Together Time

Cruising has many advantages that dirt dwellers often fantasize about: the lack of a schedule, the relaxed attitude about each day, and the carefree living that goes with cruising.

These are all true, but there is yet another major benefit of cruising: Together Time.

When I worked on land, I would get up early in the morning, say goodbye to my wife, dog, and bird, then head to work. I would return home very late in the evening, in time for a late dinner and then bed. It seemed that the weekends were the only time I had available to actually be with them.

Now that we are cruising, everyday is spent together, all day long! When we are anchored, we all go to shore together and explore the new land we have arrived at. When we are sailing, we all hang out in the cockpit as we make our way to the new anchorage!

While Maddie and I have really come to enjoy being together all the time, I think that the pets are the ones that enjoy it the most. They used to see us in the early morning when we woke up. We would take them on a walk and then say goodbye as we headed to work. I went to work at 5:30am, Maddie a bit later at 6:00am. Then we would be away all day until we got home, Maddie at 4pm, and me at 9pm. Our pets spent the entire day sleeping in the boat as they awaited our return. Each day as boring as the last.

Now that we are cruising, we are all together all the time! We never need to say goodbye or leave them alone, as they come with us everywhere we go! When we go to shore, they get to come along on the journey. When we are sailing, they get to snuggle up with us as we make our way through the waves.

In the end, we never look back on the time we spent at work and wished we had done that more. No, people always wish they spent more time traveling, or with their families. We have decided to take that route in life and live it to the fullest, together!

Onboard Radar

I've been told repeatedly that I need to have radar on my boat to go cruising. "Crossing an ocean without radar is just plain dangerous!" Radar is one of those devices that cost a lot, not just money to buy and install a unit, but also a lot of electricity to run. Being how we have a small electric motor, we have no way of actually producing the power needed to run such a unit in a storm, especially since our solar panels would not be operational in the cloud cover.

The choice to go without radar was not chosen lightly, we simply had to look at what radar is, what is it used for, and why do we need it.

Radar is a method of detecting other objects by sending out high frequency electro-magnetic pulses and then reading the returning signal. With weather, denser clouds will reflect more of the pulses and appear as a denser object on the screen.

Radar is typically used for spotting other vessels in the distance, as well as seeing land masses and weather systems. This is really important if you plan to sail by night, especially if you plan to enter a new port in the dark. The radar screen will display any unlit vessels, as well as show you the cliffs and hills of the land masses around you.

If you are not very brave, you can also heave to outside of a new area and wait for dawn to make your entrance. With the sun, you will be able to see everything that was obscured by the darkness.

As far as seeing weather systems, this is an important facet of radar. Light clouds will appear as light signatures on the screen, while dense storm clouds will appear as heavier signatures on the screen. Radar also lets you track the direction of the storm and lets you know if you need to prepare for it or not.

Sailors feel the need to have radar on their yachts because it gives them eyes in the night, and shows them things that they do not know how to look at. We live in a technological age where we would rather stare at a screen than look out at the horizon.

As far as seeing land formations and ships in the dark, if you do not sail in the dark or enter new harbors, this is a mute point. Weather on the other hand is rather handy.

Radar displays of weather systems tells you how bad the storm will be and if it will hit you. You can track how fast it is moving and know when it will strike you and with how much severity.

I do feel that radar is very important when on inland water ways, such as the Chesapeake Bay, where sea room is limited and storms are fierce. Knowing how and when a storm will hit lets you know if you have time to run for shelter or if you need to get away from a lee shore now.

Instead of going through the expense of buying, installing, and maintaining a radar on your yacht, you can just use the one you have in your pocket!

​Your smart phone has the capability of tapping into the Doppler radars that surround you! These radars are far more powerful than anything you could carry on board, and let you see the entire system, instead of what is just a few miles around you.

​These apps are free, and work as long as you have internet signal to your smart phone!

If you are in coastal waters, you will have signal and can track these storm systems as they move around you, thus negating the need for a fancy and expensive radar system. But what about if you are off shore? How do you deal with storm systems then without the smartphone radar?

Well, all you need to do is look around you. Storm systems will pop up on the horizon and can be seen from over a hundred miles away. You can easily watch the clouds and see how they move, how fast, and in which direction. If they are constantly approaching you, it might be a good idea to get the storm sails out. If they are getting closer yet, it is time to set the storm sails.

