Almost every project going on here makes a run through the paint shop. Or several, depending on how many parts a particular project is made up of. Suzanne gets all credit for every bit of painting, and today we got a photo of many completed items. It’s a handy opportunity to show what’s been going on around here. First, a picture from some time ago, while things were in progress: Various parts are laid out on the workshop table. Some are obvious, like the tiller, showing it’s heavily scraped area where it rubs on the movable slide board in the cockpit. The chunky thing in front is cargo boom jaws, explained more in a moment. Other odds and ends have to do with the rudder stock repair, and resulting changes in the stock/tiller connection. There is also a short drop board, which has two jobs: holding the bracket for the gimbaled propane cookstove, and new this year, having a proper gasketed lip to make a little barricade for unruly bits of water sloshing toward the interior of the cabin, while underway with no big drop boards in place. At the back left, those are not boat parts – pieces of the house have been patiently waiting their turn.
The completed paint collection includes the new version of beaching legs, for another try this year. These boards have multiple uses, besides holding the boat up when the tide goes out: they will be lee boards for secure sleeping in the starboard berth, and the two pieces will also go together as one, with velcro straps or lashings, and fit into the cargo boom jaws, as the cargo boom. The cargo boom jaws rest against the mizzen mast, on top of the partners (with a parrel line around the back of the mast). The cargo boom is attached to the jaws by that heavy pin on the left, and a block and tackle goes on the upper end of the boom. The cargo boom is supported at the upper end by a spare mizzen halyard, and together the whole business can be used for lifting heavy stuff like spare anchors from cockpit lockers. This is experimental, but I’m hopeful…
The tiller is finished, and Suzanne and I had some fun setting up a piece of leather and lacing it on, to protect where the underside of the tiller was getting scraped. Leather for this kind of project, which was originally a little bit hard to find, came from The Wooden Boat Store, where it is sold primarily for oar leathers. Off and on they have “scraps” available, at a much more manageable price. We did a similar leather project on the yard last year, where the yard had been getting worn against the mast, and it worked out well.
The odd shaped thing at the left of the completed paint photo is the rudder stock “clamp,” which will reinforce where the wooden stock (now repaired) had deteriorated badly from strain with the tiller connection. Now, instead of a large bronze pin through plain wood, there’s a completely different arrangement. Because of the rudder stock “clamp,” the tiller connection has needed to change, and will have bronze straps (one shows in the first photo), and the pair of wood spacers that show in both paint shop photos. The end result will be overbuilt, but sturdy! And removable, for dropping the rudder in the future. When this all goes together, after the rudder goes back on the boat, there will be a blog post devoted to the subject. But if anybody is curious now, there’s a series of photos that can be seen here: http://smu.gs/1hn0kDE
Also new, and somewhat experimental, is the belaying pin collar for the mizzen mast (shown below), to provide places to tie off the numerous junk rig and other mizzen lines. There used to be a big plastic cleat on the mast, held with two screws, which has now been taken off. I’ve been averse to putting more screw holes in the mast, so the collar is going on with wedges, and is braced by that little stop block that uses the old screw holes from the cleat. Seizing will be going around the wedges, to keep them from going anywhere… It all feels pretty firm now, but we’ll see what happens in use. Belaying pins made from dowel, with little tubing stop-collars, will go in those holes. They too are just out of the paint shop, and are shown in the earlier photo.
With all this going on, I guess it’s obvious why the boat has not made it to the water yet! But on the other hand, I’m having a really nice time being home for a bit of summer. It’s satisfying to work on this stuff, even if a little alarming to have so many experimental bits running at once. It should make for an interesting month, as the parts get to actually go together.
One of the biggest challenges in doing a junk rig conversion, for me, was the very beginning: deciding which design/sailplan to follow. Reading up, there are a number of choices, and then once a particular design is selected, there are more choices, including sailcloth, batten material and method of attachment, and specifics of overall rigging, as well as the question of camber, which is the curved shape that can be built into a sail, to help with going upwind. My process of resolving those questions went on for years, literally. Now that the selections have been made it’s quite a relief, and it seems time to share what I’ve learned about the deciding factors.
