Or, the coast is not always your friend!
In rough water, or in rough
weather, you need to move away from the shore. I’m not kidding. This is serious
stuff.
I know. It’s
counter-intuitive. Most newer sailors want to stay close to shore, and
especially in a storm, which is scarier than sailing in calm weather. A lot of
newer sailors worry about falling out of the cockpit when the boat heels, and
shallow water feels safer. How many times did your mother tell you not to go
into the deep end of the swimming pool when you were little?
But you’re not in a swimming
pool. You’re on a sailboat. You’re not going to fall out of the cockpit (even
in a bad storm there are very good ways to keep that from happening, honest!)
And, in your swimming pool, if a storm develops, you just get out of the pool
and go inside. It isn’t quite that simple on a sailboat in a storm.
Storms are not static, and
they’re not completely predictable. They can pop up on what seemed like a perfect day to
sail. They can move or remain stationary. They can expand, contract, and even
rotate. They can join other storms. They can develop right over you. The point of this is that you
can’t necessarily predict where the wind will come from (unless you are a very
unusual beginning sailor with lots of weather forecasting experience), and the
fact is that the wind direction can shift on you during that storm.
Why does that matter? It
matters because you need to keep your boat in deep water during a storm. You
don’t want to be caught near what is called a “lee shore.” That doesn’t mean
the storm is on the other side of the island. It means the wind is blowing you
toward the shore. The wind is to the windward side, and the shore is to the leeward
side, of your boat. The wind is pushing your boat toward shore. Even if you don’t have a lee shore right now, the waves may
be pushing you toward the shore, because it takes a while for the water to
change direction after a wind change. In other words, the wind may be pushing you in one direction
while the waves push you in another (and in shallow water, that situation is a
real mess!) Either way, it’s not an ideal situation. And, you can’t assume that
the wind direction you have now will remain where it is. A wind shift could
suddenly put you next to a lee shore, and you might have a hard time getting
out to deeper water. Better to move there sooner rather than later.ß
So then, think about scary
things you’ve seen about boats: they can break, and then they sink – or have
you not seen the movie “Titanic?” Water doesn’t break boats -- "Poseidon" is a fiction movie. Boats hitting hard things break boats.
Don’t break the boat.
You avoid that by staying away from hard things that can break it, like icebergs …
and the ocean’s bottom. In deep water, the ocean (or lake) bottom is farther
away from your keel. That’s what you want.
Where I live, the danger near
the shore is generally shallow water. (It’s even worse in some other places,
where the shallow water includes hidden, big, sharp rocks.) When the water gets
rough, a number of things happen in shallow water.
· The waves tend to break. That makes rough water
even rougher.
· The waves tend to come closer together. That
makes the water not only rougher, but harder to manage as well. The water can
even get very confused, much like a giant, front-loading washing machine. Do
you really want to try to pilot your boat through a giant, front-loading washing
machine? No, I didn’t think so. The waves will be easier to handle, and you and
your crew will be much more comfortable, away from shore.
·
The
waves tend to push you toward ever more shallow water. If you have any other problems – and you may well have other
problems by this point, because things often go wrong in clusters (see my
personal experience story, “Out of the Bathtub!”) – it will be much harder
now to move your boat back out to deeper water.
· Now you’re really in
trouble, because the waves have been bouncing your boat up and down, and other
things have gone wrong, and now it’s all happening in shallow water. I know
someone this happened to, and the breaking waves banged his boat against the bottom in the shallow water, and
drove the keel right through the bottom of his boat. His boat sank in four feet
of water. No one was hurt, but the boat was totaled.
