The First Time I Went Sailing

      Or, Aren’t sailboats supposed to heel?

_______

May 1, 2013

     “You are not going to find the ideal boat. You are not
even going to have it if you design it from scratch.”

Carl Lane

Except for watching my first husband do all the work as he sailed the little Abaco sailing dinghies when we were on our honeymoon, I had never been sailing when we moved to southern Illinois for graduate school. I had always wanted to try it, however, so when he found a little 14’ sloop-rigged boat at a nearby lake for sale, I enthusiastically encouraged him to buy it. The Abaco dinghies were fun, but pretty tame stuff compared to this baby – two sails – TWO! A REAL sailboat.

I’m talking about a little boat, with a dagger board for a keel. We dragged it up on to the beach of the little man-made lake to store it. There was a small sailing club that had an area reserved for them, and no one bothered the boats there.

We didn’t do a test sail before we bought it. Perhaps we should have …

I waited impatiently for Saturday to come, and then we raced down to the lake to sail our little boat, which we named Daisy Mae after the wonderful sheepdog I had had as a child. I watched Dave putting the sails up, and climbed in. Our first sail on our first sailboat –- does it get any better than that? He took the tiller, of course; he had learned to sail at summer camp while I knew nothing at all about it. In no time we were scooting across the little lake. The boat was tipping, but I’d seen pictures, and I knew sailboats “tipped.” It didn’t bother me, but Dave kept saying, “This isn’t right … this isn’t right.”

“Dave,” I said, “I certainly don’t know anything about sailing, but I’ve seen pictures. Sailboats tip!”

“Not in this direction!” he said, and with that, the boat, with its sails out to starboard, tipped completely over –- to port -- and stayed there. HUH?

Well, she couldn’t completely turtle, because the lake was only 8 ft deep, but the mast got stuck in the mud. Meanwhile, I was in the water with the sail over me. I was frantically trying to swim out from under it to get air, afraid I would drown, when it dawned on me. I just poked a finger up, pushed the sail off the water, and there was air. So I calmed down. Dave dived down to the bottom of the lake with our throwable cushion and tied it to the top of the mast, and we managed to get the boat upright – but she went right back over again.

By then someone with a little outboard motor on his bass boat had come by and offered to tow us in. “OK,” said Dave, “but please do it slowly, because she wants to tip over again, and if she gets dragged with the mast down, it will snap.” Shallow water can be a problem!

So the man towed us in, with both Dave and me hanging in the water off the starboard corner of the stern to keep poor little Daisy Mae upright.

She was much harder to drag ashore than she should have been, and Dave finally figured out what had happened. The boat had “positive flotation” –- that is, the benches we were sitting on were air pockets. The port bench leaked, and had filled up with water, pulling her over.

I don’t recall what we did to fix it, but people from the little sailing club helped, and we had a lot of fun sailing that boat around the lake that summer (I say we, but Dave did all the sailing.) By the end of the summer, Dave had me convinced that if you put a mast in a bathtub, he would be able to sail it.

My first sail may be why I don’t really get scared when sailboats heel. I know, first hand, that heeling is a good thing. I really don’t like boats that flip you off into the water, but Daisy Mae only did it once, no harm was done, and I have forgiven her.

How Did that Winch Get All Tangled Up?

       Or, I only looked away for a moment …

April 30, 2013

     "He that will not sail till all dangers are over must never put to sea."

Thomas Fuller

I have said before that sometimes sailing is a little dangerous. Really, that’s OK. Lots of things adults do can be a little dangerous – or even very dangerous. We all know people who have done downhill skiing. We also know you can get injured, and we have heard of rare cases of famous people who died while skiing –- Sonny Bono. Michael Kennedy. I know three people who ride or rode motorcycles, and all three have had fairly significant accidents resulting in a badly broken ankle, a badly broken wrist, and some broken ribs. My late husband completely severed his Achilles tendon –- a serious leg injury –- playing, of all things, volleyball. What are you going to do –- just stay at home? Won’t work –- most accidents happen in the home!

We shouldn’t let a small degree of risk keep us from doing things we love. However, it makes sense to be aware of the risks involved. So from time to time I may point out some of these risks. They are easier to describe than the joy of sailing. And when you know about them, you’ll enjoy sailing more because you’ll know you’re prepared.

