Happy New Year!

I wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2011.

Wind

Anyone coming to grips with the weather aspects of sailing will have realised early on that wind direction is given as the direction from which it comes. Currents, on the other hand, are named for the direction to which they flow.

It can be confusing for beginners: You can’t sail west in a west wind. A north wind blowing over a northerly current kicks up a boisterous sea. A north wind blowing over a southerly setting current gives a more benign sea state.

Most just accept this apparent anomaly and get on with it. Others never get to grips with it. Perhaps it would help if we could find some reason, if not logic, behind the naming of wind direction?

Here’s a theory: In various mythologies – Greek, Norse, Hindu - the wind was sent by a God. A God of Wind blew the wind towards us. It’s not difficult to see that this would lead to winds being named for their origin.
I don’t think currents were given much consideration in mythology so they missed this derivation and got lumped in with rivers and streams, their direction defined by where they were going.

Does that help?

Season's greetings

Merry Christmas to all my readers!

When you get stuck into the Christmas 'spirit' this year, remember the words of William Penn:

Have a care, therefore, where there is more sail than ballast!

 

Don't mention the anchor!

Anchoring is an emotive issue. It leads to some right barnies on sailing forums or in Yacht Club bars or at those wonderful sundowner dock gatherings at marinas all over the world.

I’ve always maintained that sleeping soundly at anchor is a confidence trick; if you have confidence in your ground tackle and anchoring technique you are in that happy band of sailors for whom anchoring-out holds no fear. If you’re also certain that if you should happen to drag you’ll wake up before anything disastrous happens, you are truly blessed.

With the possible exception of a couple of anchor salesmen I’ve spoken to, no one is born knowing how to anchor. You have to learn it. You have to practice it.

In the absence of the experience from which confidence builds you seek assurance elsewhere – you search for the perfect, never-drag anchor, perhaps, or an anchoring method that someone, somewhere, swears blind never fails. Or an anchor alarm that always wakes you. But it’s difficult to convince yourself from the anecdotal evidence of others that you will enjoy the same success if you replicate their system, especially when for every positive story there is an equal and opposite negative story. So you get frustrated and angry.

And when you think you’ve got your system right you tell others about it in order to bolster your own confidence, to convince yourself it’s all coming together. When the response is a sucking of teeth and shaking of the head you get angry because your fragile belief system is being undermined.

I think that’s why we get irritated and angry when anchoring is discussed. I try not to mention anchoring.

National colours

Here's an interesting fact: We offer sail ties in a choice of blue and red webbing. We sell quite a lot to French customers and they choose, by a factor of two to one, red sail ties over blue. UK customers choose blue sail ties over red, by about the same factor. Strange but true!

The Confessional

For what seems forever the British magazine Yachting Monthly has been running a regular feature called ‘The Confessional’ in which tales of embarrassing faux pas are contributed by readers. If a story is selected the author receives absolution for his ‘sin’ from the magazine’s editorial department and an original Mike Peyton cartoon depicting the event.

In 1994 I submitted the following true story which took place in Culebra:

"One Sunday morning we were lounging naked in the cockpit, enjoying our tea and toast, when the drone of an approaching outboard motor caught my attention. I suggested to Carol that we put on some clothes as we were about to have visitors. A small open motorboat with a striped Bimini top was heading towards us and aboard it were two men in suits and a lady dressed as if for a garden party. The lady was kneeling on the bow-seat struggling to maintain her balance as she held aloft a tabloid newspaper in both hands. As they drew closer I could see that the newspaper was the Watchtower, and realised that this trio were water-borne Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Stepping up to the shrouds I waved them off, assuming from their non-nautical appearance that their boat-handling skills were minimal, and afraid that if they dinged Adriana's topsides I would say something which would condemn my soul to eternal damnation.
Carol emerged from the cabin, having donned tee shirt and shorts, and expressed the opinion that their sudden about-turn had less to do with my imperious arm-waving than with my failure to follow my own advice and put my pants on".

