Second-hand learning

When I first started sailing, more years ago than I care to remember, my then-boyfriend got me into reading the old cruising yarns.  In those halcyon days, libraries would hang on to book a lot longer than they do now (there were, to be sure, fewer books being published and I dare say their budgets were a lot lower), which meant that in spite of the book having been originally published before WWII, they were still available (and I'm not that old).  Sadly, most of these books are long out of print and have not been republished as ebooks.  (Should some wealthy philanthropist be reading this, may I suggest s/he gets hold of all the copyright for the books in the Mariners Library and republishes them as ebooks?)

However, I am digressing from the main reason for this posting.  We all learn (or at least I profoundly hope we do) from our mistakes.  Men, in particular, it would appear, have difficulties learning practical skills any other way, but it is such a wasteful way of acquiring knowledge.  If we read these old cruising yarns, written in the days before any electronics (including a radio receiver) we can learn so much from these self-reliant and usually, self-taught mariners.  Their mistakes were honest and honestly recounted.  I remember, especially in my early days of sailing, some of these stories coming into my mind when a particular issue was creating a problem and requiring a solution.  It was almost as though I were drawing on my own experience, and this received wisdom helped me sort out the matter.

I was talking to a friend the other day, about a mutual acquaintance who has just started sailing, well into his 60s.  "Has he read such and such?" I asked.  "What is he doing about charts?  Did he get that cruising guide?"  'Oh", my friend replied, "he says he just has to learn from experience.  Once he's made a mistake he'll be fine.  That's the way I learn things, too."

But how sad and how dismissive of all that knowledge, acquired by others and made available to the rest of us, in order that we can avoid making stupid mistakes ourselves.  To my mind, there is a deep-rooted arrogance here, too.  An assumption that one's 'learning curve' is sufficiently steep that one will stay out of trouble due to one's razor-sharp reactions.  But what happens if, as a result of 'learning from experience', he damages somebody else's boat?  Or loses his own?  Or injures himself or somebody else.  Simply because he 'didn't realise that would happen'.  But if he'd read around his subject, he would have known it might happen, because just that same event occurred in Francis B Cooke's In Tidal Waters.

Maybe this unwillingness to take on board the wisdom of others explains far more than the 'shake-your-head' antics of other sailors.  Maybe it's why the human race keeps believing that the solution to a problem, is to take a lot of soldiers there and shoot people, in spite of the fact that history has shown over and over that this never produces a satisfactory outcome.  Maybe Messrs Putin and Obama, Assad and Mugabe also like to learn from their own mistakes and by experience rather than learning from the wisdom of others.

Chart plotter assisted strandings

We all know that I'm a curmudgeonly Luddite and if you despise this aspect of me, then I don't suppose you read this blog.  As it happens, I rather like my little Garmin 76 GPS.  It's as old as the century and still does all that I want it to.  I find it very handy for working out how far it is from A to B, as I have all my usual routes fed into it and can extrapolate from them.  I feel no need to have anything better - not in the least because my handheld GPS is completely waterproof and needs no aerial - and I most certainly do not want a chart plotter.

I have used one of these devices, so am not coming here completely from uninformed prejudice, but while I can see its use for sneaking up a narrow channel in the dark, or poor visibility (as long as you are confident of your waypoints), I am at a loss why anyone should prefer to use a tiny screen instead of a 43 inch by 29 inch chart.  Where, pray, is the advantage?  However, by far and away the worst thing about a chart plotter, is that as you scale down ie, (for those who get confused about the difference between large scale and small scale), show a larger area of (land and) water on the screen, most chart plotters eradicate 'extraneous' detail.  Like buoys.  Or reefs.  Now the smallest scale chart will most definitely omit buoys and even anything but the most major lighthouses, but it will never omit a reef.  So if you are racing across the Indian Ocean, as a Danish boat was recently, and happen to make a blunder that sends you heading directly for a reef a couple of hundred miles north, north east of Mauritius (as far as I could deduce from the radio), then your navigator, placing his fix on the chart, will say, 'Good heavens!', or words to that effect, 'there's a bally reef in the way', and advise the helmsmen to alter course accordingly.

