Running Aground in the Slip

     Or, Was my face red!

I’d had my Hunter and had been living aboard for about three months. It was February, and there was a full moon.

I didn’t think anything of it. I certainly didn’t connect that full moon with what the dockmaster had told me when I first took my slip, that one reason to keep the boat bow in was that the sand had built up at the end of the slip.

I looked at how the boat was tied up before I left for the evening, but I’d been on the boat for three months now, and I thought I had it all pretty well figured out.

I came home about 10PM and looked at the boat sitting perfectly centered in the slip. “Man, I’m getting good at this!” I thought. I grabbed the breast line to pull the boat over to the finger pier.

Nothing happened.

I pulled harder. Nothing happened

The boat wasn’t perfectly tied up at all. She was aground! She was actually tilting.

Other people might have been able to take a flying leap, or climb over the bow, but I really felt the boat was too far away for either of those options. I knew the cats had enough food and water. I called it a night and slept elsewhere.

By the next morning when I came back to the boat, the water had risen and she was afloat again, and I thought, “I really don’t want this to happen again.” My solution was to re-tie her so that she moved some in the slip. I actually like the sensation of the boat rocking, so that didn’t bother me, and the keel had a chance to dig herself a hole. I lived at that marina for another 21 months and never again had this problem.

LESSON LEARNED: use your depth sounder and/or depth line when you first move your boat into a new slip. Talk to others in the marina, and of course, the dock master. If you have a shallow slip, you need to know about it and what kinds of problems it can make for you.

Or you can just wait for Mother Nature to surprise you.  :)

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Climbing on to Your Boat at High Tide

     Or, You can make this one yourself if you want

My boat has what is called "high freeboard." "Freeboard" is the distance between the deck and the surface of the water. Because of this high freeboard, my boat can be hard to get on to at high tide.

To solve this problem, I got a nifty gadget called a "portable step." In the current West Marine Catalog it is item no. 1829522, listed as "DOYLE#STEP," also known as a "quickstep."

My sailboat has a very strong perforated toe rail, so I can hang this step anywhere I want. Where I hang it is in front of the shrouds, which just happens to be within an openable gate in the lifelines and right by a stanchion. There is a great advantage to hanging it below the shrouds, because the shrouds are strong. You can safely grab the shrouds as you climb up.

You may have to add hardware to your deck if you don't have a toe rail in order to be able to clip it on.

The point of this step, of course, is to get you safely on or off the boat, and there is a trick to that. When you step on the "quickstep," immediately stand up straight and push your weight against the side of the boat (my step has never left a mark on the boat). Grab the shrouds. Keep moving the whole time, and put your other foot on the deck of the boat. If you do this in one smooth motion, the step will be stable and secure and you will have no trouble getting on and off.

But as you can see from the picture above, at high tide in particular, you may have a line crossing the step. Take note of that obstacle before you use the step.

As you can see, my "quickstep" is not perfectly level. It doesn't have to be perfect for it to work well. You can see by the line hanging below it that I had to shorten its length. That's not hard to do, and perhaps one day I will get very particular and even the lines out, but it is perfectly stable as it is.

I don't often recommend making something when it already exists, but I'm going to make an exception here. The design of this item is quite simple and anyone who can use a drill at a basic level should be able to duplicate it with a piece of strong, water-resistant wood. I paid $10 for my portable step on sale. The price now is $32.95, which seems awfully high to me. Just don't go cheap on the hardware. Get marine-quality snaphooks. You may want to put a rubrail on the wood, as wood might leave marks on the side of your boat otherwise.

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How Joe Shattered His Leg, and How He Survived

_______

May 5, 2013

     You are primed to come up with a creative solution.

Fortune cookie

Joe lives in St. Petersburg, FL. Last December, he was going for a sail on a friend’s boat in Venice, FL, about an hour south of his home. A 36’ boat, it had a fair amount of freeboard –- its deck sat higher from the water than smaller boats. Nevertheless, it was an abnormally low tide, and a bit of a drop to the boat. Joe had gone through two knee replacement surgeries in the previous year, so he carefully considered his options. As he was first to arrive at the boat, he would have to do this all himself.

He pulled the boat close to the dock, and tossed his backpack into the cockpit. He didn’t want to risk dropping anything into the water during a tricky boarding. That also kept his center of gravity lower, always a good thing when boarding.

Holding the boat close to the dock with his right hand, he sat on the edge of the dock and swung his legs over the lifeline. He judged that he could make the short drop well. Typically, stepping on to the outside of the lifelines would be the best choice, but the boat was so low in the water that this didn’t look like a good choice to Joe.

