Why pets and boats dont mix

14.15 in and, Boat Plans, boats, brain, dont, from, lame, mix, pets, poppycock, port, question, starboard, tricky, why

A young couple readying their boat for long-distance cruising want to know what kind of pet would be best to take along on their 35-foot sloop. Well, I have definite ideas about pets on boats, and I couldn’t do better than refer them to a column I wrote several years ago. It went like this:

EVERY SUMMER EVENING, toward sunset, quiet anchorages all over America suddenly become busy as dinghies begin ferrying dogs ashore from yachts. The dogs, cooped up all day on small yachts, almost always stand in the dinghy bows, ears pointed forward, tongues flapping in the breeze, panting with eagerness to get on dry land and empty their bladders.

It’s the poop parade and it’s not pretty. It starts with the dreadful, awkward business of trying to get a dog down into a dinghy in the first place, and ends with the equally dreadful, awkward business of trying to get it up, out of the dinghy and back on deck.

Sailing with dogs is such a lot of bother that you have to wonder why anybody would do it. I love animals as much as the next guy, perhaps more than most, but when I’m cruising I don’t want my choice of destinations and times of sailing to be dictated by an animal whose only ambition is to lift his leg on the nearest beach.

Dogs don’t enjoy sailing. They don’t care if you’re doing two knots or 10. They don’t mind if you hoist the spinnaker or not. They don’t even know what a spinnaker is. People take dogs sailing because they’re lonely for their dogs, not because their dogs are lonely for them.

If you can afford a boat, you can afford to put the dog in a good kennel while you cruise, or to hire a dog sitter. If you really love your animal, you will do what’s best for the dog, not for you. Don’t kid yourself that the dog can’t live without you. Dogs are pack animals and like to follow a leader but believe me, any leader will do. And if a dog’s going to be cooped up with nowhere to go, it surely would prefer to be cooped up on dry land that stays level and doesn’t make it seasick.

In the main, dogs won’t use a sandbox on board, or even a piece of Astroturf on the foredeck or in the cockpit. They’ll hold in a pee until their bladders almost burst. They’ll hang on to a poo until their eyes change color. They only want to go ashore, find a neatly tended marina lawn, or someone’s pretty flower garden, decorate it with their internal debris, and scratch the hell out of it. That’s doggy heaven; and the whole process is repeated again at dawn the next day.

If you must have an animal on board then a parrot makes more sense than anything else. The pirates knew what they were doing. Did you ever hear of a pirate with a dachshund, for goodness’ sake?

And if not a parrot, then a cat. Cats are more compact. They don’t need exercise. You can ignore them and they’ll ignore you right back, with no hurt feelings. And, best of all, you don’t have to take them ashore. They’ll use a litter box. In fact, some will go one step better, and use the head.

I once met one called Pepe who had sailed around the world on a boat called Aqua Viva. His owner, a lawyer, had trained him to sit on the toilet seat by first placing his sandbox there. Pepe never did learn to open the seacock and flush the loo, but nobody was complaining about that.

The trouble with ocean-going cats is that they almost always seem to fall overboard and drown, or else, if they’re females, they run away with some local riff-raff tomcat as soon as they get to port. So, if you have a cat you should try not to get too attached to it because sooner or later you’re going to learn that sailboats and household pets are a very poor mix.

Today’s Thought

America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.

 —Arnold Toynbee, News summaries, July 14, 1954.

Tailpiece

I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance

Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance.

—Ogden Nash.

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

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Smoke without the mirrors

06.48 in at, Boat Plans, boats, how, hurt, mirrors, never, sea, small, smoke, survive, the, will, without, words, you

IF IT LOOKED like you had drowned in Massachusetts in the 18th century, someone was certain to come along and blow smoke up your ass. That was the published instruction, although more politely expressed. The official version was that victims of drowning were to be revived by blowing tobacco smoke up the victim’s rectum while bathing the victim’s chest with hot rum.

You may well wonder how the smoke inflation was accomplished. I can only tell you that it wasn’t done cheek-to-cheek. Special machines were built for this purpose. I have never seen a picture of one, so I can’t tell you what they looked like, or how they worked. All I know is that it wasn’t an original New England practice. The idea apparently came from The Netherlands.

Dutch people were always falling into the canals and drowning, apparently, so, in 1767, they founded the Amsterdam Society for the Rescue of Drowning Persons. These poor souls were to be taken into a house where their airways could be inspected. Their wet clothes would be removed and they would be warmed up by being rubbed with woolen clothes, after which “tobacco smoke fumigation” was administered per rectum.

More was to come. Moderate bleeding could be performed from the arm or neck, and if signs of swallowing were observed (not earlier) some hard liquor could be poured into the mouth. Spirits of ammonia could be held under the nose.

If all this brought no  results, the society advised that the victim should be laid in a warm bed accompanied by a naked person to provide natural heat. 

In 1787, The Institution of the Humane Society of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was founded, and the Dutch smoke-blowing trick was adopted in the New World.

Because boaters are more likely than ordinary landlubbers to come across drowning people, it might pay them to invest in a pack of cigarettes and a reliable lighter. (I’m not sure that nicotine vaping would do the trick.) But I leave it to you to figure out how to transfer the smoke from your mouth to the victim’s wotsit. It might need some thinking about.

Today’s Thought

The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most things, in fact, are better in the morning.

— Dr. Lewis Thomas, President, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, NY Times, 4 Jul 76

Tailpiece

A game park in Texas has reported an extraordinary cross between a lion and a parrot. A park spokesman admitted yesterday that they’re not quite sure yet what they’ve got, but when it talks everybody sure sits up and listens.

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

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The most wonderful mystery

13.14 in better, Boat Plans, boats, deserve, joy, most, mystery, of, old, simple, small, the, these, wonderful

A READER in Newport Beach, California, says she would like to know what the Bible means when it says:

 "There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not:
"The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid."