Setting storm sails is easy to do during calm weather, not so much during the storm itself! We usually set the storm sails and wait hove to in the calm before the storm for a few hours as we await its arrival. When it hits, we then sit and wait for it to pass. Once it has moved over us, we resume sailing again as if nothing had happened.

Having radar in this situation would not change anything. You can see a storm on the horizon long before it shows up on the radar screen, and if it does hit you, you have plenty of sea way to drift in as it rages over you. There is no "out running a storm to safe harbor" in the ocean, as there is nowhere to hide. Instead, you simply need to be prepared to ride out the storms that come upon you as they do.

Based on these reasons, we have opted to forego the installation of radar on our boat as we cruise the Atlantic Ocean, and instead prefer to watch the horizon for dangers that are around us.

Blackout Curtains

Sleep hygiene is very important for good overall health. To accomplish this, you will need to get around 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep at a regular time each night. You should also be in near or in total darkness during your sleep. Here lies the problem while cruising.

Cruising means that you will have to sail from one place to the next. If the winds are unfavorable, or they die down, you will take on her to get to your next anchorage. This could mean that you will miss your regular bed time, and instead, need to stay awake for many hours longer than usual as you sail into your destination.

We were sailing from Solomons Island into the St. Mary's river one day. This is a simple 18 mile sail, so it should theoretically only take us a few hours to make the trip!We left at 10am, and were moving along at around 6 knots, meaning that the whole journey should only take a bit over 3 hours. Then the winds shifted and our track was no longer going to bring us directly into the next river south. Instead, we needed to tack back and forth as the winds kept shifting and loosing intensity.

We finally arrived at our anchorage at 2am, a full 16 hours after we had left.

At this late hour, I had to drop the sails and the anchor and get ready for bed. This might not seem like that big of an ordeal, since I can simply sleep in the next day to get my full 8 hours of sleep. The problem is the sun is rising at around 6:30am, meaning I would get about 4 hours of sleep before the sun would peer in the hatch over our bed and wake me up in the morning.

Here is an unsung benefit of hank-on, tanbark headsails. They can double as black out curtains!

I draped the dark sails over the hatch and went below to sleep. When I awoke, well rested, at 11am,, the V-Berth was still a black cave, devoid of light!

Another benefit of draping a sail over the hatch is you can open the hatch under it to get some airflow through it without getting any nightly rain through the hatch as well.

Using this nifty little trick, you can get a good night sleep even after a long and tiring sail!

Weather Forecasts

Everyone always talks about the weather. It is a safe topic where you seem immune from hurting someone's feelings or offending their beliefs. But the funny part about weather is you will hear forecast reports from many people about the same day and they will all differ drastically! 

One person will say they heard it was supposed to rain, another will say it's supposed to be clear skies! If land based weather forecasts are so wrong, what makes you think that weather forecasts over water will be any better?  

I heavily trust a website called Passage Weather (http://www.passageweather.com) for my weather information. They tend to be spot on with wind force and direction, but not always the best with when said wind will arrive. 

We were sailing along as the sun was setting when we were becalmed. We drifted for a few more hours until we started to get tired. I looked up the wind information from passage weather for the area and it said that we were to have no wind for the next 9 hours. After that, the winds were to pick up to 20 knots from the North.  

We were in an exposed area, offering us no protection from wind or waves, but we figured we could get 8 hours of sleep, and then raise anchor to keep going before the winds returned. We set the anchor and got ready to sleep when the winds hit with full fury.  

The winds that were supposed to be 9 hours away slammed into us and we were stuck! We were both tired and raising the anchor in that much wind would take some considerable effort. We decided that we would simply ride out the night and keep moving in the morning as the anchor showed no signs of dragging.  

We spent that night heaving around in 4 foot seas, not sleeping, as we were constantly awakened by the constant trashing of the waves against the hull and the howling of the rigging in the wind. The next morning, our anchor and all of its chain needed to be collected before we could continue our way. It took me nearly 2 hours to crank in the 180 feet of chain I had let out with our manual windlass, pulling in 1 link per stroke on low speed.  

The sleepless night concluded with us raising anchor in a blow and sailing away in sloppy weather, all because the forecast said it would be a calm night. Forecasts might be fun to talk about on land, but the weather can always change and this can have serious consequences for you when cruising. 

