Why are Screws Right Handed?

A right handed screw is driven in by rotating it clockwise. A left handed screw is driven in by rotating it anti-clockwise. What does the rotation of a clock have to do with handedness? 

The truth is, there is nothing about the screw that gives it the designation of right handed or left handed, in fact, this designation comes from our anatomy and physiology.

When you hold your arm straight out and rotate your hand so that the palm is up, this is called a supine position and the act of rotating your hand is called supination. When you rotate your hand so that your palm faces down, this is called a pronate position and the acto of rotating your hand is called pronation. Awesome, now you can get that question right at your local pubs trivia night! But what does it have to do with the handedness of a screw?

Simple, the muscle that supinates your hand when your arm is stretched straight out is called the Supinator. The muscles that pronates your hand are called the Pronator Teres and Pronator Quadratus. These muscles are all very small and weak, making this motion a rather weak movement. This is why it is hard to get any leverage on a screwdriver with your arm outstretched. If you bend your arm, the biceps brachii comes into play and can help supinate your hand with a lot of force, driving the screw all the way down!

As you may have noticed, your hands supinate in opposite directions, your right hand supinates in a clockwise direction while your left hand supinates in an anti-clockwise direction. This means that you can drive a right handed screw with your right hand using your supinator and bicep, while your left hand would only be able to use the pronator muscles. Hence, a right handed screw can be driven in with the greatest strength when using your right hand.

This little mnemonic helped me learn supination and pronation while in dental school:

You hold the soup, and you "pro" it out.

To hold the soup, your hand needs to be supine. Turning your hand into a pronated position would throw out the soup.

The take home message is when you need to put in and take out a bunch of screws that are all right handed. Drive them in with your right hand but back them out with your left hand. This will make sure your strong biceps do all the work and your forearms will not get fatigued. 

Manual Bilge Pump Supports

After deciding where we wanted to stand while pumping out Wisdom in the event of an emergency, it was time to actually install the pump. Maddie wanted to be near the companionway so that she could hear me if I were at the helm while still being safely protected inside the cabin. 

The bottom of the wet hanging locker seems to be the best location for the pump, it can be easily operated by lifting a lid and inserting the pump handle into the top of the pump. Now we just need to make this location a reality!

First, we need to locate the pump in a position where we can comfortably swing the lever arm without the risk of striking nearby objects. Next, we need to make sure that all the plumbing can run to and from the pump with ease. To meet these two conditions, we decided to mount the pump as close to the top of the compartment as possible and angle the pump towards the midship a bit. This will set the pump lever further from the cabinet next to it and allow you to pump without leaning over the unit the whole time. 

Wooden supports were set in place to keep the pump just shy of the inside of the lid, and then marked and secured. I am securing the supports with brass L brackets during the mock up procedure. 

Once the position on the support boards is finalized, I will drill the large holes through the bulkheads to pass the 2 inch hose to feed the bilge pump. The output end of the bilge pump will run up the back of the closet and out the side of the hull, just under the rubrail. 

After all the holes are drilled, I will remove the wooden support boards and prepare the area for fiber glassing. The ends of the boards will be tabbed and filleted onto the bulkhead to produce a very strong connection which will augment the strength of the screws and brackets. After everything is glassed up and cured, the pump can be installed on its very strong and secure base. The hinge might end up being removed from the lid, converting it to a regular lid which can be placed out of the way should we need to gain access to the pump.

One last point about where to position the pump in the locker, if we had placed it at the bottom of the locker, junk would end up piled on top of the pump. By locating the pump at the very top, nothing will fit over the pump and we won't be tempted to pile junk on it. Should clutter accumulate under the pump, it will not impede our quick use of the pump in an emergency.

2016 Honeymoon Cruise vs 2015 Summer Cruise

Our honeymoon cruise was very relaxing. We spent more time at anchor than under sail, and enjoyed more meals off the boat than on board. Most of the trip consisted of calm weather with light winds, with a few isolated storms. We only sailed 190 miles and stopped in Harness Creek, Annapolis, Deale, and Oxford.

