Do you REALLY have towing insurance?

A couple of days ago I wrote about some friends who ran aground while trying to solve a roller furler problem. I wish that the roller furler, followed by running aground, had been the end of their grief, but unfortunately it was not.

I won't name their insurance company because it isn't my goal here to promote one insurance company over another. But it is a lesson in reading the fine print.

My friends couldn't get their boat off the grounding, but their insurance covered towing by the standard towing companies, so they called Boat US, who had no trouble getting them off.

However, the bill was $1,000, which they had to pay upfront and then get reimbursed by their insurance company. They knew that and were not upset by that.

However, that "towing coverage" includes a $500 deductible, so they're only going to get $500 back. That they're not quite so thrilled about.

My car has similar towing insurance -- only worse, really. It covers eight miles, or to the closest Subaru dealership (the brand of my car) -- which ever is shorter. Fortunately, if I want to be towed a little farther the cost doesn't nearly approach the $500 my friends will have to swallow for their boat tow.

Read your insurance policy carefully. My personal recommendation is that you not only get Boat US towing insurance but that you get their best package. I had to be towed about ten days ago because of dead batteries. They towed me to the club, where I had the boat looked at. The great thing about Boat US's best package, which I have, is that if the boat couldn't have been fixed at the club, they would have towed me again, either to my home slip or to a boat yard where they could have fixed the boat. (I was lucky, by the way. I was afraid the alternator had gone bad since all three batteries had died within a couple of days even though the engine had been used a lot, but it turned out to just be coincidence. The alternator is fine.)

Anyone can run aground. If you have a sailboat in waters like Florida, it's not if -- it's when. You will run aground.

My friends now have Boat US towing insurance, and I urge all sailors to do so. Any number of things can happen that could disable your boat even if groundings aren't common where you are. This advice isn't just for beginners, either, but then I have no sympathy for the macho idea that one should never, ever turn the engine on. If I can't use my motor to get back into my slip, I'm not going to try to sail it in through a blind entrance, a narrow entry way, and a long fairway, counting on being able to use the wind in four different directions without hitting anytbing. I'm going to call Boat US. Then if they hit something it's their fault, and I do like that.

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Change Your Impeller!

I was sailing on a friend's boat one weekend for one of BCYC's monthly cruises. I use the word "sailing" loosely. My friend had sails up on principle, but since the winds were only about 2 mph, the engine was running.

He had put me at the helm and was giving me a variety of useful tips, so I wasn't surprised when he periodically walked by the helm on his center cockpit boat.

I didn't notice that his engine temperature gauge was installed on the side of the binnacle (the pedestal that holds the wheel), but one of the things he was doing was checking the engine temperature.

On one pass, he said, "The engine's overheating. Shut her down, and you'll have to sail her while my friend and I go below to see what's going on. Can you do that?"

His boat was 37' while mine was 25', but I assured him that I could sail the boat and that I would come get him if there was a problem. He and his friend went below.

Forty-five minutes later, he and his friend came back up. His friend looked as if he didn't feel at all well -- in the US we have s saying, "a bit green around the gills," for feeling nauseous. Well, he'd had his head in an engine for 45 minutes, smelling all those engine smells, while the boat gently rolled, so I wasn't surprised.

My friend held out his hand. There was his old impeller, broken into eight pieces.

My friend had been smart. He put down a paper towel on the cabin floor, and put the broken pieces of impeller on the paper. Then the two of them put it back together like a puzzle. That's how they knew there was still one piece of impeller somewhere in the cooling system, and they hunted until they found it.

Well, that was a bit of bother, wasn't it? What if he had been the only person on the boat? He still could have done it, but he would have had to put the anchor down, get to work on the engine, come up periodically to make sure the anchor wasn't dragging, etc.

Your engine manufacturer probably tells you right in the manual to replace the impeller once a year. Most sailors will tell you to "carry a spare in case it breaks."

That's two different pieces of advice, and it's the manufacturer's recommendation you should follow. It was hard to be that diligent on my old engine. You had to do a bit of engine dismantling to change the impeller, including taking the water pump off.

That makes it all the more important to replace that impeller *before* it breaks.

This happened to my friend's boat on a calm day. He didn't need the engine to get him away from a lee shore, or to fight a strong current, or to get through a bridge safely. There was no one injured we needed to get to shore. We were in open water. I had to tack the boat once to get it away from the shore, but that wasn't a crisis.