However, if he's sitting looking at his chart plotter, cranked down to small scale, the reef won't be shown and there will be no warning of its existence until the boat blunders on to it.

Here were the excuses:

• "The boat was going very quickly".  Well, about three times as fast as the average cruising yacht, running in the Indian Ocean.  About the speed at which a decent-sized ship would travel in times long before GPS.  Considerably more slowly than a WWII bomber.
• "GPS isn't always that accurate".  No?  Well, since that nice Mr Clinton turned off the 'wobble factor', it has been sufficiently accurate for courier services to navigate by.  I dare say it will show you when you are within cooee of a fair-sized reef.  And if it isn't that accurate, why are they relying on it so heavily?
• 'The charts aren't always accurate".  Well, true, but the French and the British were squabbling over that bit of water a couple of hundred years ago and had a pretty good idea of where all the bits of rock that might damage their ships were located.  And if the charts aren't that accurate, is it not rather poor seamanship to go hurtling along in that manner?

Did they say: "the navigator was incompetent"? No.  Did they say "we had the wrong scale set?" No.  Did they say "we had no paper chart to provide a reality check to the chart plotter"? No.  They blamed everything from the weather: breezy, the time of day: dark, to the technology.  The one person who received no share of the blame at all was the navigator.  But of course, it's far too traumatic to admit "It was my fault".  Poor fellow would probably require counselling.

Of course, we can all make this mistake and many others; I am far from the perfect navigator.  A kind guardian angel guided me through a cluster of rocks on one occasion when my pilotage was well out.  They were well large enough to wreck my boat.  I've come out of the hatch to see the beach but a few yards ahead.  I've hit a navigation mark before now and run aground more times than I care to remember.  But in each and every case, it has been my fault.  Sure the charts have sometimes been misleading and the navigation mark wasn't where it was shown, but as I was doing the navigation, the responsibility was mine.  GPS and chart plotters add to the information available to the navigator.  It should be easier than ever to avoid shipwreck.  No-one can blame the chart plotter for assisting the stranding - but it's increasingly common to hear it being used as an excuse.

A strange fetish

Dave Z's comment recalled me to myself.  I have been musing muchly of late, but for reasons best know to my subconscious, have not inflicted such musings on an innocent world.

I've recently encountered one of the stranger boating fetishes on several occasions: this strange insistence that a cruising boat - pardon me, 'expedition vessel' - has to be built of steel.  For strength, you know.  Well, the only time I can think of the strength being of real value is when you run ashore on a solid object, from which you can easily access dry, and inhabited land.  What's the use of having a steel boat that takes longer to crush in the ice than that built from another material?  You still get crushed.  Or being marooned high and dry and largely intact on a reef in the middle of nowhere?  You're still marooned.  Oh, of course, you turn on your 'device' and magic the maritime equivalent of the AA to come and take you home.

But sarcasm apart, and I admit I was being a teensy weensy bit sarky there, why this fetish for steel?  Sure, I know that you can hit solid things a lot harder with a steel boat and get away with a few dents, but isn't the object of the exercise not to hit anything so excessively solid?  How many people do you know who have lost their boats because they weren't built of steel?  How many times have you hit a solid object with something other than your keel?  I've been aground more times than I care to think about, but it's invariably the keel that has taken the major impact.  Now, if you are sailing around in a delightful barge yacht, or traditional Chinese junk, you will ground on something less solid than steel (although the junk, with its watertight compartments, would take a bit of sinking), but on the other hand, with such shallow draught you are less likely to hit anything and if you do, you can step off the boat and set to on your repairs.  And if you are sailing such a quirky boat you probably don't regard it as an 'expedition vessel' (or take yourself ridiculously seriously).  Because, at the end of the day, isn't this what it's all about?  The steel boat, built brutally strong and undoubtedly with rope reels on deck, fore and aft, is a statement.  "Look at me: I'm about to do something really, really heroic."

