Finding Shangrila

While cruising, you will encounter many wonderful and new places. Some places are gorgeous because they have a lot of natural beauty. Others are surrounded by nice people and pleasant towns. Everyone has their own picture of paradise, and that is what we all strive to find. 

Shangrila is a mythical city that travelers find after a weary passage. The towns people are welcoming and inviting and everything there is in perfect harmony. You are welcomed to stay as long as you like, but if you leave, you may never find it again!

I feel that Oriental, NC is our Shangrila. We arrived here after a gale off Hatteras and a long, blustery ride down the Pamlico Sound. We anchored in the harbor at 4am, and spend the first few days sleeping and recovering on the boat before we went to shore. 

When we made landfall at the free and well maintained dinghy dock, we were instantly greeted by many kind and caring people. The restaurants were inexpensive and delicious, and everyone seems to know everyone else. This makes it easy for them to spot the cruisers, as we are the "new faces" in town. 

Every morning, we would go ashore and get a giant serving of ice cream for $2.79!  

We would then strol around town and inevitably be invited to some event that was happening and this would consume our day. After dark, we would return to the boat and go to sleep, only to repeat the process tomorrow. Each day is filled with a magical unknown quality that we know will lead to a fun and interesting day surrounded by kind and caring people. 

To make it even more attractive, the harbor is filled with a very soft mud that the anchor sinks into with ease, and the entire harbor is completely protected from wind and waves! Even better, there is no lunar tide! I know that sounds odd, but there is actually no tidal change throughout the day. The tide here is controlled by the wind, if it blows from the North, the harbor fills a bit, if it blows from the South, the harbor drains a bit. The difference from full to drained is only about 1 foot, so you really don't need to worry about your boat shifting direction and dragging anchor while you are away. 

We have been in Oriental for 3 weeks now and the locals have been trying to set us up with work and a home. They have pointed us in the direction of a few nice homes that are for sale and told me that the local dentist might be looking to retire soon and sell her practice to me. All of these offers are very tempting as we could spend the rest of our lives here anchored in the harbor with a steady source of income and a town full of happy and caring people. 

But as the story goes, the traveler yearns for the unknown distant horizon and will set out to find someplace new! In the fable, the traveler then returns to where he thought Shangrila was located but can't find it, as it is lost to him forever. 

We, on the other hand have the coordinates to this place, and plan on returning to this wonderful place when we sail up the East Coast of the United States in the future. Until then, we will escape from this sanctuary and head off into the distance! 

Our next stop will not be anything like this place though, which will give us motivation to continue on towards warmer waters! When we leave here, we will travel 20 miles south towards Beaufort, NC, and then 65 miles down to Masonboro, where our anchorage will have a 7 foot tidal variance and a strong current to boot! Paradise will be a sweet memory as we wonder why we left and wander the globe by sail. 

Go Cruising Now!

While most "soon to be" cruisers plan to prepare their yacht to completion before setting out, "current" cruisers are breaking stuff just the same and are constantly repairing the problems as they arise. It might feel more comfortable to tackle all these issues while in a home port where you know your way around, the truth is, new problems will arise as you cruise! 

Putting off your departure date until everything is perfect will only cause you to put off cruising for longer. When you do finally go, stuff will still break and you will find yourself fixing things in a strange port anyways.

With this fatalistic view of cruising, it makes sense to take your boat as it is and get going on it now! Set off and get going while you work on it along the way. Stay close to shore as you start, testing the waters and systems, fixing what breaks as you sail your way along the coast. Once your yacht is repaired to a point where it is sea worthy, you can then venture out into the real "blue water" sailing towards a distant destination with all that experience and all those memories under your belt. 

Don't wait until later, just get going now and have fun with your life and your time at sea! 

Climbing Your Mast on a Wire Halyard

First off, I want to emphasize that you should never climb a mast with a wire halyard, or a wire-rope spliced halyard. 

Now, if you have a wire halyard and you need to go up, then you need to make due with what you have! 

If your halyard isn't long enough to reach your harness, now you need to attach a length of line between the end of the halyard and your harness, that way when you are finished, you will end up on the deck and not suspended a few feet above the deck when you are tired and want to get out of the harness! 

