Keeping Your Roller Furler Safe

       Or, Is that sail really supposed to deploy itself

UPDATE: Sept. 22, 2013

I have talked to the people at Hood, and they no longer sell the replacement 

lower unit that converts a Hood 810 from continuous line to single line. 

They didn't give me any reason for the change. If you have a Hood 810 

this article has important information for you.

May 10, 2013

Most roller furlers are easily secured. You pull it in tightly, wrap it several times with the sheets, lock the lines off, and you can be reasonably certain that the sail will stay securely furled even in a strong thunderstorm. However, please notice the word “reasonably.” I didn’t say you can be absolutely certain. I know someone who has lost not one but two headsails because they unfurled in a summer storm and then flailed themselves to death. I have also seen headsails that partially deployed in summer-type storms (which actually can occur at any time of the year where I am in Florida). While only part of the sail was out, they whipped around in the wind, nearly always doing damage to the sail. The damage can be repaired, but do you really want to have to go there?

It’s IMPORTANT to take all sails and canvas off your boat if a tropical storm or hurricane threatens, but taking your headsail off a roller furler off at the end of each sail defeats the convenience of having a roller furler. In fact it’s worse, because although you can get it off by yourself, most people will need a second person to put it back on again. Fortunately, there’s a much easier solution!

See the picture of the furled headsail below.  You can see the two sheets wrapped around the sail clockwise. But in addition, there is a third line, tied to one of the sheets, wrapped counterclockwise around the sail, and then tied off to the pulpit. This sail is now secured from both directions and far less likely to come undone in an unexpected storm. I tied this on to the boat that had previously lost two headsails as a storm approached. 

 

I know to do this because other, more experienced sailors told me to do it. And, I knew the man who had lost two headsails to storms, and didn’t particularly want to experience it myself.

For some boats, including mine, it’s extremely important to counter-wrap the furler. My furler, a Hood 810 SeaFurler, uses a continuous line rather than a single line to deploy the sail. By “continuous,” I mean that the two ends of the line have been braided together to make one continuous loop of line. It was often standard equipment on older Catalinas and Hunters, including my boat. Here’s a picture of what the bottom of the unit looks like:

 

That double line is used to furl and unfurl the headsail. It has no mechanism in it to hold the sail in place when partially deployed. This means that once the wind fills the partially deployed sail, the rest of the sail will rapidly pop out – whether or not you wanted to use the whole sail.

It’s “all or nothing” with this roller furler. You do not have the option of rolling your headsail partly up if the weather should deteriorate. Because there is nothing to keep the drum from turning, even with both sheets locked off the sail will pop out and deploy fully.

By the way, countless experienced sailors have confidently told me that if I lock that continuous line off securely, wrap the sheets around the furler well, and tie both sheets off well at the cockpit, the sail cannot deploy. However, they are all wrong. That bottom drum can still rotate, because there’s nothing to stop it. It can loosen enough to damage the sail in a storm.

FIRST LESSON LEARNED: You have to listen cautiously to other people, as they sometimes speak whether they know what they’re talking about or not. The fellow who lost two headsails in storms ignored advice he had gotten from experienced sailors to counter-wrap his headsail with a third line. TWICE. If you’re uncertain about advice you’ve been given, double-check it with other knowledgeable people.

This won’t protect you from all bad advice. I was confidently given bad advice about how to operate my new diesel engine from five different people. It was different than what the certified engine mechanic who installed it had told me, so I went to the place that sold me the engine, and they agreed with the mechanic and told me with great certainty that all five people who had advised me otherwise were just wrong.

However, putting a counter-wrap on your sail harms nothing. It only takes about 30 seconds to put on, and about as long to take off. I keep the line I use for this purpose secured at the bow of the boat so it’s handy and there’s no excuse for not using it, because my headsail is particularly vulnerable. If someone tells you it’s not necessary, smile and thank them. They mean well. Then counter-wrap your headsail.

SECOND LESSON LEARNED: If you look closely at the edge of the furled sail, you will see bits of it sticking out. While the sail had been furled, it had not been tightly furled, providing a way for wind to get under the edge. Be sure you furl your headsail tightly.

Why You Should Keep Your Deck Clear

     Or, Boy was my face red!