So – on to overrides. An override means a line that has wrapped itself badly around the winch, as shown in this picture:

  Headsail sheet “wrapped” around a winch. The line 
is now frozen and the winch will not move.

Now, I can tell you four things about overrides:

1)   They happen when the line approaches the winch from the wrong angle.

2)   There is a safe, and a very UNsafe way to solve the problem.

3)   It WILL happen to you if it hasn’t already. It’s a common event for newer sailors and sometimes catches very experienced sailors by surprise. 

4)   The boat will now sail in circles. Just accept it. You’ll have to turn the engine on to force the boat to stay on the needed tack to solve your problem.

That takes us back to #2.

The guiding principle for all fouled lines is this: lines can be dangerous. You really have to pay attention to where your hands and feet are. If you try to force the line off the winch while it is “loaded,” or with a lot of tension on it, you could lose one or more fingers. I’m not kidding –- I know someone it happened to under similar circumstances. One of his hands no longer has a ring finger because he tried to loosen a line under tension.

So what do you do? Relieve the tension. Unless you’re racing, start the engine. Give it just enough power to overcome the force on the sail and move the boat in a straight line instead of circles.

Put the boat on whatever tack you need to so that the wrapped sheet (what we call the lines that control the headsail) becomes the “lazy” sheet –- in other words, there is no longer any load on it because your headsail is now to the other side of the boat. Of course, it can’t go all the way, because you’re going to have to free up that override first. If the headsail is out to port when the override happens, then the tension is on the port sheet. Since it’s the tensioned, or “loaded” line, that gets wrapped, this means to change your tack so the boom is out to starboard. Now the strain is on the starboard sheet and you can safely remove the wrap.

NOW –- take a moment to consider how that wrap happened. Probably, whoever was pulling that sheet in didn’t pay attention to how it was wrapping around the winch. You need to be looking at the winch when you’re using it.

LESSON LEARNED: You might not always have to turn the engine on, but any time I have a significant problem that’s the first thing I do (make sure there are no lines dragging in the water -- even in neutral, a line can get wrapped around the propeller, and then your life will *really* complicated). It can help you solve all sorts of problems, including problems you don’t know how to solve –- yet. With the engine on, I –- or my crew and I –- don’t have to get things perfectly right using only sails in order to get things under control again.

Why It Was Hard to Raise and Lower My Mainsail

      Or, Bigger isn’t always better!

April 29, 2013

     “Mine’s bigger!”

Some braggart

  Ever since I bought this boat more than two years ago, it’s been difficult to get the mainsail up and down. Even using a winch, it took a lot of muscle power to get the sail up. When it was time to come in, I had to go up to the mast and tug the sail all the way down.

I have “lazy jacks” on my boat. These are lines that pull out of the way to the mast when not needed. However, when you want to lower the mainsail, you tighten them by pulling on one small line on each side of the mast, and three lines spread out on each side like a basket. They catch the dropping sail, which should drop like a stone when released.

So dropping the sail should be a piece of cake. It’s quite convenient when single-handing, because you don’t have to try to both manage the boat and secure the mainsail with ties immediately so it won’t flop around and block your vision all at the same time.

But no matter what I did, the sail never dropped easily. It would drop a few feet, and then stop. I would have to go up to the mast and manually pull the sail down. That’s what you call inconvenient.

Someone put lubricant on a paper towel and forced it to slide up the groove in the mast where the slots that hold the sail to the mast travel. It didn’t help. I sprayed the slots with silicon spray. It didn’t work. I tried other lubricants, such as WD-40 and PB Blaster. Nothing worked.

Then one day about six months ago, someone said, “Are you sure this is the right sized halyard for the blocks in your mast?” Not being Superman, I lacked x-ray vision, couldn’t see inside the mast, but as we looked at the line, it looked “fuzzy” –- it had been rubbing on something. This wasn't degredation from UV rays; that part of the halyard had been protected in the mast.

So I put a new halyard on the mainsail, one size smaller than the old line. Immediately, the sail dropped like a stone any time I released it. That’s all you have to do on my boat now when coming in –- tighten the lazy jack lines and release the mainsail, and it drops like a stone, perfectly contained and under control.