But a 29ft, wooden yacht sailed the NW Passage last year.  (Yes, I know that's not quite the same as doing it 20 or 30 years ago and they had plenty of support, but it's still not to be sniffed at.) The late-lamented Shrimpy was sailed (somewhat carelessly, it has to be said) on to a reef and was patched up in a couple of days. 

40 or 50 years ago, nearly everyone was sailing wooden or (later) fibreglass boats.  They sailed without radar, GPS, or any other of the aids that nowadays most people require to cross the Irish Sea.  Their charts were limited in number and out of date.  There were no cruising guides.  If they had engines, they were unreliable: no forecasts, rarely tide tables.  But they sailed safely and happily around the world and generally didn't end up stranded on reefs.

So I'll continue to say that my perfect boat will be built largely from wood, thank you very much.  And I'll get rid of that extra draught, so that running aground is less of an issue.  And have something light that bounces rather than being self-destructively heavy.  And all the time that I'm not running aground (or being crushed in the ice) I will be sailing something built out of a material that is pleasant and easy to maintain or alter, and intrinsically beautiful.

The Devil in the Chartroom.

I'm sure I've gone on about EPIRBs, SSB and all the other acronyms that people load their boats down with, so that they can bleat for help when things go wrong, they get seasick, or it all just gets too wet and uncomfortable.  You will gather I don't have a lot of time for them.

If you decide to go wandering over the sea in a small boat, it is ridiculous to think you have a right to be baled out when it all goes to custard.  Fair enough when you're pottering around the coast within VHF (or mobile phone!) range: the boys and girls who come to pick you up will probably enjoy the challenge and it won't cost the taxpayer too much money.  But to institute a full Search and Rescue in the middle of the ocean is really making yourself out to be far more important than you actually are.  I'm sure the world will continue to turn and society (more or less) to function without your valuable input; just accept your fate and drown like a gentleman.  All that money spent on picking you up out of the 'oggin could be much better spent on a lot more people who are actively contributing to society.

The latest in the line of devices to help you bale out, are the little trackers that normally-self-sufficient sailors are adding to their boats.  The theory is that friends and relatives will be able to follow them across the ocean, so that everyone can feel 'in touch'.  And, supposedly, said friends and rellies won't be worrying.  Yeah right.  This year, two of my friends fitted these devices and, in my opinion, the results have been from bad to disastrous.

One friend's device stopped transmitting for the simple and sufficient reason that there was no money left in the account.  Those following his track, instantly went into panic mode and only the fact that they first debated the issue prevented them from contacting the Coastguard to 'see if they had heard anything'.  How could they have?  The self-sufficient friend in question does not carry an SSB.  Needless to say, a few days later, he turned up safe and sound explaining why he'd 'gone off the air'.  Now the damn transmitter is playing up again.  He's had enough and it's soon to be on its way to the recycler.  Friends and family will just have to go back to the good old days of hearing nothing of him when he chooses to traverse an ocean, and he can go back to enjoying his peace and quiet.

The incident with the second friend was far worse.  These wretched transmitters allow you to send wee text messages and, of course, your location.  So you can shout for help.  Now my friend had had some truly horrendous weather, he was getting very tired; he'd had a few issues with water ingress and rig malfunction.  All things he has dealt with in the past.  He had a little device on board with a blinking light that said to him 'You don't need to carry on with this, you know.'  They should be fitted with horns and a pitchfork, for they are surely little devils in disguise.  If you can't give up, you won't, but the devil spake and he was tempted.  So he called for help and, in due course, along came a ship and, when the wind had moderated to less than 45 knots (the conditions were appalling) he was picked up.  He was very nearly crushed during the transfer from perfectly seaworthy yacht to the large ship and his brave little boat, that had looked after him loyally for tens of thousands of miles, survived being lifted up and repeatedly flung against the steel hull of the huge vessel alongside, and was last seen drifting disconsolately into the murk.

