Oops -- What Do We Do Now?

I have some sailing friends who, like me, are newer sailors. They're working hard to improve their skills and split their time between improving their boat and sailing it.

They were out a couple of weeks ago when they suddenly had trouble with their roller furler. They were jybing, and I suspect the headsail wrapped around the furler. Jybes can be easy, but you have to keep control of the lines. Of course, a sheet can slip out of anyone's hands (gloves help, but ... stuff happens.)

So they did the logical thing. One stayed on the helm, and one went forward to straighten out the sail.

While they were doing that, they ran aground. Oops. Things tend to cascade like that.

What could they have done to avoid it?

Sometimes there's nothing you can do. One time as I was leaving a marina, my outboard died. It was a lowering tide, and I knew there was a shallow area just to starboard. Unfortunately there was a strong wind from the east. When the engine died, that wind had us solidly aground within five seconds. There was nothing we could have done.

However, in retrospect, my friends had some choices. Here's what I and others recommended to them for next time:

1) quickly check for lines in the water (a real possibility when the headsail is out of control)

2) start the engine

3) notice where you are before deciding what to do.

If they'd stopped to think about where they were, they would have known they were near shallow spots. A better option probably would have been to turn around and move to a place with room to work. The sail would flap around a bit, but that's not the end of the world. Engine power would keep the boat from "sailing crazy" while the headsail was tangled (the time this happened to me, the boat sailed in circles until I got it untangled).

What if you have a different problem, and you don't have power, or you can't steer? I told a story a week or so ago where someone ended up with a line wrapped around both the rudder and the propeller. They were in very deep water, but if you aren't, put the anchor down.

Your goal should be to prevent things from getting worse as well as solving the original problem. If you're lucky you may prevent one thing from leading to another and another and another ...

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Your Chart is Probably Out of Date--Updated

PS: I just spent the weekend with club friends in a little cove off the Manatee River. There's a very high spot shown on both paper and electronic charts that's supposed to only be 3.3' deep at mean low tide.

I had difficulty getting the anchor up, and in the process, according to my chart plotter my boat drifted all over that spot, but the chart plotter, which I checked frequently because I knew about that supposed bump, showed I never had less than 9..4' water to work in. There's another example of how wrong charts can be. Someone had told me with great confidence that this "bump" wouldn't change because there was no current in there, but of course, since it's on the south side of the river, a lot of storms will stir that water up. In any event, the bump seems to be gone. This is actually the most dramatic case of change I've come across so far.


I've shown pictures of floating buoys in a major channel in the Tampa Bay area before:

 

This photo faces east. This is Channel Marker #10 in the Sunshine Skyway Channel. You can see exposed sand beyond. Channel Markers #8 and #12 are significantly farther east than this one is. The Channel is shoaling, or filling in with loose sand, at this spot. I took this picture some months ago. Since then I've seen a sailboat aground, in the channel, north of this spot. In addition, to the south, another piling has been taken down and another floating buoy moved significantly west. The eastern edge of this channel is starting to get a bit zig-zaggy!

I ran lightly aground between markers 2 and 4 a couple of weeks ago. We had a lower than average low tide, partly influenced by the 25 mph north wind that apparently blew a fair amount of Tampa Bay's water to Venezuela. I got off fairly easily; sand that has just moved hasn't had a chance to compact yet and gives way fairly easily. I've also "skipped bottom" at other spots in the channel.

I don't know when the powers that be will get around to redredging this channel, but probably it takes a while. Meanwhile, what do I have to go by? One thing is for sure: my chart still shows both channel markers in their old places. So does my chart plotter.

Meanwhile, we've had a run of unusually low tides here. The lowest point doesn't typically go below mean low tide (except for that one very windy day), but we're not having full high tides. Since the typical distance from low to high tide around here is only two feet, when the tide only rises one foot "high tide" isn't a lot of help in very shallow places.

But the problem with charts and chart plotters lagging behind real life is more complicated than just where the channel markers are. At the southern end of the Skyway Bridge Channel, it appears that there is deeper water -- 8' - 10' -- just to the west of Channel Marker 2. So it would *appear* that one could just bypass the southern entrance by going west of it, and then enter the channel past that shoaling spot.

However, if the channel is filling in to that degree, perhaps the area to the west of it is filling in as well.

When faced with such situations, local knowledge can be a great help. Local fishermen may know, or local dockmasters, charter captains, etc. You can get on the radio and see if you can raise someone. or put someone, preferably someone with experience in shallow water, on the bow. Proceed very slowly, so if you do run aground, your boat's speed doesn't make it worse. 