For this I received the aforementioned certificate of absolution and a Peyton cartoon, pictured.

Family Island Regatta

The Family Island Regatta takes place every April in Georgetown, Bahamas. Georgetown is a delightful place located at the southern end of the Exuma chain. I love it.

We were in Georgetown in the winter of 1991 but left for points south before the regatta, but we were there again in 2000 and, this time, made sure not to miss the event.

The regatta was originally set up in 1954 in an attempt to breathe fresh life into the Bahamian workboat fleet when the era of working sail was declining and many boats were falling into disrepair. It also provided an opportunity for local sailors and boat builders to show off their skills to their fellow Bahamians as well as to a growing number of visiting yachtsmen.

In 1973 the regatta was held in Nassau as part of the Bahamian Independence celebrations and a new National Regatta Committee was set up to run it and all subsequent events back in Georgetown.

The boats are now designed and built to win races but they have to stay largely true to their Bahamian sailing smack heritage; they must be built, owned and sailed by Bahamians (although the odd foreign crewmember is allowed), they must have wooden hulls and masts, no spreaders, no alloy spars, no synthetic sails, no winches.

Stability is provided by the crew sitting out on sliding planks or hiking boards, scuttling in and out to balance the pressure of the wind in the enormous mainsails; I’ve seen this system on the ‘log’ canoes that race on Chesapeake Bay and it’s not surprising to find that the Bahamian smacks share common ancestry with the Chesapeake Bay oyster boats.

Spectator boats are allowed to chase the fleet around the course. While we were there the conditions were such that the course took the boats tacking through the small boat anchorage, a thrilling experience intensified by some close encounters with our bowsprit!

Competition is intense and the racing is fierce; I hope this video gives a small inkling of the excitement this wonderful event provides. Click on the Link:
Family Island Regatta

Inconsiderate boaters

Everyone seems to be getting on the back of inconsiderate boaters, for which read ‘power boaters creating large wash’. On the YBW Scuttlebutt forum Dylan Winter (of Keep Turning Left fame) has a thread running on this subject and it’s into thousands of viewers and scores of contributors. In retaliation there’s a thread running on the Motor Boat section of the same forum group entitled – ‘peep your horn if you hate raggies’! John Vigor has also had a go at wake makers on his blog.

I feel I would be less than topical if I didn’t add my own thoughts.

I’ve owned a motor boat - I know how it feels to have the power to create tidal wave wakes. Sail boat owners don’t have the same potential to set up a damaging wash so, inevitably, power boaters are almost exclusively responsible for wake incidents.

I’m sure the vast majority of motor boaters don’t deliberately set out to annoy and endanger others. Of course, there’ll be some to whom it’s fun to send small boats rocking and rolling - the same people who cut you up in traffic, paint on walls and toss litter. But the majority of offenders are more inconsiderate than malicious; they cause mayhem by accident not design.

But there are a couple of scenarios where motor boaters need to be particularly aware and considerate – moving through an anchorage, and overtaking in a narrow channel:

At anchor our boats are particularly vulnerable to power boat wash – we can’t take evasive action so we’re filled with impotent rage when we’re rocked out of our reveries by some unthinking idiot blasting through the anchored boats. If we’re underway we can at least point into your wake and minimise the effect – more rock but a lot less roll - but at anchor we’re at your mercy. Only the motor boaters can help with this one, so just don’t do it, OK? Slow down. Simple.

When you, in your big powerboat, come zooming up behind a sail boat in a channel, intending to pass, there is a natural tendency to maintain your speed to get the manoeuvre completed slickly, but in doing so your large wash hits the sail boat almost beam on, the worst possible scenario from his point of view. He rolls wildly, his boom flails around creating real danger to the crew who are clinging on with one hand and making rude gestures at you with the other. The air is blue. You are mentioned on the YBW Scuttlebutt forum.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Part of the problem is that the sail boat, in his desire to keep out of everyone’s way, is motoring flat out, maybe 6 or 7 knots. This requires that you travel at a somewhat higher speed, dragging your tsunami with you.

