Catching Fish

Let's face it, sailors and fishermen are two different breeds of people; but we both wish we could be each other. Fishermen get places quickly while catching many fish along the way while the wish they could get further out to sea. Sailors wish they could get places quicker and wish they could catch many fish while far out to sea.

Catching fish is a great way to add fresh meat to your diet while on a long voyage. The problem is, if you are not good at fishing, it is not safe to count on caught fish as food source. We voyaged over a thousand miles, trolling the fishing line for most of the journey before we caught this little fish. I have no idea what kind of fish it was, but it was delicious!  

This did make for a very fresh meal, as it was caught, filleted, and on the grill in under an hour! This fish was rather odd as it looks like a reef fish, but we caught it in water that was 15,000 feet deep (3 miles deep). It had no teeth, and was rather small. 

When we sailed from Bermuda to the Azores, we caught this exact same type of fish again, this time in water that was 16,000 feet deep! This was the only fish we caught in a 2,200 nautical mile voyage while our friends were catching large mahi mahi every other day.  

Your skill as a fisherman will pay off when out in the ocean as you will have plenty of time to troll a line behind your yacht. Fishing will also give you a way to pass the time as you wait and see what is biting from deep down in the sea. 

How To Cross an Ocean: Time

Ok, you have your yacht, you have sails and rigging, steering, navigational equipment, and plenty of fresh water; what more could you possibly need to make it across an ocean? Time

Time is by far the most important item to have in order to make the crossing possible. Many sailors have all the required items to make the journey, but lack the time and therefore can never leave their mooring. 

Sailing is slow and the ocean is big, having time lets you wait for the right weather, and lets you relax as you slowly make your way through the waves. If you have a short schedule and just enough time to make it from Point A to Point B, then you won't have enough time to make the crossing. Something will happen that will exhaust your limited allotment of time and you will run out of it while at sea. Too much wind will force you to change course or slow down, too little wind will force you to a slow crawl. The 100 mile per day goal is just an illusive figure that is never achieved. Not once in our passage did we ever do 100 nautical miles in a day. Some days we did less, others we did more, but we never managed to get 100 on the nose. Yes, our average at the end of a long voyage was around 100 per day, but what if you don't have that many days available to you and you only get to experience the 80 mile days?  

Time away from work, away from friends and family, time away from your life. These are all components of our world that cost time and if you can't remove yourself from these expenses, you will never be able to afford to cross an ocean.  

On the other hand, if you simply take the time to do it and allow no time to be squandered on shore, you will then spend all of your time crossing the ocean and getting to the other side. Your expenses will shift and you will find that crossing and ocean is easy, all you need to do is find the time to do so. 

How To Cross an Ocean: Fresh Water

Food is a "Nice to Have", but you don't need it to survive for a short period of time. Fresh water is mandatory!  On average, the human body can survive about three weeks without food, but only a few days without water!

Fresh water in your possession is mandatory, hypothetical and potential fresh water is not a replacement. Water in your tanks that you have on board is what counts, not water that your watermaker could produce or water that your rain collector could collect.  

Think about it this way, would you go on a hike through the dessert with a bottle of water, or a rain collecting system with a straw on one end? What if it doesn't rain? Water that you could have is water that you could also not have. 

A good rule of thumb for calculating water needs is to plan on 2L per person per day. If you are a crew of two, it would then be 4L of water per day. If you prefer gallons, 3.8L is roughly one gallon, so you can just plan 0.5 gallons per person per day, or for a crew of 2, 1 gallon per day.

But how many days will you be at sea? A good rule of thumb is to plan on sailing 100 miles per day, so the distance you want to cover should be divided by 100 to tell you roughly how many days to plan for. If you are sailing 1000 miles, it would be 10 days, 1800 miles would be 18 days, and so on. 

Now it's time for reality to show its face. You won't always sail 100 miles per day, and you won't always sail the shortest and most direct route. When we sailed from Bermuda to the Azores, our route was 1800 miles, which should take 18 days. We ended up sailing 2,200 miles and it took 24 days.  

It is always good to carry enough water for the journey and half as much again. This means that the number of days you calculate should be multiplied by 1.5 to give you a safer option. 

in our example of 1800 miles taking 18 days, 18 x 1.5 = 27 days. As you can see, we came in under that mark, but still close to it. It is wise to not carry the minimum water you need, but rather make sure that the water you carry is enough for the journey and more. 

What I mean is, say you can hold 100 gallons of water, don't fill them up only to 18 or 27 gallons for the journey. Instead, fill them full and know you will be arriving at your destination with plenty of water to spare.  

Water is the most valuable item you carry on your boat, and should be treated as such. It should never be wasted, and it should never be lost. The condition of the tanks needs to be monitored and the use of this resource needs to be closely observed.  

You might be thinking "Why not just carry an infinite amount of water?" The answer is water is heavy. Water weighs about 8 pounds per gallon, so every 100 gallons of water you add to your boat adds 800 pounds to it as well. The more water you carry, the heavier your weight penalty will be. 

