What is it Like to Live Aboard?

April 24, 2013

     "At sea, I learned how little a person needs, not how much."

Robin Lee Graham

I have imagined living in a small, moveable space most of my life. When I was eight I was fascinated by Flash Gordon’s rocket ship. With my dad’s help, I designed a rocket ship to be made out of wood. I wanted to build it in the back yard and live in it, in the back yard. In my heart of hearts I knew it couldn’t fly into outer space and land on the Moon, but a child’s imagination is a wonderful thing.

Then, when our children were 5 and 8 we rented an RV that wasn’t really all that big, and traveled throughout the Southeast for two weeks. It was the best vacation we ever had, and a completely minimalist life style: 4 forks, 4 spoons, 4 knives, 4 plates, etc., and 5 days of clothes for each of us. A two-burner stove, and I had no trouble producing good meals. In fact, we ate out only once. That RV experience showed me that I could live happily with minimal belongings and space. It won’t be right for everyone, but the simplicity appealed to me.

But now to the realities of choosing a sailboat. Your bathroom, the “head,” is so narrow that you can go in to use the toilet, or the “head within the head,”  and bruise both elbows on the two walls (pardon me – bulkheads – what – another ‘head?’) at the same time.

As it happens, I had a rough winter aboard this year. I had bacterial bronchitis, an inner ear infection that caused enough dizziness that I had to go to a motel for a couple of days, smoke inhalation that caused various kinds of chaos, then viral bronchitis, and finally a badly sprained shoulder. I didn’t get much sailing in. But living on the boat, I always felt the promise of sailing. I still felt the boat sway in the slip in the wind (in fact, I deliberately tie my boat up so it will sway).

Living on a sailboat, the problem-solving is constant, but usually, fun -- not annoying.

I live immersed in nature. While docked in salt water, I heard tiny shrimp eating algae off the side of my boat at night. Now in slightly brackish water, I hear little crabs eating the algae off day and night. When the very reliable bottom cleaner comes and cleans my hull, I miss sound of the crabs. I spent one summer in a marina that was swarming with bioluminescent algae. It was breathtakingly beautiful, and at one point, the algae were so prevalent that you could see them sparkling like diamonds at noontime on the tops of small waves. It was more intense than the normal “sparkle” you can see on water all the time.The manatee would come in six or eight at a time to drink from the fresh water spring at the end of the marina. Dolphin came in to corner fish and feast on them.

On the downside, I am constantly looking for things that have been stored in the wrong place. That’s because storage space is so precious that sometimes strange combinations of things have to be stored together. When I cruise with others on my boat, I put an empty plastic box in the middle of the cabin and tell people to just put things they use – everything they use – in that box. I need those things to go back where I keep them. Do you have labels on every cabinet and closet in your house (I mean on the outside)? I doubt it. But because of the storage problems mentioned above, it helps me tremendously. My P-Touch is one of my most-used gadgets. When I was researching this life change, I came across an article that said something like, “When living on a sailboat, you have to move two boxes and a body to get a cookie.” There’s truth in that.

I have to have a system for keeping things on the shelves that line the settees in case we should heel over strongly.  On one side I made panels that snap down and keep things from flying extremely well. On the other side I have a panel of netting I can stretch across the shelves that serves the same purpose.

I find living on a boat invigorating. The first time a storm was approaching, I went above decks and methodically secured everything, and had a great feeling of accomplishment knowing I had prepared the boat well.

But most of all, living on the boat makes the promise of adventure ever-present, concrete, and real. How many 67-year-old women can say that?

I doubt I’ll leave the marina I’m in now except to move back to land, which, I suppose, is inevitable some day. There are obvious potential risks to an older woman living alone on a boat, but this marina is a gated community. Only people who are on my dock have the code for the gate to my dock. I know someone who was murdered recently in his trailer park. A couple of days ago, a couple was murdered on their houseboat in an unsecured marina. Terrible things happen everywhere, but I feel safe here.

I thought there would be less housekeeping to do, since it was a smaller space, but a sailboat’s smaller space has many nooks and crannies that are awkward to get into and hard to clean.  For instance, suppose the task is to clean the head (and the head in the head and the bulkheads lining it). Cleaning the head can be a full body workout. You gather up your supplies: you’re going to need a tooth brush, and Q-tips to get into some spaces -- and get on to your hands and knees (get some knee pads). You squat down, contort yourself down onto your hands and knees in the VERY small space in front of the head ... and then you realize you left your favorite cleaner outside. So you back out into the 14” square space in front of the head, climb back off your knees, turn around, bend over and grab the cleaner. You reverse all that and get back to work. You've done five minutes of exercises and you haven't cleaned a square inch yet.