But it could have been.

Follow your engine manufacturer's recommendations on this kind of thing, because a simple thing like an impeller can contribute to a "cascade event" of things going wrong. Even if you have another person with you, he or she may not have the skills to maneuver your boat safely through a storm while you change the impeller you should have changed three months before.

Here's a good article from BOAT US on how to do it:

http://www.boatus.com/boattech/casey/replacing-impeller.asp

If it breaks unexpectedly, do what my friend did. Lay down a paper towel, put every piece on that towel, and make sure you got every bit of it.

Go through your manual, and make a time table for all these basic maintenance issues. We tend to think of our engines as something to get you out of the marina and on to the water -- but do you really want your boat adrift in a crowded marina?

No, I didn't think so.

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Aground and Comfy

     Or, Yes, it’s possible. 

You are more clever than you realize.

Fortune cookie

I actually had some pretty rough times with my first sailboat. Silver Girl was a 25’ Irwin “Citation,” only eight feet wide. She was a lot of fun to sail, but I was a beginner, and when I bought her I couldn’t imagine what scrapes I would get into, but I was sure there would be some.

I was right.

I’d learned the basics of sailing. The basics of using an outboard motor? That was more like a trial by fire. Hopelessly trying to save money, I had bought a used outboard motor. That proved to be disastrous, but I thought that motor was the exception, and bought a second used outboard motor to replace the first one. The unfortunate fact is that we don’t always learn from experience.

Exiting from the dock about 3PM on that day, we had wind from the east and a very high sandbar just to the west of us. Now, I knew that sandbar was there. Unfortunately the outboard motor died just as I was alongside that sandbar, and the wind immediately blew us aground. To make it worse, the deepest draft on my boat wasn’t the shoal keel but the very exposed rudder.

The tide was going out quite fast, so I wasted no time and called Eckerd College’s Search and Rescue program (EC-SAR). They had a very short distance to travel and got there quickly, but the water was already halfway between their feet and their knees, and still dropping. They walked around my boat with a depth pole, determined what my best path out would be, and took my anchor out. By now the water was so low that all they had to do was stomp it into the mud with their boots to set it.

They took my companion back to the dock to limit the amount of extra weight on the rudder. They made sure I had not only food and water but also a book and light to read by. They told me it would be a long wait. They were unwilling to tow my boat off because of the risk to the rudder, and they urged me to not let anyone else tow me off, either. They said something about 2AM. I thought, “OK, I’ll have to come back in at night.” I had battery powered green and red lights, and crawled carefully up to the bow (didn’t want any weight to shift on that rudder) and attached the running lights. The boat was already listing severely, but fortunately it seemed that the side of the boat was supporting it, and not the rudder.

So I read, and ate the prepackaged tuna fish and crackers I had on the boat, watched the sun set, and read some more. The boat kept listing further and further, and I thought, “How the heck am I going to be able to sleep?”

What I finally did was take a cockpit cushion and put it abeam in the cabin instead of pointing fore and aft. It stretched between the two settees below and was supported in the middle by a companionway step. Lying with my head to the high side, I was reasonably comfortable. I set my phone alarm for 2AM to bring the boat home, and drifted off to sleep.

Well, 2AM came. It was a glorious night with a full moon. I looked around the boat … and saw mud in every direction for at least 50 yards. I wish I had had a camera, because the scene was spectacularly beautiful. But -- EC-SAR had been telling me when LOW tide would be, not high tide.

This boat is almost as severely aground

as my poor Silver Girl was.

The tide had gone to Alaska. What could I do? I went back to sleep.

I had already bought line and a weight (a round zinc), and in the morning I made a sounding line. I put a knot in it every foot, with a double knot every three feet. I was able to see the water slowly rising. High tide was at noon that day, and at 11:45 AM, my boat FINALLY floated free.

LESSONS LEARNED: First, go ahead and make plans if you must, but always have a Plan B. Carry more food and water than you think you need, and be ready to tolerate long waits in good humor, because sooner or later, the act of sailing is going to cause you some major delays. If you’re due to arrive home on Sunday and absolutely have to be at work on Monday, you might want to plan on returning on Saturday instead. Sailboats are fundamentally undependable modes of transportation, and a big cushion of time is a good thing.