It’s far better if the sail boat slows down so that you can pass at a lower speed with a mere ripple of a wake. Well, maybe not a ripple but certainly something less damaging that the usual wall of watery death that surrounds you.

This is how sensible people handle the situation: The sail boat slows down, you slow down, you go on past and as soon as you’re past, the sail boat turns across your wake into the relatively smooth area directly behind you. You can now roar away to your urgent appointment or whatever. No one gets hurt.

We aren’t all sensible people. More often than not the about-to-be victim stands-on, maintaining speed and course, challenging you to get past. He’s in the right, the Colregs say so. But unless he gets with the programme he’s going to be hoist on his own petard.

By slowing down and then signalling for you to do the same the sail boat driver can participate in a mutually satisfactory manoeuvre that leaves both party’s feeling warm and friendly towards each other. Or the power boat could take the initiative and contact the sailboat by vhf, or make ‘slow down’ gestures of his own.

Mutual respect and cooperation is all that’s required.

Now don’t get me started on motor boaters running their generators in tranquil anchorages!

Boat rigs

I’ve owned six yachts (and one power boat) and I can honestly say that the type of rig did not influence my choice in any of those acquisitions. It may seem strange that something as fundamental as the rig should be low on my list of preferences but I’ve always thought that the important thing is that the rig suits the boat rather than the owner.

I do have preferred rigs, of course, and, if it were to be the only consideration, I would have a cutter headed sloop. With this rig you get good all round performance with the added advantage of being able to shorten sail quickly by dropping, or furling, the jib. The staysail and reefed main is a handy and efficient rig in a blow, well balanced with the centre of effort brought inboard.

Sloops work fine and have the advantage of simplicity. Roller furling headsails mean you don’t have to go forward under normal circumstances. But furling headsails do introduce a bit of a problem in that there is nowhere to fly an efficient storm jib. If you sail in relatively sheltered waters and keep a close watch on the weather this is unlikely to be a real concern but for serious offshore work a radically furled jib just isn’t good enough. On Adriana I had hanked-on sails and on Shiwara I had a removable inner forestay that I could set up specifically to fly a storm jib from. This is probably the best option for a sloop with rollerfurling, a stay that is normally carried tied off at the rail or at the base of the mast that can be set up and tensioned quickly to take the storm jib.

Converting a sloop to a cutter doesn’t often work because a sloop has the mast somewhat further forward than a cutter and with this smaller fore triangle the two headsails may interfere too much with each other to be efficient on the wind. If the fore triangle is large enough it might work.

I’ve owned a ketch, a CT41, and the rig looked right. This boat also had raked masts, a bowsprit and filigree around the bow – it was that type of boat. The boat sailed well enough but I could never really find any advantage with this rig other than the aesthetic. It introduces more cost and complexity, of course, so you would expect some offsetting advantage. That the sails are smaller and more manageable, the usual justification for a ketch, doesn’t really convince me in these days of lighter sail material and more efficient sail handling systems. On very large boats this may still be valid but not on the size of boat that most of us play with. I rarely flew the mizzen once the novelty had worn off but I also didn’t encounter the heavy conditions in which, I’m assured, flying just mizzen and jib, ‘jib and jigger’, would make a convert of me.

Many years ago I spent a week as crew on a 72’ cutter headed ketch. A boat that size, one of the  Ocean Youth Club fleet, did  benefit from having its sail area split into more manageable chunks; when we experienced force 8 conditions en route to Cherbourg we were able to reef down without losing anyone or breaking anything and the boat took it all in its stride.

The ketch’s close relative the yawl is intriguing. I haven’t owned or sailed a yawl. They look good and Hinckley Yachts, whose products I drool over, made many. The Hinckley Bermuda 40, for instance, wouldn’t look right with any other rig.