The cleaning supplies have to be stored in several places to use your storage as well as possible, and you’re careful to return them so you can find them when you have to do it all again. 

Then there’s the entire outside of the boat to maintain, plus all the mechanical elements. It’s complicated. You screw up while changing the oil, and you’re going to spray used engine oil all over your living room (I haven't done that yet -- just the image of it in my brain makes me very, very careful!)

But overriding all of the bothers is the promise of adventure. If I choose, I can just throw off the lines and take off, and I have done that. Or I can sail with friends, and I’ve done that too. On every single trip out, whether it was for an hour or for four days, I’ve learned something  that excited and energized me. I’m physically stronger than I was 20 years ago.

LESSON LEARNED: The things that kept me down this winter were not really related to age, nor to living on a boat. They were the same things that have followed me for years (well, except for the smoke inhalation -- that isn't about sailing, but I'll have to tell that story one day!) I never get through winter without a bout of bronchitis, for instance (and no, I don't smoke), and the shoulder injury was my own fault – and completely avoidable (see the blog entry about anchoring safely). That injury might have healed a little faster 30 years ago but it’s still just a bump in the road. I've made the right lifestyle choice for me, and I feel blessed.

Stay in the Channel!

     Or, Why aren't we moving?

April 23, 2013

    “You got to be careful if you don't know where
you're going, because you might not get there.”

Yogi Berra

Staying in the channel can be trickier than it sounds. Basically, it means staying between the red and green markers, but channels are twisty, winding, and fickle. Mother Nature really doesn’t care what your chart says when she’s playing in the sandbox and moving the bottom under your boat around into big bumps that like to play tag with your keel.

See the photograph below. No zoom was used; those birds were sitting about 15 feet to the port of my boat. Where my boat was in the channel, the water depth read as 19 ft. These birds are sitting on what remains of a wooden boat that burned to the water line, leaving only some wooden ribs sticking out of the water. I’ve seen those ribs at low tide, and they aren’t more than three feet high. The point? Sometimes very shallow water is very close to the channel or deep water you’re in, something you can’t always predict by looking at the water. Water and sand are shifty things.

Moreover, channels often are not straight. They’re not highways. They’re dredged out based on how the water moves the bottom around. There will be bends, sometimes extreme, in most channels. When the channel runs through very shallow water, as this one does (it runs along west side of the Skyway Bridge, which crosses Tampa Bay), straying even a little outside the channel can result in a severe grounding.

Until you’re very comfortable with the process of spotting channel markers and comparing them to your charts, have a second person spotting them also. The channel markers in front of you and behind you should line up in a straight line (red in line with red and green in line with green, and on the same line with your boat), with you moving parallel to and inside those lines. Do that, and you will know to turn the boat when the channel bends.

Take a look at the markers below.  See the slight tilt to the green one? If you look at the horizon, you’ll see that it … leans a little. That marker  probably did some damage to the boat that it hit (notice I always blame the channel marker and not the boater.) By the way, don’t put the exact location of channel markers in your chart plotter, because then your chart plotter will plot a collision course for you. Save a point near the channel marker, inside the channel. That way your chart plotter won’t lead you out of the channel, either.

When I was test sailing the boat I have now, a broker was at the wheel while returning to the marina. She had a green marker to her left, and a red marker to her right. She steered the boat to the right of the red marker, and we didn’t go two feet before we were aground.

Finally, if you’re in an unfamiliar channel, get on the radio and call to other boaters. You may find out that an important marker was recently knocked down, or that a marker needs to be moved but hasn’t been yet, and that at a certain point it’s important to hug one side of the channel or the other. Sweep widely with your eyes as you look for markers, as channels make big turns sometimes – but make sure that the channel marker you have spotted is for your channel and not a different one. And importantly, both charts and chart plotters can be out of date.

LESSON LEARNED: motoring (or sailing) through a channel isn’t like driving on the highway. There are no lane markers, and roads follow more predictable paths than channels do. Keep your eyes open and have more than one pair of eyes on watch.

Finally, see the red buoy below. It is also a channel marker. This is a "floating buoy." They can be red or green. You may be able to see the “10” on this one. As you can see, there’s some very shallow water just beyond it. In this channel, both red marker #8 and red marker #12 are further east than this one is. This one is movable, and has been placed there because the bottom is shifting significantly in this area. In this stretch of the channel, the boater has to line her boat up with the green markers (#9 and #11), which will be in a straight line. This buoy is at a narrowing of the channel.

