lived before us — Michelangelo or George Washington or Moses.

— Jacob Bronowski, “Biography of an Atom—And the Universe,” NYT, 13 Oct 68

Tailpiece

Did you hear about the Scot who felt embarrassed in national dress?
It seems he suffered from a kilt complex.

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

Don't forget your hacksaws

FEW YACHTS LOSE their masts at sea. But when it does happen, it’s usually because of a rollover, a 180-degree capsize. It’s serious, of course, but losing your stick is not the end of the world.

In fact, it always astonishes me that more masts don’t go overboard, considering their narrow support base. I can see why ocean-going sailors were suspicious for many years of the tall masts needed for Bermuda rigs. Shorter, more rugged masts on gaff-rigged yachts could be stayed more efficiently and were far less likely to be lost in a capsize.

That being said, modern masts do fall down from time to time, but crews inevitably bring their boats home under jury rigs concocted from the spars they can salvage, and sails trimmed to fit. A keel-stepped mast most often breaks several feet above deck, so there’s a handy stump left to work with. A deck-stepped mast, on the other hand, might even be recovered whole, but raising it at sea will probably prove impossible because of the boat’s jerkier movement when it is deprived of the inertia of a tall mast. So makeshift jury rigs usually use booms, spinnaker poles, boathooks and other odds and ends to make a mast one-third to one-half the height of the old one. Sails such as jibs are usually set sideways and are surprisingly efficient.

The first and often most difficult task involved with a dismasting is disconnecting the rigging wire attached to the spar. The old advice is always to carry a pair of heavy-duty wire cutters, but in practice there are very few that will do the job efficiently on a violently rolling hull, and those are likely to be very bulky to stow and expensive to buy.

You’d think it would be easy to do without mechanical or hydraulic cutters altogether by merely unpinning the rigging wires where they join the mast tangs and the chainplates. But I’m told there will always be at least a couple of shrouds or stays whose end fittings bend so badly that they won’t come apart.

I have read of several cases where wire cutters (and even heftier bolt cutters) failed to do the job for one reason or another, and I also know of a couple of dismastings where the crew had to fall back on ordinary hacksaws to cut through the stainless steel wires.

So even if you insist on taking along long-handled wire cutters, I’d advise you to also carry a few hacksaws and a good handful of high-quality blades along with some spare wire, heavy gloves, and plenty of wire clamps for the jury rig.

Today’s Thought

To each is given a bag of tools,

A shapeless mass and a book of rules,
And each must make, ere life is flown,
A stumbling block or a stepping stone.
— R. L. Sharpe

Tailpiece

An intellectual is someone who reads even when he’s not in the toilet.

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