Observations on Moving Off the Boat

     “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Mark Twain 

Friends have been inquiring, in very kindly ways, about how I feel about having to move off my sailboat. Part of this is no doubt also personal concerns on their part; many of my friends are close to my age, and they know that something could happen that could force them to stop sailing at any time, just as it could happen to me. But mostly I think they're just kind, and caring, and truly hoping I'm OK with how my life has played out lately.

Well, I am OK with it. 

Some have wondered how that could be possible. After all, I'm 68 and didn't even start learning to sail until I was 62. I surprised a lot of people when I moved on the boat, right before my 65th birthday. I acquired a new primary care physician not long ago, and (although he knew the answer from the medical history I had filled out), he asked my marital status. I told him that I was widowed. Then he asked, "Did you move onto the sailboat as a reaction to your husband's death?" 

"No," I said. "He died 18 years ago. I moved onto the sailboat as a reaction to having had breast cancer." 

I was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy right before my 61st birthday. The surgery was remarkably easy (my surgeon truly had velvet hands), and I handled chemo very well. I had little problem dealing with Herceptin, one of the real miracles of the 21st century. However, they also put me on an aromatase inhibitor (AI's), drugs designed to suppress female hormones (we don't lose them completely at menopause). My type of breast cancer (there are seven major subgroups) was fed and supported by female hormones. 

I did *not* do well on AI's. I had every symptom they knew of, at severe levels, including a couple that hadn't yet made it into mainstream medical research literature. There was a very good chance that these AI's would be life-saving in my case, and my oncologist really pushed me to stay on them in spite of the side effects, and I tried. I reallly tried. But after two years of those side effects, I just couldn't bear them any more, especially after one of them put me in the emergency room for four hours, resulting in a bill of over $8,000 when I didn't have health insurance. (Oh yeah -- there was nothing wrong with me except a side effect of the AI).

That's when the reality of life hit me right between the eyes: it's going to end some day. I decided that even at the risk of my life, I needed to be happy and feel well again, and that meant dumping the AI's. I did that, felt better immediately, and looked at my tiny sailboat, wishing I could live on it. With no water tank, no shore supply, no head and no working galley, it was perfectly good as a day sailor. But as a home, it was one step up from a cardboard box. Knowing that something could happen at any time that would end my life -- and that I had just made a choice that increased the odds of that happening -- I found a really good deal on a larger, better configured boat, and I bought it.

So you see, there's more than one way I could have moved off my boat. I could be off it because I should have kept taking those AI's and had invited a fatal version of breast cancer back into my life. But it's been seven years and there's no sign of recurrence, and I have probably dodged that bullet. But something will take me some day, just as something will take you, and everyone you know, some day.

The only real question is, "What are you going to do until then? Are you going to live a life of purpose and actively seek ways to bring and keep joy into your life, or are you just going to let life happen to you?"

I made the choice to live aboard while I could. Now I have made the choice to move off, the only rational choice I could have made. My back problems are in no way incapacitating. I can still sail (I'm not sure how I will deal with it when the day comes, as we know it will, that I can no longer sail). Those back problems just make it hard to *live* on the boat, with all the bending, twisting and stretching under load it takes to keep the cabin of a sailboat orderly and comfortable to live in, but with modifications I've made, such as a 2:1 halyard, I can still sail.

I knew I would not always be able to live on board the day I moved on. But I've had 3 1/2 years of a wonderful adventure that just didn't have to happen. Some people have actually told me that they see me as a hero. I don't see it that way. In some ways it was a very selfish thing to do. It's been very hard, for instance, to reciprocate after someone has had me to their home for a party or dinner, unless they sail, and not all of my friends sail. No doubt my daughters see it as much more possible for them to come visit now, since both of them have spouses who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in being on a sailboat, but this being Mother's Day, I have to say they were terrifically supportive of my decision to move aboard, and neither of them said "Thank GOD!" when I decided to move off.   :)

So I would say, make your choices where you can. Think them out as well as you can ahead of time, recognizing that life is often completely unpredictable and even contrary to your desires. Don't be foolish; don't spend your entire 401K at age 50 on the biggest sailboat you can find, but look for sensible ways to follow your dream, whatever it is. If you start to think "I can't ..." ... well, maybe that's true, but look for paths around your obstacles and think creatively first. Then you will be able to say, as I do right now, "It's all good."

