Ocean Passage Planning

When you want to go from one place to the next, you might find that the shortest is across the ocean. If you are sailing, the quickest way across will be when the wind is blowing well and in the direction you are going. 

If there is no wind, you will have no power with your sails. If the wind is on your bow, you will have to beat into the wind and waves as you tack towards your desitnation, easily sailing 2 to 3 times the distance between the two points.  

Picking when to go based on the weather will give you the perfect conditions to make your way there quickly and easily.

If you are planning to go in the direction of the prevailing winds, then you will find it easy to choose. Since you are going with the prevailing winds, most of the days will be blowing in the right direction. This means that you will have plenty of times to choose from! Simply picking a day that has fair winds will give you ideal conditions. 

If you are planning to go in the opposite direction of the prevailing winds, then you will have to wait for a cold front to come through and reverse the winds. This will blow you to your destination, but the days are not as frequent. 

Cold fronts come through periodically, and can vary in intensity. Obviously, you don't want to go out in front of a very powerful cold front, but you also don't want to head out on a very weak one that won't be able to push you along. 

It is important to keep in mind that cold fronts are also called "storms" by other people, so be prepared for those kinds of conditions. 

We have sallied from Charelston, SC to Ferdinandina, FL moving along quickly under storm sails, and again from Ferdinandina, FL to Fort Pierce, FL thanks to strong cold fronts. 

There were small craft advisories, and we were only flying the trysail and staysail, yet we were doing 5-6 knots most of the time with periods of 8-10 knots! The ride was rough and intense, but we did manage to cover two days worth of sailing in a single day!  

We worked hard, slept little, and sailed fast. Once we arrived at our next inlet, we were able to pull in and go to sleep for the whole day!  

An Alternative Method to Tensioning Synthetic Standing Rigging

While passing through Carolina Beach, I met a fellow cruiser who had rigged his previous boat with synthetic standing rigging. He has since sold his ketch and moved onto a gorgeous wooden motor yacht. We got talking and he told me his innovative and wonderful method of tensioning his synthetic standing rigging. 

Instead of setting up a complicated pulley system that leads to a deck winch, he simply took a different tool and made his life easier. He used an electric fence wire tensioner. These tensioners cost him around $2 and are made of plastic. (http://www.kencove.com/fence/Wire+Tighteners_detail_SSDR.php) They lasted him a few years and were innexpensive enough to simply replace when the sun weakened them.

The only caveat to this system is that you need a special tool that is used to tighten the wires with these devices. The tool has a square end that inserts into the device and has long handles on it. The handles are long enough that he felt it easy to tension his standing rigging without over exerting himself.

To tension his rigging, he would tighten the lashings by hand as much as he could and then tie them off. He then slipped the plastic tensioner onto one of the lashings and set it in the slot that is cut for a wire to pass through. 

With the tensioner slipped over the lashing, he would then insert the tool and begin winding the lashing around the tensioner. This system is genius because it uses a massive leverage advantage to collect the lashing line and generate the tension needed. This not only makes it easy to setup the rigging, but also quick to adjust the standing rigging as all you need to do is insert the tool and spin it as needed! 

Once the tension needed is achieved, a simple pin is inserted to hold everything in place. The pin prevents the tensioner from spinning and unspooling, holding your rigging in place! There are no knots to tie or pulley systems to setup. Simply insert the tool into the key hole and spin until its perfect! 

Yes, the tensioner is made out of plastic and dies after a few years, but the unit costs around $2 and is easy and cost effective to replace when compared to all the time that it will take to tension your standing rigging using the Shroud Frapping Knot.  

If you are considering switching to synthetic standing rigging but concerned that the Shroud Frapping Knot is too complicated for you to learn, this is an easy alternative that achieves the same result of a properly tuned rig with much less involvement and effort. 

Blog Browsing

After much request, I have finally created a page that should help you to browse over the blog topics and find areas of interest to you, with improved ease.

Yes, the search button is nice, but you need to know what topic you want to read about in order to type it in and find the blog posts. But what if you don't know what you're looking for and simply want to browse? Well now you can!

All you need to do is visit this page (https://www.riggingdoctor.com/blog-index/) and it will show you the most important tags and categories of the page. You can simply scan the list to see if there are any topics you want to read more about. When you find a topic, a simple click will take you to a long list of posts on that specific topic!

Keeping an Interior Work Area Clean

Woodworking projects are notorious for creating a mess. Wood shavings and saw dust will fall everywhere and migrate far from the work area! There is a simple trick to keep the mess contained and not impede on the project itself.

The trick is to work in an area with no breeze, so that any dust or shavings will fall vertically, then place a moist paper towel under the work site. The wood shavings and saw dust will fall on the moist paper towel and stick to it! This will let you work away without fear, and have a single piece of paper to fold up with the mess. The paper can be folded up to contain the issue and disposed of easily. 

This trick works well for wood, but it also works well with metal (though I would personally make it a wider area of paper towel). Next time you have a project, enjoy being able to fix it quickly and clean up even quicker! 

Wooden Doors Not Closing

Wood on a boat is subject to a lot of dimensional changes in size as humidity and temperatures change the moisture content of the wood. Wooden doors are going to swell and shrink as the air in the boat becomes moist or dry. 

The doors in our table (where we store our linens) are rather large, so a small percentage in dimensional change will equate to some significant movement in the wood. 

These doors used to close easily, but after a rather most winter, the wood swelled slightly, but caused the doors edge to migrate a few millimeters. Now the doors overlap instead of closing. The solution will be to trim the wood at an angle to allow the latches to meet and the doors to close.

Using a block plane, I was able to slowly and carefully bevel the edge of the door to allow the edge to pass the latch and the doors to close effortlessly.

With the wood trimmed off and the doors closing easily, the fresh wood was then given a few coats of varnish to seal it up and protect it from future moisture. Varnish doesn't make wood waterproof, but it does help. Varnished wood is sealed up and fed well with the oils and resins in the varnish. This creates a barrier to keep the moisture out, or at least slow the ingress of moisture.  

With some simple hand tools, the problem of a non closing door can be fixed and cruising life can continue on without a hitch!