Do you REALLY have towing insurance?

A couple of days ago I wrote about some friends who ran aground while trying to solve a roller furler problem. I wish that the roller furler, followed by running aground, had been the end of their grief, but unfortunately it was not.

I won't name their insurance company because it isn't my goal here to promote one insurance company over another. But it is a lesson in reading the fine print.

My friends couldn't get their boat off the grounding, but their insurance covered towing by the standard towing companies, so they called Boat US, who had no trouble getting them off.

However, the bill was $1,000, which they had to pay upfront and then get reimbursed by their insurance company. They knew that and were not upset by that.

However, that "towing coverage" includes a $500 deductible, so they're only going to get $500 back. That they're not quite so thrilled about.

My car has similar towing insurance -- only worse, really. It covers eight miles, or to the closest Subaru dealership (the brand of my car) -- which ever is shorter. Fortunately, if I want to be towed a little farther the cost doesn't nearly approach the $500 my friends will have to swallow for their boat tow.

Read your insurance policy carefully. My personal recommendation is that you not only get Boat US towing insurance but that you get their best package. I had to be towed about ten days ago because of dead batteries. They towed me to the club, where I had the boat looked at. The great thing about Boat US's best package, which I have, is that if the boat couldn't have been fixed at the club, they would have towed me again, either to my home slip or to a boat yard where they could have fixed the boat. (I was lucky, by the way. I was afraid the alternator had gone bad since all three batteries had died within a couple of days even though the engine had been used a lot, but it turned out to just be coincidence. The alternator is fine.)

Anyone can run aground. If you have a sailboat in waters like Florida, it's not if -- it's when. You will run aground.

My friends now have Boat US towing insurance, and I urge all sailors to do so. Any number of things can happen that could disable your boat even if groundings aren't common where you are. This advice isn't just for beginners, either, but then I have no sympathy for the macho idea that one should never, ever turn the engine on. If I can't use my motor to get back into my slip, I'm not going to try to sail it in through a blind entrance, a narrow entry way, and a long fairway, counting on being able to use the wind in four different directions without hitting anytbing. I'm going to call Boat US. Then if they hit something it's their fault, and I do like that.

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Storm!

      Or, You can't see over the horizon ...

Seven weeks ago last Sunday (mid-September), we had a heck of a storm here. I was up at Boca Ciega Yacht Club (BCYC) sitting on the patio, watching sailing students out on the little 16.5’ Catalinas, their first time on the water. Their instructors were teaching them to do the most basic things – notice where the wind was coming from, steering with a tiller, and tacking.

Now, BCYC is careful about the weather when we have sail school. The Catalinas are far more stable than most instructional boats because they have full-sized fin keels. However, they can’t be reefed, and are easily overpowered by what would be moderate wind on a larger boat (we send students in when we see sustained wind of 15 mph or more, and actively encourage members to not take the boats out on windy days as well).

But this was a beautiful mid-September afternoon, and “storm season” (not hurricane season) was just about over. Except … September was exceptionally warm this year, more like August.

The prediction for that Sunday was a 30% chance of rain. There was no prediction for particularly bad weather. But it’s Florida, and when it’s 90º on the coast, it is often 95º inland. Very often we get a sea breeze that forms in the afternoon from the west, which hits the stronger prevailing east wind coming off the Atlantic and across that hot interior. Thunderstorms can be the result. Two walls of wind colliding with lots of heat and humidity often means thunderstorms. However, they typically form at least a little inland from the coast, especially by September.

This day was going to be different.

There were probably 15 people on the patio. The “Waterfront Director” is the person who makes the final decision about whether or not students should be called in due to weather, but none of us saw any signs of trouble … except for one man. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me that day, but we had a similar weather pattern the next day, so I took my camera up to BCYC the next day like a storm chaser, hoping to get lucky – and I did.

This first picture is very like what we saw that Sunday, a little before 4PM: clouds, but relatively formless, and not threatening-looking at all. They kind of looked like cotton candy.

Innocent-looking "cotton candy" clouds. Only one person realized they
were actually "blow off" from a huge storm just out of sight over the horizon.

Only one person on the patio looked at the clouds suspiciously. He went to the club’s computer and checked the weather radar. The radar (which you can get on your cell phone if you’re close to the coast) showed a massive gathering of angry-looking red and orange. I couldn't take a picture of the radar on Sunday, but I saw it, and it was huge, moving west and bearing down on both Pinellas and Manatee County – and just over the horizon -- out of view on land. The clouds we could see from the patio were pretty. The radar, however, was scary.

He and the Waterfront Director talked, and they quickly called the student boats in. We got all the students in ten minutes before a wall of wind of at least 40 mph hit us. We would have had five student boats out in a terrible storm if one person hadn’t realized that those sweet fluffy clouds we were looking at weren’t sweet at all – they were an alarm warning.

Here are photographs I took of the next day's storm. First I’ll show you what was happening on the radar. Each picture was taken less than five minutes apart, so on Monday, as on the previous Sunday, we had a rapidly building storm. It didn’t cover as much geography as the one the day before had – but it could have.