Taken Advantage Of ...

I wish I could tell you the name of the company, but I can only tell you what happened. Those of you in the St. Petersburg area will at least know to pay attention. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, this problem may not be exclusive to St. Petersburg.

The St. Petersburg Power and Sailboat Show will take place December 4 - 7 of 2014. It's an annual event, one I have enjoyed. In 2012 I worked at the show on behalf of Boca Ciega Yacht Club. All the volunteers had some time off to visit the other booths. There was a rope vender across the path and west just a bit west of BCYC's booth in 2012, and the prices were too good to resist. I talked with another member who has the same boat as mine, and then went to the rope vender and bought 120' of 3/8" line, at what seemed like a very good price, to use as a spinnaker halyard. I told him what it was to be used for, and he told me he had "some" halyard line left. I want to be clear here; the vender presented himself as knowledgeable regarding lines for sailboats. He assured me that he had a small amount left, just enough, and that he would set it aside for me.

A friend installed this line as a spinnaker halyard for me. I don't have a spinnaker sail; I intended to use it to move heavy things, such as the air conditioner, on and off the boat. It didn't work very well, though. It was extremely hard to raise the air conditioner even a few inches so it could be swung over to the dock. Then I tried to use it to raise my storm sail over the roller furler, and it simply wouldn't do it. Friends took a look at it, and noted the same thing I did: the halyard seemed to run freely until there was any amount of appreciable weight on it. Then it simply wouldn't budge. However, when it had no load, it ran quite freely through all hardware including the sheave at the top of the mast.

Today someone figured out why the line was so difficult to use under load. This supposed halyard rope was not that at all. It was ... polypropelene! It was covered with woven threads, but it had a polypro core. It's cheap line that can't take much strain and that stretches until it breaks. Today's helper noted that as we pulled on the halyard (with someone sitting in a bosun's chair at the end of it to provide load), the line stretched significantly without raising the bosun's chair at all. I had thought it was just me, not as strong as I used to be after being laid up for a while, but three different strong people had not been able to raise it under load. We cut the end to examine the core.

It's really quite scary. In a storm I would have counted on that halyard to keep the storm sail up, and it might not have been up to the task, leaving me in a storm but with essentially no steering, no ability to either heave to or point the boat into the wind.

To me, selling such line to a sailor pretending that it would be suitable for a halyard borders on sociopathic behavior. I would not say that if I knew the name of the company, but I have tried and have not been able to trace it down. Since I can't provide the name of the company, all I can do is describe the danger presented by such sales behavior.

Stretch is not always bad. It's good to have a little stretch in one's dock lines, for instance. Polypropelene can also be useful, as it floats. But it isn't nearly as strong as other lines, and it's particularly susceptible to UV damage. Diameter for diameter, it's a weak rope. Between its weakness, its vulnerability to UV rays and its marked ability to stretch, it's a terrible choice for a halyard.

So all I can say is, "Buyers beware." Venders with Swiss cheese for consciences can spot a beginner from a mile away.  You really can get some great deals at boat shows, but if you aren't 150% certain regarding what you're looking at, bring a more experienced friend along.

Really Bad Joke and a Small Amount of Information

So, a rope goes into a bar and sits down.

The bartender comes over and says, "You're a rope."

"Yes, I am," says the rope.

The bartender says, "We don't serve ropes in here. I'm sorry, but you'll have to leave."

So the rope gets up and goes outside. He ties himself up and fluffs out his ends. He goes back into the bar and sits down again on the same stool he was on before.

The bartender comes over to him and says suspiciously, "Say ... aren't you the rope I just threw out of here?"

Comes the answer: "I'm a frayed knot!"

Corny!!

A friend who has been sailing for over sixty years passed this tip on to us. He's amazed that he didn't learn it until he'd been sailing for more than 20 years.

When you coil a rope, do it clockwise, not counter-clockwise. The rope is twisted when it's made in a way that will cause it to want to knot all up if you coil it counter-clockwise.

He also had a tip about the "geezer halyard" I wrote about yesterday, in fact any halyard. He recommends against hanking the halyard and hanging it from its winch. You may need to use it very quickly. He recommends coiling it in a circle (clockwise, of course). He suggests stowing it in a bag. It will be much easier to use in a hurry if stowed that way.