Second, when you first start to sail your own boat, look at tide predictions carefully. Mother Nature can change what the real high or low tides are for a given day, and the only way to judge that effect is by being familiar with what is typical for your area. I experienced an extreme low tide on this sail caused by the moon and the sun being lined up along with a fair amount of wind. Weather can also make tides either extremely high or extremely low.

Where I live, typically there is about  a two feet difference between high and low tides. Occasionally it’s as much as three feet. When Tropical Storm Debby came through, she blew a lot of water in front of her, and for three days, high tide was so high I couldn’t safely get off the boat. “Low” tide was what we typically experience on a very high tide. There was only about an hour in each tidal cycle where I could safely get on and off the boat. For most people, that would make it impossible for them to go to work. If you’re thinking about moving aboard, consider whether the combination of tide and weather will ever keep you from reporting to work. Most employers wouldn’t be happy about that as an excuse for not showing up.

OTHER LESSON LEARNED: The great majority of sailors simply do not sell an outboard motor they have found to be reliable. There are exceptions; I sold mine because it was just too big for my dinghy; but most of the used outboard motors out there are well past their prime. Shop cautiously!

*Source for photo: http://yachtpals.com/sailing-sailboat-aground-9100


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Who IS Lee Shore, Anyway?

      Or, There is more than one way to sink a boat …

 

For the last few months, every time I crossed the Skyway Bridge traveling north, between the Skyway Bridge and the Meisner Bridge I would see this boat aground on the east side. 

The first time I saw her, she still had both sails. Then about three weeks ago, the sails were gone.

Then two weekends ago, we had a big blow-up of a storm. It formed in the center of the state, and for some reason no sea breeze formed from the west to stop its movement, and it moved right over the greater Tampa Bay area. It was a  big storm with steady winds of over 40 mph and gusts higher.

Because this boat was on the east side of the highway, when the storm came in from the east, the boat was on the lee shore. 

 

 It gets confusing. If I were talking about an uninhabited desert island, the WEST side would have been the lee side of the island, because the weather was coming from the East. But in boating, “lee shore” has a different meaning. It means that your boat is between the wind and land. The lee shore is on the lee side of your boat. The geography of the land no longer matters in this terminology.

So this little boat (about 25’ is my guess) was aground on a lee shore for the storm we had that Sunday. If this boat had been aground on the West side of the highway she would have been somewhat safer.

Earlier in this blog I told about the man who fell asleep on the beach, and when the wind shifted, his boat was anchored on a lee shore. The wind blew his boat to the shallows and then the waves banged it up and down on the sand until the keel finally came through the bottom of the boat.

I was tempted, but I did not wade out to this boat to see if the keel was now inside the boat.  But I did drive by her again after the storm, and found her more severely aground (no surprise). I also found boat parts on the beach (not a surprise either – I’m surprised she held up as well as she did.)

 

The galley sink, now on the beach

What does this have to do with you? It’s bad enough to run aground, but if you run aground on a falling tide, you may want to consider calling a towboat as one of your first strategies. Keep working things and trying to get off the grounding, but the lower the tide gets, the harder it will be to get your boat freed safely. If you have to wait to get her off, you might want to consider staying with her. It can be uncomfortable, but your grounded boat might make a tempting target, an easy wade away for someone with sticky fingers.

Which leads me to my next comment: I drove over the bridge again a couple of days ago, and looked at this boat.  Both the mast and the boom were gone along with all the shrouds and stays. It’s possible that the owner has been coming back to get sails, and the mast, etc. (I hope he finds his sink on the beach), but gone is gone.

This is terrible for the boat, and terrible for the boat owner, who probably did not have towing insurance. He or she is also likely to get a fat bill from whichever county that stretch of land is in – the Skyway Bridge sits in three counties. So how do you keep this from happening to your boat?

First, study a paper chart of the area you will be sailing. Don’t rely only on a chart plotter. Except for very expensive ones, they have small screens, and dangerous shallows could be just off the edge of your screen. Have some idea of where the shallow spots are so you know what to look for. 

 

Second, pay attention to the waters around you. In the photo above, see the light green spot of water apparently near the horizon? The water there is probably less than one foot deep at low tide. You can also see another very shallow spot off to starboard.  A change in color will often tip you off to shallow water. In addition, over shallow water there will sometimes be breaking waves, just as you see on a beach. Neither of these are foolproof, but it should remind you to take another look at where you are.

