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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More Than One Way to Dock a Boat

     Or, "Is That Boat Going BACKWARDS????"

Samantha Ring, my first sailing instructor, has continued to pass tips on to me from time to time. It was Samantha who taught me how to tack my boat easily by myself (I talked about that in the entry titled "How to Single-Hand Your Boat in a Pinch").

From her I learned some very basic things, such as tiller steering: to turn the rudder in the direction you want to go, you have to push the tiller handle in the opposite direction. In other words, to turn to port, you push the tiller to starboard.

She has also shared with me how she backs her boat into her slip very reliably every time.

It's so simple. I mentioned it to some sailors online who thought the very notion was absurd, but I discussed it with a true master sailor, and he explained that he still uses it, especially if it's a large boat. (Remember that I have said more than once that you should double-check every bit of advice you're given by others, and this is a perfect example.)

What Samantha does is simple: before she enters the marina she turns the boat around. She then faces the stern of the boat instead of the bow, and puts the boat in reverse.

Since she has a tiller, this requires a quick adjustment in thinking. Now the stern of the boat moves in the direction of the tiller.! The bow still moves to starboard, but since she's facing the stern, the boat now essentially steers the way a car does.

It's a little hard to see in the photo below but if you look carefully, you will see a sailor facing the stern, pushing the tiller to starboard. Sam makes a starboard turn to back into her slip. It's much easier to steer in reverse when you only have a few feet of boat in front of you.

This approach helps solve a number of problems. First of all, you have to deal with "prop walk" when in reverse. Prop walk is the frustrating tendency of a motor to pull the boat to one side or another, usually to port, when in reverse. When you only have to worry about where the few feet in front of you are going, the difficulties of dealing with prop walk are diminished. Ditto for the effects of both wind and current. All you have to do is get the stern in, and the rest of the boat will follow. When you're facing the direction you're moving in, it becomes much easier to adjust for all the forces acting on your boat.

However, people get set in their ways sometimes, and so some people think this approach is nothing short of ridiculous. Samantha actually heard someone shout to her once, "Did you know you're going backwards?" But Samantha let me try it, and I think it's brilliant.

Few things are scarier to new sailors than bringing their boat into the slip stern first, and being able to face the direction you're moving in really takes all the terror out of it. Wherever that stern goes, the bow is going to follow, and you will only have to make judgments about the few feet of boat in front of you instead of sitting with feet toward the bow, alternately looking over your shoulder and then the whole length of the boat, and havng to judge all that distance to your bow, along with whether or not wind, prop walk, or current will take your boat into another boat or a piling.

Don't try this for the first time in the marina, however. Like any skill involving maneuverability, you're much better off practicing in open water first. Just tie a fender to your spare anchor and drop it over the side. If you want to practice with great precision, put two fenders over the side to mark the width of your slip.

If you have a boat with a wheel, you can still use this trick. However, with a wheel you think about the wheel just as you would if you were facing forward.

There is a "negative" to this approach, and that is that the boat will have a lower maximum speed in reverse than in forward. But you don't want to move any faster than you want to hit the dock anyway, so that's a small limitation. You do have to maintain enough speed to have steerage, but that feels safer when facing the direction you're going in as well.

And don't forget -- now you will put the boat in *forward* instead of reverse to slow it. But since when you face the stern, reverse looks like forward, and forward looks like reverse, it doesn't have to be a complication. Just don't over-think it. Relax, take a deep breath, and you'll get that boat in the slip like a champ.

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Various Updates

     Or, New Information on Old Topics

Remember when I said that going down your companionway steps is one of the most dangerous things you do on your boat? I just met a woman who knows this all too well. She fell going down her companionway steps a couple of months ago, breaking several ribs. Remember the corollary advice, that a cabin is a terrible place to fall into because there are so many things you can hit on the way down. I’m not happy that I was right about that one.

My chartplotter still doesn’t work right. West Marine told me the software needed to be updated. Someone with a PC loaded it onto a SanDisk for me. I put it in the chartplotter and nothing happened, so I took it all to West Marine. When they inserted it, a hidden window popped up that should have updated the software, but it didn’t happen. West Marine told me the SanDisk was empty, so I took it back to the fellow who had loaded it for me. He put it in his computer and found the software on the SanDisk. Meanwhile, the chartplotter’s depth sounder told me that I was in over 20’ of water – while I was aground, centered in a channel (that’s another story). So the chartplotter, which has an extended warranty, is going back to West Marine, and I am going to insist that they send it to Garmin. Stay posted and keep your paper charts handy! I know someone else who benefited from purchasing the extended warranty, and I am now officially recommending that.

The Cruisers and Sailing Forum continues to talk about how small boats should just get out of the way of big ships. They have been debating the meaning of “impede” in the COLREGS, but more and more people are saying, “Oh for heaven’s sake. Just get out of the way!” So far, none of those people have been kicked off the forum that I know of. I am glad that those people have not been kicked off, and I’m glad they’re not being harassed for displaying obvious common sense as well as expressing the true intent of the law.

The little boat aground by the Skyway Bridge is still there. We’ve had extreme low tides here lately (part but not all of the grounding incident mentioned above) because of strong north winds just blowing the water south, and with the water nearly gone it’s clear that the entire keel of the little boat is buried in sand. That boat isn’t going anywhere until Pinellas County decides to cut it up and haul it away. Whoever is the registered owner will get a big bill when that happens, so if you sell a boat, make certain that the new owner transfers the title, or you might get a salvage bill some day for a boat you thought you no longer owned. At least in Florida, boat titles are not controlled as tightly as car titles are.

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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.