Unfortunately, soon as he let go of the boat to jump down, the boat moved rapidly away from the dock. This threw his balance off, and with his feet inside the lifelines, he ended up hanging from the lifeline by one knee. While the knee was not injured, his body twisted, and he broke his left femur quite badly. Fortunately the boat had moved so far from the dock that he did not hit his head, but his body weight pulled him into the water. Now he was in cold water, and he was badly hurt.

No one else was around. Hollering for help brought no one.

He managed to pull himself to the stern of the boat, and that is where the owner of this sailboat helped save his life—even though he wasn’t anywhere near the boat yet. The owner had tied his stern ladder up with a “half bow tie,” with the loose end of the line long enough for Joe to reach it from the water. Here’s a picture of the type of knot his friend used. It is also commonly used to secure the mainsail to the boom.

Joe managed to pull the line, drop the ladder, drag himself up the ladder and land in the cockpit using his arms and his good leg.

Once in the cockpit, he was able to find his cell phone in his backpack to call 911. Since he had put his belongings in the boat before he tried to board, his cellphone had not gone in the water with him, and so it worked. The ladder, rigged to be deployable from the water, saved his life. With such a severe injury he wouldn’t have survived long in cold water.

When EMS got Joe to the nearest hospital, the doctor told him he needed immediate surgery. “Please transfer me to St. Petersburg, where I live,” Joe asked.

“You’ll be dead before you get there,” the doctor bluntly responded. “We have to operate NOW.” A piece of bone had cut the femoral artery, and Joe was actually bleeding to death inside his leg, even though the skin had not been broken. Joe has boarded boats many hundreds of times over the years. This is the only time he was hurt, but it was a doozy.

It’s really important to have a good ladder on the stern of your boat. There are several things that go into that. The ladder needs to hang from the boat at the right angle. If it hangs at more than 90º, people will have a hard time climbing it. Injured, it would probably be impossible. In addition, it needs to be long enough that the lowest wrong is well down into the water, or it will be hard to use, especially with a significant injury.

Your ladder also needs to be rigid. I was on a boat once where the owner had made his own ladder out of wood and rope. It floated at the surface, making it difficult to get a foot in the bottom rung after a swim. In addition, its flexibility let it curve under the boat. Finally my friend had to physically hold the ladder out at a 90º angle and then I managed to get back on the boat. A ladder is no place to try to save money. West Marine sells portable ladders you can hang over the transom or the side. They work well. If you use this ladder, get the longer one—it only costs $59.99 at this writing. The farther that ladder drops (rigidly) into the water, the easier it will be for an injured or otherwise impaired person to get safely aboard.

The problem with this type of ladder is that most owners won’t leave it hanging on the boat unless they are on the boat, so it probably wouldn’t have been there when Joe needed it so desperately. However, it is highly superior to anything made of rope and boards. A permanently installed ladder is a better choice, but this one is a lot better than nothing, or a ladder that can’t be lowered from the water.

Joe survived this accident for several reasons. First, he kept his wits about him and didn’t panic, even though he knew it could well be a fatal accident. Second, he was familiar with the boat. He knew that ladder was there, and that it was worth his rapidly fading strength to get to the stern. Third, the boat owner had a ladder long enough to be useful even under extremely difficult conditions. Fourth, the owner secured the ladder in a way that made it easy to deploy it from the water. Finally, Joe had kept his phone safe and dry, and was able to get to it. He does not believe he could have gotten to the marine radio in the cabin. Without his cell phone, he would have bled to death in the cockpit.

LESSONS LEARNED:

FIRST: When boarding any boat with either life lines or railing, pick a place to get on where you can place your feet on the outside of that lifeline or rail. By the shrouds is an excellent choice: you can step on the toe rail and grab the shrouds, which are very strong, at the same time. Then swing one leg over the lifeline, get that foot secure, and then bring the other leg over. This is an expansion of rock-climbing technique: three points secure (one foot on the toe rail and two hands on the shrouds), with one leg moving at a time. If your legs are on the outside of those life lines and the wind suddenly blows the boat away, even if you fall in the water, it won’t be nearly so dangerous a fall. The only thing likely to be hurt will be your pride. But in all likelihood, you’ll be able to keep your behind on the dock, stay dry, and just try again, or hang on to the boat. Either way, you’re safe.

SECOND: Always have your boat’s safety features fully functional. Joe might have fallen off of someone else’s boat without a good ladder, but he still might have been able to get on his friend’s boat, and perhaps by hollering for help from the cockpit, another person would have come along in time. Your properly secured and adequately long, rigid ladder could save someone’s life some day.