Third, get towing insurance. There’s a very good chance that a towboat could have gotten this boat off the grounding, and nothing bad would have happened to her. Even if they couldn’t get her off in a low tide, it most likely would have been pretty easy at the next high tide. She’s not a big boat.

Fourth, know several ways to get your boat off a grounding yourself. That’s a huge topic and too much for this blog entry, but you’ll see several approaches very well explained in SAILING FOR DUMMIES.

Fifth, have some creature comforts on your boat. If she doesn’t have a head, get a porta-potty. They work extremely well. Have a flashlight and a good book to read so you have something to do while you stay with your boat. Always carry extra food and water, even if it’s only a can of Dinty Moore Stew. Creative arranging of cushions can make spending the night on a grounded boat fairly comfy. 

I’ll have to tell you how I know on another day.

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Oh Dorothy, is That Your House Spinning Above Me?

     Or, What is Boca Ciega Bay doing in Kansas?

_______

May 20, 2013

     People who make no mistakes lack boldness and the spirit of adventure.” 

Norman Vincent Peale

I woke up that Friday morning, anchored out, because something didn’t feel right. I looked out the port to see all 360º of Boca Ciega Bay passing by my view, as if I were a camera panning in a circle. Huh??

I stepped into the cockpit, and sure enough, the boat was slowly spinning. It did two complete circles that I’m aware of. Then the squall hit.

I hadn’t planned on anchoring out the day before. I had picked up my new rudder; the old one lay on the ground at the club. A friend was going to use my dinghy and outboard to “tugboat” me and my boat out to deeper water in Boca Ciega Bay so he could install the new rudder. Meanwhile, I had no mechanism to steer.

Unfortunately we got a late start. Using my dinghy and outboard as a tugboat, he was able to get my boat away from the club’s transient dock easily enough, but the wind had begun to build, and with my boat’s relatively high freeboard, there was too much wind to move my boat where she needed to be, even with a second dinghy with small motor helping.

Since I lived on the boat, my friend said, “No problem! Just put your anchor down, and spend the night out here. In the morning I’ll come back and we’ll get that rudder in.”

That made more sense than trying to steer my boat back to the transient dock when we already knew the wind was a significant problem, so I put the hook down. I put out an 8:1 rode, including 30 feet of chain, and marked the location on the GPS. I checked the GPS several times throughout the afternoon and into the evening, and the anchor seemed well set. The boat hadn’t moved.

But here was the problem: normally I would have checked the weather before anchoring out. I should have done it this time: the wind was building because a front was on the way.

By the next morning, that front had arrived, and was forming squalls so fast that a weather report 15 minutes old was too old. I used my cell phone and could see that the squall over me was going to move away quickly, but I could also see that other squalls were popping up all over the place, and that this one would probably not be the only one. With an engine but no steering, I really had no choice but to stay where I was.

According to the chart plotter, I had already dragged about 100 feet. Fortunately the boat had stopped spinning and pointed back into the wind again. However, all I had to do was look at the shore around me to see that I was still dragging. Then I would feel the boat lurch as the anchor re-set itself. “Oh, good,” I thought … but then she would drag again. Meanwhile there was the mystery: why had the boat been spinning when I woke up?

I dragged about 500 feet during the fifteen-minute squall, stopping temporarily and moving again. Although the bay has a number of anchored boats, fortunately I wasn’t in their paths. Also fortunately, my boat had so far avoided the nearby shallows. When that storm had passed, I called my friend and told him what was going on. He said he would come right out.

There was only one thing we could realistically do, and that was to let out more rode. With no boats nearby, we let out about 50’ more feet of rode, right before the next squall hit. At least I wasn’t alone this time, and letting out more rode helped: we only dragged about 100 feet this time, but any more drag and I would be in shallow water for the next squall. I called EC-SAR (Eckard College Search and Rescue) and told them my predicament, and they came right away.

The solution was easy: they would hip-tow me to the club’s transient dock, not far away at all. They tied two of their giant, round fenders to my boat, and were 90% done tying us up together when they got another radio call.

“No time to explain!” they said as they rapidly untied my boat. “But we will be back for you!” They raced off to the southwest toward the bridges leading to Tampa Bay, leaving their fenders on my boat.