The book Practical Junk Rig, by Hasler and McLeod, provides an overview of the possibilities, and the website junkrigassociation.org has descriptions of those possibilities and more, including recent developments that have come up since Practical Junk Rig was first published in 1987. For a beginning on diagrams and photos, see: http://www.junkrigassociation.org/sailplans_early_days and http://www.junkrigassociation.org/sailplans_current
For a while I thought, oh I’ll just copy what Dave and Anke (at triloboats.com) have on their current boat… until it turned out that I would need something close to a 30 foot mast. Oh well! Then it looked like the Reddish rig, with its traditional character and proven, low-tech possibilities, could be a good fit. For a while there was a detour, and I was intrigued with the split junk rig, designed by Slieve McGalliard – who also did that nice article about yuloh design. I’m still intrigued, but the mainmast on AUKLET is too far forward for that one. Along the way it was pointed out to me (thank you Dave) that the most sail area for the shortest mast would come from the Reddish rig, and making low mast height a priority, in the end I came back and settled on that one.
Things are always so much clearer after the fact, and I now realize that the straightest line through junk rig decision-making (at least for me) is indeed the mast question. Mast height rules out some junk rig designs and enables others, and mast position does the same. Some people change the location of the mast on their boat, but I didn’t want to get into that. With AUKLET, having the mizzen mast provided some room for adjustment as far as location of sail area, so except for considerations with the split junk rig, mast height was really the deciding factor for the overall design. Now here we are, with a Reddish rig in progress.
Then there is the question of size, once the shape of the sails has been decided. Determining sail size is related to mast height, desire for sail area (and what the hull can carry), and locations of booms and sheets, as well as the relationship of the forces on the sails to the forces on the hull. Some tinkering goes into figuring this all out.
In the design process, it’s important to keep the combined center of effort – the “balancing point” where the wind pushes, for both sails – in roughly the same place as for the original rig. Sorting that out for this project involved starting with a scale drawing of the hull and masts, and then making cardboard cutouts, to scale, of potential sails. (It’s probably important that the cardboard is something like what comes inside shirts, and is not corrugated, so there’s no question of uneven weight distribution within layers.) Balancing the cardboard cutout on a pin serves to roughly locate the center of effort for each sail. Then the combined center of effort can be determined by first working out the square footage of each sail (counting squares inside a scale drawing on graph paper helps with figuring this without using big geometry skills.) Next comes drawing a line between the two centers of effort, and measuring along that line proportionally, related to the ratio of the areas of the two sails; this yields the location of the combined center of effort.
We had the original combined center of effort for AUKLET from the plans for the Glasshouse Chebacco, but you could find this from a scale drawing of the original sails, if you needed to, by making another set of cardboard cutouts from the original sail design. We actually did this for the Peep Hen a few years ago, though never took it further than the cardboard stage. However you get it, it’s handy to have the originally designed center of effort so that you can make the center of effort for the new sails line up with the original.
In the end, for the AUKLET junk rig design, Theo and I made an entire array of sizes of cardboard cutout sails, to try out the different possibilities both by eye and for calculated balance. It was pretty entertaining – it felt like being a kid with paper dolls cut out from the Sunday newspaper, but way more fun! Because of the yawl rig, when the potential mainsail pulled the combined center of effort too far forward it was possible to increase the size of the mizzen to compensate. We had everything from a 10 foot boom on the mainsail up to a 14 foot boom, and eventually settled on 13 feet, and a 6 foot boom for the mizzen. (Boom length determines measurements for the rest of the sail.) The sail area for this final arrangement is 175 square feet for the main, and 37 square feet for the mizzen. This is more than the original design, which was 149 and 27 square feet, respectively. Phil Bolger, designer of this boat, used to write about that nobody just sails nowadays, so it’s more appropriate to design sail area for those who motor in light winds, and the Glasshouse Chebacco rig reflects this approach. Myself being a bit of a throwback, as far as the motor question, increasing the sail area has seemed appropriate to the actual use of the boat.
