My Current Storm Strategy

"Climbing (sailing) is like fun, only different."
     Tom Pattey, Scottish ice climber

When I first started sailing, I had a storm strategy. That’s good; everyone who sails should have a storm strategy.

My first plan (just avoid storms) was completely unrealistic (in two ways). That’s bad. See my three-part entry, “Out of the Bathtub!” That wasn’t even a storm – just more wind and waves than typical. We were in 5’ waves, and I was completely unprepared. I noticed on the news tonight that 8’ waves are predicted on the Gulf tonight. There’s nothing in the visible observation of local weather to suggest this. Locally, it’s cloudy with occasional light drizzle. However, to the north of us a cold front is moving south. I’m guessing now, but wondering if maybe north of here, weather is just pushing waves southward. The weather report didn’t give wave direction, and I haven’t checked yet.

It doesn’t really matter, because both weather and weather-related events, such as waves, can’t always be predicted (see my entry “Storm!”, where a significant storm seemingly came out of nowhere.)

In my first wind-and-wave event, I was woefully unprepared, particularly because of my reefing system that was so inadequate and dangerous that it couldn’t be safely used. That led to a cascade of ever-worsening events.

My second storm strategy was “just drop all the sails and motor.” That is also a significantly flawed strategy in my opinion.

First, my first sailboat had an outboard engine. In the waves we had it would have been impossible to run the engine because the engine would have kept coming out of the water, denying it cooling. On my next boat, the engine proved to be completely undependable. Now, with a dependable engine, I need to protect it. I don’t want to operate it if the boat heels more than 10º, because after 10º the oil pump cannot adequately pump oil through the engine.

The reality is that a sail plan in a really significant storm can’t and won’t be that simple, and it partly depends on your individual boat as well as your experience, and your experience with that boat.

For instance, my boat is particularly sensitive to being in balance -- that is, having the size of the headsail and the size of the mainsail matched so they work well together without allowing the boat to become overpowered (too much sail up for the conditions). I discussed this today with someone who has the same boat I do but vastly more experience, and he agrees.

For my boat, the hull shape is important. Its fat stern tapering to skinny bow makes the boat “bow tender.” In other words, the bow is particularly sensitive to wind and waves compared to some other boats.

Now, my friend already knows what I’m going to mention next. I’m still sorting it out because I haven’t been in a storm in this boat in some time and have learned a lot about how she handles since then. The first step for me would be to see where the coast is. If it’s close (I’m largely a coastal cruiser), getting away from or staying away from the coast has to be a top priority. You have to look at the chart closely and account for all possible obstacles, not just the shore itself.

The next concern will be how the hull goes through the biggest and most common waves. Unfortunately, waves don’t march like well-disciplined little sailors. While most may come from one direction, there will be contrary ones, and size will also vary. They are the concern of the helmsman. Right now, the current trend should be studied. In shallower water, the waves will be more confused and harder or impossible to predict. But you’re going to get out of shallow water as fast as you can.  :)

Once a tentative point of sail has been chosen (based on conditions, not destination – destination sailing is over for now) – it’s time to set the sails to help the boat through those waves as smoothly as possible. Wind direction has to be considered. You should have a good idea of where to put your sails, but try tweaking them for best result. “Harden them up” – that is, do things to take as much belly out as possible, such as tightening your outhaul (pulls the sail back toward the end of the boom) and the leech line (tightens the leech of the sail and helps take curve out of it). Why do that? Because a curved sail catches more wind than a flat one.

If you have a traveler, check its position. You probably won’t want to be on a close reach (often called “beating” with good reason), but you probably don’t want to be broadside to the winds either. Someplace in between will probably be best for the winds, but it may have to be a compromise between the wind and the hull, as the waves may not be from the same direction as the wind. You may want your traveler halfway between center and the end of the lee side. That gives you the option of using the traveler to quickly spill wind out of the mainsail in a gust. Simply release the upwind traveler line and let the traveler move all the way to the end. The sail will instantly become less efficient, and that’s exactly what you want.

Tweak your headsail as well. If this sail has height to it (my ATN Gale Sail is fairly short), you might want to use the position of the sheet leads to “twist” the top of the headsail. While sometimes undesirable, it is one strategy for depowering the headsail, because wind will spill ineffectively out of that twisted top.

The headsail can also be hardened up, by pulling the working sheet as tightly as possible. Many headsails have leech lines. Try to get forward to tighten that before any significant wind hits your boat.

All of this is a matter of judgment and balance. You will have your hardest time with it in your first storm, because you will have to test everything as you go, and make a number of adjustments. In subsequent storms you’ll know much more about what works on your boat. 

Is this my final storm strategy? Of course not.

Should you copy it? Don't be silly -- I haven't tried it yet. I'm absolutely certain it won't all work equally well. I have done all these things, but not all at the same time in a storm.

I'll post when I've done that. It's Florida. Inevitably, it will be tested. 

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Chart Plotter or No Chart Plotter? Update ...

     Or, Ooops -- I Just Ran Aground in the Center of the Channel!

Last Thursday I was bringing my boat through the Skyway Channel. At the south end, the piling for Channel Marker #2 had been removed, and there was a floating red nun with a 2 on it in its place -- or more accurately, halfway into the channel. I showed a picture of a similar change in that channel some time ago at Marker #10.