Rapidly after seeing the first innocent-looking “cotton candy” clouds, we saw something like this:

Still not terribly threatening looking, but it rapidly (and I mean, within minutes) developed into something like this (actually, all of these pictures would have been more ominous on Sunday):

And then this:

See how the “cotton candy” clouds are still there in the background? But they’re higher now. You don’t have to be a meteorologist to see that you’re looking at turbulent air. Turbulent air and sailboats? Not the best combination!

The storm was rapidly building. Within two minutes, the sky looked like this:

Those are clouds to pay attention, to, aren’t they? They’re well organized, and growing both vertically and horizontally. At this point, you would be checking weather radar if you had it available to you. Here’s what you need to know about weather radar: the images you see may be 15 minutes old, and when faced with a rapidly growing and intensifying storm, data that is 15 minutes old may be misleading. It may not yet be showing you that rapid intensification. Your eyes and your senses may be much more valuable at this time. By now, you should be preparing for a possible storm, because that storm may move toward you, and even if it doesn't do that directly, it may expand to the point that it envelops you.

Actually, we should have been on high alert from the first glimpse of the “cotton candy” clouds. Why? Because they represented a CHANGE in the weather. Along with an unexpected change in wind direction, temperature or force, an unexpected change in the clouds should get – and keep – your attention.

Within a few minutes the storm was nearly on top of us, and the sky looked more like this. Monday, however, BCYC was on the edge of the storm. Sunday we were in the thick of it, and there were no patches of blue sky showing. The wind was starting to pick up significantly.

From the radar on Monday, it was clear that the bulk of the storm today was going to hit south, in Manatee County, so I went south and crossed the Skyway Bridge. Approaching the Skyway Bridge, this is what I saw:

The wind was gusty, although not as bad as it had been the day before. This storm was smaller and not as bad as the one on Sunday, but you wouldn’t want to be out unprepared in this one, either.

Something should jump out at you at this point: there are no waves. You must be thinking, “What is she talking about? That’s just rain. You’ll get wet, but it’s not a crisis.” You’ve probably seen descriptions of how to judge the strength of the wind by looking at the surface of the water. For instance, at around 12 mph, white caps start to form. By the time the wind is up to 15ph, you’ll see a lot of whitecaps.

Except.

It takes a while for the waves to form. When a storm is rapidly forming, the wave development will lag behind the wind. This storm, as well as the one the day before, grew rapidly, and the wind on Monday, which I estimated to have 30 – 35 mph winds, was plenty strong enough to concern any newer sailor, even though it wasn't as bad as the day before. Monday's storm also didn't last nearly as long as Sunday's did.

Another thing you may have been told is that these storms pop up in Florida but don’t stick around very long. That can be true (see my story, “Oh Dorothy!” for an example of strong but short-lived storms).

However, the Sunday storm was different. It kept growing, and reforming, and re-strengthening, and here’s an example. Two members of BCYC, well-experienced sailors, and another couple who were just along for the ride, were about four miles out on the Gulf of Mexico when the Sunday storm hit the coast. They were trying to return to Gulfport, but their boat’s engine could make no headway against the storm, and they had their hands full managing the boat. Their friends could not be much help.

At 11PM they were still caught in the storm. They were exhausted, and wet, and hungry, and they threw in the towel and called for a tow. The towboat was able to fight the waves and the wind and get them safely home. It is not typical for afternoon storms to last that long – or, for that matter, to develop with so little warning. But it does happen.

So what are you to do?

What you should NOT do is print out this article and look for these kinds of clouds. You won’t always see “cotton candy” clouds before a storm. What you should watch for is changes in the weather that might be an early warning system. In addition, you should tune your radio to the weather channel. A weather advisory was put out very early for the Sunday storm, and there’s a lot you can do to prepare for a storm, even when you only have a few minutes. See the accompanying article, “Ten Minutes to Act,” for things you might get done if you have ten minutes warning before a storm hits. 

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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 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!”

What to Do When Your Boat Runs Aground

 

     Or, If I’d only had one more day’s experience …

DISCLAIMER: THE SUGGESTIONS ON THIS BLOG (ALL ENTRIES, NOT JUST THIS ONE), ARE NOT INTENDED TO TELL ANY ONE INDIVIDUAL WHAT TO DO IN ANY SPECIFIC SITUATION. THEY ARE SIMPLY BASED ON MY EARLY EXPERIENCES SAILING, AND SHOULD ONLY BE A PART OF INFORMATION ANY SAILOR GATHERS ABOUT SAILING. FINAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ACTIONS TO TAKE OR NOT TAKE ALWAYS LAY WITH THE SKIPPER OF THE BOAT IN QUESTION.

_______

April 25, 2013

     "Only two sailors, in my experience, never ran aground.
One never left port and the other was an atrocious liar."

Don Bamford

It’s just a fact. If you sail, you’re going to run aground. Now, if you’re sailing a little boat with a centerboard, or a small boat like the 16.5’ Catalinas, you may be able to just pull the centerboard up, or get out and push the boat free (put an anchor down before leaving the boat, since you’re trying to make it move). But if you’re on a bigger boat, things may not be quite that simple.