I was sailing by myself although I don’t think it would have made any difference. It was such a lovely sail, I think if I’d had someone with me we would have ended up admiring the beautiful day and the fabulous job we were doing of sailing, and still have made this mistake -- unless my sailing companion had been very alert, but sometimes I think airhead moments are contagious.

BCYC had sailed to Twin Dolphin Marina in Bradenton for the weekend. I took my boat by myself, arrived with no difficulty but ended up in a slip near the river’s current. In the morning, when it was time to leave, a strong current was running, and the man on the boat next to me helped me get my boat out. As he took the last line off the dock, he said, “What should I do with it?”

“Just throw it up on the deck,” I said. “I’ll stow it after I’m underway.”

When the wind is right, you can sail the Manatee River. It’s such a beautiful river, and this day the wind was out of the southwest. I put the sails up and delighted in turning the engine off (my favorite part of any sail) and moved out toward Tampa Bay. The Genny was a bit of a pain to deploy because of its design, which includes a continuous line that leaves two lines running up to the back of the boat, but it deployed well. As I turned toward the Skyway Bridge and the “ditch” that runs more or less north and south along it, I was watching two boats ahead. They were easily recognizable as two other members of BCYC, both of them excellent sailors – and I was keeping up with them! Boy, I’m getting good at this! I thought. I was going to be on some point of a port tack for the entire trip. How sweet is that?

I tweaked my miansail sheet; I tweaked the traveler; I tweaked the Genny, and I was still keeping up with them. The boat was sailing beautifully, and I thought, “That’s why I sail her by myself sometimes. I’ve done this on my own. I own this successful sail.”

A little later I noticed the two boats, who were about two miles in front of me, sailing, not motoring, up the Ditch. “Oh, good! I won’t have to turn the engine on!” Sure enough, the wind was still from the southwest, and I sailed up the ditch in blissful silence except for the swish of water on the hull. 

I watched as my friends turned west, and noted that they kept on sailing across Pinellas Point in the east-west channel at the tip of the Pinellas peninsula, and thought, “Dang – I’m going to be able to sail right up to the bridges! This is great. I’ll bring my sails in at Structure E (the bridge to Tierra Verde), put the headsail back out afterwards and I’ll be able to sail all the way back to BCYC!”

I was really full of myself by this point. I’m surprised I didn’t sprain something patting myself on the back, because I was still keeping up with two men I considered to be really excellent sailors. 

I was so full of myself that I completely forgot about the loose line on the foredeck.

Unfortunately, by the time I got to the Pinellas Point channel, there had been a slight wind shift – just enough that I could not sail west. No matter how determined I might have been, the channel is just too narrow in some places for a boat my size to tack, especially single-handed. The only choice I had was to bring the sails in and turn the engine on. Darn it!

I got to a wide place in the channel, locked the wheel, turned the engine on and sprinted up to the mast and tightened the lazy jacks. Mainsail down.

Then I tried to pull in the Genny. It wouldn’t come in! By now I was headed to a narrow area, so I turned around, went back to the beginning of the wide part and tried again. No deal. Something was jamming it. I was starting to think things stronger than “Darn it!”

So I turned the boat around again, and followed the double line up to the bow, where I found that loose bow line tangled in the roller furler lines. I really couldn’t get it untangled in that narrow channel. I needed to be at the wheel. I now couldn't get the Genny out properly, or do anything else except listen to it mocking me as it flapped and rattled with the boat pointed directly into the wind.

Structure E was just about to open as I approached, and as I turned, of course the Genny started to fill with wind. Fortunately it had a terrible shape, spilled wind, and didn’t influence the boat much as I went under the bridge. There was only 10 minutes to the next bridge, so I just gave her all the engine could safely give, and made it to that bridge.

Now I was in Boca Ciega Bay. I moved the boat away from the shallow areas around the bridge, went to the mast, loosened the lazy jacks, pulled the mainsail up again, and heaved the boat to. She was drifting sideways, but I was able to get the lines untangled and bring the Genny in properly. 

Clutter on your decks can cause all sorts of problems, and I was actually lucky that there wasn’t a front coming through, or a rising wind, or a pop-up storm, or some other bigger problem to solve. When you can’t control a sail for some reason, it can cause serious problems. I was foolish to not make stowing that line a priority. I should have done it before touching a sail.