However, the combination of low tide and a lot of north wind had made things even worse, and I ran aground, fortunately in soft sand as it was still drifting, right by that floating nun.

The wind was to my back and there was plenty of wave action, and combining that with careful use of the engine, I was able to get off. It was dicey, though, because apparently even my rudder caught a couple of times, judging by how the wheel acted.

Now, on the chart -- and on my chart plotter -- there appears to be much deeper water -- 10 - 12 feet at low tide -- just west of that part of the channel. It would appear to be a better way in and out.

But here's the problem. Obviously paper charts aren't updated unless new surveys are done *and* you buy the updated chart ... and your chart plotter is just as dated. It uses the same data.

So what do you use?

Your eyes. Shallow water looks different than deep water. I don't think there's anything I could have done that day, but if the tide had been a little higher I could have probably visually picked my way through that spot. In such a situation, if you have another person with you, put him or her on the bow, if possible with a depth line. I'll show mine soon. By the time your depth sounder reads water too shallow, your keel has either found it or will in the next second or so.

Inch your way through.

This was a potentially bad situation -- I lost my rudder once before to shallow, rough water, and I was in a real bottleneck in the channel. If a power boat had come through there with a big wake, first of all the skipper might have assumed I was moving, and second of all a big wake could have banged my rudder around. I really don't want to go there again! But because the day was so blustery, few boats were out. In the five minutes it took me to pick my way through that 100 feet or so, I didn't encounter any other boats.

Always be watching for shallow water, no mater what the chart says, and no matter what the electronics say. By the way, my depth sounder said I was in 20.6' of water while the depth line said 4'. I draw 4 1/2', and I know which measure I believe. Either this is another sign of my chartplotter malfunctioning or somehow the container that holds my transducer needs more fluid. That's easy to check, and I'll be doing that, but meanwhile, this is more proof that while useful, electronics are not the whole answer for a sensible sailor.

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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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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!

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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!”

Go Slow and Aim for Something Cheap!

     Or, TURN, boat, oh please TURN … oh dear!

When I bought my first boat, my little 25’ Irwin, I fell in love with her immediately. Even though I knew next to nothing about sailboats at the time, she had one trait I really liked.She was really, really skinny. That, I believed, would make it easier to get in and out of the slip … without hitting anyone else. Hitting another boat was big on my list of things I never, ever wanted to do. In fact, one of the pieces of advice I was given as a beginning sailor was the title of this little essay – “Go slow and aim for something cheap!” Of course, my goal was to aim for open water.

I took someone with me to look at this boat before I bought her, someone who knew a lot more about sailboats than I did. The fact is that for a really cheap sailboat, this boat I ended up naming Silver Girl was really in pretty good shape. Most of the standing rigging was in good shape, she didn’t need a bunch of expensive repairs, and the hull and deck were sound. The centerboard didn’t work, but I was assured that this didn’t really matter. I took her.

The one thing she lacked was an outboard motor. She was designed for an outboard motor, with a cut-down transom. But the man who sold her to me had bought her for the outboard motor. I said to the person with me, “I’m concerned about getting a dependable outboard suitable for a sailboat.” As most of you know, sailboats require longer shafts than an outboard used to push a fishing boat around, and good used ones can be very hard to find. He said, “I know where I can get you one at a good price.”

I had one question about that motor: “Is it reliable?” The answer was yes. He was confident that the engine would be completely reliable. So I took the boat, we borrowed someone’s outboard to move it, and brought it back to BCYC.

As it turns out, different people have different definitions of what “reliable” means. To me, it meant that the engine would start, and keep running until you turn it off. To the person who sold it to me, “reliable” apparently meant, “On the outside, it closely resembles an outboard motor.”

This was an old engine that hadn’t been properly maintained and had to be finessed just to start. As it turned out, the rubber bushing around the propeller was old and worn out. When you first started the engine, the bushing was too hard to do its job and the propeller would not spin, or spin quite ineffectively. Then as the engine warmed up, the rubber warmed up and would bunch up in a couple of places enough to get the propeller spinning enough to actually move the boat. THAT was the time to leave the slip. Unfortunately, if something delayed your exit, the rubber continued to warm, and then it would smooth out – and once again the propeller would not turn effectively.

Unfortunately, to aim for anything – whether it’s the channel out of the marina or “something cheap” – the boat has to be moving. If the boat isn’t moving, you have no steering. On this particular day, I didn’t get out of the slip promptly. As I finally pulled out, that rubber bushing flattened out, and the engine stopped pushing the boat. No steering. Right in front of me, a beautiful million-dollar trimaran from South Africai

The owner really was very gracious about the grapefruit-sized dent my bow pulpit put in his beautiful vessel. I paid him for the damage and a little extra to take his wife out to lunch for his inconvenience.

LESSON LEARNED: you cannot just will a boat to turn. It has to be moving! Don’t waste your money on an old, worn out motor. Just accept that if you’re buying a sailboat that uses an outboard, you need a good outboard motor, or it will fail you, and at the worst possible time. Also, you really want that centerboard to work. It helps the boat go where you want her to go sometimes.