Our relaxed pace was the polar opposite to our previous years cruise. We traveled 190 miles, as opposed to 751 miles, and we stayed in protected anchorages for a much longer amount of time. 

On our 2015 cruise, we would sail from dawn to dusk, everyday and all day. We spent very little time relaxing as one of us had to be steering the boat at all times as we worked our way to windward. We anchored out in the middle of the bay, where the winds and tides would toss us all night long and make for a very rough anchor recovery in the morning. We suffered through this because our main goal was to reach the Atlantic Ocean and spend a few days out there beyond sight of land. 

For our 2016 cruise, we had much smaller goals: sail to Oxford to visit my grandmother. We had a week and a half to get there, so we took our time and enjoyed the trip. We spent our first night in the marina waiting for better weather, then made our way to Harness Creek. We stayed in the protected creek for a few days as we relaxed and took it easy. When the weather was favorable, we set sail and made our way to Deale, where we pulled into Herring Bay and enjoyed a delicious dinner ashore. Once in Oxford, we relaxed on the boat and did day trips by car to other nearby towns. Wisdom stayed anchored in the same spot for several days before we decided to make our way home. The return trip was equally as relaxed; we slept in, we sailed to the nearest protected harbor, we ate ashore, and slept well.

Our slow pace did greatly reduce the distance we would be able to cover in a set amount of time, but a combination of the two will yield a very pleasant pace for our future voyages. 

The goal of the 2015 trip was to give us a taste of sailing in the ocean and to make sure that Maddie wouldn't go stir crazy when land was not in sight for some time. Our next big trip is going to take us far out into the ocean, so we need to have some practice before we go. This trip to Oxford was simply a relaxing continuation of our honeymoon, and not a trip to test anything out (even though we did experience a wonderful opportunity to test out sail combinations for heaving to). We were simply going cruising for a week and a half and going to enjoy every moment of it.

Sailing South in the bay is a tedious process, the prevailing winds blow from the South meaning the entire trip is spent beating to windward. We will stop at convenient anchorages along the way and enjoy nice shore side meals while we are still close to land, but there will still be some nights when we anchor in unprotected waters in the interest of making it South as fast as possible. 

Once we are out in the ocean, we won't need to find protected anchorages because we heave to at night. This means that the windvane can steer us all day long and we will be able to relax around the boat while underway (in between sail changes and storms), until we heave to for the night and go to sleep again. 

The only reason we feel any rush when sailing, and the reason we don't sail everywhere with this relaxed pace, is because we do have a fixed amount of time to sail. I take time away from my dental practice and Maddie takes time away from painting and teaching to go on these trips. Without these time constraints, the only logical method to travel would be at the slowest and most relaxed pace. In our case, we need to work a bit at getting there first, then we can relax and meander our way back. The longer we take off for these trips, the more relaxed we can travel through the water.

Honeymoon Cruise: Day 12

Waking up in a full mooring field in the heart of the Annapolis, MD; the sailing capital of the world! What a sight to see. There were cruisers here from all around the world, enjoying the protection from the wind and the convenience of being in downtown Annapolis.

The winds were blowing 15 to 20 knots, but the water was very calm in Spa Creek. We decided to return to Baltimore today, so I got Wisdom ready to go early in the morning. A small craft warning was in effect, so I put in two reefs while tied up to the mooring ball. 

Instead of hooking the tack ring over a horn, I tie the tack line to the gooseneck. This provides a very secure attachment to the tack without any risk of puncturing the luff of the sail. 

The reefed main was raised and the mooring line casted off once we were pointing away from the mooring field. With the staysail up, we ghosted out of the harbor and into the river under very reduced canvas. Most other boats in the river were flying full sail as we slowly moved along under double reefed main and staysail.