Keep your decks clear. Stow all your lines. This is one reason why boats have things like wheel brakes and autopilots, so you can leave the cockpit and deal with things. If your boat has a tiller, you can get a gadget called a “Tiller Tamer,” and in reasonable weather and seas it will hold your boat steady enough to deal with things like lines that need to be stowed. “Tiller Tamers” and “Tiller Tenders” hold the tiller where you’ve set it while you go forward, visit the head, or grab a snack. It can be tiring to have to hold the tiller for hours on end, and even a short break can be helpful. Here’s a link to a Tiller Tamer at a company called Defender. They often have good prices, and are known for good service. http://www.defender.com/product.jsp?path=-1|118|297677|1863917&id=92415

My bias is to pay attention to the sheets in the cockpit. You don’t want to coil them tightly while you’re sailing, but you can still tuck them out of the way of people’s feet. Take care of these things, and then if a problem arises you can focus on the problem and not first have to perform the tasks you should have done earlier.

How Joe Shattered His Leg, and How He Survived

_______

May 5, 2013

     You are primed to come up with a creative solution.

Fortune cookie

Joe lives in St. Petersburg, FL. Last December, he was going for a sail on a friend’s boat in Venice, FL, about an hour south of his home. A 36’ boat, it had a fair amount of freeboard –- its deck sat higher from the water than smaller boats. Nevertheless, it was an abnormally low tide, and a bit of a drop to the boat. Joe had gone through two knee replacement surgeries in the previous year, so he carefully considered his options. As he was first to arrive at the boat, he would have to do this all himself.

He pulled the boat close to the dock, and tossed his backpack into the cockpit. He didn’t want to risk dropping anything into the water during a tricky boarding. That also kept his center of gravity lower, always a good thing when boarding.

Holding the boat close to the dock with his right hand, he sat on the edge of the dock and swung his legs over the lifeline. He judged that he could make the short drop well. Typically, stepping on to the outside of the lifelines would be the best choice, but the boat was so low in the water that this didn’t look like a good choice to Joe.

Unfortunately, soon as he let go of the boat to jump down, the boat moved rapidly away from the dock. This threw his balance off, and with his feet inside the lifelines, he ended up hanging from the lifeline by one knee. While the knee was not injured, his body twisted, and he broke his left femur quite badly. Fortunately the boat had moved so far from the dock that he did not hit his head, but his body weight pulled him into the water. Now he was in cold water, and he was badly hurt.

No one else was around. Hollering for help brought no one.

He managed to pull himself to the stern of the boat, and that is where the owner of this sailboat helped save his life—even though he wasn’t anywhere near the boat yet. The owner had tied his stern ladder up with a “half bow tie,” with the loose end of the line long enough for Joe to reach it from the water. Here’s a picture of the type of knot his friend used. It is also commonly used to secure the mainsail to the boom.

Joe managed to pull the line, drop the ladder, drag himself up the ladder and land in the cockpit using his arms and his good leg.

Once in the cockpit, he was able to find his cell phone in his backpack to call 911. Since he had put his belongings in the boat before he tried to board, his cellphone had not gone in the water with him, and so it worked. The ladder, rigged to be deployable from the water, saved his life. With such a severe injury he wouldn’t have survived long in cold water.

When EMS got Joe to the nearest hospital, the doctor told him he needed immediate surgery. “Please transfer me to St. Petersburg, where I live,” Joe asked.

“You’ll be dead before you get there,” the doctor bluntly responded. “We have to operate NOW.” A piece of bone had cut the femoral artery, and Joe was actually bleeding to death inside his leg, even though the skin had not been broken. Joe has boarded boats many hundreds of times over the years. This is the only time he was hurt, but it was a doozy.

It’s really important to have a good ladder on the stern of your boat. There are several things that go into that. The ladder needs to hang from the boat at the right angle. If it hangs at more than 90º, people will have a hard time climbing it. Injured, it would probably be impossible. In addition, it needs to be long enough that the lowest wrong is well down into the water, or it will be hard to use, especially with a significant injury.

