Dress Like a Sailor

Source: http://fashionew.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Sailor-fashion-style-clothes-wearing-on-luxury-yacht-trip-1.jpg

When you picture someone sailing along, you might think they dress like this:

The truth is, these clothes don't work out too well when sailing. Imagine working hard to raise the anchor or raise the sails and breaking a sweat. 

This is what we wear when we go sailing: pajama pants, t-shirt, life jacket with harness and tether. Wearing a lot of clothes means more laundry to do, so less clothing means less laundry! The pajama pants offer sun protection without the need for applying so much sunscreen and are light weight to keep you cool. 

These clothes are comfortable and easy to move around in, making it easier to do all the necessary labors on a sailboat. I try to stay away from white pants because, as you can see, my knees get filthy. When I raise the anchor, mud from the sea floor comes up and falls on the deck. When we are raising anchor in rough conditions, I will need to kneel to avoid falling overboard. Kneeling on a muddy deck will promptly and permanently stain your pants. If you chose to wear nice white shorts, they would quickly be ruined. Instead, wearing pajama pants that are inexpensive and comfortable, we don't have to worry about keeping them getting messed up while working the boat. 

Best of all, light weight pajama pants take up very little space, meaning they can be washed in a small washing machine! And in true sailors attire, wearing the same pajama pants for a few days in a row will greatly cut down on the amount of laundry we need to do. When sailing on long trips, Maddie and I will typically wear the same clothes for a few days before changing them for new ones. While this may sound disgusting to land lubbers who imagine us wearing these clothes for four days straight, that is not the case. We wear them during the day while working the boat; as soon as we finish for the day, we shower and put on clean clothes. When morning comes, we don our old clothes once again after letting them air out all night! 

Wearing any jewelry is also risky, as it can slip off and fall overboard. Maddie and I take off our rings and watches when sailing, keeping them in a safe place inside the cabin. If time is a concern, a mounted clock can tell you everything your watch could have without any risk of falling into the great blue sea. 

One last thing to note is footwear for sailors. You always hear of people wearing special boat shoes, but the truth is barefoot is best! Yes you can stub your toe on deck gear, but once you learn your deck layout, you will be able to navigate it in the dark. Any shoe will get wet and take time to dry, and will begin to smell in the process. Bare feet will dry quickly and will stay smell free for the entire trip if you never wear any shoes. When we reach port, the hardest part is getting used to wearing shoes again because going barefoot is the best!

Pumping Out Rainwater

Our dinghy, Tooth, doesn't have a garboard plug so he has to live floating in the water. If Tooth were out of the water, the weight of the rainwater would blow the hull open. Instead of dealing with a disastrous dinghy repair every time it rains, we leave Tooth in the water where he can fill and simply sink into the water a bit further until I can pump him out. 

When you live on the rainy East Coast of the United States, this almost daily routine quickly becomes a tedious chore when you have to pump out the rainwater with a hand pump or hand bailer. When you walk down the pier heading to your boat after a long days work, the last thing you want to do is deal with this.

The dinghy is sitting a few inches deeper as it has filled up with rainwater during the downpour that occurred earlier today. Since I was not in the mood to pump Tooth out, I set up my handy electric bilge pump. 

The electric pump is a self contained battery powered pump that takes all the effort out of the job. I simply hook the hose over the side of the dinghy which holds the pump in position and turn it on. The pump will suck the water out and slowly get the job done without me breaking a sweat!

As the dinghy begins to empty, the pump will start to draw in air. To remedy this, I simply push down on the gunwale with my feet to tip the dinghy and collect the water in a smaller area with more height. This keeps the pump submerged and continues to suck the water right out of the dinghy. 

After a while, Tooth is floating on his unloaded waterline once again with no major effort on my behalf. To get the last bit of water out of the hull, I will tip the hull and scoop it up with a hand bailer. After using the pump, you will only need to do about 2 to 3 insignificant scoops to get the last bit of water out of the hull.

Summer Cruise: A Reflection

Our summer trip of 2015 was originally planned as a 2 week trip, and we slowly added days to the trip until we arrived at our final 1 month cruise. 

