Ocean Watch Keeping

When close to shore, there is much more boat traffic around you. This necessitates a more frequent watch keeping is vital to safe boating. Close to shore you will encounter commercial traffic, fishing traffic, day sailors, and small powerboats that are out for a joy ride. They will be weaving around you as you try to make your way to your destination.

Luckily, this traffic only seems to occur within a few miles of shore. Once you reach around 10 miles out to sea, especially by night, the amount of traffic quickly diminishes. Out in the ocean, you will rarely encounter another boat, and if you do it is most likely a commercial vessel. Commercial vessels all broadcast an AIS signal that can be picked up via a receiver. Having an AIS proximity alarm which will sound a loud alarm if a vessel will come within a set distance of you is a great way to add piece of mind to your voyage offshore. 

Since recreational traffic is seldom to none, you can relax a bit as you sail along, allowing you to further space out your watch schedule. During the day, we will hang out in the cockpit or companionway, looking around every 30 minutes to 1 hour. At night we will space our watches to 40 minutes to 1 hour. Our rate of watches depends on our speed through the water and the amount of traffic. 

If we are close to a major port or inlet, there will be a lot of traffic and we will stand watch continuously until we have cleared the area. When out in the open ocean, far from any other vessel, we will space out the watches and allow ourselves to get some much needed sleep. 

Now, sleeping for only 1 hour at a time will not give you restful regenerative sleep, but it will get you through the night. Having a second person on board will allow you to get hours of continuous sleep while they are on watch and you can sleep. If you are alone or the other person is incapacitated (and sea sickness will incapacitate someone) then you might find yourself carrying out this hourly watch/sleep schedule. 

Obviously, looking around for only once every hour is far from ideal in terms of keeping a proper lookout, if you are alone then it must be done. When you are sailing fast, you will have to look more often. When you are sailing slowly in light winds, you can then afford to sleep for a longer period of time. If you heave to for the night, you would be able to sleep the entire night without moving and get a full nights rest! 

Ocean sailing can be fun and enjoyable, but there are logistical concerns that need to be addressed when you head offshore. Finding solutions to what may at first seem like a problem is the key to cruising long distances.  

In time, you will find comfort and relaxation at night by being far from shore and out to sea where you are alone and able to sleep well. 

Keeping Watch

Sailing offshore means that you will be sailing out in the middle of the ocean with nothing but water all around you. As you sail, the scenery will consist only of waves. This may seem fun or interesting at first, but after a few hours, the monotony will bore you. 

You might feel inclined to go inside or take a nap, not keeping a lookout as your boat sails itself. While this might seem tempting since there is obviously nothing around you, the truth is this is very dangerous. 

When you don't keep a lookout, you run the risk of running into that one other boat on this huge expanse of open water. There is plenty of space, but boats paths will intersect, hopefully not at the same time! 

Keeping a good lookout is vital to safely making ocean passages, but the truth is, you don't have to look all the time. What you really need to do is look most of the time. 

The trick to it is to scan the horizon periodically for any other vessel and then go inside for a rest while you tackle some other aspect of sailing. Taking a break from looking will refresh your eyes so that you will be more alert to a new vessel in the distance when you look again. 

To figure out how often to look, you need to evaluate your speed and your ability to see. You can only see as far as the horizon. When you look, you can see if there are any vessels between you and the horizon. If everything is clear, then you can relax until you reach the horizon again and do another lookout.  

As you can imagine, this means that you will be looking around every 15 minutes or so, 15 minutes is not enough time for a good restful deep sleep, only enough for a nap. I like to refer to this schedule as "sleep sailing" where I have an alarm set next to me and I sleep at the helm.  

The windvane is steering and the sails are balanced, so all you need to do is keep a lookout. You can doze off, and when the alarm goes off, you look around and make sure the horizon is clear, then go back to sleep. 

Natural Beauty

When cruising, you will encounter the world in a way most never imagine. You will come a cross wildlife that rarely sees humans, and wildlife that is so accustomed to human interaction that it will seem unfazed.