Your ladder also needs to be rigid. I was on a boat once where the owner had made his own ladder out of wood and rope. It floated at the surface, making it difficult to get a foot in the bottom rung after a swim. In addition, its flexibility let it curve under the boat. Finally my friend had to physically hold the ladder out at a 90º angle and then I managed to get back on the boat. A ladder is no place to try to save money. West Marine sells portable ladders you can hang over the transom or the side. They work well. If you use this ladder, get the longer one—it only costs $59.99 at this writing. The farther that ladder drops (rigidly) into the water, the easier it will be for an injured or otherwise impaired person to get safely aboard.

The problem with this type of ladder is that most owners won’t leave it hanging on the boat unless they are on the boat, so it probably wouldn’t have been there when Joe needed it so desperately. However, it is highly superior to anything made of rope and boards. A permanently installed ladder is a better choice, but this one is a lot better than nothing, or a ladder that can’t be lowered from the water.

Joe survived this accident for several reasons. First, he kept his wits about him and didn’t panic, even though he knew it could well be a fatal accident. Second, he was familiar with the boat. He knew that ladder was there, and that it was worth his rapidly fading strength to get to the stern. Third, the boat owner had a ladder long enough to be useful even under extremely difficult conditions. Fourth, the owner secured the ladder in a way that made it easy to deploy it from the water. Finally, Joe had kept his phone safe and dry, and was able to get to it. He does not believe he could have gotten to the marine radio in the cabin. Without his cell phone, he would have bled to death in the cockpit.

LESSONS LEARNED:

FIRST: When boarding any boat with either life lines or railing, pick a place to get on where you can place your feet on the outside of that lifeline or rail. By the shrouds is an excellent choice: you can step on the toe rail and grab the shrouds, which are very strong, at the same time. Then swing one leg over the lifeline, get that foot secure, and then bring the other leg over. This is an expansion of rock-climbing technique: three points secure (one foot on the toe rail and two hands on the shrouds), with one leg moving at a time. If your legs are on the outside of those life lines and the wind suddenly blows the boat away, even if you fall in the water, it won’t be nearly so dangerous a fall. The only thing likely to be hurt will be your pride. But in all likelihood, you’ll be able to keep your behind on the dock, stay dry, and just try again, or hang on to the boat. Either way, you’re safe.

SECOND: Always have your boat’s safety features fully functional. Joe might have fallen off of someone else’s boat without a good ladder, but he still might have been able to get on his friend’s boat, and perhaps by hollering for help from the cockpit, another person would have come along in time. Your properly secured and adequately long, rigid ladder could save someone’s life some day.

Courses at the Coast Guard Auxiliary

_______

May 8, 2013

     There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing
as simply messing about in boats.”

Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

I started sailing by taking the Basic Sailing course at Boca Ciega Yacht Club (BCYC). There are other schools in the area, including University of South Florida and Eckerd College, that can get you out on the water in a small boat, really controlling the boat you’re on, but BCYC is the one I’m familiar with.

And it’s a lot of fun. You learn the points of sail, or the position of the sails in relation to the wind; how to tack (turn the bow through the wind to sail in a different direction); jybe (turn the stern through the wind to sail in a different direction); backwind the headsail, which makes tacking easier in light wind; heave to, or set the boat at a slow and controlled drift so you can do things like eat lunch; dock; and rescue a person who has somehow managed to fall off your little boat in spite of your expert sailing skills. Hey, anything can happen!

Learn those things at BCYC and you get the treasured little card that says you are qualified to take out their 16.5’ Catalinas on your own (with a sailing partner – they’re designed to be sailed by two people). I’m sure all the small boat sailing classes in the area are very good, but of course I have a bias for my club.

However, there’s still a lot more to learn about sailing. You’ll find, when you sail on a bigger boat, that although the principles of things like tacking and jybing are the same, the execution will be somewhat different. In addition, a number of extra pieces of equipment will be on those boats that you haven’t yet learned how to use, such as reefing systems. To sail safely on bigger boats, it’s crucial to know how to use that additional equipment.

There’s also a whole world of rules and regulations that don’t apply to small boats sailing in very restricted areas during daylight. So how do you learn those next steps? BCYC has only the 16.5’s for instruction. You can go sailing with others on their boats, but that instruction will be hit-or-miss, and if you study more systematically, you’re unlikely to miss the important things.