On Wisdom, we carry 200 gallons of water which tallies up to be 1,600 pounds or 727 kilograms. This is quite the weight penalty, and this is only the water in the tanks. We then carry another 40 days supply of water in plastic bottles, adding another 42 gallons of water and 336 pounds to the boat. This brings our total water weight up to 1,936 pounds when full!  

Why carry so much extra weight? Why not just have a watermaker or a rain collector? The answer is simple, rain doesn't always come and watermakers break. When we sailed from the Bahamas to the Azores, we were unable to collect any water. In the first three weeks from the Bahamas to Bermuda, we had no wind and the 700 mile journey took 20 days. When it rained, the waves would pick up as well and the deck remained salty. Opening up the rain collector to let in rain water would also let in sea water. When we left Bermuda for the Azores, we had no rain for the entire 24 day journey.  

Rain collectors are convenient when you are anchored in a remote location and protected from the seas brought up by the storm.  In these conditions, we were able to stay away from civilization for longer, but not as a reliable enough method to depend on it to survive an ocean crossing.

How To Cross an Ocean: Navigation

You have sails, rigging, and steering; congratulations, you have a sailboat and can go anywhere. Where should you go?

This is where navigation comes into play. When you set out to cross an ocean, you need to know where you are going. Navigation can be as basic as looking at the sun and stars, or as technologically involved as GPS navigational equipment.  

In the most basic forms, a compass can give you an idea of your direction, a time piece will give you an indication of your longitude, and a sextant can be used to measure your latitude. Paper charts can identify dangerous areas and give you guidance to reach your destination.  

Many people view paper charts as they view a chart plotter, but this is not the case. A chart will not tell you where you are or where you want to go; it merely tells you where things are located in the world, you need to do the rest! This lack of convenience is out weighed by the fact that a paper chart will never "not work". You will never open a chart to find that your subscription has expired, or it's battery is low, or that an update has occurred and you need to log in to unlock your chart. A paper chart will always tell you where land masses are located as well as hazards and depths. 

Electronic charts are convenient, but can decide "not to work" when you need them most. We personally like to have electronic charts available to us because at any point we can look at them and know where we are, how fast we are moving, and where we are going. We understand that this is a convenience and also rely heavily on paper charts with traditional navigational equipment. I use a sextant to take a noon sight where I then calculate our position. Then I plot our position on the paper chart and record the data in our log book. After all that, I compare my findings with the electronic charts and see how close I was to the "true value". During the rest of the day, we enjoy the convenience of the electronic charts. One of our favorites is when we are approaching a waypoint. We will use the electronic charts to know when we reach that point and then use it to set our new heading. 

Yes, we rely heavily on them for their convenience, but should they fail, we know how to navigate without them and how accurate we really are.  

Electronic charts are "Really nice to have" but not necessary. Paper charts and the equipment to use them is mandatory to safely get you across an ocean. 

While actual navigational equipment is critical to a safe passage, there is always the "Oh crap!" situation where everything goes wrong and your goal is to simply make it to shore. Your paper charts are gone, your log book washed overboard, and the waves ate your sextant. This is where situational awareness becomes very important. Imagine you are in the Atlantic Ocean and you just want to get home. You know you are close to the East Coast of the United States. Who cares if you show up in Florida or Maine, just head West! You will come upon land and can find a sea buoy to guide you into a port.  

What if you have a Captain Ron moment where the compass falls overboard? This is where general awareness is important. The Sun rises in the East and sets in the West. By night, the Moon follows this same pattern and Polaris sits squarely in the North. The higher Polaris is from the horizon, the further North you are, and using the Sun and Moon you can find your way West to get back to a shore. The same holds true in any ocean in the world. The stars can be used as guides through the night sky and the Sun and Moon can guide you for East and West. 

In a moment of desperation, sail in the general direction of the largest landmass you want to find and deal with landfall as you get closer. The important thing is to make it back to shore where you can then get help and get food and fresh water to survive. 

How To Cross an Ocean: Steering

Steering is what distinguishes a yacht from a floating pile of debris! If you can steer, you can then elect where you want to go. If you can't steer, then you are adrift. 

There are various methods to steer a yacht, from fancy contraptions that convert energy in the form of gears, cables, and fluids, all the way down to the very simple stick (a tiller). The goal of steering is to manipulate a flap in the water called a rudder which will guide water in one direction or another and cause the yacht to turn. With the ability to turn, you can then steer and maintain a course. 

Whatever system you have, it would behoove you to familiarize yourself with it and fully understand how to service, repair, and rebuild your steering system yourself with only the tools you carry on board. 

Lets start with the simple steering systems and then work our way into the more complicated versions. Last, we will discuss what you can do when everything brakes! 