Specifically, “Nautigal” wants to know about the way of a ship in the midst of the sea.

Well, ma’am, science has made great progress since those words were written. We can explain an eagle’s flight with aerodynamics. Herpetologists now know how a snake slithers across a rock. Dr. Phil understands all too well the wicked way of a man with a maid (and spares us no details). And that leaves the ship in the midst of the sea, the most wonderful of all the mysteries.

Little ships, and especially little sailing ships, conduct themselves in many different ways in the waves of the sea. You may have experienced them all without giving any particular motion a name or a definition. But one man made a list for us to wonder at.

He is the well-known American naval architect and author, Francis S. Kinney. He held that there were eight motions of a sailboat at sea:

Broaching: Accidentally swinging broadside on to the wind and sea when running free.

Heaving: Rising and falling as a whole with the seas.

Pitching: Plunging and scending, so that the bow and stern rise and fall alternately.

Pitchpoling: Accidentally tumbling stern-over-bow in a half-forward somersault.

Rolling: Inclining rhythmically from side to side.

Surging: Being accelerated and decelerated by overtaking swells.

Swaying: Moving bodily sideways.

Yawing: Lurching and changing direction to either side of a proper course.

I note that the discreet Mr. Kinney refrained from mentioning wallowing and foundering, which has happened in boats I’ve sailed. The foundering was in a small sailing dinghy, luckily, and there was a sandbank nearby. Perhaps Mr. Kinney’s designs never did those things. But he might well have included heeling, which is simply deliberately arrested rolling.

So next time you’re out there, “Nautigal,” take note of what your boat is doing, and at all costs avoid pitchpoling. That’s the most dangerous motion of all.

Today’s Thought

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.

— Harry Emerson Fosdick, “The Mystery of Life,” in Riverside Sermons

Tailpiece
A man rushed into the dining car of a train. “A lady just fainted next door,” he cried. “Anyone got any whiskey?”

Several flasks were offered. He grabbed the nearest one and drained it in one gulp.

“Thanks a lot,” he said, “it always upsets me to see a lady faint.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

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In praise of beautiful overhangs

09.44 in a, about, beautiful, Boat Plans, boats, in, learning, little, lot, many, of, overhangs, praise, thanks, to

I FOUND A PROFILE of a Pearson Vanguard in a boating book the other day and I couldn’t help but be struck by how beautiful she was. That man Philip Rhodes could design a mean sheerline. Combined with low freeboard, Vanguards still look gorgeous 50 years or so after they were built.

The bow, in particular, has a cocky sheer and a rounded profile that seems just right for a seagoing boat, while the stern rises just enough to complement the wonderful curve that sweeps from fore to aft as befits a creature intended to live among waves.

By today’s standards, the overhangs are excessive. The bow and the stern overhangs measure more than 10 feet combined on a boat only 32 feet 7 inches overall. But today’s boats have traded beauty for utility and interior space, which is a compromise not necessarily for the better.

Designers tell us that overhangs enable a boat to go faster. They increase the boat’s waterline length as she heels, and waterline length, as we all know, is the major factor affecting the maximum sustained speed of displacement boats. I have never been convinced of this alleged benefit. Not for any good mathematical reason but just because I can’t believe it makes enough difference in waterline length to matter. I’m even suspicious about the very claim that heeling adds to waterline length. Some boats roll buoyantly upward, out of the water, as they heel. I bet they don’t add much, if anything, to the wetted waterline. And besides, when you’re running downwind, and not heeling, there is no gain in waterline length at all.

In any case, I personally don’t think the Vanguard’s overhangs are excessive. Another famous and very handsome design of that period, the Camper & Nicholson 32, had overhangs totaling 9 feet. Furthermore, L. Francis Herreshoff, the great master, designed what he called “sensible cruising boats” with overhangs very much like the Vanguard’s. His famous H-28 ketch, at 28 feet overall, had a waterline of just over 23 feet.

There’s no doubt, though, that very long overhangs are dangerous at sea. They’re very elegant, but on smaller boats they’re suited only to sheltered waters. They cause pounding at the bow and slamming at the stern.

A friend of mine once took his 30-Square Meter to sea. This was a narrow-gutted formula racing class with very long overhangs, because the goal for naval architects was to design the fastest sailboat you could build with a maximum of 30 square meters of sail area. My friend got caught in quartering seas and found that the leverage afforded by the long stern overhang caused each overtaking swell to spin the boat almost broadside on, into a dangerous broach. Those 30 Squares were gorgeous to look at, and extremely satisfying to sail to weather, but they were lousy seaboats in bad weather.

The Vanguard was designed in the days when the Cruising Club of America (CCA) rule applied, of course. When that rule was superseded by the International Offshore Rule (IOR), the rear ends of racing boats suddenly changed from generous, flowing, callipygian sterns to mean and tight pinched-in haunches, often with unsightly reverse-sheer transoms. This did nothing for seaworthiness or looks. It just helped a boat get a better handicap under the IOR formula.

Manufacturers of cruising boats, like lemmings plunging over the cliff, followed the style of the racers, of course, in the hope that prospective clients would be impressed. So we had a very ugly production run of racer/cruisers in the 1970s and early ’80s. Happily, though, there were the occasional standouts, like Pearson and Philip Rhodes.

I feel thankful to them every time I see a Vanguard.

Today’s Thought

Perhaps the greatest difference between the beautiful yacht and the plain one is the way their crews treat them, for the crew of the beautiful yacht usually gives her tender loving care.

—L. Francis Herreshoff

Tailpiece

Overheard at the yacht club bar:

“My dirty bottom is really wreaking havoc with my performance.”

“Yeah, just imagine what that would do to your boat.”