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

The Coolest Halyard on the Planet

The other day a club member proudly showed me a very clever modification he has made to his boat, and it's worth passing on. He calls it his "geezer halyard." This sailor is in his early 70's, not ready to give up sailing, but ready for some of the harder physical tasks to be a little easier.

Meanwhile I had heard from an old friend -- my long-lost first husband, actually, the man who introduced me to sailing and got me so hooked on it that I spent nearly 40 years daydreaming about returning to the sport some day. While he is generally in good health, he had to have rotater cuff surgery not that long ago, and was looking for easier ways to handle his boat. However, this adaptation isn't just for "senior citizens." I have a thirty-year-old daughter who has also had rotater cuff surgery. The truth is that any of us can have some sort of injury at any time that could make sailing harder for us.

If you look at the picture below, you'll actually see a couple of things this clever inventor has done to make his boat easier to manage. If you see the triangular thing sticking off the mast, that's one of a series of mast steps. With those mast steps, he can still climb his own mast.

Which he did. At the top, he used a pop rivet gun to attach a piece of hardware at the *very top* of the side of the mast. He attached an extra long halyard to that hardware. before leading that halyard through its sheave at the top of the mast, he first dropped it to near the bottom, and fed it through a block attached to a snapshackle. Then he took the halyard back to the top of the mast, through the sheave, back down the mast and through turn blocks to run it back to the cabin top and cockpit. (You don't have to run your halyards back to the cockpit, but it will make the boat much easier and safer to sail single-handed.)

In the picture below, the snapshackle for his halyard is run back to a loop on the top of his StackPack. If you're going to attach your halyard to a lifeline, that will require a little more length as well, so measure appropriately.

The "Geezer Halyard." You can see the extended halyard dropping

from the top of the mast, through a block, and back up again.

When he's ready to sail, he moves the snapshackle from his StackPack to the head of his sail. Because of the block attached to the snapshackle, he now has 2:1 purchase on his halyard. I tried it. His halyard is remarkably easy to raise. It certainly would make the task easier not only for those with shoulder injuries, but those with bad backs or arthritis in their hands.

This sailor put his block and snapshackle together from hardware he already had, but he's going to make a few changes.

First of all, the snapshackle he used is the type that swivels. This allows the two lengths of halyard going up to the sheave to twist, so it has introduced one more thing that can go wrong while raising the sail. Below are pictures of hardware I found at West Marine, a single block, and a non-swiveling snapshackle to attach to the becket.

Hardware used to connect your 2:1 halyard to the head of your sail

 It's still possible to get the two lengths of halyard twisted, but it's a good practice to eyeball the entire length of your halyard to look for things it might be hung up on anyway. The block costs about $36 at West Marine, and the snapshackle about $22. It's crucial that you use stainless steel hardware. You do not want your hardware to break at the top of the mast.

Besides the extra (but avoidable) chance of a fouled halyard, there are two other downsides to this adaptation. First, you'll have a lot of extra line in the cockpit after the sail is raised. Once your halyard is raised, you're going to have extra halyard in the cockpit. One option is to take a moment and hank the dangling halyard. If your halyard has a dedicated winch, you can put a loop over the winch, and the halyard will be stowed neatly. You can also find "line bags" on line you can hang near the bottom of your mast or in your cockpit to catch that line.

Second, you will have increased the number of turns your halyard has to make as you drop it. You may find that you have to go to the mast and help encourage the sail to drop when you're ready to take the sails down.

There's one more thing you might want to note about the hardware shown above: the sheave in the block I photographed is black. It seems counter-intuitive, but black plastic is more resistant to damage from UV rays than white. A block with a black sheave in it will last longer than one with a white sheave.

Finally, make sure your halyard size runs freely through the block, and that the snapshackle is large enough to attach easily to the head of your sail. If you choose a piece of hardware with a pin in it, make sure it's of a type where the pin can't be completely removed. The halyard hardware on my first boat used a pin that could fall out, and it did within five days. Then, of course, it bounced on the cabin top and into the marina. If a crucial piece of hardware can free itself it will, laughing all the way to the bottom.

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