Still, I’ve gone back and forth on the sail area question, and my thinking is continuing to develop, and to change back and forth, on this subject (see writings by Sven Yrvind for reasons for smaller sails). While I was swung toward the “wishing for more sail area” side of things, the time for an actual decision arrived, and now we have a really big sail! Necessitating a mast the height of the original Chebacco design, at 19 feet. These last two years I’ve been sailing with the borrowed short mainmast, which is 16 feet. I like that a lot, especially for things like squeaking underneath closed drawbridges, and the relative ease of stepping and unstepping the mast. Now that the junk sails are built, and the new taller mast is coming soon, I’m committed, but my thoughts keep going back to the benefits of a short mast and smaller sail. It’s a little late for a change, at this stage! It’ll be fascinating to see how the increased sail area feels – worth the compromise of height, weight and bulk? For extra headway in tiny wind? And just how much extra headway? I have no great need for speed, but reliable movement along the shore when the wind is minimal may turn out to be worth the trade-offs.
Regardless of the issue of mast height for the new sail, something had to be done about the overall mainmast situation. The one that I borrowed from the Peep Hen (a much smaller boat) is tapered aluminum, 3 inches in diameter at the base, with 1/4 inch wall thickness. It’s had a good deal of strain and flexing, over these last two years, and there are issues about work-hardening, with aluminum masts, that can lead to breaking. It’s possible that everything is fine, but I haven’t felt confident. As near as I can tell from material on the Junk Rig Association site, appropriate, somewhat conservative scantlings for an unstayed aluminum mast for this situation are 4 inch diameter and 1/4 inch wall thickness in the lower part of the mast, with the diameter tapering higher up. The best I’ve been able to come up with is an aluminum flagpole that is 4 inches in diameter with 3/16 inch wall thickness, tapering above 11 feet to about 2 inches in diameter at the top. Five inches in diameter at the base would be considerably stronger, but won’t fit in the existing partners, and they would be complicated to change. As it is, I think that the 4 inch version will certainly be fine in the early part of its life; if I really love the rig, there is probably another mast change somewhere in the future.
Other big decisions have been sailcloth, and the camber issue. Both of these questions completely stopped my process for a long time also. I originally wanted to go with acrylic sailcloth, such as Sunbrella. This would mean expecting stretch, and because of that, the sail would more closely resemble traditional junk sails in Asia, but would still avoid the mildew issues of cotton. This approach would have been taking a chance, but I rather liked the idea of the adventure. Then Suzanne, with a good practical eye for details of a question, looked at my sample of acrylic fabric and asked “how heavy is that going to be when it’s soaking wet?” That moment was the somewhat sad end of the acrylic idea, but I’m really glad that the question came up before I had a giant, soaking wet sail on my hands, too heavy to move. Maybe not a problem at first, when the fabric still had all its water shedding treatments intact, but surely as time went on.
The other thing that happened about sails is that I came upon a sailmaker with some experience with building “Western” junk sails, on this side of the Atlantic! This would be Stuart Hopkins, at Dabbler Sails. (You can see his work at http://www.dabblersails.com .) Commiserating together on the question of fabric, and on the question of camber, we settled on Dacron sailcloth, and a very small amount of camber in the lower four panels of each sail (stated for the record, Stuart heartily advocated for more camber – if this flatter design doesn’t work out so well, it’s entirely my responsibility!) Above the lower four panels, the top two panels are left completely flat, for heavy weather. It’s an experiment, all the way around, and we’ll see how it goes.