The next squall wasn’t as fierce, and the boat didn’t drag. About 90 minutes after EC-SAR had left, they came back, tied our boats together, helped me raise the anchor, and brought me back to the transient dock. What had called them away? Someone had seen a man floating in the water, obviously alive but passing toward the Gulf under the Skyway Bridge. The fisherman had waded just a little too far out into the water while fishing on the east side of the Skyway Bridge, got caught in a current, and ended up being swept out of Tampa Bay into the Gulf. EC-SAR went out to the mouth of Tampa Bay, rapidly found the man, and evaluated his medical condition. The man declined further medical help, so they brought him back to his fishing companion (who had not noticed that he was missing), and returned to rescue my boat.

Afterwards, several knowledgeable people and I put our heads together. The only conclusion we could come up with was that a waterspout must have been forming over my boat, causing it to spin. Spinning several times fouled the claw anchor by wrapping chain around the shank. It would loosen, drag, and catch, but eventually release again because it was still fouled.

LESSON LEARNED: Always have a second anchor ready to deploy. I had just lost my spare anchor and had not replaced it yet. Although I hadn’t determined the reason why, I knew my primary anchor wasn’t holding. If I had had a second anchor ready to put out, as my boat dragged the second one would have set. It might have been enough to stop the boat, or at least significantly slow it. I was just lucky that I was so close to good help when all this happened.

Have at least two anchors, and have them both ready to go to work.

I’m going to divide my anchor locker to make deployment of both anchors easier.

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OUT OF THE BATHTUB! (Part 3)

     Or, The buck stops here!

______

May 18, 2013

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

Ted Turner

Tom and I were in a bit of a pickle, in waters way too rough for either our experience or the boat’s size and equipment, and with multiple things going wrong. I had friends who had attempted something extremely dangerous trying to help us. It was time to take definitive action, and I called for Boat US on channel 16 to come and get us (they had us switch to channel 68), which at least ended attempts by crew from other boats to somehow climb onto ours. While a pair of experienced hands might have been helpful, it wouldn’t have changed the fact that we were overpowered for those winds and waves. Our most fundamental problem would still be there. I was also very concerned that if we lost steering, the waves would push us into the shallows, where the boat could get quite damaged.

Boat US recognized that we were potentially in serious trouble, and said they would make us their top priority, and get there as soon as possible. I told them what our new sail plan was. They called us every five minutes for updates of our latitude and longitude, which a handheld GPS provided (two boats from BCYC stayed near us, and if our GPS had malfunctioned, they could have provided that information also –- sailing with another boat can be quite helpful in a variety of ways.) Boat US warned me that because of the conditions, I might have only one chance to catch the tow rope. I looked at the skinny, bouncing bow, not relishing the idea of going back up there for a one-handed catch.

However, Boat US wasn’t the first “Help Boat” to arrive. I looked up to see a boat pounding toward us. It was from EC-SAR –- Eckard College Search and Rescue. Eckard College, a small school in South Pasadena, FL, runs a co-curricular search and rescue program staffed by highly trained, dedicated and brave students. I looked at them in surprise and said, “Boat US is coming for us.”

“We know,” was the reply. “We’re here because we heard them tell you that you would have to go to the bow to catch the tow rope. We’re here to fish you out if you fall in.” Boy, was I glad to hear that!

Well, Boat US did find us; I did catch the tow rope, I didn’t fall into the water, and the team from EC-SAR waved goodbye and scooted away to help someone else in trouble in those messy seas.

When we were under tow and safe, Tom went below to check out what the other two “thumps” were. I think he already had an idea.

The first thump had been his backpack rolling off the V-berth on to the floor. The second thump was the porta-potty, which flipped itself over the bungee cord and spilled its contents –- on to Tom’s back pack!

LESSONS LEARNED:

FIRST: So far I’ve only talked about what I did right that day, but I made several mistakes, one of them a “no excuse” goof: I did not decide for myself whether, when and where I should be sailing my boat. I should have checked the weather reports myself. Twin Dolphin Marina had a computer for guests, and the information was available to me. Instead, I entrusted that decision to “more experienced” sailors in the group. The problem with that is that they made the decision to sail based on their experience and their boats –- not mine.

