Sea Sickness

Yeah...I get sea sick.

Luckily there are two things that help me through it: Herby is very understanding, and I know the cause. The problem is, sometimes the cause can't be avoided. When the waves are even slightly choppy, I can't go down into the cabin for more than about one minute without running back out and adjusting my breathing so as not to puke all over the place. It's definitely a handicap when it's raining...or night time. I've tried taking Bonine, which supposedly makes people less drowsy than Dramamine, but I was a useless blob for an entire day after taking it. True, I wasn't throwing up, but I also wasn't any sort of help whatsoever. It just wasn't worth it.

I know that if I stay outside, I'll be completely fine. The problem is, the cozy bed, the food, and the bathroom are all inside. It's not the most comfortable situation, but so far, it's been worth it. Herby fetches food for me when I'm hungry. He built a middle insert in the cockpit so that we could sleep outside during rough nights. I even got these rubber tubes to help me pee over the side so that I don't have to go down into the cabin every couple hours to relieve myself. It's a handicap for sure while sailing long distances, but honestly, I view it as completely worth it.

Sometimes I casually throw up over the side or into a plastic bag, but at least I'm cognitively present when we need to reef or drop a sail. So far on this trip, we've made an effort to always anchor in protected waters, but it won't be like that in the ocean. I sincerely hope that the rumors about adjusting to the rolling waves after a few days at sea are true, but if they're not, I know I'll be able to sleep outside and have an understanding husband who will cook and grab me snacks.

The Importance of a Dry Run

It may seem boring for us to spend the first three months of our journey in the Chesapeake bay, but there's a very important reason that we are doing so.  We needed a dry run.  It's helping us figure out the important things before we cross an ocean, so that we know that when we do set out, we are as prepared as we can possibly be.  I have only gone on one sailing journey in which I actually helped sail and it was two years ago.  It was extremely important for me to have this time in the Chesapeake to relearn all the skills that have been laying dormant for the past two years.  I am also gaining practice with things that I didn't even learn the first time around such as attaching hank on sails and putting in a triple reef.  As I do these things for the first time, I'm not only learning how to do them, but I'm also gaining a better idea of how the boat works as a whole.  This knowledge then helps me control it more effectively when we are at sea.

Besides the technical knowledge, however, this trial run has also given us important practice with things like rowing to shore and provisioning. We have learned how much fruit we consume in a week versus how long it will remain edible and we have also learned that we suck at keeping our garden alive while detached from shore hoses. Along those lines, we have also gained an understanding of how much water we tend to use in a given week, allowing us to ration appropriately when showering and doing dishes. 

That brings us to our rain water collected. We have had plenty of weather while away so far, which has shown us that we can collect more than 60 gallons of rain water in a single down poor. We learned the hard way that we can't sit on our flexible solar panels, but we were able to replace them with new ones within a couple of days since we were still in Easton, Maryland. It is far better that we figure these things out while still in familiar territory rather than discovering that something isn't working the way we had planned in the middle of our trek to Bermuda. Though it might not be as fun to follow along with or watch on YouTube, this trial run was completely necessary for us to prepare for the year of travel ahead.

Measuring the Stays

When fabricating your synthetic standing rigging, you may wonder what length you should cut your section of rope for the stay. The trick is to measure and mark everything before you begin working the line.

The moment you open the weave to perform a splice, you will lose your ability to estimate the accurate length of the finished stay. The length of the stay needs to take into account the amount of line that will be buried back into the line, as well as the amount of line that will be consumed in passing around the eye, and the length of the stay that will be composed of the lashing and deadeye.

The simple method to calculate this is:

Length of the stay + Perimeter of Thimble + Amount buried - Length of deadeye - Length of lashing

The length of the stay is the distance from the mast tang down to the chain plate.

The perimeter of the thimble is easiest to calculate by wrapping the line around the thimble and measuring the length involved.

The amount buried is 72 times the diameter of the line in millimeters. You will also want to taper the end of the tail that gets buried, so it is wise to give yourself the minimum amount of bury before the taper begins. This will ensure that you are not going to end up with insufficient bury on such an important splice.

The length of the deadeye tends to be around 1 foot.

The length of the lashing is up to you, but I recommend planning it to be around 3 feet. This distance gives you plenty of leeway in case your stay comes out a bit long, and it places the lashing in harms way of the lazy sheet. This means that most of the chafe will occur on a disposable lashing instead of an expensive stay.

Once you have all of these numbers calculated, it is time to mark it on the line before you cut it off the spool. When you mark your points, you can then make sure that everything is correct before you cut the line. If you cut the line too short, you will not be able to make the stay the correct length. If you cut the stay too long, you can always trim it shorter. This is why I like to cut a few extra inches of leeway on each end just in case I find that I need a bit more length.

When you stretch out the line to cut, you will start at the bitter end. For this example, we will do the math using 9mm line.

The first point in will be the tapered length. To taper the end gradually, it is best to do this over 2 feet, where the taper runs 1 strand every few weaves.