So then I started thinking about my traveler. It was also hard to work, and its lines were fuzzy also. So I looked at the blocks (unlike my situation with the mast, they are all visible on the traveler), and sure enough, two of them were quite small. The line was much too big for the smallest blocks it had to move through, causing a lot of unnecessary friction. This is actually fairly serious, because one very good strategy if you get hit with a sudden gust of wind is to depower the mainsail by releasing the traveler.

I had done all the same things to the traveler that I had tried with the mainsail – lubricating everything with multiple lubricants, with minimal or no improvement. Now I have smaller line on my traveler, and it works reliably and with ease.

It also turned out that the headsail sheets –- the sheets you use to tack your jib or Genoa – were too big. I had self-tailing winches that couldn’t self-tail because the line used was too big. I’d found that mistake early on because its effects were so obvious, but it hadn’t occurred to me that the previous owner might have oversized other lines as well.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that “bigger is better” –- even safer –- than smaller lines, but particularly when it came to the mainsail, the opposite was true. Someone had to go stand on the cabin top and reach way up to pull the sail down. Even holding on with one hand, that’s an inherently unbalanced position. The cabin top of my boat has multiple levels and curves, and it’s easy to take a misstep.

Your mainsail halyard, especially if it moves through the inside of your mast, has to make a number of turns. This is increased if your mainsail sheet comes back to your cockpit, and you need that if you’re going to single-hand your boat. My personal opinion is that all small and mid-sized sailboats should have running rigging that allows you to single-hand. Maybe you never intend on doing that, but if your sailing partner sprains an ankle, you’ll have a much easier time getting back in if all your running rigging comes back to the cockpit. You’ll also have your crew in a safer position than standing at the mast to raise and lower the sail.

Since this happened I’ve heard similar stories from a number of other sailors. So if you find the lines on your boat seem to fight you, first trace them to make sure they’re not caught on something (mainsail halyards, for instance, are notorious for getting caught on things like the steaming light), and then consider whether the line is actually the right size for the mechanical parts it must travel through in order to do its job.

You should always wear gloves when sailing. You’ll be able to grip the lines better and pull harder, without worrying about a rope burn. But in addition, gloves also make it easier to get a good grasp on smaller diameter lines. Bigger isn’t better. The line that fits the hardware it will travel through is the size you want.

Where to Keep Your Boat

      Or, Once again -- Hitting hard things is what breaks boats!

_______

April 29, 2013

     "Land was created to provide a place for boats to visit."    

Brooks Atkinson

 Take another look at this video, filmed while Tropical Storm Debby was pummeling the Tampa Bay area.

You can see how rough the water is out on the bay and in the canal, but as the video pans around, notice how much calmer the water is in the marina. That is Boca Ciega Yacht Club’s (BCYC) marina. The one just further north, the Gulfport Municipal Marina, is also very sheltered. The BCYC marina is sheltered north, south, east and west.

In stormy weather, where you keep your boat can be crucial.

When I got my first boat, I lived in a condo that had very reasonably priced docks. At first, I thought that was great. Then one day we had a front come through. I looked out at my boat, and that little thing was rockin’ and rollin’! I could only hope I had learned enough about tying her up to keep her safe. As it happened, I had, and she was OK.

But I thought about it, and I looked at how the docks were built. They weren’t terribly stout. I realized that if the dock broke, my boat would not be secure. In addition, I was at the mercy of my dock neighbors and could only hope they had tied their boats up well. As I looked around, I saw that not everyone had, including the boat next to mine. So I had my beloved boat tied up at a flimsy dock that was quite exposed to heavy weather.

So I moved my boat to the BCYC marina. It cost a little more, but when the next storm came through, I saw the boats rockin’ and rollin’ at the condo docks. I got in my car and drove to the marina to check on my boat. I expected it to look like a bucking bronco, but the marina is well sheltered and the boats weren’t moving at all. The bay was all churned up, but all was calm in the slips.

This area also got brushed by the edge of a hurricane in 2004. In the marina just west of BCYC, multiple boats were severely damaged, because those docks were exposed in a way that BCYC’s marina is not. Not one boat was damaged at BCYC in that storm. Being sheltered counts.