This Great Egret came right up to us as we landed our dinghy on the dinghy dock. He appeared to want a handout of some sort and was rather incessant about it. While we did not feed him, we were able to get some amazing views of this majestic bird up close!!

Little Boat Syndrome

On the water, there are set rules of navigation called COLREGS which exist to make sure that everyone is safe on the water. This system takes into account that some boats are more maneuverable than others in different situations and therefore, the rules are adjusted for each type of encounter. 

For example, a sailboat is less maneuverable than a powerboat, so a sailboat has right of way over a powerboat. Now, a giant cargo ship is a powerboat, but it also draws a lot more water and can't maneuver as easily; therefore, when in a channel where the powerboat is technically trapped, it has right of way over a sailboat. 

In general, when in a channel, a commercial boat will always have right of way over a pleasure boat because they are doing something that forces them into the channel. So, if you encounter any commercial vessel in a channel, stay out of their way (and maybe radio them to let them know that you see them and are staying out of their way). 

In the open ocean, however, there is plenty of water and no channel to restrict movement, so the giant and mighty commercial ship will now yield to the slower moving sailing vessel. This might seem backwards at first, since both boats can go anywhere, but the sailboat is limited in movement based on the wind.  

On the open ocean, we have found that radioing a commercial vessel that is on a collision course with you is best when you are still more than 5 miles apart. At this distance, an alteration in their course of less than 2 degrees will open up your passing and take you from a collision course to a generous clearance.  

We have found that giant car carriers, oil tankers, and container ships all have extremely courteous captains who will gladly alter course slightly to give a wide passing between ships, day or night. 

We have also found that tug boat captains are the least courteous. We feel that it is "Little Boat Syndrome" where they are a commercial ship, but the smallest of the commercial ships. Therefore, they need to bark the loudest to be heard and respected. All they are doing is being rude though as they totally ignore the rules of the road and try to bully everyone around them. 

Our first encounter with an angry tug happened with Arabian Sea off the coast of Virginia. We were in open water and he was heading for our port side. We radioed him when we were still 7 miles apart and he quickly became very irate and angry with us over CH16. After a few minutes of his badgering, we offered to change course to avoid the collision since he was not willing to. This is when he told us "No, don't change course, I turned a few minutes ago." If you already turned, why did you keep yelling at us? 

More recently, we had a run in with Chistine M. McCallister off the coast Florida. We were sailing around 10 miles off the coast of Florida, far from any channel or major city, when Christine M. McCallister began approaching us from our stern. We were sailing under storm sails, as it was blowing around 20 knots at 2am, when our AIS CPA alarm began to sound. Christine M. McCallister was fast approaching us on our stern and was 10 miles away. 

Maddie radioed him over the VHF radio alerting him to our presence and letting him know that we were on a collision course. His response was simple, he told us that we needed to know where he was and get our of his way. We informed him that he was overtaking us and we were under sail, but he didn't seem to care and continued on his collision course. 

When he was only 5 miles away and not altering course, we radioed him again and illuminated our sails to help him see our position. He responded by putting a search light on us and radioing us to move out of his way.  

Maddie calmly called him on the radio again and informed him that we had right of way and asked him to alter course just a little bit to avoid a collision. His response was "Jesus F***ing Christ!" The reason we didn't want to alter course is because we were on a run, and if we turned to windward any, we would run into a shoal up ahead. If we turned downwind any, we would have to jibe. By staying on course, our windvane and sails were all perfectly set and would carry us on that course for the entire night and into the next morning. The alternative was for him to simply turn by a few degrees and avoid the collision at sea. 

If we were in a channel, absolutely we would move out of his way. In this case, we were in the open ocean and we had a few points to our favor in terms of right of way:
First, we were under sail.
Second, we were being overtaken.
Third, we were on starboard tack.
Fourth, we were the downwind vessel. 

After a lot of verbal abuse from Christine M. McCallister, he finally turned just slightly and avoided the entire predicament. Why do tug boat captains always yell the loudest? Why can't they be nice like everyone else on the water? We all yield to the vessel that needs to maintain its course, allowing everyone to proceed as they were in the happiest of ways. Why yell and curse over the radio only to find that you are at fault and end up turning just a bit anyways? 