For now, I'm just avoiding that patch of water at low tide. I'm not going to go through there at night by myself unless I have a full-out high tide, and even then it wouldn't be my first choice, because being aground in a narrow channel at night is not exactly an ideal situation. 

So don't trust your chart plotter 100%. Don't completely trust the routes you've plotted on it unless it's all through known deep water. Keep your eyes open, and reduce your speed at night. Keep a log of such instances so you're not left scratching your head next time, thinking, "Now where was that high spot?" You don't want it under your keel!

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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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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!

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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!”

Chart Plotter or No Chart Plotter?

       Or, There’s more than one way to get from here to there.

May 12, 2013

 

On sailing forums online, you’ll sometimes see heated debates over whether people should use chart plotters or not. The people arguing in favor of them point out their compactness and ease of use. It can be hard to find a place to spread out a chart in the cockpit, and on smaller boats, even the so-called “chart table” in the cabin won’t be big enough. I use mine as an addition to the galley.

The arguments of those opposed to their use pretty much boil down to “reliance on electronics makes you stupid.” There are all sorts of varieties of those arguments, some descending into the absurd (“What if all the satellites went out at once? What would you do then? Huh? HUH???”)

Here’s a picture of mine. The model is Garmin 441S (the S stands for “sounder,” because you can connect a depth sounder to it, and I strongly recommend that.)

If you look at the picture, you’ll see a representation of my boat as she approaches the entrance to a channel. It shows a line for me to follow, where the channel markers are, and the depths of the waters surrounding my boat. It shows the path I’ve chosen because I’ve saved the entrance to that channel as a “waypoint,” and told the chart potter to guide me there. What’s not to love?

Well, a couple of things. First of all, as you get all that detail, you lose the bigger picture. Without that bigger picture, you might be entering the wrong channel, just as an example of one thing that can go wrong. For another, the chart plotter is only as good as the information you put into it, and it is fairly complicated to learn how to put the waypoints in. It’s easy to make a mistake entering the numbers. So unless you’re just a little bit anal and double check what you’ve put in, you could end up going somewhere you didn’t intend.

Second, although they will shortly be coming out with a chart plotter that remedies this problem, the chart plotter I have will cheerfully steer me onto a sandbar if I don't put in a path around it, a fairly complicated thing to do, or a reef (they can really do a lot of damage to your boat), or through a restricted area (where I live you will get to meet either the Coast Guard or the Air Force, depending on where you’ve wandered). In other words, until the new generation comes out, they can’t pick a safe route for you. You can use your chart plotter badly and end up in a pickle.

Third, they can malfunction. My chart plotter started telling me that I was always at latitude 32º, which runs roughly through the middle of Georgia, while I live near the midline of Florida. Every waypoint I had saved came up as being at latitude 32º. I took it back to the store, and they told me it needed a software update. So if you get a chart plotter, check the manufacturer’s website from time to time. Your chart plotter has to be able to talk the same language as the signals it’s receiving, and sometimes that will mean an update.

That takes us back to paper charts. You really should have paper charts of any waters you’re going to sail. You can get the big picture, study it in detail, note where the high spots and reefs are, and get a global feeling for where you’re going. You can pick your waypoints by latitude and longitude on the big chart, and then enter them that way on the chart plotter (as I said, double check afterwards and make sure they’re right.)

However, you can zoom in and zoom out with your chart plotter. The more you zoom in, the less you have of the bigger picture, but the more detail you have about the immediate area you’re in. You can’t zoom in on a paper chart. You can even hook the chart plotter up to your computer and get a larger view if you want (personally, I don’t risk having my computer in the cockpit – too many things can happen to it, from a drink being spilled on it to having someone step on it.)

The paper chart, for instance, will show you where two channels intersect. The chart plotter will not only show you that, but show you where your boat is as well, so you know exactly where to turn. You wouldn’t think channel intersections would be confusing, but on the water, they can be difficult to sort out, especially when you first start sailing.

On this chart plotter, the more shallow water is darker, and the deeper water is lighter, showing very clearly where the intersection is. I’m just about to make a 90º turn to port at this point in order to turn into the east-west channel. You can also see the depth of the water under my boat, which at 18.6’ is a clear indication that I’m in the channel.