In addition to the BCYC marina being physically sheltered, everyone using it has to sign a lease that includes instructions about how boats must be tied in bad weather. We actually have club members walking the docks during storms, adjusting lines as needed, so all the boats ride the storm out well. (That’s another reason to join a club, and if possible, keep your boat there).

Consider more than price when deciding where to keep your boat. Ask other sailors in your area, and they will be able to tell you which marinas are sheltered and which are not. 

You Are the Skipper of your Boat

       Or, Be quiet and sit down! (Not you –- your crew!)

_______

April 28, 2013

"The chance of mistakes are about equal to the number of crew squared."

Ted Turner

I sailed, not all that long ago, with someone who had a couple of decades of sailing experience. However, he knew little about the hazards of coastal sailing, and did not know how to read channel markers. On the other hand, he was very good at sail trim, and there was a lot more he knew and could do very, very well.

How could this be?

Well, I’ll tell you: his experience was as a racer, not as a cruiser, and on other people’s boats, not his own.

What did this mean about his sailing skills?

First, he had never been responsible for any part of navigation. He didn’t have to know how to get the boat in or out of a marina. He didn’t have to read the charts. He had no idea how to use a chart plotter. He trimmed the sails and was very good at it, and he knew a whole lot about sailing in general, but he was never responsible for the overall safety of the boat and crew.

I know another sailor (me) who doesn’t race. I’ve gotten pretty good at leaving and returning to the dock. I’ve taken classes on navigation (and a bunch of other things) and have taken the boat out to practice the course material.

However, I’m not an expert sail trimmer –- yet. A little racing might improve those skills (depending on what I did during the race). I know nothing about racing strategy.

The problem with all but the most expert sailors is that they don’t know what they don’t know. (That includes you and me, of course).

This means we should listen to other sailors on our boats. However, it does NOT mean we turn the decision-making process over to them. I have been in a situation where I was criticized by an expert sailor because I started a tack two seconds before or after he would have started it, but guess what: we didn’t hit another boat (or a channel marker); no one went overboard; we didn’t run aground; the boat neither sank nor exploded; etc., etc., etc. In other words, both opinions regarding when to start the tack were equally adequate. Probably he was thinking as a racer, and I was just making a turn.

LESSON LEARNED: don’t let minor differences in judgment undermine your confidence. Just because someone else might have made a slightly different decision doesn’t make you “wrong.”

Here are some guidelines for hearing others out when possible without surrendering “skippership” of your boat:

1. If you have an emergency, and you’re certain you’re right, give specific orders and do not allow a discussion until the crisis is over. It’s your boat, and you’re the skipper. Afterwards, encourage discussion. You may both learn something.

2. If a decision has to be made soon but not immediately, and you respect the skills of the person who has an alternate idea, discuss both options freely. End the discussion if the other person will not hear your point of view. Then you make your best judgment.

3. If you’re in the middle of the discussion and the situation suddenly deteriorates (ex: you "skip bottom" -- the keel is brushing the bottom of the channel -- and you need to choose a safer course immediately), say “Discussion on hold” (not “Discussion over!”), and give directions. Not opinions -- directions.

4. People who do not own their own boats may have some very good skills, but if you own your own boat, you learn things about your boat that the crew doesn’t know (that’s why we call you “skipper!”) They may follow directions very well, but may not have the “big picture” when it comes to handling your particular boat. And besides, it’s your boat, and you’ve taken it out and practiced (you did, didn’t you?) You know your boat. If you don’t have practice sessions for yourself, pick a skill to practice. Be a skipper who is learning to make good decisions.

If you have people on your boat who are experienced sailors, explain all this to them ahead of time. If they can’t agree to it, they should, frankly, sail on their own boats. Do not sail with people who have come aboard to prove that they know more than you do, or who imagine that you would be better off if they took over. You may not be able to count on them to follow your directions when it is important to do so (see my comments above that you may actually know more than some very experienced sailors, especially on your own boat.)

As the Bible (almost) said, there’s a time to listen and a time to take charge. Don’t mix the two up on your boat.

A Knotty Problem -- updated photos

 

     Or, I thought Sail School was going to put me in a “remedial knots” class!