If I had seen the wind and wave prediction, I would have done two things. First, I would have put Tom on someone else’s boat to go home, as he had to get to work on Monday, and second, I would have stayed at Twin Dolphin until the wind died down and the waves decreased (waves will continue to be riled up for some time after weather has settled down). I didn’t even have to know all that. If I’d asked questions of the other sailors about the next day’s forecast, the answer would have been enough to raise alarm bells in me. The staff at Twin Dolphin could have advised me.

I would have had to bring the boat back by myself (although someone from the club might have been willing to make the half-hour drive to accompany me back), and I could have gone back up the “ditch” along the Skyway Bridge, a much more sheltered sail than along the west coast of Florida.

Another option, had we had a little more experience, would have been to reef at the dock before leaving. However, if we had done that, I might not have realized how inadequate my reefing plan was for a while.

SECOND: As we left to sail south on Saturday, I told Tom we could “co-skipper” the boat, since we had similar levels of experience. But when things get bad, one person has to be the skipper, and typically that would be the owner of the boat (I would have had no problem turning the helm over to an experienced sailor in this situation, but we didn’t have someone like that on board). Our agreement on Saturday made it harder for me to assert myself as skipper on Sunday when most of the trouble occurred. My personal opinion is that if it’s your boat, you have to do the scary stuff. Tom wanted to go up to the bow both times it was necessary, but I felt that I had gotten us into the predicament we were in, and that I was obligated to do the dangerous stuff if I was able to.

THIRD: I let someone with inadequate skills work on my boat. If I had asked around the club, I would have found out that the fellow who “installed” the gas tank and the porta-potty didn’t exactly have the best reputation for quality work.

FOURTH: I did not check the work done on my boat the day before. Even the best, most reliable people can make serious mistakes (see my story, “Your Boat Could Sink! Really!” for an example of that).

FIFTH: I did not double-check information I was given about my boat. If I had asked virtually anyone at the club about my so-called “reefing system,”  each sailor would have pointed out the obvious risk and encouraged me to install a better one, something I did more or less immediately after getting back from this trip.

I DID DO SOME THINGS RIGHT: I studied the chart before sailing. I moved the boat away from the lee shore (over the protests of my crew). I took steps to keep the boat from rounding up so easily. I had a knife tied to my pants, which meant I couldn’t drop it overboard while freeing the headsail. I went forward to the bow prepared to do everything necessary to deal with the sail (bungee cord). I refused to allow a dangerous attempt at boarding my boat. And, importantly, I had towing insurance. While EC-SAR will sometimes tow disabled boats in, they are a search and rescue organization, not a towing service. If someone else had called them with lives on the line, they would have released me, as protecting people is their priority (see tomorrow’s story, “Oh, Dorothy!” for an example of how they do that.)

The major lesson learned was that you are the skipper of your boat –- and that with that comes responsibilities. Study the weather reports yourself. Be prepared to make hard decisions, such as not to sail –- or to not follow the advice of well-meaning crew. Tom, not realizing the danger, was having fun as the boat repeatedly attempted to broach, which is why he did not want to spill the sails. In addition he had not studied a chart of the area, so even if he had realized what the boat was trying to do, he might not have recognized that the “lee shore” shallows at that spot (off Bunce’s Pass) extend far out into the water.

Even more experienced sailors may overlook something you believe to be a significant problem. Or, they may engage in wishful thinking (“Oh, that won’t be a problem!”) These things are not for the crew to decide, although you should listen to what others think when there’s time to do so. But ultimately, it’s your boat and your insurance on the line, and you are responsible for the lives of those on your boat.

By the way, it turned out that the nuts on the bolt holding the tiller to the rudder mechanism were loose. They were easily accessible and easily tightened, but it took two monkey wrenches, and I only had one on board. Sometimes having extra tools is not a bad thing.

In addition, I put netting on the front of the boat after our return. If we had managed to drop the sail from the cockpit, the sail could easily have been blown off that tiny bow into the water – where it would have filled with water and created a true crisis. Make sure you can control your sails when they come down.

EC-SAR is a phenomenal organization. If you live or sail along the central Florida coast or Boca Ciega Bay, you should have their phone number on your boat: (727) 864-8288.  Also see their website at http://www.eckerd.edu/waterfront/ecsar/.  