The most simple of steering systems is a tiller. A tiller is nothing more than a stick acting as a lever that delivers force to the rudder. When you push or pull the tiller, the force is transmitted directly to the rudder. The longer the tiller, the more leverage you will have to control the rudder. Tillers are wonderful because they are simple. The more moving parts you involve, the more points of failure you introduce into the system. A tiller is easy to maintain, as everything is visible in front of you with no hidden parts that can begin to fail quietly without notice. Tillers seem to have fallen out of favor as they are seldom seen on luxurious yachts, though they are very common on the most high performance of race yachts. 

The alternative to a tiller is wheel steering. Wheels are familiar to most people as they resemble the steering wheel of a car. People also think wheels look "shippy" even though the original "ship steering" was a tiller. Wheels take rotational energy and transform it into the lateral motion of the rudder via a whole host of convoluted methods, each with it's own list of problems and pitfalls. 

The most reliable of all the wheel steering systems is gear steering. This is where a quadrant with teeth is mounted to the rudder post. The wheel attaches to this by a small gear. The teeth interlock and the steering works reliably. The points of failure are limited (usually wear in the gears) and is easily maintained and repaired. The downside to this system is the wheel needs to be mounted right over the rudder. This tends to make this a rather uncommon steering system as the ship designers enjoy more freedom in wheel placement. 

The next system is cable steering. Here a cable is moved by the wheel which runs through a series of shivs to a quadrant mounted on the rudder post. The cables give the freedom to move the helm far from the wheel, as long as the cables can reach it. Weak points in this system are numerous, and the setup can get quite complicated. Each shiv can jam, causing strain on the cable which would lead to cable breakage. The quadrant itself can also break from stress, rendering the entire system useless. 

Aluminum quadrants are lighter in weight, but much more fragile. They have a tendency to shatter into pieces if the rudder is hit hard in a grounding. Bronze rudder quadrants, while heavier, are much more resilient in these situations, making them a much better choice of quadrant materials if you are planning to go offshore. 

Cable steering is simple to maintain and repair, once you understand how it works. If your first time seeing it is after something has broken, you might find yourself looking at a complicated spiderweb of slack cable and broken parts!

The last common steering system that utilizes a wheel is hydraulic steering. This system is the most convienient from an installation standpoint, giving you complete freedom of wheel placement with regards to the rudder post, but the worst system from a reliability standpoint. Hydraulic steering uses hydraulic pressure to push the rudder around, and relies on the airtight seal of the hoses, as well as all the connections and pumps involved in the process. If the system fails, you will need specialized equipment to repair and replace the damaged sections of hose as well as a very good understanding of the system to trouble shoot the whole setup.  

Now, what if you are out at sea and everything that could go bad does. Whatever steering system you have fails and your rudder falls off! You venture into your lockers to find all your spares and everything you have related to steering falls overboard!  Now what?!

Well, there are two simple options. One requires you to carry an item before you leave port, the other will be available from parts on the boat at the moment.  

If you carry a sculling oar, you can use the oar as a separate rudder steering system. The oar on its side off the stern of the yacht will give you the ability to steer your yacht just like a tiller on a rudder. Naturally, this setup only works if you have a sculling oar. 

The other option is to use spare lines and create a steering device out of them. A long length of line will act as a drogue in the water and provide resistance and pull in that direction. Tying a mass of line to a bridle system led to each corner of the stern will let you pull the tangle of line to port or to starboard. When you pull it to starboard, the drag will cause the yacht to pull to starboard. When you pull it to port, the drag will cause the yacht to pull to port. This gives you steering, but at the expense of a lot of speed. If you put too much line out, the drag will slow you down too much. Too little line and the drag will be insufficient to steer you properly.  

These were all situations where your steering fails, but who wants to steer all the way across an ocean? Why not turn on the autopilot and relax! Well, autopilots can fail too. Electronic autopilots can fail because of electrical reasons as well as mechanical reasons. Wind steering systems can fail because of mechanical reasons. Having the materials on hand as well as the expertise to fix the system you have is critical to being able to depend on the system to get you to where you are going. On our passage, our wind steering system began to suffer from chafe, and sacrificial chafe protection needed to be applied and reapplied to the control lines. We also had a shiv seize up and need to be serviced to restore proper steering, as well as have our aluminum rudder quadrant shatter in a grounding in North Carolina. 

You might be wondering about "Emergency Tillers" and why they have not been mentioned. The reason is, not all boats have them, and those that do tend to go ignored. Almost every person I have met who has an emergency tiller admits to having never tried it out. They had no idea how to set it up or use it. I myself was guilty of this, so before we set off on our big cruise across the Atlantic, we tested and set up our emergency tiller (who had lived in a locker for the past half century). As it turns out, we would have been in big trouble had we needed it out at sea as we were missing a large and important bolt to connect the tiller to the top of the rudder post. Thankfully, we were still in the United States and walking distance to a West Marine where I was able to procure myself this crucial bolt. 

This makes us part of a tiny population of cruisers who have an emergency tiller and have tested the setup, making sure they know how to use it. If you are going offshore, it would be a great idea to join this small group of sailors who are truly prepared.