I am a person who prefers to tie her boat up without help. No one does it the way I want it done. I know where I want the lines, how slack I want them, what knots I want used. I have it all figured out.

I didn’t get there quickly, or easily. In Sail School, I really struggled with some knots, particularly the bowline. That’s unfortunate, because the bowline, with its cousins and aunts (“bowline on a bight,” for instance) are highly useful knots. After I’d managed to learn the bowline, I could only do it if no one was watching. No kidding. (That means I really didn’t know it very well.)

So if you’re struggling with a knot, or knots, you have my full sympathy.

Here’s what you need to know about knots: they need to be easy to tie –- and also, easy to Untie. Consider the cleat hitch:

 

This cleat hitch above has been done perfectly. The working end –- the one that leads to the boat –- is leading from the right direction on the cleat. There are no extra wraps. Someone is holding the bitter end tight, but it isn’t wrapped ‘round and ‘round the cleat.

Ever see that? (See above.) Don’t do that. You might need to free that line quickly, and wrapping the extra line around the cleat –- or doing more loops on the cleat than necessary to complete the knot –- only slows you down. You might have to undo it in the dark, and having lots of extra line wrapped in silly places for no reason will only make that harder. If there’s extra line, just coil it neatly. Then no one will trip on it, but it won’t interfere with the line’s uses, which are both to hold the boat and to release quickly. Your dock will look neat and tidy, and your neighbors will not mutter your name under their breath.

As you look at the cleat hitch above, you’ll also see that it is actually attractive and symmetrical. It has one loop on each end, and two parallel sections. It just looks good. Good knots look good. Here’s a clove hitch:

Again, you can see that it is symmetrical and attractive. Ditto for a bowline. When it is pulled tight, you’ll see that the base of the knot has three neatly interwoven lines. When you look at these knots, you can easily figure out how to untie them. This is how nautical knots turned into an art form. Put “Celtic knots” into Google and you’ll find dozens of pages full of beautiful examples of intricately-woven knots. The knots you use while sailing will be simpler and more utilitarian, but they can still be frustrating to learn.

I’ve heard the craziest tips for the bowline: the rabbit hops out of the hole, runs around, gets scared and jumps back down into the hole. The truth is that you can stick the line in the wrong place at any point while that poor rabbit scampers around! There's a much easier way: just go to this website!

http://www.animatedknots.com/

You can practice at your computer, or –- really –- there’s an app for that! You can get it at that website and put it on your phone, or IPod, or IPad.

That’s what I did. I put it on my Ipod, and when I needed to use a bowline, I just whipped that baby out and accepted its help. I also practiced knots as I watched TV.

See, it isn’t enough to know the knots. You have to be able to do them quickly, and easily, and often, while telling other people “NO! Please don’t jump from my moving boat to the dock!” or “NO! Don’t push the boat that way! We’ll hit the boat in the other slip!” or “NO! Please wait for directions …” People really want to spring into action while you are leaving or returning to the slip, and often they feel they should know what to do even when they don’t. You have to be able to keep a sharp eye on the other people on the boat while docking or undocking. You don’t need to be racking your brain trying to remember how to work that cleat hitch, or untangling the mess that was supposed to be a bowline.

LESSON LEARNED: Practice knots until they're instinctive. Some day when other things are going wrong, you'll be very glad you did.

Keep Your Feet OUT of the Anchor Locker

     
     Or, Now is not the time to go for a swim!

April 26, 2013

     The average depth of the ocean is 2.3 miles.

A friend of mine had gone with me on a club cruise to Terra Ceia, a little cove at the end of a narrow channel off Tampa Bay. It’s always a lovely cruise, with a sheltered anchorage. Boats raft up and often there’s a chili cook-off.

My friend had done a lot of small boat sailing, but hadn’t done much on bigger boats, and she had no familiarity with anchoring. But we didn’t have to put the anchor down, because the boat we rafted up to had its anchor down. We minimized the number of anchors down so if there was a wind shift during the night, we wouldn’t have too many crossed anchor rodes.

The next morning, however, we couldn’t get the engine started, and I did put the anchor down, and then the wind backed the boat away to set it. A friend came along, rafted up, helped us solve our battery problem, and we were ready to get on our way.