If you look to the northwest of the boat, you’ll see some green. It looks like an island, but it’s not. That’s the chart plotter letting me know that the water in that area goes from very deep to very shallow, very rapidly (I mentioned that in another article; here’s a visual representation of it). In rare extreme tides, that area will be above the water, which is why it’s green. While you’ll see that area as shallow on the paper chart, seeing where my boat is puts that danger right in my face. Suppose I were very close to that spot? I might not have time to look at the paper chart and estimate (which is all I would be able to do) how close I was to it.

The chart plotter can tell you a lot of things. It will give you your speed over ground, or the current time, or what time it estimates you will get to the waypoint you’ve selected. These are all choices you make in the menus, and learning to wade through the menus will take some time and dedication. By zooming in and out, you will get all the information on the paper chart. In addition it will have easy access to information about tides and currents.

So where do I sit on this debate? Obviously I’m not opposed to the use of chart plotters, but I think most people who argue about them miss one of their best features: they can really help you learn how to read a paper chart. (Of course, the people saying that chart plotters are crutches for lazy sailors have been sailing a long time, and, I think, don’t remember how complicated it is to learn all this stuff.) I recommend having a crew member take the latitude and longitude off the chart plotter and on to the paper chart every half hour, so you can mark your course. You can use a grease pencil and remove the marks when you’re done if the chart is waterproof.

You’ll learn a lot about using your paper chart from this practice. In addition, in your cruising log, note the time as well as the latitude and longitude. Then, if your chart plotter should go out (and that does happen), you’ll have a good idea of where you are, and a good idea of how fast you’re moving across the water. With that information, if the chart plotter should go out, you’ll be able to use the paper chart much more effectively. (Update: someone on Cruisers Forum suggested including the compass heading in the log also, and I think that's a good idea.) You’ll be able to estimate the distance you’ve traveled and make better guesses about where you are.

So, my opinion is to use paper chart and chart plotter together, but intelligently. You do that, and your electronics won’t make you stupid. They will make you a more highly skilled sailor.

Do You Want Your Keel Under the Boat or IN the Boat?

     Or, the coast is not always your friend!

In rough water, or in rough weather, you need to move away from the shore. I’m not kidding. This is serious stuff.

I know. It’s counter-intuitive. Most newer sailors want to stay close to shore, and especially in a storm, which is scarier than sailing in calm weather. A lot of newer sailors worry about falling out of the cockpit when the boat heels, and shallow water feels safer. How many times did your mother tell you not to go into the deep end of the swimming pool when you were little?

But you’re not in a swimming pool. You’re on a sailboat. You’re not going to fall out of the cockpit (even in a bad storm there are very good ways to keep that from happening, honest!) And, in your swimming pool, if a storm develops, you just get out of the pool and go inside. It isn’t quite that simple on a sailboat in a storm.

Storms are not static, and they’re not completely predictable. They can pop up on what seemed like a perfect day to sail. They can move or remain stationary. They can expand, contract, and even rotate. They can join other storms. They can develop right over you. The point of this is that you can’t necessarily predict where the wind will come from (unless you are a very unusual beginning sailor with lots of weather forecasting experience), and the fact is that the wind direction can shift on you during that storm.

Why does that matter? It matters because you need to keep your boat in deep water during a storm. You don’t want to be caught near what is called a “lee shore.” That doesn’t mean the storm is on the other side of the island. It means the wind is blowing you toward the shore. The wind is to the windward side, and the shore is to the leeward side, of your boat. The wind is pushing your boat toward shore. Even if you don’t have a lee shore right now, the waves may be pushing you toward the shore, because it takes a while for the water to change direction after a wind change. In other words, the wind may be pushing you in one direction while the waves push you in another (and in shallow water, that situation is a real mess!) Either way, it’s not an ideal situation. And, you can’t assume that the wind direction you have now will remain where it is. A wind shift could suddenly put you next to a lee shore, and you might have a hard time getting out to deeper water. Better to move there sooner rather than later.ß

So then, think about scary things you’ve seen about boats: they can break, and then they sink – or have you not seen the movie “Titanic?” Water doesn’t break boats -- "Poseidon" is a fiction movie. Boats hitting hard things break boats.

Don’t break the boat. You avoid that by staying away from hard things that can break it, like icebergs … and the ocean’s bottom. In deep water, the ocean (or lake) bottom is farther away from your keel. That’s what you want.

Where I live, the danger near the shore is generally shallow water. (It’s even worse in some other places, where the shallow water includes hidden, big, sharp rocks.) When the water gets rough, a number of things happen in shallow water.

·      The waves tend to break. That makes rough water even rougher.

