The boat that stays in touch

IT’S STRANGE how one particular boat keeps popping up in your life. I suppose boats become part of the family. Like the kids when they leave home, they keep in touch occasionally — at least, as often as seems necessary to them.

A 30-foot sloop called Freelance was part of our family for only about three years;  but we did share a big adventure. She was young then, just five years old and born in South Africa.

Now she’s 33 and swinging to a mooring in Portsmouth, England.

We sold her in Florida in 1987 and headed west. We didn’t hear from her for years until she suddenly came up for sale in the 1990s. I flew to Florida to see her with intention of buying her back, and was heart-broken at her condition: rust, rot, filth, mildew, cockroaches. Almost everything that could be removed and sold had been removed and sold. The engine control lever was a rusted pair of Vise-Grips.

I made a low-ball offer, which apparently wasn’t enough to cover the bank loan still remaining.

She was eventually bought by a South African who saved her life and her soul. Every few years he would check in with me. Last time he contacted me, Freelance was on the hard in Grenada, West Indies, sitting out the hurricane season. Finally he sailed her to Spain and put her up for sale there.  I thought seriously about buying her back, but as I live on the west coast of America it would have been a very long delivery voyage home, via the Panama Canal or The Horn. I just didn’t have the time or the money.

Out of the blue yesterday I got an e-mail from a stranger in England, giving me details of the present British owner and where he keeps Freelance.  And so the saga continues. One of these days I fully expect someone to buy her, sail her round the Horn, bring her up here to Seattle, and give her to me. Of course, I’ll have to give her right back, because I’ll be too old to sail by then. But it will be a nice gesture.

Today’s Thought

He who joins in sport with his own family will never be dull to strangers.

— Plautus, Trinummus

Tailpiece

“What’s all that celebrating in the clubhouse?”
“My wife did it in one.”
“She hit a hole in one?”
“No — she managed to hit the ball in one.”

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All about noble sacrifices

WHAT DO YOU KNOW about the Galvanic Series? It sure doesn’t sound very exciting, unless you are a proton or an electron, but it’s of vital importance to boaters. It’s an indication of what metal on your boat is likely to eat some other metal, perhaps a bit that’s keeping the vessel afloat.

Galvanic corrosion begins when two metals far apart in the Galvanic series are connected under water by a conductor. They form a rudimentary electric cell, in which electrolytic corrosion eats away the less “noble” metal. The process even takes place out of water, between, for example, the aluminum in a mast and the stainless-steel screws holding a fitting in place.

Metals close together in the Galvanic Series have little or no reaction with each other, but the farther apart they are, the more vigorous the corrosion. For example, a copper nail that falls into the seawater bilge of an aluminum boat will eventually eat a hole right through it, as the less noble metal, aluminum, corrodes away.

Here is a shortened version of the Galvanic Series, showing the metals most used on boats. It starts with the least noble metals, the ones that will be sacrificed, and ends with the most noble metals, which will be spared:

        Magnesium

        Zinc

        Aluminum

        Mild steel

        Stainless steel (active)

        Lead

        Monel

        Tin

        Brass

        Copper

        Bronze

        Nickel

        Stainless steel (passive)     

Note that stainless steel will corrode almost as fast as mild steel in its active state, when it is in still water with no access to oxygen. But when it has a ready supply of oxygen from air or from water, it is passive.

Today’s Thought

True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant.

— Manuel de Unamano, The Tragic Sense of Life

Tailpiece

Money isn’t everything. In fact, at the end of the month you’ll find it’s nothing at all.

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Cleats and the bottom line

BOATBUILDERS ARE notoriously mean with the size of cleats they supply. Perhaps they have daintier fingers than common sailors or use thinner lines but I think it far more likely that it’s the bottom line that makes their decision for them.

They fear the wrath of the firm’s ferocious financial manager much more than the complaints of a wimpy bunch of sailors, so they inevitably install smaller, cheaper cleats that simply won’t accept a decent couple of turns of a jib sheet or main halyard with a locking turn on top.

Now we shouldn’t have to put up with this. There are enough frustrations on small sailboats without our having to wrestle with piddling, undersized cleats on a bucking, heeling deck.

Throw the little monsters out. Give them to your dinghy-racing friends. Replace them with sailor-sized cleats and bolt them firmly in place.

The length of a proper cleat is 16 times the diameter of the line used with it. That means nothing less than a 6-inch cleat for 3/8-inch line, or an 8-inch cleat for a half-inch anchor line.

And incidentally, if you fasten a cleat so that it’s angled about 15 degrees across the line of pull, the line won’t jam on itself.

Today’s Thought
Size is a matter of opinion.
— George Meredith, Richard Feverel
Tailpiece
Confucius say fat in human like sugar in coffee — always settle on bottom.

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Meet the real yachting heroes

CRUISING STORIES often make heroes of deck crews who brave howling winds and fearsome waves to navigate a small sailboat across an ocean. Very rarely do they give credit to the real hero, the cook.

Galley space is very limited on a small boat, and the galley tilts and lurches so violently that in heavy weather it’s impossible to do more than boil water or heat a can of soup.

You have to plan your cooking step by tedious step. You can’t just set a dish down on the counter. It will be flung off immediately. You can’t even perform a simple act such as pouring from a kettle into a mug until you know the trick, which is to hold one in each hand and pour fore-and-aft, never athwartships.

The fiddles and potholders are never high enough, the galley stores are always buried way up forward, and at the end of it all the crew ... well, the no-good crew will either spurn your meal because they’re seasick or complain that you never, ever give them enough.    