The original plan was to sail to Charleston, SC; and as you can see, we didn't make it. I planned on us traveling 80 miles per day, getting out of the bay in 4 to 5 days and making our way offshore between the coast and the west wall of the Gulf Stream, crossing the Gulf Stream near Cape Hatteras, and then crossing over again to make landfall in Charleston. We both knew this was a bit of an overreach, but we figured that if we did make it to Charleston and had time to continue South, we would stop there and explore the city. 

I arrived at this overzealous plan from talking to other sailors, who turned out to be power boaters. They told me that they can make it from Baltimore to Norfolk in 2 days comfortably. I figured I would tack on a few days to that estimate since we would be sailing and I assumed they motored a fair bit. Talking to a friend who lives on a trawler, he does the bay in 2 days; first day from Baltimore to Solomons Island, second day from Solomons Island to Norfolk. It took us a week to get to Solomons Island! Turns out the old saying is true:

Whats the difference between a power boater and sail boater?

A power boater uses his engine 100% of the time,
a sail boater uses his engine 90% of the time.

When we finally set out on our trip, we were planning to head as far south as we could, take each day as it comes and enjoy the trip with no set plan for our destination. The illusion of "Heading to Charleston" became "Heading South". If we did make it to Charleston, then we would stop there and return North when we decided it was time. 

This mindset of "Heading South" kept us out of trouble. When we were in a storm just north of Cape Hatteras, we slowed down rather than riding the storm winds south, deeper into the storm on the cape.

If our destination had to be Charleston and we had no time limit, we would have hove to for a few days and waited for that storm system to pass by before approaching the cape. If we were in a rush, and jumped into that weather system, we certainly would not have had a wonderful time!

Patience is the most important item on a sailboat. When you rush is when you get in trouble. We pulled into St. Mary's River to wait out a strong thunderstorm that was passing by rather than riding the winds straight down the bay. We could have made excellent time that day, but it would have been a rough day of sailing. Instead, we waited for the bad weather to pass and enjoyed a relaxing afternoon on the beach! We set sail the next day and continued with more easy sailing in the wake of the storm that was now gone.

Not having a strict schedule also made the whole trip so enjoyable. When we fouled our prop near Deltaville, we simply got towed into port (because I was afraid to jump into the murky water with the recent shark attacks) and enjoyed our time there. If we were in a rush, this would have been a horrible setback and a huge stress on the trips schedule. Instead, we enjoyed our time in Deltaville, exploring the small town and the local museum, relaxing in the pool and riding bikes on the small streets. We actually stayed an extra day because we enjoyed the place so much! Had we been in a rush, we would have missed out on this wonderful gem as the stress of a schedule would have altered our view of the situation.

While we didn't move very far each day, we also never stressed about it. We enjoyed the scenery and wildlife as it came by the boat. We were visited by dolphins, dragon flies, small birds, pelicans, and pesky flies (we could do without the flies). If we were power boaters, like most of my sailing friends are, we would have been worried about how much fuel we have, fuel costs, and schedules. Instead, we have an electric motor with a small battery bank. We never had to buy fuel, and instead used what would have been fuel money on meals and excursions. 

We also had a similar attitude towards the equipment on board. When the batteries would be depleted, we simply turned things off. When the fridge would consume too many amps and run the batteries down, we simply turned it off and limited opening it to try and keep as much cold in it as possible.

Our only method of charging the batteries while underway was via the electric motor regenerating power. Regeneration started at 5kn, which was very easy for us to achieve; so we always got a little bit of electricity from this process. Serious regeneration didn't occur until 7kn and would replenish our battery bank at a rate of around 6% per hour. If we left the fridge on all night, it would consume around 10% of the battery bank, and the morning winds would carry us along at 7kn for a few hours, allowing us to gain back all that was consumed during the night and give us a bit more for the day. On other days, we would maintain this speed all day and charge the batteries up to the point where we didn't have to worry about how much electricity the fridge was consuming. 

The problem was that we tended to have a few days of wind followed by a few days of no wind. When we had wind, we would charge up our batteries and keep them charged. But the days of no wind took their toll on our battery system, depleting it down to the point where we would have to turn off the fridge and wait for windy days.

The windless days were also cloudless days, and with plenty of sun beating down on our boat. That is why we have decided to install solar panels on our transom to give us charge during those windless days and to keep the fridge running. 