We are leery of tug boats that we see on the water as we never know what they are going to do, but we are ready for how they will respond over the radio. 

Dinghy Hoist without Davits

Davits are a convenient attachment that will allow you to raise your dinghy out of the water behind your boat. They hang out over the stern like crane arms and allow you to pull the dinghy straight up. When you are ready to launch the dinghy, all you have to do is release the davit lines and lower the dinghy back in.

Davits are convenient but they suffer two major flaws. Their first flaw is that the dinghy now is hanging behind your boat right side up. If you are in a following sea, you risk a boarding wave filling the dinghy with water that will rapidly add a significant amount of weight to the back of your boat. This usually results in the davits being bent or ripped off the back of your boat as your dinghy plummets into the sea behind you. Now, you are dragging a drogue of your mangled davits and dinghy.

The second flaw with davits is they are expensive. Cheap davits are a few hundred dollars and are not worth the money. I purchased some very inexpensive Davits to raise my dinghy out of the water. The arms were too short so the dinghy kept hitting the transom on its way up; and the purchase system was so puny that I couldn't raise a simple 80 pound dinghy. More expensive davits solve these issues by having much longer arms that hold the dinghy further from the boat to solve the transom clearance issues. They also have better purchase systems and sometimes, even a winch system to crank the dinghy right up. These better systems will not cost you hundreds, but instead, thousands of dollars!

So, you decided that you don't want to carry your dinghy like a bucket waiting to be filled with water behind your boat, and you also don't want to fork over thousands of dollars. What else can you do?

The answer is easy! All you need to do is store the dinghy on your deck. If you are coastal, you can keep the dinghy right side up. If you are offshore, simply flip the dinghy over to keep it from being filled with water by a boarding wave. Now, how do you get the dinghy onto your deck?

Your mast and boom are capable of serving more purposes than just holding your sails. They can also be used as your own oversized davit system. All you will need to do is add a length of rope to act as an outhaul. That's it!

In the dinghy, you just need three small lines that run to the two stern corners and one to the bow ring. These are standard on all dinghies and referred to as the lifting rings. The three lines are led to the halyards shackle, allowing you to pick the dinghy up from a single point. It is important to custom tie the lines so that the weight of the dinghy is balanced and the dinghy hangs level. Remember, most of the weight in a boat is located by the stern, so the bow line will be a bit long and the stern lines a bit short.

Now, the second thing you need to do is setup an outhaul system. An outhaul is merely a line that pulls something away from the center. The outhaul on your mainsail pulls the clew aft, and the outhaul on your hoist will pull the halyard aft. Having the outhaul attach to the end of the boom allows you to control the position of the dinghy with the boom.

Now, as you crank on the halyard, the dinghy will raise up. Then you can pull on the outhaul to scoot the dinghy aft. I have found it best to also raise your boom really high up by cranking on the topping lift before you start, as this gets the boom and sails out of the way of the dinghy as you raise it up.

As the dinghy climbs upwards, you can push the dinghy down the boom and pull in on the outhaul. This will cause the outhaul to pull the halyard aft and scoot the dinghy along the boom.

Once the dinghy is up and out towards the end of the boom, you can push the boom over to swing the dinghy out over the water and clear of the boats deck. You might think that a forward guy would be needed to pull the boom outward, but the truth is, as the boom swings outward, the weight of the dinghy will cause the boat to heel in that direction. This then unbalances the system and causes the boom to swing out even further! Basically, it will swing out for you and stay there.

Once the dinghy is swung outward, you can then safely lower the dinghy into the water.

Recovering the dinghy is the exact opposite, and just as easy. This lets you easily and safely raise and lower your dinghy onto your deck without risking anyone's back or spending a lot of money. The only real cost to you will be an outhaul line, which ideally should be twice the length of your boom. This will allow you to lead the line from the dinghy, out to the end of the boom and back to the mast. You also need a shackle that will allow the halyard to fit through. You don't need to have a shackle, but it will reduce the resistance and chafe that the lines will endure.