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Learning to trust your crew

19.44 in adrift, aisle, an, better, Boat Plans, boats, crew, deserve, in, innocent, learning, old, soup, the, these, to, trust, your

A sailor I know told me the other day that he is hesitating about buying a bigger sailboat because he’s afraid his usual crew — his two teenage daughters — won’t be able, physically, to handle the bigger craft.

Now I am too streetwise to get into an argument about the capabilities of women, but I was reminded that several years ago I wrote a column on this very subject. I dug it out and gave it to the worried sailor; but it struck me that the advice I handed out then is still valid today. Here it is:  

A FRIEND OF A FRIEND is dreaming of crossing the Pacific under sail. He normally holds down a highly technical and well-paid job, but he’s out of work right now and not likely to be hired again until the economy improves.

However, he is a frugal man and has husbanded his resources. So now he’s thinking that this might not a bad time to turn his dream into reality.

His loyal wife, who crews for him on their 32-foot cruising sloop, is happy to go along with him, but he is worried about his two daughters, aged 16 and 14.

“If they were boys I wouldn’t have a moment’s hesitation,” he says, “but I’m not sure girls will be able to handle the hardships.”

Well, I don’t know these daughters of his, of course, but I can’t help thinking it’s a bit old-fashioned to regard girls as lacking in the ability to handle crew duties aboard yachts. What they might lack in brute strength they surely make up for in ingenuity. You only have to be able to read to know that girls of 15 and 16 are sailing bigger yachts than his around the world on their own these days.

Besides, boys don’t always make idea crews anyway. The last time I crossed an ocean with a son, who was then 17 years old, I lost a lot of sleep worrying about him.

As we were the only two watchkeepers, he had specific orders to call me if he spotted another vessel at night. He had specific orders to call me if he thought a sail change was necessary. He had specific orders to wear a harness and tether when he was alone in the cockpit at night.

But he was 17. He was becoming a man. He couldn’t help himself. Nature was pumping testosterone through his tissues. He didn’t obey any of those orders. Although he was color blind, he guided us through a fleet of fishing boats one dark night way out in the South Atlantic while my wife and I slept below. I nearly had a fit when I found out.

And when we were running fast in the southeast trades I was woken up one night by the thud of footsteps running forward along the cabintop. My untethered son was jibing the foresail singlehanded, shifting the pole from one side to the other. I lay awake, staring into the darkness, listening to the noises, waiting for the thuds that would indicate he was returning to the safety of the cockpit. But they never came. Had he gone overboard? I reasoned — I hoped — that he had returned along the side deck. I wanted to get up and peek out of the companionway hatch, but I didn’t want him to know that I had caught him in an act of disobedience because that would have forced me to impose disciplinary punishment or else lose my power of authority over him, such as it was. So I lay there fretting for another half hour until it was time to go on watch and I could decently make an appearance. And there he was, sitting in the cockpit, neatly buckled up and looking the picture of innocence in the moonlight. I could have bitten him. But I didn’t ask him why the jib pole was suddenly on the other side.

I don’t think a girl would have disobeyed her father/skipper like that. Girls don’t have the same impulse to prove they’re macho.

Or do they? Maybe now I’m the one who’s acting old-fashioned. Well, if I am, I can’t help it. Old-fashioned is what I am. Like it or lump it. But my advice to the friend of a friend is simple: Go for it. Invest some trust in those daughters of yours. I’m sure it will be amply repaid.

Today’s Thought

A man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts.

— Harold Macmillan
Tailpiece
Did you hear about the short-sighted moth that blundered into a 2-year-olds birthday party? He burned his end at both candles.

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Silent Fan Club paradox

23.42 in and, Boat Plans, boats, club, dont, fan, his, mix, paradox, pets, sad, sailor, salopettes, silent, soils, why

A LETTER FROM Ivor Tungin-Cheaque, Chairman of Vigor’s Silent Fan Club, says:

Honorable Sir,

A dilemma of considerable proportions has raised itself in regard to membership of your Silent Fan Club. As you well know, members are forbidden to contact you or praise in any way your unmatched wisdom and unrivalled literary skills. Because membership is automatic from birth, you have the biggest fan club the world has ever known.

But a recent newspaper article has given me cause for concern about the exploding world population. The article said that the Real Madrid soccer club is claiming to have 45 million fans. This is nothing compared with Vigor’s Silent Fan Club, which numbers its fans in the billions — but the implications are alarming

Since enrolment in your honor’s club is automatic, there have never been never been more members of Vigor’s Silent Fan Club. Nor has there been so great a demand on our administrative services. Never before have we struggled so valiantly to  keep track of new members and expel those few who break their vows of silence.

It is obvious, however, that the more the world population grows, the greater the chance that some members will break their vows of silence by reading your columns and publicly praising you. They will then have to be expelled.

This means that as the club grows, so its numbers will decline. This is a vexing paradox.

My humble suggestion is that you should immediately start toning down the the cleverness of your columns and the skill with which you wield the editorial pen. If your fans find less to admire in your writing, the less likely they will be to give in to their instinct to burst into ill-considered praise.

I shall, of course, keep you informed of developments.

I close with admiration for your sage-like utterances, your ready wit and charm, the subtle thrust and parry of your sparkling repartee, and the wisdom, Solomon-like, that graces your princely brow.

Yours Humbly and Obediently,

IVOR TUNGIN-CHEAQUE (Chairman, Vigor’s Silent Fan Club)

PS:  I hope this makes sense. They’re replacing the padding in my cell and it’s very distracting.

Today’s Thought

To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man.

— Marcel Marceau, US News & World Report, 23 Feb 87

Tailpiece

“My husband is so careless about his appearance. He just can’t seem to keep buttons on his clothes.”

“Maybe the buttons weren’t sewn on properly in the first place.”