 

Local knowledge can be very important. The locals all know about this buoy, but you, being new to the area, do not. What if you’re moving by night? You of course have someone with a nice, bright spotlight looking for markers –- 4 – 6 feet above the water (in fact you really must have someone on your spotlight when negotiating a channel at night.) You could both easily overlook this marker … and get really stuck in the dark. Your chart plotter would say you were in the channel, and so would your paper chart. Try explaining that to the sand your keel is stuck in. (Be careful, because those spotlights can drain batteries pretty quickly. You probably shouldn't sail through an unknown channel at night anyway -- turn the engine on.)

Shine that spotlight across the surface of the water as well as at typical marker height. It can be really hard work to spot for channel markers, but don’t just rely on your charts or chart plotters. Using a spotlight is the best way to make sure that neither a channel marker nor a high spot on the bottom jump out at your boat in the dark.

Your Boat Could Sink -- Really!

 

April 20, 2013

     Or, What hoses? What hose clamps?

     “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.”

Murphy’s Law

     “Murphy was an optimist.”

Murphy’s cat

About a month ago I heard about something that happened to a friend’s boat. Tied up in the marina, someone noticed that his boat seemed to be sitting low in the water, and stepped aboard to check. That person found that the man’s boat was filling up with salt water. He went back up to the club, got a pump, started pumping the man’s boat out, and gave him a call.

Most sailboats have “thru-holes” that go through the hull for all sorts of reasons. They let in water to help cool the engine. They let the galley sink drain. Three miles out, you can pump your head’s holding tank overboard, and that requires a thru-hole. There can be others as well.

These holes have hoses held on by clamps. On this unlucky man’s boat, one of the hoses had cracked, causing the leak.

Well, I didn’t want gallons and gallons of salt water in my cabin. No, sir! So, being a newer sailor, I had someone go through my boat with me to check all of this and show me what to look for.

Happily, all my hoses are in good shape. The one bringing water into the engine, is, in fact, very new. That’s the good news.
   

The bad news is that the engine hose was installed improperly. The wrong hose clamps were used –- probably automotive, not marine -- and in 18 months they had rusted so badly that they broke into pieces when taken off. While the fellow who installed my engine was very good, he must have slipped up. Those were not marine-grade hose clamps.

Automotive product used for a marine application,

almost always, a bad idea.

LESSON LEARNED:  As you can see from the next picture, the actual hose is new and in very good shape. However, it really doesn’t matter if the hose itself is in great shape if the clamps break and it falls off. Your boat is going to fill up with saltwater, and if not stopped, sink right in its slip. Or at anchor. Or wherever she happens to be when Murphy strikes. The clamps are as important as the section of hose and the state of the thru-hole valve.

Thing is, if you check these things, this is one time you can force Murphy to tip-toe away from you and go bother someone less vigilant than you were. Good job!

The picture below shows one end of the hose with new, marine-grade stainless clamps on it. As you can see, two were used. One goes around the hose clockwise and the other counter-clockwise. Of course, this was done on both ends of the hose. This is a place to not go cheap on your boat: get your hose clamps at a real marine supply store.

ANOTHER LESSON LEARNED: Think you don’t need to know about these things? You’ve got someone really good to work on your boat? The fellow who put in my engine is probably the best marine diesel engine installer for 100 miles in any direction, but I’m pretty sure he made a mistake and put the wrong hose clamps on a very important section of hose.

And while you’re at it, check all your thru-holes. Make sure all the shut-off valves work smoothly. Check all the hoses connected to them and make sure they’re not brittle and cracked or about to crack.

Anyone can make a mistake, and everyone is human. You may not know how to fix all the problems you find, but do yourself a favor and learn as much as you can about how things ought to be. When your boat doesn’t sink, you’ll be glad you did!

Saving a Boat from the Rocks

     Or, Whadda group of people!

_______

April 18, 2013

      “You can’t believe how bleeding scary the sea is! There’s, like,

whales and storms and shit! They don’t bloody tell you that!”

 Libba Bray, in Beauty Queens

 

In the summer of 2012, a large tropical storm named “Debby” harassed the Tampa Bay area for several days. Most of the time, a tropical storm doesn’t have to be a crisis if your boat is in a slip, but not everyone keeps their boat in a slip. A good friend of mine kept his boat anchored in Boca Ciega Bay. With no hint of bad weather looming, he and his family had traveled to the panhandle of Florida for a family reunion.