It’s said that the difference between a yawl and a ketch is that the yawl has the mizzen aft of the rudder post and the ketch ahead of it. This is too simple, surely? The mizzen on the ketch is bigger; it contributes to driving the boat. On a yawl the mizzen looks like it’s just there to steady the boat and look pretty. You can hang staysails off the mizzen but all that extra sail to handle makes me feel faint. I’d have a yawl though, especially if it was a Hinckley!

The Freedom rig and other catboat rigs look like oversized windsurfer sails. The unstayed mast always worried me but I’ve got used to them now; I’d certainly consider a Nonsuch cat boat or a Freedom. On the Marathon to Key West race one year I watched a Freedom 40 walk effortlessly away from us downwind.

Another rig with an unstayed mast is the junk rig. Having been brought up overlooking Hong Kong harbour the junk was a familiar sight to me. I’ve sailed on junks and sampans but it was many years ago when I was too young and inexperienced to be able to draw any conclusions regarding their strong and weak points. I now know that all its benefits come from simplicity of handling and low cost of construction. The junk rig is favoured by many of the intrepid yachtsmen that race in the transatlantic Jester Challenge and that gives the rig full legitimacy as far as I’m concerned.

Rigs are one of those things you just have to keep an open mind about.

Southern Yacht Club, New Orleans

After the trials and tribulations of the journey along the highly commercial Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, of which I have written earlier, it was a relief to pause at Orleans Marina on Lake Pontchartrain. We met some really friendly folk who invited us to their Thanksgiving barbeque on Pier 4 of the marina. Later we were taken by this group for a drink at the second oldest yacht club in America, the Southern Yacht Club. We were given the full tour of the impressive clubhouse including the prize room with its glittering trophies and pennants.
Back in the antebellum era of the American south the well-to-do yachtsmen of New Orleans would relocate to the coast around Mississippi Sound during the summer to escape the heat, humidity and yellow fever outbreaks of the city. They organised informal regattas and races.
In the July of 1849 a meeting was held in a popular yachtsman’s haunt, the Pass Christian Hotel, at which the Southern Yacht Club was founded. It was the second yacht club to be founded in the USA, only the New York Yacht Club predates it.
The club was based at the Pass Christian Hotel until 1857 when it relocated its activities to Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans.
In 1879 a clubhouse was built. Over the years it has been expanded and rebuilt several times. In August 2005 Hurricane Katrina struck, completely destroying the clubhouse. It has since been rebuilt.
The Southern Yacht Club has always maintained a tradition of keen competition, sportsmanship and hospitality. I can certainly vouch for the latter.
To put this into some sort of historical perspective I should note that the oldest yacht club in Britain, the Royal Thames, was established in 1775 and regattas have been held on the Thames since 1662.

Brrrrrr!

Well, it certainly isn't sailing weather in this part of the world at the moment! This was the scene from Salty John Towers late this afternoon.
Never mind, another week or so and the days will start getting longer again. We'll be back on our boats before you know it!

World Cup failed bid.

As long as FIFA wants to make the World Cup competition bigger rather than better we aren't going to see it hosted in England, or any other western European country, in the lifetime of anyone old enough to read this.

That's all I have to say on that subject.

There's a hole in my boat.

Boats have too many holes in them. All those inlets and outlets below the waterline worry me. A 1 ½” hole a couple of feet below the waterline will let in 70 gallons of water per minute. It’s tough to find a bilge pump that will cope with that and if you’re pumping like a lunatic how are you going to find where the water’s coming from? It’s a no-brainer to try to minimise the number of holes in the bottom of your boat.

One way of doing this is to use a sea chest, or seawater manifold. I saw this arrangement on a Cape Dory many years ago and it struck me as a sensible idea. You can have one for water in and one for water out. The principle is obvious, as you can see from my sketch. I’d put a stop cock on each line from the sea chest.

I think it would be great to have just two seacocks conveniently located for ease of servicing. By the way, I’m a great fan of Marelon (plastic) seacocks having used them on Adriana – low maintenance and no corrosion or electrolysis issues.

If I ever prepare another boat for long term cruising I’ll have sea chests.