“Oh, you may have a point there. He’s terribly careless with his sewing, too.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

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Navigation is not precise

18.22 in all, Boat Plans, boats, en, gps, is, joy, navigation, not, of, precise, route, simple, small, the, to, trades

ONE OF THE THINGS that small-boat navigation teaches you is that nothing is precise. The best navigators make allowances for the unknown factors that always affect small boats, especially sailboats. They plot their positions within a circle of uncertainty and if they’re seeking landfall at a particular spot on a coastline, they aim way off to one side or the other, so they know which way to turn when they sight land.

When I was a lot younger I thought I knew how to navigate with precision. This misconception was confirmed when I sailed a 17-foot dinghy across the English Channel from Dover to Calais. I studied the tide tables and figured out the speed and direction of the tidal stream (or the set and drift as I used to call it then) for every hour. I then drew my course on the chart and adjusted the compass heading to account for the distance the tide was pushing me sideways in each hour. And thus, with a great sense of triumph, I arrived off the rather featureless French coast exactly at Calais.

It was beginner’s luck, of course. Nobody can forecast the exact speed of the current, or its exact direction. Nobody can tell you how much leeway your boat will make. Nobody can forecast your exact speed or distance covered during any one-hour period, and so the detailed markings you make so carefully on the chart turn out to be nonsense. In my case, it was probably a matter of all the errors canceling each other out — a minor miracle in other words.

Years later, when further experience had taught me some humility, I read The Yacht Navigator’s Handbook, by Norman Dahl. In the introduction he says: “When I was first taught navigation (in the Royal Navy) errors were thought of as being rather disgraceful, the sole result of poor technique by the navigator. Whilst I always accepted (and still accept today) that I was not the most brilliant navigator in the world, I was disappointed to find that, however hard I tried, errors never seemed to go away. Navigating a submerged submarine, and later, yachts of many kinds in many situations, eventually made me realize that errors are an integral part of navigation and need to be studied in their own right.”

Dahl said a major purpose of his book was to show that errors in navigation are normal and natural, and that a major skill in navigation lies in your ability to interpret the results in terms of the likely errors. He goes on to show boat navigators how they can actually use the errors to help make sensible decisions about their positions and a future course of action.

As one who had never experienced any difficulty in making errors I found Dahl’s advice very comforting, and I never again tried to do anything as impossibly precise as maintaining a rhumb line from Dover to Calais.

I expect Dahl’s book is out of print now because it was first published in 1983, before the great revolution in navigating that finally did bring near- precision to position-finding. We don’t think of errors now, because GPS doesn’t allow for that. It will tell us our position to within a boatlength in any kind of visibility, day or night.

And yet people have run aground using GPS, often because GPS is more accurate than the charts you plot your position on. There have been many reports of yachts wrecked on rocks, reefs, and islands that were where the GPS said they weren’t.

So we now all find ourselves in the position that I was in all those years ago, when I knew precisely and without doubt how to cross the English Channel. It’s surely time we started doubting again. It’s time we listened to Mr. Dahl, time we started taking all the possible errors into account. Time to accept that navigation is never precise, even with GPS.
Happy New Year
I wish you all health and happiness for the coming year. May 2016 also bring you prosperity in all meanings of the word.

Today’s Thought

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

— Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship: The Hero as Prophet

Tailpiece

“What made you marry old Bella?”
“She was different from all the other girls I’ve met.”

“In what way?”
"She liked me."

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First voyage of the Clermont

00.42 in at, Boat Plans, boats, clermont, crew, first, how, learning, of, sea, small, survive, the, to, trust, voyage, your

CAN STEAM BE USED to propel boats on a commercial basis? That was the question occupying people’s minds in the early 1800s. No, steam will simply not work, said the eminent engineer Benjamin B. Latrobe in a paper delivered to the American Philosophical Society in 1803. Yes, steam will work, said an inventor called Robert Fulton.

Latrobe maintained that the reasons why steam wouldn’t work were these:

Ø The weight of the engine and fuel

Ø The large space the engine occupies

Ø The tendency of the engine to rack the vessel and cause leaks

Ø The expense of maintenance, and

Ø Problems with the paddles breaking (if light) or from their weight (if made strong).

 Four years later,  Latrobe’s face must have been very red when Fulton launched a ship 133 feet long with two British-made steam engines, a huge smoke stack, and (believe it or not) a huge tiller attached to an outboard rudder.

She was called the Clermont and on August 17, 1807, she chugged all the way from New York to Albany, 150 miles, and back at an average of 5 knots. Here is Fulton’s description of the voyage in a letter to a friend:

“My steamboat voyage to Albany and back has turned out rather more favorable than I had calculated. The distance from New York to Albany is 150 miles. I ran it up in 32 hours and down in 30. I had a light breeze against me the whole way, both going and coming, and the voyage has been performed wholly by the power of the steam engine.

“I overtook many sloops and schooners beating to windward and parted with them as if they had been at anchor. The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved. The morning I left New York there were not, perhaps, 30 persons in the city who believed the boat would even move one mile an hour, or be of the least utility; and while we were putting off from the wharf, which was crowded with spectators, I heard a number of sarcastic remarks.

“This is the way in which ignorant men compliment what they call philosophers and projectors.”

Today’s Thought

Steam enginitis is very catching.

— R. D. (“Pete”) Culler, boat designer and builder

Tailpiece

“Why so gloomy?”

“I parked my car outside my house and my Seagull outboard was visible on the back seat. I came back just 10 minutes later. I found the car had been broken into — and someone had left another Seagull next to mine.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

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These old boats deserve better

22.28 in better, Boat Plans, boats, deserve, electricity, idle, is, navigation, not, old, on, precise, these, thoughts

I’M ALWAYS AMAZED when people selling boats won’t take the time and effort to clean them up a bit before inviting buyers to look at them. I’ve inspected two boats in the past few months, and quite frankly I was disgusted at the state they were in, despite the glowing descriptions in the advertisements.

