Earning luck at sea

21.33 in a, at, Boat Plans, earning, for, heater, iced, loss, luck, sea, that, the, up, words

EVERY NOW AND THEN we hear of a bad storm at sea that affects a fleet of small yachts. Sometimes, they’re racing, sometimes they’re cruising, but all too often some are lost, while others survive. There are always a slew of reasons why this happens, of course, but I always fall back on my Black Box Theory for an explanation.
I’m not going to repeat the theory in toto here because I hate boring people, and many of you know it well enough already anyway, but for the benefit of the new sailors who keep coming along, here is a summary to excite your interest:
I always imagine that every boat has a secret black box that collects the Brownie points you earn for every seamanlike action you take. Every time you check the oil level on the engine, no matter how awkward it is to reach the dipstick, you get a point. Every time you buy a real paper chart of an area you want to explore, you get a point. Every time you get up in the middle of the night and go on deck in the rain to check your anchor bearing, you get a point. For that matter, you also get a point for even having an anchor bearing to begin with. You get points (quite a few actually) simply for imagining what would happen on deck and down below if your boat were turned turtle by a large wave, and doing something about it. And so forth, ad infinitum.
As I’ve said before, good sailors don’t live in the moment. They anticipate what’s ahead.
Now, it can happen to any boat, no matter how well found and well handled, that a time will come when human skill and effort can do no more to rescue it from a perilous position. But if you have points in the black box you can spend them to ensure that your boat will survive. Actually, you don’t have to withdraw the points. They expend themselves automatically as necessary.
Other boats battling the same circumstances as you, but lacking points in their black boxes, are less likely to survive. Those who don’t understand the mysteries of small boats sailing on big waters will say you were just lucky. And, depending on how you define luck, or good fortune, they may be right. What they don’t know is that you earned your luck.
When Virgil said fortune favors the bold, he wasn’t thinking about the sea. On the contrary, good fortune on small sailboats favors the cautious, the organized, and those with enough imagination to wonder what the hell can go wrong next. Because it will.
Today’s Thought
Shallow men believe in luck . . . Strong men believe in cause and effect.
— Emerson, Conduct of Life: Worship
Tailpiece
A playboy is a man who summers in Maine, winters in Florida, and springs at blondes.

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A rumor to disregard

10.29 in a, afloat, at, bliss, Boat Plans, disregard, for, loss, path, rumor, the, to, words

I DON’T KNOW who starts these things, but the rumor about sailing under jib only has been pretty persistent over the years. The rumor, of course, is that sailing under jib only will cause dismasting.

I have no idea why sailing under a jib only should cause dismasting. Like many others, I have sailed hundreds of deepsea miles under jib only.

One of the lovely things about the lone jib is that the center of effort is so far forward that a windvane, which normally struggles on a dead downwind course, is much better able to function properly. You can huddle down below in a gale, for example, nice and warm and dry, with your hands wrapped around a mug of coffee and rum, while your boat flies downwind like she’s on rails.

The only problem with this rig is that if your course is deeper than a reach, your boat will roll from gunwale to gunwale. But all dead downwind work is pretty rolly, anyway, unless you know how to fly twin jibs in a deep V forward, so they act like a cone and resist sideways movement.

Some sloops and cutters will reach wonderfully and even beat under jib only, making good progress to windward. But on the run you need to pole the jib out, of course, and there’s a clever way to do that. I learned it from the Pardeys. The trick is to have a track running up the front of the mast as high as your pole is long. The car that runs on this track accepts the inboard end of the pole. You then hoist the pole up alongside the mast and stow it there.

When you need to deploy the pole, you attach the jib clew, or the sheet nearby, to the bottom, outboard, end of the pole. Then you simply let the pole slide down the mast. As it comes down, the sheet, and the clew of the jib, automatically gets pushed out into position. You never have to handle the weight or awkwardness of the pole.

So don’t be put off. Fly that darn jib on its own if you like, and to heck with the rumor mongers.

Today’s Thought

Rumor travels faster but it don’t stay put as long as truth.

— Will Rogers, The Illiterate Digest

Tailpiece

Our local school officials recently gave eighth-graders a test to see what they were best suited for.

It was found that they were best suited for the seventh grade.

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At a loss for words

05.14 in 25, a, and, at, Boat Plans, for, freak, in, loss, love, rips, tide, vertue, waves, with, words

WHEN I WAS VERY YOUNG and still learning the language of sailors, I was shanghaied to crew on 38-foot wooden racing sloop, a 30-Square Meter, with a bucking jib. To this day, I don’t know how a bucking jib differs from an ordinary jib. The skipper was a crusty old salt who could get over-excited on occasion, so I never found the courage to ask him. Not that I would have known what to ask, in any case.

But I did know that it wasn’t just an ordinary jib, because every time we came charging up to the stone jetty at the yacht club after a day on the water, out of control as usual, he would jump up and down in the cockpit and shout fiercely: “Don’t just stand there, boy! Get that bucking jib down.” Which I did, every time, with great promptitude, fearful of his wrath.

Thinking about this recently made we wonder about the language other sailors use to get their sails down. I mean, you can lower the jib or you can strike it. You can douse it, drop it, take (or haul) it down (or in), and furl it.

A phrase such as “Strike the mainsail!” has a fine ring about it, but I fear not many present-day sailors use it. According to my trusty dictionary, to strike sail meant “to lower one or more sails suddenly, as in a sharp maneuver, approach of a squall, or in token of surrender; also as a salute to a superior ship, a sovereign, etc.”

On any boat I’ve owned we just dropped the sail, but I have heard other skippers use the word “douse.” The dictionary describes douse as: “To suddenly let go, strike, haul down, lower, or take in, as a sail ...”

You’ll notice that once again there is a hurriedness about it, a sense of urgency. There simply doesn’t seem to be a sailor’s word for those occasions when you don’t care how long it takes your wife to get the main down, those nice gentle days when you’re just slipping along quietly with everything under control, and no squalls, sovereigns, or superior ships causing you anxiety.

What  is needed is a sailorly word or short phrase that indicates to your crew that she can just ease the sail down slowly, gently flake it on top of the boom, tie the gaskets nicely (taking all the time in the world to get the reef knots with their sweet little ends sticking out right) and put the mainsail cover on over everything, laced up and smoothed down, before she rushes down below to pour your gin-and-tonic, start the stove, and get supper ready.

You’d think we’d have a phrase for it by now, wouldn’t you? But no, I can’t think of one. “Ease the main” is already taken and means something else in any case. There’s something unsuitably suggestive about “Gentle the main,” while “Take down the mainsail at your leisure, darling, and fold it gently” is too long and sissy-like.

I simply can’t imagine why no-one has come up with a suitable verb or phrase in all the years that have passed since women were allowed to crew on boats. It’s high time somebody did.

Today’s Thought 

I am under the spell of language, which has ruled me since I was 10.

— V. S. Pritchett

Tailpiece

“And how would you like your hair cut, sir?”

“Off.”

“Yes, sir, but what style?”

“What are your prices?”

“Haircut $15, shave $10.”
"So okay, shave it to a short back and sides."

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