My friend has physical injuries that will take months to heal.  As for the mental ones: 'I can't believe, now, that I felt things were so bad that I needed to abandon the boat.'

As Bill Tilman once said: 'we were distressed, but we weren't in distress'.

Without that little devil, my friend would probably be happily anchored near waving palm trees, the storms a fading memory and doing some minor repairs to his stout little ship.  Now,because of that devil's insidious influence, he has lost his uninsured home, his joy and his freedom to roam the world.

Starry nights

Cruising is a life of contrasts.  Many years ago a friend said to me that when you lived on a boat, the highs are higher and the lows are lower.  It was true then: it's true now.

At present it's at a low.  The wind is howling; rain is pelting down and I'm in a tidal anchorage with the ebb flowing strongly, dead against the wind.  We are rocking and rolling and in the lulls, the poor wee boat swings round as the tide catches her and the next thing I know is that she's stern to the wind.  I don't like wind: it's an over-rated commodity.  And today there is far too much of it around.  I have two consolations: we have good holding and sooner or later the wind will die down.  One of the few things that I genuinely have taken on board over the years, is that gales finally blow themselves out  But at times like this it seems much more an act of faith than a reality.  I watch my barometer.  It's an electronic one and it has dropped so far, so quickly that all but the most recent reading are jammed along the top of the scale.  It's not a reassuring sight and I should dearly like it to start rising again.  I suppose there's one more consolation: the tide will soon turn.

How different is this night from one last week when the wind had died away to a glassy calm, and the sky was filled with bright stars.  I was in a different anchorage, sharing it with several other yachts, who were away for the weekend.  Before turning in, I took a glass of wine to the after hatch to enjoy the evening: spring was in the air and in spite of the clear sky, it was surprisingly mild.  Not by the wildest stretch of the imagination could I be described as an astronomer: I've always found it immensely difficult to recognise anything other than the major constellations, but for all that, I know the patterns that stars make, so I was somewhat startled by two bright, completely-unidentifiable planets.  Both so high in the sky and neither in a place I would have expected.  Puzzled, I looked at them for a few moments before it dawned on me that what I was looking at wasn't a planet; nor a star; nor even a satellite: I was looking at a couple of masthead lights, with LED bulbs and absolutely unmoving on the flat water of a calm night.  In case you hadn't noticed, LED white lights are exactly the same colour as a bright star.

Now, for many years I have been bewildered as to the prevalence of masthead lights in anchorages.  I am reliably informed that the people who switch them on regard them and describe them as 'anchor lights', but when and where did the ridiculous habit of placing them at the masthead come about?  When I sail into an anchorage at night, I'm looking ahead of me, not star gazing.  I want the anchor lamp to be at eye height, not 40 or 50 ft in the air.  USAnians, indeed, believe that the masthead is the correct place for the light to be.  Traditionally, an anchor light (also known as a riding light) was hung from the forestay and although the Rules (for Prevention of Collision at Sea) say that the anchor light should shine for a full 360 degrees, boats either at anchor or under way, rarely keep such a steady relation to one another that a light on the forestay would be hidden by the mast.  Yes, a masthead light does comply with the literal meaning of the rules and yes, if you were wanting to be seen by ships rather than other small craft, a masthead light would probably be more efficacious, but shouldn't common sense and courtesy also apply?  Surely, you are not switching on your light only in order to comply with the ColRegs?  You are trying to make it easier for your fellow sailor, groping his way into the anchorage after dark and trying to thread his way among the boats already there.  The fact that LED lights are so bright, only makes matters worse: it's astonishingly difficult to estimate how far off that light up in the sky is, particularly as you haven't a clue whether it's on a 20 ft mast or a 60 ft one.

If you feel you must have a masthead light, then please hang another one further down so that the approaching sailor can get an idea of where your boat actually is.  You can go to any hardware store and buy a $5 lamp, with a tiny solar panel, a re-chargeable battery, one LED bulb and a light-sensitive switch that turns itself on when it goes dark.  It's enough for anyone to see you long before they hit you and you might be happy to have it yourself, on the day when you return to your boat after dark when you only intended to be ashore for a couple of hours.