There was little wind and it was a simple process. I explained to my friend what I wanted her to do to help get the anchor up –- slowly pull the rode into the anchor locker as I slowly drove up on the anchor. I told her there would be no real physical effort because the line would be slack. I showed her how to sit on the back edge of the anchor locker, with her feet wedged on the corner edges, and to use her whole back to pull, although there would be little strain on the rode. I showed her how to lock it off temporarily if needed, and I was going to have her lock it off at the end of the double-braided rode, and I would come up and deal with the chain. Come to think of it, I gave her a lot of instructions all at once. Just once. Hmmm …

I emphasized that she must keep her feet out of the anchor locker, and explained to her that it was extremely dangerous to get the anchor rode wrapped around one’s leg. She said she understood, took the right position, put on gloves and was ready to go.

After about a minute, I told her to lock it off. I put the engine in neutral and walked forward to see how she was doing.

There she sat, feet in the anchor locker, with all the rode she had pulled piled on top of her feet.

I pointed out to her that if the anchor rode started to pay itself out, she could get a foot caught and be pulled into the water, tangled in the anchor rode. I showed her the knife clipped to my pants. I told her that since the water was only 8’ deep, there was a 50/50 chance that I could have cut her free. In deeper water I might not have been able to get to her.

She really hadn’t thought of anchors as dangerous things until then. She had a lot of instructions given to her at once, and she missed one of them in the excitement of doing a new and important thing on the boat.

LESSON LEARNED:

The fault lies with me, not my friend. I should have gone over this process with her more thoroughly. I should have made the dangers very clear to her. We both got impatient after the delay, but that’s no excuse.

In addition, I should have given her the knife and had her clip it to HER clothes. A bra strap would have done. If things went terribly wrong, she would be the one in the water, not me. She needed the knife, not me.

You can give very specific directions, and people may not hear you –- for the best of reasons –- they’re thinking, they’re excited, or just because a bird flew overhead and cried out in the middle of it. Maybe –- just maybe –- you gave unclear or even wrong directions. Maybe you overloaded the person with too much information all at once.

Check after you’ve given someone directions and make sure things are going as you expected. Anything we do on sailboats can be dangerous.

What to Do When Your Boat Runs Aground

 

     Or, If I’d only had one more day’s experience …

DISCLAIMER: THE SUGGESTIONS ON THIS BLOG (ALL ENTRIES, NOT JUST THIS ONE), ARE NOT INTENDED TO TELL ANY ONE INDIVIDUAL WHAT TO DO IN ANY SPECIFIC SITUATION. THEY ARE SIMPLY BASED ON MY EARLY EXPERIENCES SAILING, AND SHOULD ONLY BE A PART OF INFORMATION ANY SAILOR GATHERS ABOUT SAILING. FINAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ACTIONS TO TAKE OR NOT TAKE ALWAYS LAY WITH THE SKIPPER OF THE BOAT IN QUESTION.

_______

April 25, 2013

     "Only two sailors, in my experience, never ran aground.
One never left port and the other was an atrocious liar."

Don Bamford

It’s just a fact. If you sail, you’re going to run aground. Now, if you’re sailing a little boat with a centerboard, or a small boat like the 16.5’ Catalinas, you may be able to just pull the centerboard up, or get out and push the boat free (put an anchor down before leaving the boat, since you’re trying to make it move). But if you’re on a bigger boat, things may not be quite that simple.

You’ll find lots of strategies for getting your boat off a grounding in Sailing for Dummies. You’re not a dummy if you ran aground, though – you’re just a sailor.

Nevertheless, in my opinion many people take groundings too lightly. Groundings can damage the bottom of your boat. They can leave your boat stuck in a vulnerable place, such as a rough surf. If you’re on a falling tide, damage may occur to your boat later (ex: your rudder) as the boat leans more and more to one side. The lower the water gets, the harder it will be to get her off.

So take groundings seriously, while accepting the fact that – like some other things – groundings happen.

So what should you do?

1. GATHER INFORMATION

Check the inside of your boat for any signs of leak. If there’s any chance your boat is leaking, call for help immediately.

Study your chart and see what it says about the surrounding water.

Consider getting off and “walking the boat.”