Admittedly, I’m searching the cheap and nasty end of the boating spectrum. What I want is an inexpensive daysailer/weekender on which I can teach my grandkids to sail. They know the rudiments already, of course, and they’ve taken a few lessons, but I would like to teach them the real stuff that will keep them interested in sailing for the rest of their lives.

In particular, I’m looking for an old Santana 22, simply because I once restored one from a 28-year-old wreck. I discovered all her weak spots and now know where to look for trouble. Over a period of years, June and I sailed her from one and of the Salish Sea to the other, and we were delighted with her performance as a “sport cruiser,” as I called her.

But the two Santana 22s I found for sale on Craigslist last year were simply not worth looking at. One, described as “awesome” and well maintained had a keel that was a mass of rust. There were bits and pieces of mysterious boat stuff strewn all over the main cabin and the forepeak, rust streaks on the paint, ripped and deflated upholstery, aluminum chainplates bubbling with a white encrustation, and a mast support beam that was bowed downward. The other boat was much the same, but it had also suffered the “improvements” of a series of owners with their own lubberly ideas of what a small sloop should look and behave like.

I don’t know how many prospective buyers must have been put off by the state of these boats, but I would have been ashamed to put them on the market in that condition. I know we’re talking about boats that are nearly 50 years old, but I can’t understand why they can’t at least have been kept clean and tidy and smelling sweet. Nobody expects an old boat to be perfect, but to present a boat for sale in such a slatternly run-down condition is an affront to the person expecting the “awesome” boat of the advertisement. It actually hurts me to see good, well-designed boats so badly neglected. There are years of life left in them yet. They surely deserve better.

Today’s Thought

I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old wine.

— Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer

Tailpiece

“How did you knock this pedestrian down, sir?”

“I didn’t knock him down, officer. I stopped to let him cross the road and he fainted.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

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The joy of small simple boats

16.44 in and, boat, Boat Plans, boats, electricity, fever, idle, joy, neglect, of, on, simple, small, the, thoughts

SAILING, FOR MANY GOOD REASONS, tends to be regarded by the general public as a complicated and expensive pastime. But it needn’t be. Small simple boats can afford pleasure and gratification out of all proportion to their cost. And small gentle voyages can generate as much joy and satisfaction as long adventurous ones.

The man or woman who gingerly sails a dinghy along a friendly shore is no less worthy of our respect than the sailor who braves the mighty ocean. 

We all have our own areas of anxiety and doubt in our own abilities, and when we conquer our fears it is just as much a triumph to cross the bay as it is for someone of sterner nature to cross an ocean.

And yet, human nature being what it is, we tend to judge other sailors by the size of their boats and how far they’ve traveled: their most distant ports, and the length of their voyages.

Now it is true that sailors who cross oceans in small boats perform prodigious feats of seamanship because they sail the same seas as big ships that have large crews specializing in the various skills needed to move people and cargoes across oceans. Sailboat sailors are their own cooks and navigators. They are their own engineers and riggers. They handle the sails and anchors and electrical circuits. And they face exactly the same hazards as large ships, including the storms, the rocks, and even pirates.

Yet, at the same time, to take a small boat across a body of water of any size is no small feat. To each his own goals and ambitions. We all set our own limits, and who can gainsay our individual achievements? What we all seek deep down is a feeling of ability, of achievement, of confidence. And sailing a small boat on a small voyage often does generate the confidence we need to deal with the greater troubles the world constantly throws at us.

Seamanship is as much a set of the mind as anything else. You are the only judge of your seamanship. We challenge ourselves, we feel fear, and sometimes we get more fear than we bargained for, but we learn and we gain confidence, and are not as frightened quite as much the next time. And there always is a next time for those who challenge themselves.

Today’s Thought

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage.

— R. L. Stevenson
Tailpiece

Mary had a little lamb

That leaped around in hops

It hopped into the road one day

And ended up as chops.

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Sailing science advances slowly

04.08 in across, advances, and, Boat Plans, boats, dont, europe, mix, pets, sailing, science, slowly, why

IT TOOK MANKIND a long time to figure out how to represent the shape of a boat on paper. Indeed it is quite an achievement to be able to “see” the three-dimensional shape of a hull in the mind’s eye just by looking at a set of lines drawn on a flat surface. It took centuries before waterlines, buttock lines, and stations became the everyday tools of naval architects.

In fact, before the sixteenth century little was known of the science of ship design, according to Steve Killing, author of Yacht Design Explained: “It was experience rather than theory that taught the shipbuilder (who was often the designer) what was fast and what was seaworthy.”

In those days, experimentation was the only way to make a new ship better than the last, and sometimes progress wasn’t progress at all, Killing says. “In 1697 Paul Hoste, a French Jesuit priest and professor mathematics, was beginning to explore the new science that Newton’s example had inspired.”

Hoste wrote: “It cannot be denied that the art of constructing ships . . . is the least perfect of all the arts . . . . The best constructors build the two principal parts of the ship, viz. the bow and the stern, almost entirely by eye, whence it happens that the same constructor, building at the same time two ships after the same model, most frequently makes them so unequal that they have quite opposite qualities.”

Progress in the early days was very slow, and we might be forgiven for presuming that science is making much greater strides in this modern age. But we are forced to think again when accidents happen such as the sinking of OneAustraliaduring the 1995 America’s Cup Challengers’ Series. That catastrophe came about because of simple structural failure.

So much for computer-aided design. “Even with the latest scientific know-how on hand, we’re still learning things the hard way,” notes Killing.

Today’s Thought

There is a period of life when we go back as we advance.

— Rousseau, Émile

Tailpiece

“How much is a bottle of brandy? It’s my nephew’s birthday and he likes brandy.”

“Well, madam, it depends on the age. Seven-year-old is quite reasonably priced. Ten-year-old costs a bit more. Twelve-year-old can be quite expensive.”

