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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Tricky question from lame brain

03.44 in barnacle, Boat Plans, brain, from, hurt, lame, never, problem, question, suicidal, the, tricky, will, words, you

MY BRAIN HAD A QUESTION for me in the middle of the night: How does a rudder rud?

“We know how a writer writes and how a singer sings,” it said, “but how does a rudder rud?”

My brain thinks it’s quite funny on the quiet but in fact its sense of humor is quite warped. Nevertheless, as I had the rest of the disturbed night to think about it, I did start considering the question.

I seem to remember learning that it’s not the rudder alone that steers a sailboat. It’s all very vague now, but apparently the rudder just starts the boat turning, and the hull, now being at an oblique angle to the boat’s forward progress, is forced off to one side or the other. So I’m not exactly sure how the rudder ruds, except that it’s a hydrofoil that generates lift in either direction, according to how you turn it.

Nevertheless, it’s the action of the rudder that you feel when you’re slicing along to windward on a lovely day in a calm sea and all is wonderful around you. A couple of fingers on the tiller is all that’s need to keep your little beauty running straight and true — until a sudden gust of wind comes along, and you find yourself tugging the tiller up under your chin. It’s the dreaded weather helm, of course. Even on boats where the sail plan is nicely balanced with the keel plan, weather helm will show its ugly face, and it’s not hard to see why.

If you take a model yacht, place it in water (your bath will do), and use a finger behind the mast to push it forward, the boat will tend to go straight as long as the mast is upright. But if you heel the yacht over and push in the same place in the same direction with the same finger, you’ll find that your finger, the source of forward power, is now out to the side of the boat. You’re creating an off-balance push from one side of the boat. Naturally, the boat will try to turn toward the opposite side. You will have to counteract that tendency to round up into the wind by turning the rudder.

Now the rudder is a very effective brake. On sailboats it needs to be a large hydrofoil because it moves through the water comparatively slowly. Various designs of rudder make brakes of greater or lesser efficiency, but they all slow the boat down, some considerably, when they are turned. That is why it pays to reef the sails when the boat is heeling too much. The mast, being more upright now, creates less weather helm for the rudder to deal with.

This is all very simplistic, of course, suitable for a lower-class brain to absorb. It’s presuming that the driving force is transmitted at one point through the mast, which is convenient but not true. You can tell that because of how the mainsheet pulls when you’re on the run. There are forces on the shrouds and stays, too, all driving the boat forward.

It’s also presuming that the rudder is working upright in optimum conditions in calm water, which is not always the case. We all know that a rudder is less effective the more the boat heels, and hardly works at all in the foaming water left by a wave breaking under the stern. So it’s all really highly complicated and, I regret to say, too esoteric for a brain like mine.

Today’s Thought

He who will not be ruled by the rudder, must be ruled by the rock.

— Isaac D’Israeli, Curiosities of Literature

Tailpiece

Words of wisdom from Scotland:

“A weel-bred dog gaes oot when he sees them preparing tae kick him oot.”

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

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Sad sailor soils his salopettes

17.38 in Boat Plans, brain, from, his, lame, mirrors, question, sad, sailor, salopettes, smoke, soils, the, tricky, without

HANDS UP those of you who know what salopettes are.

Yeah, well, okay, I should have known there would be some smart-asses among you. Salopettes, for the rest of us, are sailing trousers and tops combined, a sort of Frenchified, adult onesie. You might say they’re a fancy kind of waterproof bib and trousers — sleeker, cooler, and much hauter in the ranks of nautical haute couture. And, naturally, correspondingly more expensive.

I mention this because someone called Torp has been writing about them on Yachting Monthly’s “Scuttlebutt” forum. Salopettes have been giving Torp problems:

“I have a pair of enthusiastically bright yellow salopettes,” he writes. “They are my pride and joy. However, I used to race on an old boat with blue ‘grippy’ stuff all over the deck. Courtesy of a good few sea hours buttock-down on the windward rail, I have found that this stuff has transferred itself to the seat of my trousers and no amount of scrubbing has made a dent in. So, long ago, I stopped trying.

“I dont mind, and the clothes are still waterproof so Im not planning on forking out for a new set. However, Ive been sailing on a different boat recently. This is one of those posh icebergs with gleaming gelcoat and fixtures and fittings pretty much still in their shrink-wrap.

“The skipper is fiercely boat-proud  and ALWAYS well turned-out in the latest, freshest kit in a sleek pale grey (a color that wouldnt last five minutes on me). Today I received several vibes that my dirty bottom and I are not quite up to the required standard. Remarks were directed towards my dulled posterior letting the side down, and I did observe the skipper later checking the spot I had just quit, presumably to make sure that none of my ancient arsegrime had contaminated his treasured decks. A further subtle hint I picked up on was that whenever we passed another crew at close quarters I was hastily bundled into the cockpit.

“Anyway, its a great boat and Id like to continue sailing on it, but Im fairly sure Im soon to receive an ultimatum from the owner — hes going to tell me that my smutted cheeks are making the boat look bad. So please, can anyone recommend a product that will get rid of him?”

A little later, Torp, returned to the forum with an update on his unfortunate problem:

“Following hours of fruitless scrubbing and sluicing over the past few years, for no apparent reason some of the seemingly-unshiftable filth started to come off in last weekends dreadful weather.

“When we got back the skipper watched, stoney-faced and silent, as I had to hose all the buttock-width streaks off his gleaming gelcoat.

“The weird thing is, though, the salopettes dont even look any cleaner! And judging by the state of the boat afterward, LOADS came off. LOADS did. What the hell is that stuff?!

“Also! Does anyone else need crew?”

Well, as you can imagine, Torp received many suggestions from fellow forum members concerning what to do about his dirty bottom, most of them more humorous than practical. There was one that caught my eye, however. It suggested that if the skipper wanted his crew to match his own splendid outfit, he should provide them all with the appropriate uniforms, as all the top racing owners do. Absolutely right.

Meanwhile, as the owner of nice comfortable 20-year-old foul-weather gear, I have no plans to replace it with fancy salopettes. I fear it will take more than new duds to make me acceptable on gin-palace racing boats.

Today’s Thought

It is possible in England to dress up by dressing down, but it’s a good idea to be a duke before you try it.

— John Russell, NY Times, 9 Mar 86

Tailpiece

“Sara says she ran into you at the vegetarian club.”

“That’s a lie. I’ve never met herbivore.”

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

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