Now, on a dropping tide, you may not have a lot of time to decide what you’re going to do. If you’re short on time, just get in the water with your clothes on. Don’t waste time changing clothes. You can always put on dry clothes afterwards (even if you don’t live on your boat, you should always have a couple of full changes of clothing on it for such situations).

Put on a PFD, and tie a long line to the boat. Tie it around your waist with a bowline. Don’t let yourself be separated from the boat in a current! You will find where the water gets more shallow, and where it gets deeper. You need to walk away from the boat as well as around it in order to find the deeper water. Consider your safety carefully as you consider doing that; your chart and chart plotter may tell you all you need to know. Don’t take unnecessary risks.

Put your waterproof hand-held radio in your fanny pack, and be sure the radio is secured to the fanny pack. Don’t hold it – wear it. It’s waterproof.

You don’t have to worry about anchoring the boat. It already did a dandy job of that itself.

2. DECIDE WHETHER OR NOT TO CALL FOR HELP

Did you find a good path out? Often the good path out is the way you came in. The day this happened to me, I had realized what was going to happen, and had managed to turn the boat around before the “thunk.” So although I was aground, I was pointed in the right direction.

Are you on a rising tide? If the tide is still going to come up a foot or more, Mother Nature may well float your boat off for you if you can be a little patient. That’s the safest way to get off. Put out some sodas and snacks for your crew (not liquor), and have a nice visit. 
 

I did call Boat US, because I was on a dropping tide, and I was near two busy channels. A big boat could have thrown a wake that would have banged my boat around in shallow water, and as I have pointed out before, that’s just a very bad thing.

3. EVALUATE WHAT THE RESCUE BOAT PLANS TO DO

When the first Boat US boat came to my boat, the driver refused my suggestion to pull me out in the direction I was pointed. He said, “No, I’m going to pull you abeam.”

If I’d had one more day’s experience I would have told him no. But although I had walked around the boat, I hadn’t walked away from the boat in any direction. If I had walked in the direction he wanted to tow me, I would have seen the water dropping lower and lower on my body, and I would have known that pulling the boat out that way was a very bad idea. But I trusted him (don’t get me wrong; the great majority of towboats are terrific).

So he dragged my boat across a sandbar, using a forward cleat. I’m fortunate that that cleat is in the toe rail and not fiberglass, or – backing plate or not – I’m sure this tow would have ripped it right out. My boat flip-flopped from port hull to starboard hull. It was bad, and scary, and then the rudder broke. No kidding. I had no steering. However, that tow was so badly executed that it could have broken a perfectly good rudder. It was just a very, very bad tow plan.

As it turned out, my rudder was already severely compromised, rusted through from the inside out. The best possible way for it to break was under tow. It could have broken in a storm or rough seas and left me in a very bad predicament, so in the end it was all good. The boat needed a new rudder, and the old one, although I didn’t know it at the time, was ready to go and just plain dangerous.

But YOU are the skipper of your boat, and YOU need to know what that towboat’s intentions for your boat are. Ask. If it doesn’t make sense, ask for an explanation. If it still doesn’t feel right, ask to talk to a supervisor. One of the reasons groundings are dangerous is that the person helping you may not have the best idea on the planet for your situation. Talk to lots of other sailors and find out how they have handled groundings. You need to know this stuff.

4. EVALUATE WHAT WENT WRONG

When it’s all over, take some time to figure out how it happened. In my case, I was at a point where two channels intersected, and I was steering for a red marker in the crossing channel instead of the channel I was in. I hadn’t paid attention the channel marker numbers, which would have told me that I was aiming for the wrong one. On my chart plotter, the zoom setting I was using did not give the marker numbers.

 On your chart plotter, experiment with zooming in and out, because at different resolutions you will get different pieces of information. I zoomed closer in 10 seconds too late to prevent the grounding, but it was the chart plotter that alerted me to my mistake.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE

Instead of letting the towboat pull me across a sand bar, I should have insisted that the towboat take me out the way I came in. I should have gotten out of the boat, walked to the sand bar and demonstrated the problem to him. Then I should have called a supervisor if he still refused to make a better plan.

This is what it means to skipper your own boat. Make sure you maintain authority over your boat – even in a grounding.