As we left the wind protection offered by the harbor, the boats with full sail began to heel over excessively as they scrambled to reef their sails. We simply moved along at a comfortable speed, quietly sailing out of the bay. The winds in the bay were wonderful, blowing steadily from the South and pushing us home.

One of the best parts about sailing near Annapolis is you are bound to come across a gorgeous sailboat. Coming through the bridge, we saw the massive wooden schooner Woodwind, sailing back into Annapolis. 

We were making wonderful time this morning and I expected us to be back in Baltimore in a few hours. Maddie was pleased with the sound of water rushing past the forward berth, knowing that we were sailing along quickly, and Morty was excited to return to his old marking grounds. It looked like the forecast was correct, today would be a very windy day blowing us home!

As soon as we crossed under the Annapolis Bay Bridge, everything changed. It almost felt like if we had crossed into a different time and date! There was no wind, there was certainly no small craft warning, and most importantly there was no speed.

Before the bridge, we were cooking along at 5 to 6 knots; after the bridge, we were barely doing 2 knots. At first I thought the loss of wind was due to the bridges wind shadow. The Bay Bridge is a massive structure, with its roadway 186 feet into the air and its towers 379 feet into the air. This will create a wind shadow that extends 758 feet up and 7580 feet away from the bridge. This means that wind 1.4 miles away from the bridge will be disturbed. 

I accepted this to be the case and refrained from shaking the reefs out of the sails, instead we drifted along under double reefed main and staysail. Once we were 2 miles from the bridge, I knew we were in very light undisturbed air and we weren't getting back to Baltimore any time soon.

I shook out the reefs and eased the outhaul, letting the sail fill up with the little wind available. I didn't raise Josh, our jib, because Maddie was still sleeping, and also since the main blankets the headsails so much. It would be a lot of effort for a small boost in speed. I really wanted to raise Dill, our drifter, but I was leery that the winds would return and I would be forced to strike the sails without any help. 

Instead, I set up the barber hauler, which gave us a fraction of a knot extra without much effort or concern about returning strong winds.

Morty found himself a shady place to relax on the leeward deck near the shrouds. We all began to feel a little tired as we drifted along at a snails pace, slowly reaching our home. With all the pillows available in the cockpit, I decided to lean back and relax while the autopilot kept us on course. 

We sailed to the right of the shipping lane, where little boat traffic exists and the risk of a collision is negligible. This means I can lean back and relax, doing periodic watches where I scan the horizon. I prefer to do a 720 degree scan, in other words, do three spins to check everything three times. If you miss a boat on your first pass, you should see it the second or the third time. 

The only downside to these lazy and sluggish days is you never get very far. We passed the bridge hours ago, and it never seems to move away.

The light airs continued and we were toying around with the idea of anchoring close to Baltimore and completing the trip in the morning.  As if the weather heard us, clouds came in and the sky went gray. The winds shifted and began to blow much stronger, rocketing us back to our home port. I quickly put a reef into the mainsail and carefully sailed her up the river.

Maddie was quite pleased with the wind, as it meant we would be able to arrive this afternoon and not late tonight. We made it up the river with speeds between 3 to 4 knots, nothing outlandish, but we were moving steadily and predictably. 

As we approached the marina, we made the decision to dock the boat in a different manner. We usually drop our sails and motor in under the power of our electric motor, but the battery bank was almost depleted and we were concerned that it would die on us when we needed it most. Instead we decided to dock under sail!

The marina, and our slip was downwind from us, meaning we could run into the marina and slip, then hard reverse to avoid colliding with the pier. There would be no tacking or jibing involved and we would save our battery power for once we were in the slip and absolutely needed it.

We lowered Josh, the jib, and Marge, the mainsail, coming in on only Stan, our staysail. The dock lines were all set and ready to toss towards anyone who wanted to come give us a hand with tying up. I was at the helm while Maddie stood by the mast, ready to release Stan's halyard. We quietly and slowly came into the marina, turned into our fairway, lined up with our slip, dropped Stan, and drifted right into the slip. Once well into the slip, I used the electric motor to bring us to a stop as Maddie tossed the dock lines to our neighbor who saw us coming in and came out to help with the lines. 