The Most Dangerous Things We Do on Our Boats

     Or, Liquor Goeth Before a Fall

Sometimes we forget that this thing we do, sailing, can actually be a little bit dangerous. When most people think about danger, they think about things like the boat tipping over, or being caught in a terrible storm. But in reality, the most dangerous things you do on your boat are also ordinary, everyday activities. They don’t look dramatic, or risky, or scary. That’s one thing that makes them dangerous –- they become so ordinary that we don’t always pay full attention while doing them. In my opinion some of the big ones are:

·      Getting on and off the boat

·      Going down the companionway “steps”

·      Drinking while sailing, and

·      Sailing with friends (What? Yes …)

Stepping aboard:

It’s so easy to get on and off the boat casually, but you should give it your full attention and not think about anything else. One misplaced foot, and you could fall in the water between the boat and the dock. You could be squeezed between those two big, hard things –- onto barnacles! People have died because they hit their heads on the dock on the way down, knocked themselves out and no one knew they were in the water.

If you put netting on the bow or stern of your boat, you can set things on the boat without risk that they will fall into the water, and you can then get on the boat with both hands free to do so securely and safely. (By the way, according to a doctor friend who sails, if you cut yourself on barnacles -- do not pass GO, do not collect $200 -- get yourself to your doctor immediately, who will undoubtedly put you on antibiotics, as barnacles and dock-bound oysters can contain some very nasty, dangerous bacteria.)

Don’t get on or off your boat with your arms loaded with “stuff.” Your center of gravity is already higher than the lifelines, and loading yourself up only makes that worse.

Going down the companionway “steps”:

They aren’t steps. They’re LADDERS. It’s very dangerous to go down ladders with your back to the rungs. Yes, I know these rungs often look like steps, but please – always turn around, face the steps, and use the handholds. I know a man with decades of sailing experience who slipped going down his companionway. He lay on the floor of his cabin for hours with a badly broken leg before someone found him. I know another fellow who spent an enjoyable night drinking with friends, and then fell going down his companionway. Fortunately he was only scraped up and bruised, but not badly hurt – see below.

Now think about your cabin. Most cabins are not spacious, and there are many things you can hit as you fall. The same rule applies for this as for getting on and off the boat: heads shouldn’t hit hard things, and your hands mustn’t be loaded up with stuff as you go up or down the companionway ladder.

Drinking while sailing:

I don’t let my crew drink until we’re done sailing for the day. On a 24 hour shift, we would have rotating shifts and try to work out R and R time for people, but still, real moderation would be key. Alcohol affects balance, and boats tend to lurch suddenly. Sailing while drinking is common –- many people’s fantasy of sailing is of tootling around the Caribbean with the wheel in one hand and a fancy drink in the other (you wouldn’t do that driving, though, would you?) Alcohol also stimulates socialization, and you can end up with everyone having a great time in the cockpit –- and no one noticing that the boat is headed straight for that channel marker (see below).

One person I have met lost the entire ring finger on her right hand just by adjusting a docking line –- after having had too much to drink. The line wrapped around the base of her finger and tightened, and took it right off. 
LESSON LEARNED: Alcohol can make you go "bump!" Party hearty if you want – but at the end of the day.

Sailing with friends:

Say WHAT??? Yeah, you have to be careful. Remember when you were 16 and had just learned to drive? What did you want to do first? Pick up all your best buds and go cruising around town, right? Some states now don’t allow new drivers to have any passengers with them because they are such a distraction to drivers for whom much is not automatic yet.

 Sailing is similar. There’s a lot to think about (really, it can be overwhelming at first), and someone has to be looking out for hazards. I know someone who hit a channel marker (those things pop up in the craziest places!) with three people on the boat. The skipper was facing his guests –- and forward, but the guests were facing him, and he was looking at his friends, not the water. He was going along pretty fast and when that channel marker jumped out into the middle of the channel, it did a lot of damage to the bow of his boat. (By the way, you’ve met this man before. He’s the one who ended up with the keel in his boat instead of under it.)

FINALLY:  Buy a good, sharp, folding knife and attach it to your pants or shorts any time you sail – whether on your boat or someone else’s. West Marine sells excellent knives,

as well as elastic cords with clips on them.This is the knife and cord I use:

If your favorite sailing shorts don’t have belt loops, sew a metal (not plastic) ring inside the left pocket if you’re left-handed, and the right pocket if you’re right-handed. Clip that knife on!

Then, if your leg should get caught in a line and you go overboard, you will know you have that knife with you, and you can use it to cut yourself free without worrying about losing the knife. It was the first safety tip given to me (thanks, Craig!) and I think it was one of the best. Recently a fisherman near my marina drowned in six feet of water because he was tangled in his anchor line and couldn’t get free. It’s not a common accident, but probably a fatal one without a sharp knife to free yourself with.

This is my safety advice to newer sailors. Have fun – but be careful out there!