The next point to measure is the amount that will be buried. For 9mm line, that would be 9mm x 72 = 648mm or 25.5 inches. After the 2 feet of taper, you then need 25.5 inches of bury. This comes out to be 4 feet, 1.5 inches of tail to be buried on one splice.

At this point, you have the taper and the bury marked on the line. Now you will need to measure and mark the thimble section. Simply place the throat of the thimble at the tail mark and work the line around the thimble, then mark it again. You want to make the eye that goes around the thimble loose that way you can easily replace the thimble if it fails. The looseness of the eye can be closed by a small seizing knot to hold everything in place.

All this length is what will lay outside of the length of the actual stay. Now that the tail portion is calculated, measured, and marked, it is time to measure out the length for the actual stay.

The length of the stay is the span from mast tang to chain plate minus the four feet of the lashing and deadeye. For the sake of the example, let's assume that the distance is 50 feet. If you are going to have 3 feet of lashing and 1 foot in the deadeye, this would mean that 50 - 3 - 1 = 46 feet of length.

Your length of line would be as follows:

2 feet for taper

2 feet for bury

8 inches for thimble

46 feet for stay

8 inches for thimble

2 feet for bury

2 feet for taper

As you can see, the cut length of 51 feet and 4 inches long.

When you finish fabricating the stay, you will notice that it will be much shorter than 46 feet long that you were trying to achieve. This shortness is due to the constructional stretch, which at this time can be thought of as potential constructional stretch.

The more weave you opened to perform the splice, the shorter the stay will appear to be. Upon initial tensioning, this stretch will be removed and it will nearly approach the ideal 46 feet of our example. After a bit of creep during Phase I of the dyneema lifecycle, you will find that it will reach closer and closer to the ideal 46 feet desired.

This is very important when working with headstays, where you want the eye splice to sit as low to the deck as possible, allowing you to have your first hank attach to the stay as soon as possible. Proper measuring can safely place this eye 24 inches above the stem, where the deadeye is 12 inches, and the other 12 inches is the lashing.

If you have to err, it is best to err on the short side. If your stay is too short, the stay will have a longer lashing and will still achieve the same amount of proper tension. If your stay is too long, you will end up two-blocked and you will need to redo your splice and tension it all again.

Chopping Off My Hair

Sailing with long hair is a pain; plain and simple. 

I'm sorry, but these pirates with sexy long hair that we see in movies are doing it wrong. When we did our sailing trip to Kitty Hawk, my hair was far past shoulder length. It was a tangly mess for most of the time and this could be attributed to the hours of being outside in constant winds.

I could combat that a little bit by wearing a hat or pulling it back into a tight ponytail, but when I took my hair tie out to sleep at night, it was still a tangle rat's nest of a mess. This, however, was not nearly as bad as the fact that I couldn't wash it. One thing movies do tend to get right is the smell of a pirate. When you're on the boat for extended periods of time, you just don't shower very often. This is for a combination of reasons ranging from conservation of water and simply not having to because you're not in civilization. 

Conserving water is perhaps the most important thing about sailing, so having long hair means that it will get oily and gross very fast, but also that it will take much more water to wash it when you finally do. Therefore, chopping my hair off for this trip was the best decision I could have made. It's easy to maintain, looks great even if I don't brush it, and doesn't whip me in the face every time the wind picks up. It takes about a tenth of the water I used to need to get the shampoo out, and it dries in minutes instead of hours WITHOUT a hairdryer!

Ladies (and dudes), if you were planning to have that sexy surfer look while sailing, I'm sorry to burst your bubble. Everything about those long flowing locks are a giant pain in the butt when you actually get going.

Impulse Shopping

Advertising and marketing have really figured out how to make you buy their products. When you are constantly surrounded by advertisements and signs, you will become numb to them and they may even loose their effectiveness on you. When you are anchored out away from civilization, you are also removed from advertisements. Your defenses are lowered as you relax and enjoy the world around you for what it really is. 

Then you take a trip on your bicycle and explore a new town with plans to pick up a few provisions that you are running low on. All of a sudden you enter the commercial district in this new town and you are bombarded by advertisements! The sheer need to give them money in return for whatever they are selling is compelling and powerful! We went to pick up hair dye at Rite-Aid and along the way we saw a sign for a pizza place. I am allergic to wheat (a horrible allergy to have because breads are delicious and their memory will live on with me forever!) yet I felt compelled to eat there. The dreams of cheese and Italian spices filled my head and my heart desired nothing else than to eat there.  Maddie had to pull me away and keep me on task to go to Rite-Aid, but I just wanted a super cheesy pizza. 

To prevent impulse shopping, Maddie and I make a list of things that we need. When we go to shore, we look at the list and figure out how much cash to bring for these items. We only take the cash we are willing to spend at that moment and only buy the items that we see on the list.  

Having that simple rule will keep me from buying every cheese I see and clogging my arteries as I drain our cruising fund. I am good at following the rules, which means that I can keep on task at the last moment when I would have to let go of our cruising money in exchange for something that wasn't on the list. 

Advertisements can't seem to break that simple rule in my head, but they can yank on my heart all the way up to the wall in my head that is that rule.