We were home!

Honeymoon Cruise: Day 11

Today was an easy sail to Annapolis, the winds were light and we were on a steady run up the bay. 

We started off with fair winds which slowly died down to a whisper of wind. We sailed along with all our sails set, trying to move forward any amount. When the wind died completely I broke down and set up the sculling oar. I have gotten okay at sculling Windpuff, our Alberg 30 which weighs 4.5 tons, but I can't seem to get Wisdom to move quickly. I attribute our slow pace to our large three fixed blade propeller and our massive 17 tons of displacement. While sculling, we were able to move at 0.5 to 0.8 knots. Certainly not record setting speeds but we were moving forward! I did this for around a half hour when Maddie convinced me to sit back and wait for the winds to return. I really wanted to make it all the way to South River or maybe even Baltimore on this run, but these fantasies were unrealistic without any wind.

As we passed South River, my parents came out to say hello.

On days like today, the appeal of a power boat is very apparent. When you set out for a destination, the time it will take is directly proportional to the speed you want to move forward through the water. You don't have to worry about the weather as much, since you can make it from one point to another in a predetermined and calculated amount of time. All you need is a weather window that will allow you safe passage. When sailing, you set out on a cruise towards a destination and deal with all different forms of weather that get thrown at you as you slowly make your way.

A few hours later, we finally made our way to the mooring balls in Annapolis and we snagged one that was on the outer edge of the field. Other boaters don't appreciate when someone comes sailing into the middle of a crowded mooring field under full sail! It comes across as dangerous and reckless. Instead we sail up to the edge of a crowded mooring field under reefed sails, slowly and under complete control.

Sailing with Maddie has made so many maneuvers so much easier! I used to sail up to a mooring ball, luff the sails, go forward with a boat hook, set the painter on the cleat, and drop the sails. It was a one shot deal with very little room for error since I was alone, and no one was at the helm while I was up on the bow cleating the line. Having Maddie on board, we can both manage the boat and it makes picking up a mooring ball much less stressful. 

Under reefed main and staysail set up on the self tacker, Maddie takes the helm while I was to go forward to grab the mooring ball. The reefs were put in while out in the river, well before reaching the mooring field and our plan was discussed. We use hand signals to communicate direction since the dodger blocks a lot of sound, making verbal communication difficult. We decided that I would point in the direction she is to turn as we made our way into the mooring field. Once in the mooring field, I would then point at the mooring ball we are going to pick up and she would steer us from there. 

We like to pick up a mooring ball on the leeward edge of a mooring field, that way we can come around the field and sail up to the mooring ball. As we come up to the ball, we luff the sails and the boat will come to a stop as it aims into the wind. We also like to pick up the mooring ball on the starboard side because I like to lower the sails onto the port deck. The port deck is typically covered with sails ready to be raised while the starboard deck is kept clear and open to make it easy to run forward to the bow unobstructed. 

As Maddie came up on the mooring ball, I lowered the staysail, allowing us to point much further upwind without moving forward too much. Once I grabbed the mooring balls painter with the boat hook, Maddie released the mainsheet which ensured that the mainsail wouldn't offer any push. As the boat began to drift back, I walked the painter forward on the boat until I could hook the painter on the bow cleat. I tied the snubber through the painter and set it up as a bridle for the mooring ball, letting the boat rest evenly behind the mooring ball and giving us a smoother nights sleep.

Once everything was set, we rowed into the heart of Annapolis to grab some dinner at Chick and Ruth's Diner. If you are ever in the area, I highly recommend grabbing a meal here! The food is very reasonably priced and the portions are huge! 

We sailed for 14 hours to get to this restaurant, which made the giant milk shake all the more delicious! It's amazing how tired we were after this sail, the winds were light and we never worked hard all day; but all day we were out in the sun working the sails trying to get as much power as we could from the little wind available.