“Gee, that’s terrible. My nephew is 25.”

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Searching for nautical humility

23.45 in are, Boat Plans, boaters, boats, excellent, for, humility, in, nautical, remember, searching, taste, voters

STIRRING TIMES. Strange things happening. A Pope rides around America in a Fiat 500. Somehow I never imagined I’d ever see a Spanish-speaking Argentinean man in a funny hat and a long dress parading his religious wares in an Italian mini-car in the USA. Some people wondered why he didn’t appear in a bullet-proof limousine like everybody else does, but it was explained that this Pope was a very humble man and this was his way of connecting with the humbler and poorer masses who, his staffers assured him, have to be content with tiny Fiats.

There were, inevitably, the voices of skeptics who wondered why — if he was so humble — why he didn’t fly around in a modest Cessna instead of a palatial Alitalia Boeing, but they were quickly dismissed. Others surmised that lagging sales of Fiat 500s called for some helpful Papal advertising. Some suggested that if he really wanted to be ultra-humble he could have searched the junkyards for a used Yugo instead of a brand-new Fiat 500, but it was generally acknowledged that the man certainly has guts. Not everybody is willing to take the chance that a Fiat 500 will get you where you want to go. And if you think this is too harsh a criticism, I plead in mitigation that a girl friend of mine had a Fiat 500 that broke down in an isolated spot in Africa and left us stranded in the midst of black tribesmen who weren’t behaving very humbly. We survived, but this has affected my thinking about Fiat 500s ever since.

No matter. What I really wanted to ask was this: If the Pope were a boating man, what kind of boat would he choose to be humble in?

What about a Catalina 27? It’s one of a bunch of Belly-Button Boats (everybody has one) but it’s probably the best-selling 27-foot sailboat ever made.  And yet, while it’s modest, and largely non-polluting, it rather lacks a certain humility. This is not its own fault. The problem is that, as soon as you acquire what the hoi polloi perceives to be a “yacht,” you move into a different, less-humble social category.

Okay, how about a MacGregor26, then? It’s a boat for sailing newbies. But no, wait a minute. That 80 hp outboard motor doesn’t look too humble, does it? What you need for true humility is a 2 hp aircooled Honda. Ah, but then the nautical Pope would be even slower than a Fiat 500, so that wouldn’t do.

A Laser, maybe? Nah, he’d probably lose all his security men in one of those famous weather rolls while running dead downwind. And definitely no Hinckleys, of course. They’re modest-looking and understated, admittedly, but you could buy half-a-dozen Fiat 500s for the price of one decent Hinckley. Well, what about a Sunfish, then? Now there’s a real BBB for you. It has a nice old-fashioned rig, just like the Pope has. But wait, isn’t that a lateen sail? Wasn’t that rig introduced by ancient Muslim sailors? Good grief, they might have been Al Qaeda or ISIS. Whoa! Can’t go there. Not with a Pope in tow, anyway.  

Now I’m thinking Wharram Tiki 21. But there’s always the danger that a 79-year-old Pope could miss his step and fall into the drink between the two hulls. Did somebody say West Wight Potter 15? I’m afraid the sight of His Eminence perched in that tiny cockpit with a West Marine inflatable life preserver covering the papal robes is not one I care to imagine.

So I guess the answer is a gondola. I should have thought of that before. After all, it’s the Fiat 500 of the Venetian waterways. Small and slow and strangely shaped, but not so bad if your gondolier is trained to sing your kind of hymns and vespers and matins and things. Nothing makes you humbler than a gondolier who doesn’t know how or when to shut up. If you can manage not to strangle him, you must know the true meaning of humility.

Today’s Thought

Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.

— Frank Lloyd Wright (Recalled on his death, 8 Apr 59)

Tailpiece

“I hear you’re related to European royalty.”

“Not quite, but I had a British uncle who was a Peer.”

“Really? I had an uncle with bladder trouble, too.”

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Automated ship nightmare

09.03 in afloat, automated, bliss, Boat Plans, boats, design, flaw, in, nightmare, path, ship, small, the, to

WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER I used to dream of becoming ship’s captain. Actually, to tell the truth, I mostly dreamed about girls, but every now and then the ship captain dream broke through. I wanted to go to a maritime academy to learn how to steer and navigate and bark orders that made seamen run around like ants, but I was never encouraged or sponsored, so I just drifted through my teenage years in the usual casual manner, not knowing where I was going and not caring about how I was going to get there. In any case, I wouldn’t encourage any teenagers to take up professional seafaring these days.

That thought came to me after I watched a TV news piece about self-driving cars. Several high-tech companies and practically all the auto makers are working on producing cars that drive and think for themselves. They’re already on our roads all over the country, and proving to be far better drivers than human beings. So far, I’ve only heard of cars driving themselves, but I don’t doubt that 18-wheelers will soon be doing it also, gawd help us.

And so, how close is the day when boats and ships of all sizes will drive themselves and put ship’s captains out of business? There have been experiments already, of course, and it would appear that sending a vessel across the ocean is comparatively easy, compared with the task of guiding a car safely on a road among hundreds of dumb and unpredictable human drivers.

The thought of oceans filled with unflinching steel freighters makes me very uneasy, though. The risk of collision with small yachts is bad enough already, but how will robotic ships avoid us?  Furthermore, will they feel it their bounden duty to rescue us when we’re in distress? Will they deploy their little lifeboats and come and get us?  And then, who will feed us when they take us aboard?  Will there be any food on board at all, as a matter of fact?  Artificial intelligence doesn’t need milk and cookies.