Coast Guard Auxiliary to the rescue! The CGA in St. Petersburg offers a year-long cycle of supplemental classes for both power boaters and sailors. In addition to a basic boating safety class which lasts six weeks, they have a more in-depth one that lasts 13 weeks and a wide range of supplemental classes including coastal navigation; how to use your chart plotter; reading charts; anchoring safely; and hurricane preparedness. I have taken a number of them. They were all well organized, well taught and extremely useful on a day-to-day basis.

In addition, if you take the six week class and pass the test, you are then eligible to join the Coast Guard Auxiliary yourself, which is likely to get you a discount on your boat insurance.

If you live in the United States and have access to sailing, there may well be a Coast Guard Auxiliary near you. Check it out and see what they might have to offer you.

However, don’t completely ignore the value of reading. I don’t believe anyone can really learn to sail from a book; but once you get the basics down, books can tell you about finer points. I have said before that Sailing for Dummies was tremendously helpful to me once when I got caught in a bad situation, and that’s the truth. But try other books as well. If they don’t make sense, set them aside for now, but come back to them later. Find supportive sailors around you and ask questions about what you read, and sail on other people’s boats every chance you get.

Once you’ve started sailing, don’t ever stop learning about it, and don’t ever be satisfied with your level of skills. There will always be more you can learn. Those things may make you and your boat more safe, or it may just make sailing more fun, but either way it’s a win.

A (Different) Dolphin's Tail

 

May 6, 2013

      Dolphins sleep with one eye open.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

IT'S A BIRD … IT’S A PLANE … IT’S A … FREIGHTER???

     Or, DANG – those things move fast! 

_______

May 2, 2013

     A loaded supertanker traveling at normal speeds takes 20 min. to stop.

Unless you sail only on smaller inland lakes, sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with narrow shipping channels. Shipping channels are dredged out to be deep enough to let freighters and cruise ships travel from port out to sea, or through the Great Lakes, or up and down major rivers, without risk of running aground. We have an important shipping channel in and outside of Tampa Bay.

You may not have yet taken a boating safety course. If you haven’t, you may not know it, but these very big ships always have the right of way in those channels. You, as the smaller boat, cross those shipping channels (and you do cross them, not use them) at your peril.

There may be a shipping channel near to where you typically sail. If so, you have probably seen large freighters, or perhaps cruise ships, from a distance. Here’s what you need to know about them:

They move very, very, fast, and

They stop very, very slowly.

As the quote above says above, it can take a freighter 20 minutes to come to a full stop. What’s more, if you’re close to them, they cannot see you. Even if they could, they couldn’t do anything to avoid you. They can’t leave that channel. If they hit you, they will not be considered at fault.

Many sailors have heard that boats under sail have the right of way, and that motorized vessels must give way. Up to a point, that’s true, but that rule is true because of the bigger rule – right of way is determined by how maneuverable each boat is – not how it is powered. Generally speaking, a sailboat is less maneuverable than a powerboat of comparable size. But freighters and cruise ships aren’t very maneuverable at all when they’re in a shipping channel.

I photographed this freighter as it was moving toward the Skyway Bridge and the Port of Tampa. As I approached the shipping channel, I could see it off in the distance. I did not use any zoom on this photo. Very rapidly, this freighter was not far from me at all. If I hadn’t been paying attention, I could have ended up in the shipping channel with a huge ship steaming down on me, unable to stop. Either I would get out of the way, or it would crunch me and my boat into little bitty pieces.

Any time you are anywhere near a shipping channel, scan early and often for those big babies. Shipping channels use the same markers as the channels used by pleasure craft (in other words, us), so they’re easy to spot. You do the same thing you do to make sure you’re in your channel: you spot two red or two green, and line them up. That will show you where the shipping channel is. It will also be clearly marked on your chart plotter.

As you approach the shipping channel, turn your engine on (make sure no lines are dragging in the water first). You can leave it in neutral, but if you should suddenly realize there’s a big ship near you, you can use that extra power to maneuver. Never try to beat a freighter or cruise ship: that’s like trying to beat a train at a railroad crossing. It’s just not worth it. Tack, or gybe, or use your engine, and just get out of the way until that ship has passed. And take a good look at how fast it’s really traveling.