· Many boats have unprotected rudders, and in
these circumstances, your rudder may end up broken, and then you won’t be able
to steer. Three guesses how I know …
So what do you do? Turn your
boat away from the shore – and before all these things start to happen (using at least a
45º angle through the waves – experiment in calmer water to see how she goes through best, and you'll probably find that 45º isn't enough). If
you’re scared, tell everyone to put on PFDs (if you’re scared, you
should be more scared in shallow water). Employ all your other safety
devices – tethers, drag line, etc. It’s very unlikely that you’ll need any of
it, but you’ll feel better, and feel more in control. What you don't want is for the waves to hit the side of your boat. That will be the roughest, and the scariest, way to ride it out. If you have to make a big turn, do it between waves so you don't get caught with the waves "abeam," or hitting the side of the boat.
If there is someone on your
boat who is highly experienced, don’t be ashamed to turn the helm over to him
or her.
LESSON LEARNED: There’s a lot more you need
to know about sailing your boat in rough water, even as a newer sailer, and you
really do need to know it. Buy yourself a copy of Sailing For Dummies, and do
it today. Then read it very carefully. It is an outstanding book for newer sailors,
and as you’ll see in my story about the time this happened to me, it really
helped me. I did turn the boat out to sea, over the protests of the equally
inexperienced person with me, and it’s a good thing, because we did have
a cluster of failures. But we didn’t get thrown into the
water, no one got hurt, and we didn’t break the boat. That’s a good outcome.
Rough water doesn’t have to
be a crisis. If you think there’s any chance of rough water, and any chance
that you will get seasick, take something like Bonine in a timely way.
Encourage your crew to do so as well. One or more people on the boat incapacitated
by sea sickness is one of those things that can contribute to a “cluster of
things that go wrong.” If you get caught in a difficult situation, you need
everyone able to help out. It sounds trivial, but seasickness can completely incapacitate a person -- and even turn into a true medical emergency from dehydration.
Should you just try to get to
safe harbor? Well, I’m assuming you paid enough attention to the weather that
you know this is only a thunderstorm, and not a hurricane you thought you could just
dodge. But thunderstorms can move at up to 60mph, and I’m pretty sure your sailboat can't go that fast. If you try to get into a safe harbor, there’s a very good
chance that you will only succeed in putting yourself close to shore, or even
worse, in a channel in very rough water. If your boat has an outboard motor,
it’s an even worse choice, because an outboard won’t be any help in confused
waters, and in fact you could ruin it as it keeps bobbing out of the water with
no access to cooling.
However, that's all a judgment call. If the storm is just forming and is currently far away, that's the time to head for safe harbor (which could just be a little cove sheltered from the likely direction of the wind). If you do that, put an anchor out -- two, if you have them (and you should have two). The storm might be parallel to you at the moment. I say don't do it, but friends did it in Biscayne Bay when I was on their boat. We headed in the moment the skipper saw signs of a storm forming -- he saw gathering haze and didn't gamble. We got in just before a really big storm hit.
However, that's all a judgment call. If the storm is just forming and is currently far away, that's the time to head for safe harbor (which could just be a little cove sheltered from the likely direction of the wind). If you do that, put an anchor out -- two, if you have them (and you should have two). The storm might be parallel to you at the moment. I say don't do it, but friends did it in Biscayne Bay when I was on their boat. We headed in the moment the skipper saw signs of a storm forming -- he saw gathering haze and didn't gamble. We got in just before a really big storm hit.
Riding out a storm may not be
fun. You may get wet – but it’s just water. You may get seasick, but you won’t
be sick forever. The ride may be rough, but the storm will end. You don’t want
to be caught in a pounding surf with a keel under you and crashing waves abeam, with no way to turn the boat. Get your boat into
deeper water in a timely way.
ß This is where you have to have that “I’m the
skipper” attitude, because you cannot allow debates over whether or not to move
the boat away. Moving the boat away from
shore may upset or scare someone on your boat. But it is your boat, and your insurance, and you are responsible for the boat and passengers’ safety –
not the scared person who doesn’t know about lee shores in a storm yet. STICK TO
YOUR GUNS and don’t allow a debate. YOU are skipper; YOU make the crucial
decisions for your boat unless you are CERTAIN the other person knows more than
you. Even then, I would still move the boat away from shore. It won’t hurt
anything to do that.
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