Navigation aids such as radar and, especially, AIS, may help to avoid collisions in some places, but congested areas near shore and ports will present their own problems. Those of us who wish to sail for pleasure may find our movements greatly restricted and controlled, but I hope the future will not turn out to be as bleak as it’s looking right now. Meanwhile, I’m glad I’m no longer a teenager with dreams of becoming a ship’s captain. I guess I’ll have to go back to dreaming of girls, much good may it do me.

Today’s Thought                                                               

We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are.

— V. S. Prichett, The Living Novel and Later Associations

Tailpiece

“What jobs are hippies best fit for?”

“Holding on your leggies.”

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Disagreement with the experts

13.48 in Boat Plans, boats, design, disagreement, experts, flaw, future, in, of, ships, small, the, with

TWO VERY EXPERIENCED ocean racers have agreed that it would be wise to criss-cross the cockpit of a yacht with ropes during a storm at sea.

I am a bit puzzled by this.

At first sight, I’m not sure it’s a good idea at all, but I would be foolish to argue with either of these men.The first is Warren Brown, of Bermuda, who owned a 40-foot ocean racer named Force Seven. She was designed by William Tripp, and she was overtaken by a hurricane between Bermuda and Newport, Rhode Island, in August 1964.

Warren is quoted in a famous book on the danger of deep-sea voyages called Heavy Weather Sailing, by K. Adlard Coles. Here are Warren’s own words:

“By 1700, steering had become extremely difficult, and of concern for the deck watch. We criss-crossed the cockpit completely with rope, giving handholds for every movement in this area as a safety measure additional to safety belts.” Force Seven was knocked down many times, and her cockpit was filled with water on several occasions, but she weathered the hurricane and eventually arrived safely in Newport.

The second experienced ocean racer is Adlard Coles himself, of course. In his book, Coles describes the cockpit lash-up as a “useful tip,”and adds: “It is not uncommon for part of the crew to be swept out of the cockpit if a yacht is knocked down in a heavy gale, and several went overboard in the gale of the Bermuda Race of 1960 . . . the criss-cross of ropes seems a practical idea to help prevent accidents of this sort.”

Well, I can see the sense of providing handholds for the cockpit crew, but how would they be able to move around in the cockpit with ropes strung like spider webs at or about waist level? I can’t imagine trying to move fore or aft by high-stepping over line after line. It would be bad enough with the boat at rest in harbor, but how would you do it at sea with the boat bucking and heeled over?  I also wonder about the chances for getting sheets, other sail controls, and even your own tether snagged and tangled up in this web.

Warren doesn’t give any details of how many ropes were used, or where they were attached, but I presume they’d have to be strung from coaming to coaming, which might even be higher than waist level on some boats. I’d be interested to know if anyone else has ever tried this trick, and how it worked out practically. Meanwhile, I’m highly skeptical, despite the authoritative recommendations.

Today’s Thought

They were suffered to have rope enough till they had haltered themselves.

— Fuller, Holy War

Tailpiece

I want to know

How fireflies glow.

Do they carry

Little Exides

Slung beneath

Their tiny bexides?

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When boatyards built engines

21.12 in Boat Plans, boats, boatyards, built, crest, engines, excellent, for, in, out, taste, the, watch, when

IT’S ALMOST EXACTLY 100 years since one of the most famous American small-boat architects designed and built a wooden boat called  Cabrilla. William Atkin and his boyhood friend Cottrell Wheeler were the owners of a small boatyard on Long Island, New York, and Cabrilla was the largest boat they built there. She was a high-speed express cruiser, 115 feet in overall length.

But one of the most interesting things about her was the fact that young Atkin and Wheeler themselves designed the twin V-8 gasoline engines that powered her. Not only that: they built the engines, too, and installed them of course.

Atkin said later in his book Of Yachts and Men:  “Reviewing those days . . . I am astonished at the work we undertook and produced. The design work on Cabrilla was no small item.” This, naturally, was long before the days of computers, or even calculators, and all the work was done with pencil, paper, drafting ink, and the human brain.

Atkin described those engines as “big fellows of more than usual interest.” Each was of V-type with eight cylinders. The cylinder bore was 8 inches and the stroke 14 inches. Each bank of four cylinders was cast en bloc and, to insure perfectly even cylinder walls, was cast without the water-cooling jackets; the jackets were fitted to the cylinder blocks after all the machine work was completed.

In his book Atkin says: “The crankshaft was a steel casting and turned on Hess-Bright ball bearings, three bearings to each engine. To give some idea of the size of the crankshaft: the races of the bearings ran on balls having a diameter of 2 3/4 inches. The inlet and exhaust valve sets were made of heat-treated steel and were removable. The exhaust-valve stems were cooled with sodium. All the reciprocating valves were closed by positive cams rather than by compression springs. The crankcase was of skeleton form, cast of vanadium bronze and had 1/16th-inch-thick Tobin bronze plates to cover the openings.”

Atkin used outside contractors to manufacture several parts of the engine to his designs, but hundreds of other parts were made and assembled in his own boatyard basement.

“Yes, shipmates, Cabrilla’s engines were big fellows,” Atkin reflects, “and when, in these later years, Cottrell and I contemplate the fading past, we marvel at our youthful courage in tackling this job, which then seemed very simple, but which if attempted now would embarrass the engineering department of a large corporation.

“Cottrell designed all the mechanical and electric fittings for the hull, the disk clutches and reverse gears, and supervised their construction. The design of the engines was my contribution to the work then in hand. All this we accomplished within nine months and without the assistance of draftsmen or additional help.

“Fortunately, Cabrilla was designed before the days of expeditors, industrial efficiency, inspectors, personnel managers, safety engineers and all the other complicated and expensive claptrap of present-day production confusion. If we had had the fellowship of today’s industrial top-heaviness and discord, the yacht might never have been launched at all.”

Today’s Thought

Often ornateness goes with greatness;

Oftener felicity comes of simplicity.