The fridge was a major stress during the trip. Do we have enough power to run it? Is the food going to spoil? When can we turn it on again to keep the food cool enough? Luckily we had a good attitude about it and didn't let it get us down. The fridge and freezer were packed with food, but we also had enough canned and dried food to feed us comfortably for weeks. If all the food in the fridge went bad and had to be thrown out, we were not going to starve. Having a non-electrically dependent back up plan kept us from worrying about the fridge situation too much. Once again, we took each day as it came. 

We did change our planning process for future trips though. We decided not to use the fridge on future trips and eliminate that source of stress completely, unless we have solar panels that can feed it; and we will do canned and fresh foods that do not need refrigerating. If we make a big meal and need to store leftovers and have plenty of battery power stored, we will turn on the fridge to keep the leftovers. Otherwise, we will feed it to Morty, our dog and happy recipient of anything we were also eating. 

Anchoring was another issue we had on the trip. The southern part of the bay has much stronger currents than the northern part. I used to drop the hook anywhere and we would always point into the wind and waves. As we moved further south, the boat would lay to the current. This meant that we would spend half the tidal cycle riding over our rode and taking all the seas on the stern. The long overhanging stern kept us dry, but the slapping noise kept us both awake. 

Another thing that kept Maddie awake was me! I would wake up multiple times a night panicking! I could feel the boat pitching and rolling as the sails flogged as the wind howled! I would stumble my way to a port hole, only to find that we were laying peacefully on still water or tied up in a marina. Never were the sails up or was it blowing like stink! Poor Maddie got tired of talking me out of it, only to have me refuse what she was saying until I saw it for myself; she learned to shove me out of bed and let me go take a look so I would pipe down faster and let her get back to sleep. This happened every night of the trip when we were anchored or tied up in a marina. When we were hove to, I didn't wake up in a panic because I was getting up every hour or so to do a watch. The night that we were far enough offshore, I also slept peacefully, even though the sails were set hove to and we were rolling with the ocean swell. I guess I just feel best when out at sea!

What really drove Maddie through the roof was when we got back and immediately had to house sit for a friend. We were in a large house, sleeping in a large bed inside a large room, and I still woke up in a panic about the sails flogging and no one is at the helm! When I looked out the bedroom window and saw trees, I really started to panic yelling at her that we ran aground! Then she turned on the light and I saw that we were not on the boat, we were not sailing, and we were in a house!

Oddly, once I took the sails off the stays and bagged them up, all these night panics ceased. It's almost as if the act of bagging the sails gave me closure, knowing that the trip had come to an end and we were in our home port again.

The wildlife we saw was amazing! When you have no engine noise, you don't scare away the timid creatures. We would quietly pass through areas without disturbing a thing and get to observe what was living there! This also gave us the opportunity to watch them for a period of time. If we were moving faster, we might have missed such sights, but moving along at sailing speed, we had plenty of time to watch ospreys hunt and return to their nest, pelicans fishing, and dolphins jumping. 

While we didn't cover as much distance as we had originally hoped to, we did enjoy every moment of the places we visited! The electric motor helped a lot on this journey as well. It was as reliable as the sails, always there and always willing to move you! It allowed us to creep into or out of anchorages without disturbing anything, as well as providing us with our electrical charging systems needs while underway. While it has its limitations with battery charging (you need to sail fast), it was already there and installed, and I didn't have to shell out more money before our trip for solar or wind systems. 

On our trip, we were able to capture wonderful photographs of light houses, sunsets and wildlife! This cemented our love for cruising and got us both looking at far away destinations to sail to in the future.

Designing the New Dinghy

Our plan to build a dinghy from set plans has been changed somewhat. The plans will build a dinghy that is 3.5 feet wide, 8.5 feet long, and have a plumb bow with an angled transom. This will make for an efficient rowboat, but this no longer fits our needs.

Maddie wants to have an outboard motor as a backup in case we end up anchoring miles from the nearest shore. We decided that we will buy a propane powered outboard and use it as a backup to the oars for as long as the outboard lasts. The moment it starts to die, we are going to throw it out and not bother repairing it (I have talked to outboard mechanics and they all tell me that the propane units don't work well once the repairs begin). 