The cooks are the ones who deserve the medals.

Finally, here’s a tip to get you into the medal-earning league: Never pick up a hot pan unless you know beforehand exactly where you’re going to put it down. That’s an essential planning skill for a sea cook.

Today’s Thought

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.

— Harriet Van Horne, Vogue, 15 Oct 56

Tailpiece

Growing and smoking marijuana is now legal in some U.S. states. In Washington state there are now phone messages that say: “If you want to buy marijuana, please press the hash key.”

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A little cockpit mystery

DO YOU KNOW A SEAGULL who is addicted to nicotine? Or maybe a crane who smokes cigarettes?

I ask because of a little mystery concerning my 20-foot daysailer, which is snugly berthed in a fairly quiet spot in the city marina.

When I arrived at the boat yesterday I found two surprising pieces of evidence in the cockpit. The first was a tiny, shriveled fish head, the kind of fish a seagull or a crane would eat for breakfast. The second was the butt end of a filter cigarette.

I know for certain that a fish-eating bird of some kind often uses my boat as his dining table when he thinks nobody’s looking.  I have found the evidence in white blobs and scaly bits of fish and crab all over the deck. The rotter has also left his calling card on my nice Banks mainsail, which, for reasons we needn’t go into, stayed furled on the boom without a cover for a couple of weeks.

But now, it seems, he’s also enjoying an after-meal smoke on board, to settle the stomach, I suppose.  I haven’t smoked for decades, so I know the cigarette butt wasn’t mine.

I dissuaded him from perching on the mainsail by stretching a thin line along the boom a couple of inches above the sail, but I’m at a loss for a way to stop him smoking in the cockpit.  I’m afraid  that he might graduate to cigars, and block the cockpit drain or even carelessly forget to stub the cigar out and set the whole boat on fire. I don’t know if my insurance would cover arson committed by a feathered fish-eating cigar smoker.

I have also been wondering about where he gets a light for his smokes. There are no matches available in the cockpit so presumably he lights up somewhere else and flies back to my boat with the cigarette already glowing.  Does he perhaps have some glow-worm pals?  And do their little backsides glow hot enough to light a cigarette?

I have often said that sailing is a sport full of mysteries. Some of them are never solved. I guess you can add this one to the list.

 Today’s Thought

Let not the conceit of intellect hinder thee from worshipping mystery.
— M. F. Tupper, Proverbial Philosophy: Reading

Tailpiece

“What happened to that guy who tried to cash one of your checks?”
“They took him away in a strait jacket.”

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A temptation to resist

A PRIVATE MOORING BUOY is always a great temptation to a skipper who is obsessed with the need to find a safe, quiet berth after a hard day’s sailing.

The temptation is vastly increased if that enticing buoy also happens to lie among closely anchored yachts where there is no room to allow a decent scope for the anchor line.

But it’s a temptation to be resisted.

In the first place, you can’t know the condition of the underwater components of the mooring. You also probably won’t know what size of boat that mooring was designed to accommodate. You might get away with it if the weather is calm, but if the wind rises and the waves get up you might break the mooring and put yourself in a very dangerous position. Furthermore, where will you go if the owner of the mooring comes back in the middle of the night and kicks you off?

No, steel yourself to another half-hour of anxious circling and searching for the anchoring spot that will provoke the fewest fierce glares from those already settled back on their rodes. You’ll be a lot safer at anchor.

Incidentally, in congested anchorages, you can usually get away with a scope of 3-to-1 if you use an all-chain rode, and if the weather is calm.

Today’s Thought

Joy, shipmate, joy!
(Pleas’d to my soul at death I cry,)
Our life is closed, our life begins,
The long, long anchorage we leave,
The ship is clear at last, she leaps!
She swiftly courses from the shore,
Joy, shipmate, joy!
— Walt Whitman, Joy, Shipmate, Joy!

Tailpiece

Some people are like Slinkies — not really good for anything, but they bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.

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Unpronounceable boat names

WHAT IF YOU HAD a boat name that couldn’t be pronounced?  Not merely because it was difficult to pronounce, but because it consisted totally of letters that were silent. How would you send a Mayday message, for example, if you couldn’t tell anybody what boat you were on?

You might not realize it, but there is a chance that the name of your boat is silent. Polyanthus is a silent word, for instance. You cannot say it aloud. Callipygian is another. Impossible to vocalize.

Imagine that the latent anarchist within you wants to name your boat Pigshyt.

“You can’t call it that,” the club commodore tells you gruffly. “It’s unheard of!”

“Precisely, Mr. Commodore, you can’t say it. That’s why it’s unheard of,” you point out. “The P is silent, as in psychiatrist. The I is silent, as in bait. The G . . . they’re all silent. The whole word is silent.”

As a matter of fact there are 17 letters in English that have two or more pronunciations, at least one of which is silent. That’s more than half the alphabet, including all the vowels. See here:

Silent      As in

Y              say          

P              psychiatrist

B              plumber

G              gnome, sign

S              island

O              phoenix

E              pole

H              honest

A              cocoa

C              scent

I               bait

T              castle

K              knife

L               talk

U              guitar

W             wrap

N              hymn

 

So be very careful when you choose a name for your boat, otherwise you may not be able to tell anybody what it is. They say silence is golden, but it’s not always the best form of communication in an emergency.

Today’s Thought

To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of men.
— Marcel Marceau

Tailpiece

I have to laugh when I hear owners of Toyota Priuses and Honda Civic hybrids arguing over who uses the least gasoline.  Christopher Columbus got the best mileage ever — he averaged several thousand miles per galleon.

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