William Watson, Art Maxims

Tailpiece

“Man, I never realized how short of living space the world has become.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, I came home early last evening and found a strange man living in my wife’s wardrobe.”

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Excellent taste in boats

22.10 in an, Boat Plans, boats, disagreement, down, excellent, experts, explosive, from, in, tale, taste, the, under, with

CAMPION MARINE is a Canadian boat manufacturer that seems to be doing just fine in a difficult market. Campion has been making recreational boats for more than 40 years in Kelowna, British Columbia, and now sells its products practically all over the world, even in China.

But what interests me most about Campion (which, incidentally is Canada’s biggest fiberglass boatbuilder) is the fact that its boats are edible. At least I think they are. In a press release the company proclaimed:

Campion Marine Inc., Canadas largest fiberglass boat builder, is proud to announce that it will become the first boat builder in the world to manufacture all of its boats with Envirez®, a renewably sourced bio-derived resin from Ashland Performance Materials.
Envirez® resin is the first resin that uses a substantial amount of soybean oil and corn derived ethanol in its formulation.
So now, if you run out of food in mid-ocean, you can eat your boat. You’ll have to spit out the fiberglass strands, of course, otherwise they’ll get stuck in your teeth; and the diet of soybean and ethanol may start to pale after a week or two; but at least you won’t starve.
The only decision left to make is: Where do you start eating? Somewhere above the waterline, obviously. Not the cockpit floor, but maybe the coamings. Or perhaps the toerails if your crew wash their feet regularly.
The edible boat ushers in a new era of yachting and I look forward to the first book of recipes. Transom stew. Corn à la Cockpit. Poopdeck Purée. Pintle and Gudgeon Potage. It all sounds so delicious I can hardly wait to buy an old wreck of a Campion and invite my friends to a boat tasting.
Today’s Thought
This has got to be the most expensive food ever laminated.
— Bryan Miller, NY Times, (on Manhattan’s Casual Quilted Giraffe restaurant)
Tailpiece
“Don’t you think he looks like me, nurse?”

“Yes, sir, but don’t let it worry you.  All new-born babies look strange for a while.”

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Many thanks to many boats

07.13 in another, boat, Boat Plans, boats, dream, many, paradise, promised, strange, thanks, the, to, wheres

 

BOATS I HAVE OWNED have taught me a lot in my lifetime. I guess I ought to be giving thanks to them right now. So, OK, thanks to:

My International sliding seat canoewhose name I have happily forgotten. She taught me how ancient Roman army catapults worked. Every time a gust came along I was catapulted off the sliding seat and over the boom into the drink.

Shane, a 14-foot Sprog one-design. My thanks to her for teaching me that having a fast boat doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll win races. It needs cunning and deviousness as well.

M’aidez, an 11-foot International Mirror Class dinghy, for alerting me to the fact that you should never name your boat M’aidez if you ever want to call anybody on VHF radio.

Mother’s Ruin, another Mirror, taught me how to wage  psychological warfare against racing competitors. Old Band-Aids stuck on a brand new mainsail seemed to distract them greatly as I sailed past.

Messy, another Mirror, taught me the valuable lesson that there are various forms of polyester resin, at least one of which will not cure if you don’t exclude air from its surface.  Her taped seams never got hard, never accepted paint, so I deliberately gave her a splodgy paint job and painted her name on her sides with a whitewash brush.

Trapper, a C&C 27, deserves my thanks for raising my social status at the yacht club.  Everybody admired her looks, if not my racing results.  A sweet boat.

Freelance, a Performance 31, by Lavranos, carried me and my family to a new life in America and taught me how to lie ahull in 50-knot winds off the Cape of Storms.

Square One, yet another Mirror, was a wreck I found in Los Angeles. She taught me how to restore a wooden boat in a garage in an apartment block without alerting the tenants directly above.  I learned their habits, and did my banging and sawing while they were showering or listening to loud TV. Nobody reported me to the fierce landlady.

Square One II. Yep, a Mirror again. Another wreck, this time in Seattle. I learned that I could

use an epoxy paste to replace a whole ply of marine plywood that fell off the starboard topsides. I was very proud of that repair job.

Tagati was a Santana 22 that showed us the glories of Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands and the Canadian Gulf Islands. Fast, simple and easily handled. I spent 13 months restoring her and should never have sold her.

Jabula, a Cape Dory 25D, took us around Vancouver Island on a six-week trip and allowed us to to meet an Oregonian cruising couple who gave us their recipe for gravlox salmon, which became our most-requested dish ever.

Sangoma, a Cape Dory 27,  took us around Vancouver Island again and taught me that you can  tow a heavy-displacement full-keel sailboat for two miles behind a small dinghy in a calm if you know how to scull with one oar over the transom. Yes, our engine broke down, but I got her into a small port from which a friendly Canadian boat towed us 10 miles to the area’s only mechanic.

Eclipse, a Cal 20, one of Gary Mull’s finest, taught me that I don’t like outboard engines that work in small wells let into the cockpit. She was a champion sailor, but I couldn’t stand the idea of her propeller protruding beneath the hull and causing drag all the time.

And finally, I have to mention Tokoloshe, a 10-foot, narrow-gutted, fiberglass fishing skiff that served as tender for the last four boats I owned. She was an unfinished mongrel of a boat, but without peer for seaworthiness. We towed her for thousands of miles, including hundreds in the open Pacific, and she never gave us a moment’s worry. Perhaps it was because I warned her that if she ever gave us trouble in a heavy following sea, I wouldn’t hesitate to cast her loose. I give thanks that It was a threat I never had to carry out.

Today’s Thought

So once in every year we throng

Upon a day apart,

To praise the Lord with feast and song

In thankfulness of heart.

— Arthur Guiterman, The First Thanksgiving

 Tailpiece

"Why did that sailor buy drinks for all those girls?"

"He likes to have a port in every sweetheart."

 

 

                                            

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