While they were gone, Debby moved in. Somehow his boat broke free of her anchor and dragged to a most unfortunate place – wedged between a cement wall and a pile of rocks. With every wave his boat bounced up and down on the rocks, just across a canal and in front of the sailing club we both belong to. A boat can only take that kind of pounding for so long, and it looked as if my friend was going to lose his boat.

See the video above. While that is not as high as the water got, it shows my friend’s boat caught on rocks and rubbing against a cement wall. As I’ve said before, boats hitting hard things break boats.

However, this boat owner was a knowledgeable man who shared his expertise freely and had often helped others. Members of the club looked at his boat and decided that they had to try to do something to save his boat. But what to do?

The solution was plain old plywood. A number of brave, strong men (you know who you are) climbed on to the rocks. When the water lifted the boat up, they slid pieces of wood under the boat. With each wave, they put another protective piece of wood under, and eventually the boat was bobbing on the much more protective wood instead of banging on to sharp rocks and a cement wall.

The owner of the boat had been notified that his boat was on the rocks and was racing back as fast as he could, but Debby made that a most difficult drive. By the time he got to his boat, the rocks were completely lined with plywood, and all he had to do was climb aboard and put her in reverse, and she slid right off the boards into the water. He motored to a safe location and re-deployed his anchors. This time his boat stayed secure. The boat needed some repair – at two places on the waterline, the rocks had worn the fiberglass down to about ¼ of its normal thickness, but the boat didn’t sink.

LESSON LEARNED: Sometimes when sailors help each other out it’s quite dramatic. Other times it’s far simpler. Join a good sailing club.

BCYC welcomes all levels of experience and skill from rank beginner to advanced expert. We have an outstanding beginning sailing school. The photo below shows our true keel instructional boats (16.5' Catalinas) lined up and waiting for a Sunday morning class.

 
Once you've finished that class, we often have extra workshops. Topics have ranged from reefing systems to reading the weather to what bridge tenders do. It's a tremendous asset to immerse oneself in the company of other sailors.

Sometimes you’ll be part of the solution, and sometimes you’ll be the recipient of most excellent help and advice. And you’re likely to have a very, very good time.

Docking Your Boat Under Sail

Or, Are you sure you're ready for that?

I guarantee you that someone – probably more than one person – will someday look at you knowingly and say, “You should sail the boat into the slip.” Now, I’m not talking about little sailing dinghies and boats like BCYC’s 16.5' Catalinas. Those boats are intended to be sailed into the slip. They don’t have engines. I’m talking about slightly larger (or markedly larger) boats that have motors or engines to aid them in things like docking.

Sailing a larger boat into a slip or up to a dock is a good and useful skill – when you’re ready for it! But is a still, small voice hollering inside your head – “DON’T DO THAT!!!!” ?

If so, listen to that voice. If you don’t think you’re ready to do something, you probably aren’t. There’s a “Code of Pride” among many experienced sailors. There are two things those sailors never, ever want to do: turn the engine on to solve a problem, or call Boat US or SeaTow for assistance.

But you aren’t sailing on pride – not yet. You were smart, and you have tow insurance (please tell me you have tow insurance!) If your engine fails you can call your tow company, and they will come and get you back into your slip.

I probably have the sailing skills to sail a boat up to the size of mine (about 30 feet) up to a T-dock at the proper speed, get her secured quickly and avoid hitting any other boats – but not on my boat. My boat has a badly designed roller furling system and would not cooperate during such a maneuver. No matter how good I get at sailing, performing this maneuver with my boat would be a very bad idea unless I win the lottery and can replace that roller furler (will someone please buy me a lottery ticket?)

The people suggesting that you try things you aren’t ready for aren’t being malicious. Most of the time they aren’t even braggarts. But – they have been sailing for decades and have completely forgotten what it’s like to be on the less experienced side of sailing. Their sailing skills are so automatic that they don’t think about how many fine judgments they are making as they bring that boat in under sail.

LESSON LEARNED: If you’re still working on docking under power, if docking under power still makes your heart pound, you aren’t ready to do it under sail. Listen to that voice in your head, and always make your own judgments about what you -- and your boat -- are ready to do.