PS  Make sure the one you buy uses an AA battery and replace it with a high quality, 200+ mAh one, for long nights and overcast days.

The Gentle Art of Staying Afloat

I have recently found all Roger Taylor's books are now available as ebooks.  I love ebooks - my bookshelves are already stocked to overflowing with old friends and until recently, when I came across a writer of books I just have to own, such as Roger Taylor, the only way I could indulge myself was by getting rid of one of my other treasured volumes.  No More!!  (www.thesimplesailor.com links you to paper books: I bought my ebooks from Kobo.)

Roger Taylor has my unalloyed admiration.  I love the way he writes, the way he sails, the way he thinks.  I appreciate his attitude of sailing with minimal outlay, but still being prepared to spend money on good equipment to do the job properly.  Not economy for economy's sake, but thinking long and hard before parting with money and buying something that has caused even more resources to be wrested from Earth.

One of the more interesting aspects of Mingming  is that she is unsinkable.  Generally speaking, if you want your boat to continue floating once holed, you'd better have a multihull (and it never ceases to astonish me that people think in such a woolly way, that they will build these essentially-unsinkable craft out of a heavier-than-water material.)  Even a lightly-ballasted wooden boat will have a tendency to go glug-glug-glug if she gets a hole in her and of course metal or GRP are only kept afloat by the volume of air within.

Now Mingming, being a mere 20ft long, does not have a huge amount of spare volume to be given over to flotation.  On the other hand, Roger doesn't live on board and (it has to be said) does rather camp out.  (Forgive me for saying this, Roger, in the extremely-unlikely event you will ever read this.)  He also, obviously, has a considerably better mind than I do, and can go for long periods of time with only his thoughts and observations to occupy him, whereas I need my books at the very least. But as he is also prepared for all eventualities that he has envisaged (and his powers of concentration are impressive) and carries the wherewithal to deal with those, he still requires room for quite a lot of gear.  Of course Mingming, is so simple that there aren't that many things to go wrong, and he doesn't need, for example, a comprehensive tool kit, spare filters, etc, etc for the engine.

What am I wittering on about, you ask?  Well, I'm wondering how much foam I would need to fit in my boat to make her unsinkable.  I get the impression that Mingming would stay buoyantly afloat, but that's maybe too much to ask for.  Especially in a boat with 50% ballast ratio.  But what if I do a bit of weeding of possessions - always good for the soul (but not my precious books!)?  I could possibly fill in the space under the forward part of the V-berth and certainly under the two quarter berths.  How about putting a floor in the lazarette and filling in under there?  No room under the floorboards - that's the water tank.  Most of the other lockers are full with food, clothes, tools, batteries, etc.  I'm not, I regret, prepared to forgo my engine.  This is a shame because it is a large beast and if I filled in all the area presently taken up by the engine and its ancillaries, I could add a lot of flotation.  But I day sail, I'm constitutionally lazy and I like being able to motor 3 miles to an anchorage, rather than staying out half the night or sculling madly for hours. So unless I'm prepared to make many more compromises, I can't do a Mingming on my little junk.

But I wonder if even a little foam, a little additional buoyancy is anyway a good idea?  Anything at all that helps us stay afloat?  Because like the wholly-admirable Roger Taylor, I do not wish to be baled out of my own folly, at the expense of the already-beleaguered taxpayer, and at the risk of endangering other peoples' lives.

Back again!

Hah!  I guess you thought - hoped even - that I'd gone away for good.  No such luck. Life had dragged me by the scruff of the neck into a busyness that seemed to provide no time for musings of any sort, certainly subversive ones.  I was living a life full of Things To Do, hectic schedules - even airline flights, which I hate with a passion.  Unless in a small, propeller driven aircraft, where I can have a window seat and admire the beautiful land unfolding beneath me. But long distance 'plane flights are terrible things, made worse, for me, but the continuing knowledge of the damage I'm doing to this wonderful earth, by such greedy consumption.

