My Excuse Is That I Was Sick ... (with a PS now)

But Mother Nature Doesn't Really Care!


We just got hit by a wall of wind here about 15 minutes ago or so. The boat is rockin' and rollin' -- I love that when I know the boat is secure.

... when I know the boat is secure.

I knew this weather was coming, and as I'm down with something that probably is strep throat, I wasn't really up to a lot of work today. So the bunk didn't get made up, but I secured the deck, checked the lines, and put the tarp up in the cockpit -- it's nice to be able to keep the cabin doors open in bad weather. By the time I'd gone to the store and bought just a few things, I was just exhausted. I napped for several hours and then watched a "Project Runway" marathon.

We had a few bands of rain, but nothing dramatic -- until 15 minutes ago, when we were hit with a wall of wind. I heard the loudest sound of wind whistling through something I've ever heard before, and finally realized that it was the wind whistling through the nearby bridge.

Then it dawned on me: I have this line I usually use to counter-wrap my headsail. Because of the design of my roller furler, it is more likely to unfurl and help the sail flap itself to death than other roller furlers. I've even written about this problem here, and took pictures showing how I counter-wrapped someone else's sail as a storm approached. Simply explained, if the sheets wrap clockwise, I wrap another line around the sail going counter-clockwise. I have a specific line I use for that. I seemed to recall seeing that line somewhere else and not on the roller furler.

Also, as I listened to the wind, I did not remember counter-wrapping the headsail. Now, at first that's not too surprising. I went out of town for Christmas and wasn't likely to remember one random task done before I left. But that was an important random task.

So I went up to the cockpit. To get on deck, I had to cut one zip tie holding the side of the tarp down, but didn't see the scissors anywhere. Well of course I didn't -- it was DARK! Enter the "cockpit box."

My cockpit box, which I'll write about really soon because it just saved my cookies, was where it belonged -- in the cockpit. I know where I keep things in that box, so I was able to put my hands on my rigging knife quickly. Then I opened the top, got out my headlamp, put it on, and avoided cutting off the tip of a finger while removing the zip tie.

I went up to the bow. I had not counter-wrapped the sail -- and it was beginning to unfurl. No kidding. I grabbed a spare sail tie, tightened it around the wrapped sheets as high as I could reach, wrapped it around once, secured it again to the sheets, and wrapped it as much as I could before tying it off securely lower on the wrapped sheets.

The wind has died down significantly in the time it has taken to write this entry, but it could pick up again at any time. So tonight, I will sleep in clothes, not pajamas.

You know, some insurance companies won't insure you if you live on your sailboat. To me, that's crazy. I might not have realized that the headsail had not been been secured if I had not been on the boat when the wind hit. If I had been safe in a house or condo somewhere, even if I'd realized I hadn't checked the sail, it might have unfurled before I got to the boat, and in this wind, and with that roller furler, it would have been quite a job to pull it back in. In other words, if I didn't live on my boat, the insurance company might have gotten a claim for my headsail tomorrow. Live-aboards are more likely to notice when something isn't right.

My excuse for not noticing that the sail wasn't counter-wrapped is that I'm sick. But another time it could be that I'd had one too many glasses of wine, or I that was tired, or that I left the boat without securing her completely, even though I knew weather was coming in. It is possible to see what you expect to see, and it's easy to overlook little things.

The truth is that I should secure that roller furler with a counter-wrap every single time I come in from a sail. This one time I didn't do it, and it could have turned out quite badly.

If you have a spouse or sailing partner, it's easy to divide up tasks so that one person always, say, cleans out the cooler, while the other person, say, secures the headsail. It makes sense to divide and conquer, but i would suggest that every once in a while you trade jobs. If you are always the helmsman, pass it off to your partner once in a while. If you always secure the sails, pass that off to the other person. It may be that you will have to secure the boat for a storm all by yourself one day, and you're far more likely to remember to do things if you've done them before.

* * *

PS: It is now past midnight, and the boat was bumping up against the piling of the dock. The starboard lines, on the windward side of the boat,  had stretched, and had to be tightened. I was already in clothes, got the headlamp out of the cockpit box, tightened the lines, and will now go back to bead, hopefully without further problems to solve.

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Things You Didn't Know You Need on Your Boat

There are a number of things I have on my boat that I wouldn't want to be without. I never would have guessed when I started out I would make use of these things. Here are some of those things, and if it isn't obvious, how I use them.

ELECTRIC CARVING KNIFE: (HUH???) Yeah. You can get "Memory Foam" pretty cheaply (right now, $100 for twin-sized at Wal-Mart). A layer of memory foam makes most berths markedly more comfortable. However, you will have to cut it to fit, and electric carving knives cut all kinds of foam very well.