Collision At Sea

While cruising, we come across many ships and yachts on the water. Naturally, we are all keeping a good lookout and this lets us all avoid any problems. If I see a yacht on the horizon and that yacht sees me, we will both work our hardest to avoid running into each other.  

Sailors tend to keep their distance, as none of us want to get too close to each other. It's a big ocean after all, why get too close? Power boaters will cut it closer, as they feel their motor boat will zip along before we move. We have had some very close encounters where a powerboat insists on passing across our bow instead of going behind our stern. It is always nicer to a sailboat to pass on their stern, not only because it is less nerve wracking, but also because of the wake you create. A wake hitting a sailboat on the stern will give them a gentle push. A wake hitting a sailboat on the bow will stop them in their tracks! 

Private yachts are plentiful on the weekends, as most people with boats also have jobs. Therefore, they are working during the week. On weekdays, the kinds of boats we come across are other cruising sailors and commercial ships. 

Commercial ships can be categorized into three groups, fishing, massive cargo ships, and tug boats. The fishing boats are keeping a good lookout and tend to stay close to the coast where they work their traps. The massive cargo ships are limited to the channel as they are constrained by draft. 

When sailing along, you technically have right of way over any power boat because you are under sail, but a massive cargo ship can't maneuver around you. This means that when you are outside of a shipping channel, sail has right of way. When you are in the shipping channel, yield all right of way to the massive cargo ships.  

When offshore, there are no channels, and you once again have right of way over the container ships. I have found these captains to be very curtious when off shore. I simply hail them on the radio and tell them my position to verify that they can see me. Then they adjust course slightly to avoid any kind of close encounter. When you contact them miles apart, tensions are lower and a course correction of 1 degree will make all the difference in the world. If you wait until you can see the captains face in the bridge, tensions will be much higher and I don't think they would be as courteous about the entire situation. 

The last kind of commercial ship you will encounter would be tug boats. Honestly, these have been the worst kind of boat to deal with on the water in terms of curtesy and alertness. When pushing or pulling cargo, they will stay in the channel and the same rules apply as with massive cargo ships: yield all right of way to them. When they are not carrying cargo, they tend to cruise along next to the channel since they are not constrained to the channel by draft. This is where the problems begin.  

Tug boats are small and low, making them hard to spot off on the horizon. They also move along quickly, meaning that when you see them, they are going to be upon you very soon. The last problem is: the tug boat captains don't seem to keep any kind of lookout at all. We have narrowly avoided collisions with tugboats multiple times because they come right at us! 

Our last near miss occurred at night. We were outside of the channel and saw navigation lights approaching us. We were under sail and had our masthead tricolor light turned on, he was under power and had his navigation lights and steaming light turned on. I kept an eye on the tug figuring that it would turn to avoid a collision, but it kept its course. Naturally, the wind died and we slowed as the tug boat neared us. It got so close before turning that we could see all of its interior lights through the portholes. When we were a mere 100 feet away, he made a drastic turn to starboard as we quickly jibed to port to evade a collision. Maddie and I think that he wasn't looking and turned as soon as he saw us, which was almost too late!  

Sadly, this isn't an isolated incident. We often see tugs running next to the channel at full speed, narrowly missing other yachts as well. Our theory is that they are busy doing paper work and not looking at the water as they head from one job to the next. They are focused on work and not on the seas around them. The probably have their AIS alarm turned on, warning them of any approaching commercial ships, and ignore the rest of the boaters as the barge their way through. 

Tug boat captains also seem to have a bit of an attitude as well. We were about 10 miles off shore one time, well out of any channels and in the open waterways of the ocean. A tug boat was on a collision course with us (based on the AIS proximity alarm) so I radioed his bridge. The captain was very snarky and rude during the whole thing. We were about 20 minutes away from a collision and so I asked him to alter his course a few degrees to bring us away from a collision. The response from the captain of Arabian Sea was "This thing doesn't turn on a dime." I told him I understood that and that is why I was notifying him several miles ahead. After many other snarky comments from the captain, I saw that his heading changed by 2 degrees and our distance at closest approach increased from 0 to several miles. 

It seems that all other boats are courteous and kind on the water, paying attention to their surroundings as they share the waterways with all other boats. There are many times when I will get on the radio to let a larger craft know that I will yield around him even though I technically have right of way simply because it is easier for me to do and a common curtesy among boaters. Then you run into the tug boats, who seem to never keep a lookout and never are willing to cooperate with other boaters on the water.