Wire is dangerous to tie knots in because it is both slippery and brittle. If you bend it too tightly, it will crimp and kink, damaging and weakening the wire strands and leading to its eventual breakage. Keeping bends open will also make it easier for the knot to slip and come untied. Thus you encounter the dilemma of tying a knot in wire and rope! 

While helping out a cruiser climb her mast, I tied this knot between the two materials to allow her to hang safely from her wire halyard. The knot is a combination of a sheet bend and a figure eight in a bight. An important thing to do with this knot is to certainly secure the bitter ends. I attached the shackle of the wire onto itself and the bight of the rope had the tail passing through it. These added features are merely present so that if the knot were to slip, it would slid onto the attached bitter end and stop moving from there. 

Naturally, since this knot is new to me and created on the fly out of necessity, our cruiser friend who was in the harness and at deck level was encourage to drop from her feet to a seated position to test the knot and verify that there is no slippage or other concerns that might occur while she was aloft. 

While creating a new knot, be sure to test it at its desired function, and incorporate some method that will facilitate ease of untying after the knots intended purpose has been completed. 

The Importance of Weather Helm

Weather helm might feel like a constant force that you battle against as you sail across the water on a reach, but this constant nuisance is actually intentionally placed there by your yacht designer. 

Imagine a perfectly balanced yacht, with the sails set perfectly balanced and the rudder straight. The captain can lock the helm and relax as she steers herself through the waves. Now imagine that this captain slips and falls overboard with his perfectly balanced sails and rudder straight! He will float in the water as he watches his yacht and salvation sail off into the distance at hull speed! At this point, he is in incredible danger of drowning as no one knows he has fallen and is not coming to his rescue!  His best hope of salvation is speeding away at a pace he can never match through the water.

Now imagine the same scenario with a yacht that has a bit of weather helm (not too much, but just a bit). The sails are not balanced, so he must hold the helm to keep the rudder just a bit to leeward. When he falls overboard, the force on the rudder will push the rudder straight, no longer fighting the weather helm and the yacht will then turn upwind. With no one at the helm to keep the course, the yacht will point up into the wind and stall, coming to a stop or even tacking over and heaving to. This means that the yacht will come to a stop and the wet captain will be able to swim over to his yacht and  climb aboard; saving his life and getting him home again to tell the tale!

While excessive weather helm is a nuisance and a problem, a little bit of weather helm is a great safety feature that should be praised instead of cursed! 

Weather Helm and Genoas

The concept of sail balance is pretty easy to grasp. Powering up the headsails will produce lee helm as it moves the Center of Effort (CE) forward. Powering up the mainsail will produce weather helm as it moves the CE aft. When the forces of the main and headsails equal each other, the CE will align with the Center of Lateral Resistance (CLR) and will sail straight.  

If you suffer from weather helm, all you need to do is add more headsail area and/or reduce mainsail area, as this will move the CE forward and reduce the weather helm felt by the captain. A genoa is a massive headsail which should give you plenty of leeward force and help balance out the yacht, but this may not be the case. 

As you sail and feel weather helm, you might try reefing the main and letting out more of the genoa from the roller furler. Somehow, nothing seems to have changed! The weather helm is still present. Letting out more genoa doesn't seem to help any more either, as the problem continues to exist! 

Why would such a large headsail fail to balance out the sailplan? The answer is simple: a genoa is a jib that extends beyond the headsail triangle and continues aft of the mast. While the headsail is set forward of the mast, the portion that exists aft of the mast will move the CE aft. The larger the genoa, the more this effect increases.  

This is why you will see people beating to windward under genoa alone, with no mainsail, and they will be sailing along at a good pace! The large headsail, especially with genoas that are 150% or larger, will create enough weather helm by themselves that they are able to power your yacht to weather. Adding a mainsail to the combination only exasperates the situation, adding even more CE aft which will create even more weather helm. 

If you have a genoa and find your self struggling with weather helm, consider roller reefing your genoa before you try to reef your mainsail. Reefing your genoa will actually move the sail area forward and also move your CE forward which will help reduce weather helm and balance your sails.