You’ll find lots of strategies for getting your boat off a grounding in Sailing for Dummies. You’re not a dummy if you ran aground, though – you’re just a sailor.

Nevertheless, in my opinion many people take groundings too lightly. Groundings can damage the bottom of your boat. They can leave your boat stuck in a vulnerable place, such as a rough surf. If you’re on a falling tide, damage may occur to your boat later (ex: your rudder) as the boat leans more and more to one side. The lower the water gets, the harder it will be to get her off.

So take groundings seriously, while accepting the fact that – like some other things – groundings happen.

So what should you do?

1. GATHER INFORMATION

Check the inside of your boat for any signs of leak. If there’s any chance your boat is leaking, call for help immediately.

Study your chart and see what it says about the surrounding water.

Consider getting off and “walking the boat.”

Now, on a dropping tide, you may not have a lot of time to decide what you’re going to do. If you’re short on time, just get in the water with your clothes on. Don’t waste time changing clothes. You can always put on dry clothes afterwards (even if you don’t live on your boat, you should always have a couple of full changes of clothing on it for such situations).

Put on a PFD, and tie a long line to the boat. Tie it around your waist with a bowline. Don’t let yourself be separated from the boat in a current! You will find where the water gets more shallow, and where it gets deeper. You need to walk away from the boat as well as around it in order to find the deeper water. Consider your safety carefully as you consider doing that; your chart and chart plotter may tell you all you need to know. Don’t take unnecessary risks.

Put your waterproof hand-held radio in your fanny pack, and be sure the radio is secured to the fanny pack. Don’t hold it – wear it. It’s waterproof.

You don’t have to worry about anchoring the boat. It already did a dandy job of that itself.

2. DECIDE WHETHER OR NOT TO CALL FOR HELP

Did you find a good path out? Often the good path out is the way you came in. The day this happened to me, I had realized what was going to happen, and had managed to turn the boat around before the “thunk.” So although I was aground, I was pointed in the right direction.

Are you on a rising tide? If the tide is still going to come up a foot or more, Mother Nature may well float your boat off for you if you can be a little patient. That’s the safest way to get off. Put out some sodas and snacks for your crew (not liquor), and have a nice visit. 
 

I did call Boat US, because I was on a dropping tide, and I was near two busy channels. A big boat could have thrown a wake that would have banged my boat around in shallow water, and as I have pointed out before, that’s just a very bad thing.

3. EVALUATE WHAT THE RESCUE BOAT PLANS TO DO

When the first Boat US boat came to my boat, the driver refused my suggestion to pull me out in the direction I was pointed. He said, “No, I’m going to pull you abeam.”

If I’d had one more day’s experience I would have told him no. But although I had walked around the boat, I hadn’t walked away from the boat in any direction. If I had walked in the direction he wanted to tow me, I would have seen the water dropping lower and lower on my body, and I would have known that pulling the boat out that way was a very bad idea. But I trusted him (don’t get me wrong; the great majority of towboats are terrific).

So he dragged my boat across a sandbar, using a forward cleat. I’m fortunate that that cleat is in the toe rail and not fiberglass, or – backing plate or not – I’m sure this tow would have ripped it right out. My boat flip-flopped from port hull to starboard hull. It was bad, and scary, and then the rudder broke. No kidding. I had no steering. However, that tow was so badly executed that it could have broken a perfectly good rudder. It was just a very, very bad tow plan.

As it turned out, my rudder was already severely compromised, rusted through from the inside out. The best possible way for it to break was under tow. It could have broken in a storm or rough seas and left me in a very bad predicament, so in the end it was all good. The boat needed a new rudder, and the old one, although I didn’t know it at the time, was ready to go and just plain dangerous.

But YOU are the skipper of your boat, and YOU need to know what that towboat’s intentions for your boat are. Ask. If it doesn’t make sense, ask for an explanation. If it still doesn’t feel right, ask to talk to a supervisor. One of the reasons groundings are dangerous is that the person helping you may not have the best idea on the planet for your situation. Talk to lots of other sailors and find out how they have handled groundings. You need to know this stuff.

4. EVALUATE WHAT WENT WRONG

When it’s all over, take some time to figure out how it happened. In my case, I was at a point where two channels intersected, and I was steering for a red marker in the crossing channel instead of the channel I was in. I hadn’t paid attention the channel marker numbers, which would have told me that I was aiming for the wrong one. On my chart plotter, the zoom setting I was using did not give the marker numbers.

 On your chart plotter, experiment with zooming in and out, because at different resolutions you will get different pieces of information. I zoomed closer in 10 seconds too late to prevent the grounding, but it was the chart plotter that alerted me to my mistake.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE

Instead of letting the towboat pull me across a sand bar, I should have insisted that the towboat take me out the way I came in. I should have gotten out of the boat, walked to the sand bar and demonstrated the problem to him. Then I should have called a supervisor if he still refused to make a better plan.

This is what it means to skipper your own boat. Make sure you maintain authority over your boat – even in a grounding.