Change #1: The outboard means that we need a vertical transom to hang the outboard. 

I measured the space on the deck, and 3.5 feet is a bit wide for where we want to store the dinghy. 3 feet would be much more comfortable on the deck. 

Change #2: The beam needs to be reduced from 3.5 to 3 feet.

The dinghy will live on the deck between the mast and the dodger, but it can't cover the chimney and it needs to cover the salon hatch (the salon hatch leaks). The space available on the deck to comfortably hold the dinghy is 9 feet, and the smaller the dinghy is, the easier it is to build, hoist, and control. I personally need 4 feet in the dinghy (I have long legs) and Maddie needs more space as well. Quickly, the length kept being bumped up until 7 feet seemed reasonable and comfortable (in a small sense). 

Change #3: The length needs to be reduced from 8.5 feet to 7 feet.

As you can see, these are some rather drastic changes that we are making to the design of the dinghy, so much that I decided to scrap the plans and design one myself!

I began sketching out the design of the dinghy on a 3/4 inch piece of particle board. I marked 1 foot increments on the panel, and then marked the boats centerline, bow, and stern. I decided that the bow would rest at Station 0, and the beam of the boat would be around Station 4 (3 feet), with the transom being 24 inches wide at Station 7.

I then set small nails into the board marking the bow, stern corners, and desired beam at station 4. These nails set into the particle board and will hold the batten in place while I trace the curvature of the hull. Once the curvature of the hull is traced, the nails and battens are removed and the design is complete.

This sketch will provide a rough idea what the footprint of the dinghy will be and lets us verify that the dinghy fit before I build it!

Measurements were taken from the sketch and then transferred to the deck of the sailboat to make sure it will fit all of our requirements for the dinghy. It turns out that it did not! The transom was covering chimney which means that the dinghy would need to be removed from the deck if we want to start the fire or risk covering the inside of the hull with soot! Then some creative thinking led me to measure the dinghy in reverse on the deck and set it at an angle, this seems that it will fit and work. The transom hides behind the dorade vents and mast, and the beam of the dinghy covers the hatch while the chimney sits next to the bow. This will probably lead to a soot stain on the starboard bow of the dinghy, but I can live with that.

Our next step will be to trace out a paper template of the dinghy and set it on the deck and make perfectly certain that it will fit on the sailboat. The design process continues as we figure out what our ideal dinghy will be before the first piece of wood gets cut.

Riding Out a Series of Storms

Storms at sea are inevitable. This is a simple truth. 

If you are going to be out on the water for any length of time, the weather will eventually change. When it does, it will either improve or degrade. No one seems to complain when the weather improves, but everyone wonders what happens when the weather gets bad!

The answer is simple, you ride out the storm!

There are a few key requirements you need to safely survive a storm:

1. A tether and jacklines
2. Storm sails
3. Enough water to drift in

The tether and jacklines will keep you attached to the boat and safe. Jacklines should always be rigged and you should always clip in, especially when the weather gets bad. During severe weather, we clip in even when we are sitting comfortably in the cockpit. You never know when a boarding wave will wash across the boat and float you right out of your protected cockpit and into the unprotected storm seas! 

Storm sails are very small sails made out of very heavy sailcloth material. They are specifically made to handle heavy weather and a crucial part of your storm plan. Flying regular sails is very dangerous in very high winds, the sails can overpower the boat as well as shred in a powerful gust. Storm sails should always be ready to raise when they are needed.

The last part of the equation is having enough water to drift in. A properly setup boat will drift along in the roughest of waves and strongest of winds indefinitely and not sink during the process. There is no amount of equipment that can prevent a sailboat from breaking up on a lee shore if it runs aground.

During a storm, the most dangerous obstacle you can encounter is land! Most boaters head for shore when a storm approaches, but if you can't make it into a safe harbor in time, you should do the opposite and head further out to sea; putting as much distance as possible between you and land before the storm strikes.

In our situation, we found ourselves in a river, with land on all sides and a severe storm approaching. I expected the storm to be a low pressure because the clouds had been gradually building and becoming lower throughout the day. Low pressure winds tend to build gradually as you get further into the storm. Low pressures also suck you into them, knowledge which I planned to use to my advantage! 