·      The waves tend to come closer together. That makes the water not only rougher, but harder to manage as well. The water can even get very confused, much like a giant, front-loading washing machine. Do you really want to try to pilot your boat through a giant, front-loading washing machine? No, I didn’t think so. The waves will be easier to handle, and you and your crew will be much more comfortable, away from shore.

·      The waves tend to push you toward ever more shallow water. If you have any other problems – and you may well have other problems by this point, because things often go wrong in clusters (see my personal experience story, “Out of the Bathtub!”) – it will be much harder now to move your boat back out to deeper water.

·      Now you’re really in trouble, because the waves have been bouncing your boat up and down, and other things have gone wrong, and now it’s all happening in shallow water. I know someone this happened to, and the breaking waves banged his boat against the bottom in the shallow water, and  drove the keel right through the bottom of his boat. His boat sank in four feet of water. No one was hurt, but the boat was totaled.

·      Many boats have unprotected rudders, and in these circumstances, your rudder may end up broken, and then you won’t be able to steer. Three guesses how I know …

So what do you do? Turn your boat away from the shore – and before all these things start to happen (using at least a 45º angle through the waves – experiment in calmer water to see how she goes through best, and you'll probably find that 45º isn't enough). If you’re scared, tell everyone to put on PFDs (if you’re scared, you should be more scared in shallow water). Employ all your other safety devices – tethers, drag line, etc. It’s very unlikely that you’ll need any of it, but you’ll feel better, and feel more in control. What you don't want is for the waves to hit the side of your boat. That will be the roughest, and the scariest, way to ride it out. If you have to make a big turn, do it between waves so you don't get caught with the waves "abeam," or hitting the side of the boat.

If there is someone on your boat who is highly experienced, don’t be ashamed to turn the helm over to him or her.

LESSON LEARNED: There’s a lot more you need to know about sailing your boat in rough water, even as a newer sailer, and you really do need to know it. Buy yourself a copy of Sailing For Dummies, and do it today. Then read it very carefully. It is an outstanding book for newer sailors, and as you’ll see in my story about the time this happened to me, it really helped me. I did turn the boat out to sea, over the protests of the equally inexperienced person with me, and it’s a good thing, because we did have a cluster of failures. But we didn’t get thrown into the water, no one got hurt, and we didn’t break the boat. That’s a good outcome.

Rough water doesn’t have to be a crisis. If you think there’s any chance of rough water, and any chance that you will get seasick, take something like Bonine in a timely way. Encourage your crew to do so as well. One or more people on the boat incapacitated by sea sickness is one of those things that can contribute to a “cluster of things that go wrong.” If you get caught in a difficult situation, you need everyone able to help out. It sounds trivial, but seasickness can completely incapacitate a person -- and even turn into a true medical emergency from dehydration.

Should you just try to get to safe harbor? Well, I’m assuming you paid enough attention to the weather that you know this is only a thunderstorm, and not a hurricane you thought you could just dodge. But thunderstorms can move at up to 60mph, and I’m pretty sure your sailboat can't go that fast. If you try to get into a safe harbor, there’s a very good chance that you will only succeed in putting yourself close to shore, or even worse, in a channel in very rough water. If your boat has an outboard motor, it’s an even worse choice, because an outboard won’t be any help in confused waters, and in fact you could ruin it as it keeps bobbing out of the water with no access to cooling. 

However, that's all a judgment call. If the storm is just forming and is currently far away, that's the time to head for safe harbor (which could just be a little cove sheltered from the likely direction of the wind). If you do that, put an anchor out -- two, if you have them (and you should have two). The storm might be parallel to you at the moment. I say don't do it, but friends did it in Biscayne Bay when I was on their boat. We headed in the moment the skipper saw signs of a storm forming -- he saw gathering haze and didn't gamble. We got in just before a really big storm hit. 

Riding out a storm may not be fun. You may get wet – but it’s just water. You may get seasick, but you won’t be sick forever. The ride may be rough, but the storm will end. You don’t want to be caught in a pounding surf with a keel under you and crashing waves abeam, with no way to turn the boat. Get your boat into deeper water in a timely way.

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ß This is where you have to have that “I’m the skipper” attitude, because you cannot allow debates over whether or not to move the boat away.  Moving the boat away from shore may upset or scare someone on your boat. But it is your boat, and your insurance, and you are responsible for the boat and passengers’ safety – not the scared person who doesn’t know about lee shores in a storm yet. STICK TO YOUR GUNS and don’t allow a debate. YOU are skipper; YOU make the crucial decisions for your boat unless you are CERTAIN the other person knows more than you. Even then, I would still move the boat away from shore. It won’t hurt anything to do that.