The Most Dangerous Things We Do on Our Boats

     Or, Liquor Goeth Before a Fall

Sometimes we forget that this thing we do, sailing, can actually be a little bit dangerous. When most people think about danger, they think about things like the boat tipping over, or being caught in a terrible storm. But in reality, the most dangerous things you do on your boat are also ordinary, everyday activities. They don’t look dramatic, or risky, or scary. That’s one thing that makes them dangerous –- they become so ordinary that we don’t always pay full attention while doing them. In my opinion some of the big ones are:

·      Getting on and off the boat

·      Going down the companionway “steps”

·      Drinking while sailing, and

·      Sailing with friends (What? Yes …)

Stepping aboard:

It’s so easy to get on and off the boat casually, but you should give it your full attention and not think about anything else. One misplaced foot, and you could fall in the water between the boat and the dock. You could be squeezed between those two big, hard things –- onto barnacles! People have died because they hit their heads on the dock on the way down, knocked themselves out and no one knew they were in the water.

If you put netting on the bow or stern of your boat, you can set things on the boat without risk that they will fall into the water, and you can then get on the boat with both hands free to do so securely and safely. (By the way, according to a doctor friend who sails, if you cut yourself on barnacles -- do not pass GO, do not collect $200 -- get yourself to your doctor immediately, who will undoubtedly put you on antibiotics, as barnacles and dock-bound oysters can contain some very nasty, dangerous bacteria.)

Don’t get on or off your boat with your arms loaded with “stuff.” Your center of gravity is already higher than the lifelines, and loading yourself up only makes that worse.

Going down the companionway “steps”:

They aren’t steps. They’re LADDERS. It’s very dangerous to go down ladders with your back to the rungs. Yes, I know these rungs often look like steps, but please – always turn around, face the steps, and use the handholds. I know a man with decades of sailing experience who slipped going down his companionway. He lay on the floor of his cabin for hours with a badly broken leg before someone found him. I know another fellow who spent an enjoyable night drinking with friends, and then fell going down his companionway. Fortunately he was only scraped up and bruised, but not badly hurt – see below.

Now think about your cabin. Most cabins are not spacious, and there are many things you can hit as you fall. The same rule applies for this as for getting on and off the boat: heads shouldn’t hit hard things, and your hands mustn’t be loaded up with stuff as you go up or down the companionway ladder.

Drinking while sailing:

I don’t let my crew drink until we’re done sailing for the day. On a 24 hour shift, we would have rotating shifts and try to work out R and R time for people, but still, real moderation would be key. Alcohol affects balance, and boats tend to lurch suddenly. Sailing while drinking is common –- many people’s fantasy of sailing is of tootling around the Caribbean with the wheel in one hand and a fancy drink in the other (you wouldn’t do that driving, though, would you?) Alcohol also stimulates socialization, and you can end up with everyone having a great time in the cockpit –- and no one noticing that the boat is headed straight for that channel marker (see below).

One person I have met lost the entire ring finger on her right hand just by adjusting a docking line –- after having had too much to drink. The line wrapped around the base of her finger and tightened, and took it right off. 
LESSON LEARNED: Alcohol can make you go "bump!" Party hearty if you want – but at the end of the day.

Sailing with friends:

Say WHAT??? Yeah, you have to be careful. Remember when you were 16 and had just learned to drive? What did you want to do first? Pick up all your best buds and go cruising around town, right? Some states now don’t allow new drivers to have any passengers with them because they are such a distraction to drivers for whom much is not automatic yet.

 Sailing is similar. There’s a lot to think about (really, it can be overwhelming at first), and someone has to be looking out for hazards. I know someone who hit a channel marker (those things pop up in the craziest places!) with three people on the boat. The skipper was facing his guests –- and forward, but the guests were facing him, and he was looking at his friends, not the water. He was going along pretty fast and when that channel marker jumped out into the middle of the channel, it did a lot of damage to the bow of his boat. (By the way, you’ve met this man before. He’s the one who ended up with the keel in his boat instead of under it.)

FINALLY:  Buy a good, sharp, folding knife and attach it to your pants or shorts any time you sail – whether on your boat or someone else’s. West Marine sells excellent knives,

as well as elastic cords with clips on them.This is the knife and cord I use:

If your favorite sailing shorts don’t have belt loops, sew a metal (not plastic) ring inside the left pocket if you’re left-handed, and the right pocket if you’re right-handed. Clip that knife on!

Then, if your leg should get caught in a line and you go overboard, you will know you have that knife with you, and you can use it to cut yourself free without worrying about losing the knife. It was the first safety tip given to me (thanks, Craig!) and I think it was one of the best. Recently a fisherman near my marina drowned in six feet of water because he was tangled in his anchor line and couldn’t get free. It’s not a common accident, but probably a fatal one without a sharp knife to free yourself with.

This is my safety advice to newer sailors. Have fun – but be careful out there!

The Day I Moved Aboard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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