The river may look wide, but the deep water is very narrow. Most of the water near the shore is actually very shallow and the river is littered with crab pots and obstructions! Not the best place to get caught in a storm.

To make the most of the narrow water we had, we moved our boat towards the southern edge of the deep water. I expected the low pressure approaching from the North to pull our boat in a northern drift across the river at a slow rate. This would give us enough time to drift while hove to while the storm moved past.

We sat waiting with our storm sails rigged, ready for the winds to draw us in!

As the storm approached, a stiff cold wind struck the boat. This was not a low pressure, but instead a high pressure with strong cold winds blowing away from the storm. This meant that we were not going to be drawn North across the river, but instead we were being pushed South onto the very close shallow water. We hove to and waited to see how the storm played out.

Uploaded by Herby Benavent on 2016-07-11.

As soon as the high pressure hit, I set the sails to heave to. We were flying the trysail and the staysail with a reef in it, acting as our storm jib to balance out the trysail. Getting the boat to heave to was frustrating at first, but once we got in our slick, everything calmed down on board our sailboat, Wisdom.

We were drifting through the water at 0.5 knots with only 0.25 nautical miles to shallow water, meaning that in 15 minutes we would run aground! The choice was made, to claw our way off the lee shore and work our way out into the river toward deeper water in winds of 35 to 40 knots.

Once out into the middle of the river and with more water to leeward, we set the sails to heave too again.

Uploaded by Herby Benavent on 2016-07-11.

We hove to during the storm with more water to leeward as the storm continued to build. The winds stayed at 40 knots for almost a half hour as the waves continued to build, luckily they were calmed by our slick to windward, so any breaking waves would come upon us as gentle rollers. 

The end of the storm seemed magical! Sunlight began to pierce through the clouds as if to tell us that it was over and we survived!

Even though the storm had passed, we still had the storm sails set and ready for more. We are firm believers in "Reef early, shake late"; meaning you make your sails smaller before it gets bad, and you wait a while before you make them bigger again in case bad weather returns. As pleased as we were to have made it through that torrential storm, the clouds on the horizon never cleared up and the blue skies seemed to be swallowed up again. This was only the beginning of the series of storms that would fall on us!

We continued sailing along under trysail and staysail until the storm was much closer. Maddie and I decided that we would try heaving to under trysail only this time to see how that felt. We don't sit around and dream of sequntial storms to test out various storm tactics, but when the oppertunity presents itself, why not experiment a little? 

We made it through the first storm with 40 knots of wind hove to under the trysail and storm jib, but we did feel that we were heeling over a bit much and the boat had trouble keeping its bow into the wind. The decision was made to try this storm under just trysail, hoping that the gear and junk on the deck will provide enough wind resistance to keep our bow from riding through the wind.

The second storm was equally as powerful, with winds holding a steady 40 knots as well! This proved to be an excellent test for our storm tactics as we could compare heaving to under trysail alone and trysail with storm jib on the same tack, same day, and same conditions. 

You can hear from the calmness in Maddies voice that the severe storm is not of concern. We were both calmly waiting for the storm to pass as we slowly drifted through the seas. 

During the first storm (hove to with trysail and storm jib) I stayed at the helm even though it was locked over. I was ready to take the helm should the situation arise because I did not feel completely safe. We were close to shore and heeling over very far. During the second storm (hove to under trysail alone) I felt much safer! Maddie and I both huddled up under the dodger to stay out of the rain. Neither of us was at the helm because we felt no need to be. We knew we were safe as the boat gently rose and fell through the waves during a steady 40 knot blow!

We did have one concern during the second storm, and that was a bouy that was near by. We turned the chart plotter to face forward so we could watch our position relative to it on the screen as we slowly drifted through the water. Visibility was null, so we were unable to see it with our eyes, but we decided that we would run if we got too close to it, get past it, and then heave to again. That was our biggest concern during the storm. Not "will we sink?" "will we capsize?" "will we survive?", no, simply "where is that bouy?"

As stated before, staying clipped in to the boat, with the right sails set up, and plenty of water to drift through is the key equation to safely surviving a storm at sea. They are very easy steps that will ensure you are safe and happy while your boat floats through the water until the storm finally passes.