After EC-SAR has come out to help me, which they have in  a highly skilled way more than once, I always give them a generous donation (whatever cash I have with me). Both times, they helped protect me and my boat from serious harm in a remarkably well-coordinated and efficient way. 



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OUT OF THE BATHTUB! (Part 2)

     Or, you can really learn a lot in one eventful day.

_______

may 17, 2013

     "Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time."-

Joseph Conrad

Fairly rapidly, a number of things went wrong. Silver Girl would sail up the waves fairly well, ride the crest, plunge down to the bottom, and in the troughs, get seriously overpowered. With too much wind in the sails, she would try to turn sideways and round up. She was trying to broach, something not covered in our 4-week sailing class. We were managing to keep her somewhat under control, and Tom was having fun, but Tom wasn’t responsible for the boat’s safety, and he didn’t pay the insurance. He also hadn’t read Sailing for Dummies, but I had, and I recognized that we were in more trouble than he realized. For instance, I knew that an 8’ wide boat should not be taking 5’ waves abeam. As I found out, Tom also had not studied a chart of the area. Fortunately I had, so I knew we were slowly moving closer to shore at a very shallow area that had a crashing surf.

In an attempt to get Silver Girl more under control, I tried to reduce our sails. Unfortunately I had been previously convinced that the “reefing system” on this boat was adequate. It turns out that by  “adequate” my advisor was endorsing a system that consisted of two loose pieces of line stored in the cockpit. The idea was that you lowered the sail, passed the line through the reefing cringle, and tied it under the boom. This would have to be done manually, at both ends, while standing where the boom could hit you. The person who assured me that this system was adequate also recommended reefing at the dock, but we hadn’t done that. Because of the tack we were on, a slight wind shift could have caused the boom to swing into the person doing the reefing, and the wind was very unpredictable between the big waves. Tom and I both concluded that it wasn’t safe to use this so-called “reefing system.”

Meanwhile, Tom and I disagreed about the seriousness of the situation, and so the first (and second) time I asked him to spill the sails at the bottom of the waves to depower the sail … he declined. That’s right. He said “No.”

In fairness to Tom, I brought this on myself, as you’ll see at the end. We had a couple of discussions about this as we rolled and tossed about. Meanwhile, as the boat swung wildly around, first the gas can broke loose and bounced across the cavity under the cockpit, and then we heard other noises of something else flying free. The same person had installed both items the day before, and in my excitement over getting the boat ready for a two-day sail, I hadn’t checked his work. Apparently he thought that setting the gas tank on a shelf with rubber-gripping shelf paper, without straps, was enough to hold it in place, while putting one bungee across the head opening was, to him, enough to restrain something else just as heavy.

Neither worked. Tom and I saw the fuel hose pull out of the outboard and heard the thump, and looked into the space under the cockpit. The gas tank wasn’t leaking, but we both felt that whoever tried to retrieve it might easily suffer either a concussion or a broken arm because of the way the boat was bouncing around. So we had no engine. We heard yet another thump toward the bow, but we had our hands full in the cockpit and neither of us could go below to check.

Having finally convinced Tom that the boat was overpowered, and realizing that reefing wasn’t a good plan, we decided to reduce the windage by bringing the headsail down. Silver girl had a downhaul, and we tried dropping the headsail from the cockpit. Unfortunately the leech line was loose, and it got tangled on a stanchion. The headsail was now stuck half up and down, misshapen and uncontrollable. So I stuck a bungee cord in my pocket, crawled to the bow, cut the leech line with a knife, pulled the sail down, and secured it to stanchions with the bungee. That actually helped a little. That was good; we needed the help! It was very scary on that skinny little bow bouncing around while I tried to wrestle the headsail into compliance, and I was relieved to get back to the cockpit. But not for long.

“Feel the tiller,” Tom said to me. “It doesn’t feel right to me.” I felt it, and it didn’t feel right to me either. It felt … loose. We didn’t know if it was the tiller or the rudder, but neither could be good, and we were still being pushed toward the shore. Again, Sailing for Dummies had taught me well, and I knew to stay away from the shore. Again, there was another disagreement and discussion, but it was my boat, and I turned her toward Yucatan.