But finally I am back on my boat and in peace.  I cannot begin to describe the pleasure I have in my little ship, in her grace and simplicity and the near-luxury of my little home.  Sometimes I can hardly wait to go to bed because my berth in the forepeak is so comfortable, and in the winter, with the down quilt wrapped around me, it is inconceivably snug.  And oh! the luxury of sleeping alone - of having a bed entirely to myself, with no-one else to think about if I want to stretch out, or to turn over, or to cough, or giggle at some silly thought that crosses what I laughingly call my mind.

On a cold, clear night, I lie there with the hatch partly open, gazing at the stars.  That hatch is both a necessity and a gross extravagance.  Its predecessor, the original fibreglass one, was, of course, completely opaque, which was bad enough: it also leaked and was impossible properly to dog, which was intolerable.  A great friend went and sold his soul to the manufacturer on my behalf, and obtained, at cost price, an enormous hatch, large enough for a super-yacht.  It was still heart-stoppingly expensive, but the original had a complicated moulding that would have been very difficult to incorporate in the same-sized alloy hatch.  With this mega hatch, however, I could build a frame outside the old one and simply drop the new hatch on top.  It is such bliss.  Several people have been puzzled that I should want a hatch that lets in the first light of day, but to me it is a necessity to be able to follow the phases of the moon, as I lie awake at night.  A lifelong insomniac - such things are important.

And we move aft a little to my superb galley.  Has any 26ft boat ever been blessed with such a fine place in which to cook?  I love to cook.  I love, particularly, to cook for myself: carefully-planned and light meals, for enjoyment rather than repletion.  Sometimes I will make the starter, eat it slowly with a glass of wine, and then prepare the main course from scratch, sipping away as I cook.  It may be an hour from one course to the next, and I enjoy every second of it.  I sit down at my varnished, mahogany table, laid with attractive cutlery, hand-made pottery and Waterford Crystal glasses, bought second-hand for a pittance.  As I savour my food, I can gaze out of the window at the passing scene.

The table is something I made myself, to replace the rather ratty plywood one that wobbled around on an ugly pedestal.  Originally it had - I suppose - had the facility to rise up and down like a Pantomime Demon, in order to accommodate a loving couple in connubial bliss.  A small, loving couple, I would have to say, as my whole boat is designed around hobbits.  Fine for me at 5ft 1in and weighing about a hundredweight, but a little constrained for more normal-sized people.  Yes, this bunk is 6ft long - once the cushions are removed fore and aft and assuming your tape measure hook is not particularly thick.  I have dozed on the outboard half at sea and not found it any too long.  I never did try the original table top, because the bed thus formed would have been too narrow for comfort.  At least in my V-berth (and only a couple ardently in lust would call it a double) I can't fall out of bed!  A friend thought that my replacement table (constructed in traditional manner, of one-inch wood, with fold-down leaves) should be made in the same manner as the old one 'in case', but I reckon two people on my boat is getting perilously close to a crowd and cannot imagine sharing with a couple.  Who want to sleep together.  So I did it my way.  Which is why I bought my own boat in the first place.

The other change from the original is that my new table has no fiddles.  I love to write - as you may have guessed - and the fiddles made this awkward.  Occasionally I like to write by hand, with a fountain pen, and the fiddles made this almost impossible.  I could understand fitting them for and aft, but athwartships?  So my new table has no fiddle.  Anyway, this is the 21st century, the era of sticky mats.  There is no need for such a thing 90% of the time.  In the galley, yes.  On the bookshelves equally so, but the saloon table?  But if ever I get the guts to go offshore, I shall fit removable ones fore and aft.

So here I sit in my comfortable little boat, looking up occasionally to admire the scenery, able in one short stop to reach the coffee pot and brew up.  One day I shall sing the praises of my cockpit, but at present it is too cool to enjoy it.

Why, oh why, would anyone want more?