DREMEL: Probably not a surprise to see that, but I didn't realize how much I would use it when I first started sailing. Among other things, it cuts PVC pipe extremely well, and PVC pipe can be handy for all sorts of things (not boat plumbing, however -- boats flex too much for rigid plumbing).

BARKEEPER'S FRIEND: (in the dry form and the spray form, but not the liquid). This product gets up all kinds of stains.

FORMULA 4-0-9: Does a great job of cleaning many things, but it won't get rust stains up (however, Barkeeper's Friend will).

SNATCH BLOCKS: Snatch blocks open to clasp the line it will be working, and can then be attached to all sorts of things, including any spot on a perforated toe rail and the base of stanchions (be careful about how much strain you put on your stanchions). Many people recommend keeping them out of sight when they're not being used as they are a tempting target. New ones cost around $170 and up, but I have gotten mine at marine flea markets for $20 - 30. They can be used for all sorts of things and can be incredibly useful in an emergency.

CONCENTRATED LIQUID BOULLON: It comes in several forms, including foil packs and small jars. You *can* use real boullon when cooking without having to store the leftovers in your finite refrigerated space.

MAYONNAISE: It enhances many dishes and sandwiches. It does not have to be refrigerated (read the label -- it even says that!) Mayonnaise actually has a high acid content and is inhospitable to salmonella. It isn't the mayonnaise that grows food poisoning bacteria -- it's the food it's mixed with. So *always* use a clean knife or spoon to scoop it out. By the way, refrigerate any left over pasta or rice -- or feed the crabs with it. Pasta grows salmonella very easily. But keep your jar of mayonnaise free of contamination and you can use it for months. The one I'm using now has been open for five months (including hot summer months). I learned this from my mother-in-law, who kept her mayonnaise, opened, in a cabinet. She was French, and when I questioned her about this, informed me rather archly that the French had invented mayonnaise and that she knew a bit about it (she did -- she studied cooking at the Cordon Bleu in Paris). 'Nuff said for me!

P-TOUCH LABEL MAKER: I label all my storage boxes. My top companionway step is actually a small storage box. Everything that goes in there has a "1" on it (made by the P-Touch, because those labels stick so well and last forever). 95% of the time, whatever tool I need is in that little box. I also have everything labeled that goes in my cockpit box. It makes it much easier to put things away. P-TOUCH labels are impervious to weather. I know someone who has had his headsail train track labeled for years with where the track should be for close-hauled, broad reach, etc. All the lines on my boom are labeled: topping lift, top reef, bottom reef, etc. My line clutches are labeled: spinnaker, headsail halyard, mainsail halyard, etc. This makes things much easier for people new to my boat. 

KNEE PADS: Once you have them, you'll keep them handy.

SAILING GLOVES: Don't give me that macho attitude that real sailors don't wear gloves! If "macho man" cuts his hand or gets a serious friction burn out of pride, he's still a handicapped crew member. Get gloves and wear them. I keep them in my "skipper's cockpit box" -- I'll write about that shortly -- so they're always handy. That way I always put them on. 

I would love to hear from other posters regarding things they have found useful enough on their boat to let them take up some of their finite storage space. I know this board can be hard to respond to. If you can't do that, just email me at

Rakuflames@gmail.com

I'll be glad to post it and give you the credit. I know I have lots to learn from you guys. Bring it on!

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Bugs!

It's a fact. Boats are havens for bugs. You know, the awful ones. The ones we whisper "roach" when we see them, right before we run around screaming.

I've had reason to do a little research on them, unfortunately. It turns out that they can live inside or outside. They're opportunistic. Now, anyone with any sense can look at a boat and see that with its dark, damp corners, it would be a haven for bugs. If you don't keep your food in bug-proof containers it's really just a matter of time. But I had done that. I grew up with that as a child and continued the practice all my life. I never even thought about it.

Several of my neighbors had also mentioned seeing them as well, and the timing was suspicious. The marina had just had to re-plumb the entire dock, and I think it disturbed some outdoor-living beasties. At least one male and female (or a female with eggs) decided my boat was a great place to move to.

Well, I'm nearly 68. I know it's Florida, but I grew up in Florida, and I've lived here since 2005, and I've never, ever had bugs ... until a couple of months ago. Here's the problem with bugs and boats -- there are many, many places for them to hide. You may not realize they're there as quickly as you might in a house.

Complicating things, I have a pet. We moved out and bombed the place. That has gotten rid of the occasional palmetto bug (who really don't want to be in your home or on your boat, and who do not eat things like the little crumbs you didn't see and didn't sweep up), but it did not faze these critters.

Plus, then I had to wash down the entire interior of the boat. Even if I hadn't felt that was necessary for me, cats rub up against everything and then lick their fur.

Naturally, when the first bomb didn't work, I did it again. Apparently I like difficult, repetitive chores.