Meanwhile, another club boat was sailing closer and closer to us. They wanted to try to put one of their crew on my boat in this five-foot rolling sea. The man was already climbing over the stern rail of the boat he was on. At that point I drew a line in the sand, and said “No. It’s not safe. I’m steering her to deeper water, and we’re calling Boat US.” I think the man who had volunteered for this was a little offended, but it just wasn’t a good idea. Tom did not like the idea of our sailing away from shore, but I knew we had to get away from the shallows. I also knew we could handle the waves better. I steered the boat until she was angling into the waves as well as away from shore. She rode much better this way than taking those big waves on the stern, and cut through the waves reasonably well.

However, I made several mistakes, one of them a very big one that led to all the others. Can you guess what it was? Check in tomorrow for the finale!

Go to our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/boldlygosailing?skip_nax_wizard=true 

OUT OF THE BATHTUB! (Part 1)

     Or, The Adventures of Silver Girl!

_______

may 17, 2013

     "Whenever your preparations for the sea are poor, the sea worms its way in and finds the problems."

Francis Stokes

This is going to be a three-part story. Tomorrow I will post all the things that went wrong on the way back, and then finally, the mistakes I made that you should avoid, including one really big one.

We were on the way to Twin Dolphin Marina in Bradenton from Boca Ciega Yacht Club (BCYC). In fairness, it was really a shake-down cruise for my first little boat, a 25’ Irwin “skinny mini” (only 8’ wide) named Silver Girl. It was May, and I had bought her the previous November -- one month after finishing 4 weeks of sailing lessons at Boca Ciega Yacht Club. I had, as crew, a man from my sailing class. So we had two pretty inexperienced people on a tiny tippy-cup of a boat.

“Don’t worry,” other people in the club said. “We’re only going to Twin Dolphin, and besides – you’ll be with us!” It was very comforting to know other club boats would be with us, because I had never left Boca Ciega Bay before. Sailing on Boca Ciega Bay was lots of fun but much like sailing on a small lake. Neither the boat nor I had really been tested, so this would be the boat’s first “shake down cruise.”

My friend, who I will call Tom, and I were quite excited. He hadn’t sailed out of Boca Ciega Bay yet either. As we moved down the ditch along Sunshine Skyway Bridge, we hooted and hollered: “We’re out of the bathtub, baby!” Never mind that we had to motor most of the way. We were out where the big kids sail!

The trip to Bradenton, which involved crossing the mouth of Tampa Bay, was uneventful except for docking. Somewhere on the trip down, the outboard engine dropped a rod, and it would no longer go into reverse. After a lot of struggle, we got the boat into a slip, but it was the wrong slip. The dock personnel at Twin Dolphins helped us turn the boat around, get it into our slip, and turn her around again so I would only need forward to leave. “Oh, well,” I thought. “Worse things could go wrong.” 

Worse things were going to go wrong the next day on the trip home.

The next morning we were the fifth club boat out of the marina. Tom and I were sailing in the Manatee River, a lovely run along the south bank. The wind was probably about 15 mph from the southwest. Us both being beginners, we didn’t realize that the land on the south side of the river was shielding us from some of the wind … until the very experienced boat out front radioed back to the rest of us: “We’re at the mouth of the river, and it’s actually pretty rough out here!”

I called back to the other boats. “This is a small boat,” I said. “Are you sure we should even be out here?”

“Don’t worry,” the call came back. “You’re with us!”

That was a comfort. The wind picked up to over 20 mph as we left the shelter of the river’s shore, and Tom and I could both see why it was rougher on the Gulf. As it turns out, though, “Don’t worry, you’re with us” is not quite the same as “Don’t worry, you’re both experienced sailors and your boat is plenty big enough for these seas…”. We had five foot waves on the port stern corner of the boat.

Tom and I rapidly discovered that neither of us get seasick easily, which was a good thing, because we needed our wits about us. The other boats had decided to return via Pass-A-Grille Channel rather than “the ditch.” This meant that we would be sailing along the west coast of the Pinellas Peninsula, with the open Gulf to our port side, instead of in the relatively sheltered water along the Skyway Bridge. Our route put the beach on our lee side. But in order to go up the ditch ourselves, the only other choice, we would have had to leave the rest of the group and sail across Tampa Bay to the northeast alone, in more wind and waves than we had ever experienced. We decided it was better to stay with the group.

As with every decision, that one had its pros and cons …

Stay tuned for the next thrilling chapter of “The Adventures of Silver Girl!”

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.