I talked to an exterminator who said that spraying might keep them from coming aboard, but especially in a boat, with all its hiding places, it would not solve the problem. He suggested a paste that he places, exposed, in places the little critters are likely to go. I wasn't really comfortable with that. My cat rubs against every new thing to put her scent on it. I didn't want exposed poison on the boat.

So before doing that, I went to the store and I found RAID "large roach baits." this is a paste poison but in a container that would protect the cat. I put lots down in every conceivable place.

That solved the problem quite rapidly and effectively, I'm happy to report.

So here's the

LESSON LEARNED:

Be proactive. Get something like RAID's "Large baits," and put them out *before* you have a problem. I wish I had, but this boat will be protected from now on. There are a couple of brands of this type of bait, and switching them occasionally might be a good idea. Just assume the beasties are out there, looking to make your boat their home ... because they are!

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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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A (Different) Dolphin's Tail

 

May 6, 2013

      Dolphins sleep with one eye open.

I wish this had happened to me, but these people belong to my sailing club, and if I claim it as my story, I’m gonna be busted.

They lived aboard their sailboat in the same marina as me, two slips down. They report that one morning about 4AM they were awakened by a loud sound reverberating through the hull of their boat. For those of you who haven’t slept on a sailboat, if you flipped it upside down and took the keel off, it would be shaped somewhat like a bell. Things that bump into the hull make magnified sound. So when their hull rang like a bell, he grabbed a flashlight and got up to see what was going on.

What he found was a group of dolphins hunting sheepshead. Sheepshead are fish with hard beaks for mouths. They hang around in marinas and eat the barnacles that grow on the seawalls and the pilings. So what happened?

His boat was in a dolphin’s way, so when the dolphin needed the boat to out of his way, he just whapped the boat with his tail! Those dolphins are very strong, and the boat moved.

The dolphin hunted in the marina for several nights before moving on.

That is the biggest noise I’ve heard of animals making on boat hulls … but not the only one. The first marina I lived in was salt water. When I went to sleep in the v berth (the bow of the boat) in the summer, I could hear faint clicking sounds -- little shrimp eating the algae off the hull. Thanks, guys! Then I moved my boat to a marina in a river six miles from the Gulf. Now I frequently hear louder clicking, day and night. That sound is crabs – eating the algae off the hull. Thanks again, guys!

The Day I Moved Aboard

     Or, ever have that funny feeling you’ve forgotten something?

So there I was, standing at the dock, a cat carrier in each hand. I’d planned for this day, and two days earlier, had bought the 31’ Hunter I was going to live on. It was November 15, 2010 and I was about to either dazzle or confuse everyone I knew.

I was certain I had thought of everything. I had prepared. I researched living aboard extensively. I knew some people who either had lived aboard a sailboat or were currently living that way, and I quizzed them until their eyes glazed over.

Meanwhile, I bought three plastic storage bins. I put in them the clothes I thought I absolutely had to have. For the next three months, those plastic bins were my closet. If I wanted to wear something that wasn’t in one of the bins, something had to come out (and stay out). So by the time I was ready to move aboard, I had my wardrobe whittled down to a manageable level.

Next, I took a hard look at what I was able to afford. I wanted a boat about 30’ long, because I thought that was the most I could sail safely by myself if caught in a storm. With my budget, I quickly realized that if I got a sound boat, it was unlikely to have a lot of amenities. So … I stopped using my refrigerator and started using an ice chest in the kitchen. I had a friend who lived on his boat without a refrigerator, so I knew it was possible. My sailing club membership includes ice and wasn’t far away, so ice wasn’t a budget-buster.

Finally, I found my boat, and took possession of it on Nov. 13, 2010! I rapidly moved the things I felt I could not live without: my collection of DVD’s, a few pots and pans, herbs and spices. The things I needed to take care of my two cats. Not much.

It didn’t hit me until I stepped into the cockpit with the cats: there was one very serious issue I hadn’t addressed – the possibility of seasickness! As I moved the cats into the cabin, it dawned on me: plenty of people who don’t get seasick in the cockpit get quite sick when they’ve gone below. And I had spent virtually all my time on sailboats in the cockpit. In the cockpit, I had only gotten seasick once, while anchored for five hours in extremely rough water. However, I was spectacularly sick. Many people who don’t normally get seasick do so in the cabin. What if I was one of those people? All my preparation and I didn’t know the answer to that question. I thought, “This may be a very short life style change!”

Fortunately, it turns out that I don’t get seasick in the cabin. Neither did the cats, but it was just pure luck.

LESSON LEARNED: if you’re going to live aboard, spend time in the cabin and make sure you can be comfortable on your boat -- everywhere on the boat.

And, given that one experience with mal de mer, I keep Bonine aboard. I take it if there’s any chance it’s going to be rough.