The argument for camber has to do with upwind sailing ability, which has generally been not so good for Western versions of junk rigs with flat sails. I’m intrigued by the theory that “fanned” sails, such as the Reddish rig, also develop camber as they twist. One can opt for an assortment of control lines, following traditional Asian practice, to make adjustments for optimal performance. That does assume that you know what you’re doing… Or are willing to take quite a while to begin to figure it out. But it does seem possible, and I’m looking forward to trying.
Along the way in the planning/design process, I’ve also given up on the idea of bamboo battens, going with the highly recommended aluminum tubing version, in pockets. There is a source of construction-quality (as opposed to garden quality) bamboo in eastern Massachusetts, and I was hopeful for a while. But it turns out that, issue #1, there’s a lot of finish work involved in bamboo battens – wooden plugs for the ends, and varnish, and then, the consideration that really sealed it, issue #2: that the traditional way to make bamboo battens work out well (preventing splitting) is to soak them in seawater for three weeks before beginning the finishing process. (Thank you Lesley, at http://www.huntingjunks.org) Here we are in Holyoke, about 80 miles from the nearest seawater. It could’ve been done, but overall there is the question of exactly WHEN we would like this project to get on the water… So aluminum battens it is, and they are in fact almost complete at this writing.
That’s about it for the major design questions. There are just reams of excellent information available at http://www.junkrigassociation.org and quite a bit of it is accessible to nonmembers. Joining is low cost, and opens up all the rest, including PDFs of all past newsletters. The book Practical Junk Rig, by Hasler and McLeod, is also loaded with outstanding, detailed information. This includes everything from junk rig details, to exactly how to go about making a mast out of a tree from the forest – a real mast, for a big boat. It’s an expensive book, but encyclopedic, in what it covers. (Nope, just like always, not receiving anything for any of the business, organization or book mentions in this post.)
Beyond the design question, there’s the concrete progress. Presently, the sails are complete, and here; yards have been built, epoxied, and painted; the battens are cut to length, and wooden end plugs (turned, grooved, epoxied, and painted) are ready to be caulked in; a belaying pin collar and belaying pins have been made for the mizzen mast, as a place to fasten the zillion lines for the mizzen sail; and mast hardware, loads of line, and assorted other necessary bits, are accumulating in corners. On it goes!
This process is so enormously routine for a lot of people – but it doesn’t seem that way as you’re figuring it out! Jacking the boat up, ensuring that it will stay vertical, and doing it again in order to shift wood blocks under the keel, all feel like an enormous big deal. I’m happy to say that the boat is indeed still vertical, and the wood blocks are now repositioned under the keel, allowing for the remaining repairs and painting to go forward.
The second round of jacking went smoothly, putting to use everything we learned from round number one. Stern lifted first, maintaining weight at all times on both stern jack stands, then up with the jack at the bow. Blocks of wood positioned between the hull and the outer bunks for additional stability and safety, then reaching under to move the 4 x 4 blocks under the keel. Then everything in reverse: blocks at the bunks removed, bow jack lowered, then stern jacks, until the weight of the boat was once again resting primarily on the keel. Assorted fiddling with side supports, and cushions kept between trailer guide-on posts and hull throughout the process.
Since the last writing, we added extra supports at the stern, shown in the top photo, so that the boat would be stable without the wood blocks at the bunks. This has eased some of the pesky issues with the painting. I would have sprung for regular metal boat stands to do this, but the position of the trailer rails wasn’t going to allow for orienting the angled boat stands correctly. It was a little bit fussy doing the wood version, because of wedges for the funny angles where the pieces fit together, but in the end it has been quite sturdy, and pushing on the side of the boat yields no movement whatsoever. That’s been satisfying!
Then there’s the paint. Regular bottom paint would be a lot easier, and if we had used it this process would have been done a while ago. Or, if we had a big, heatable shed, even the very particular ePaint would have been done long before now. As it is, I still think ePaint is worth it, and the good weather this weekend should mean that the hardest part will be done, and we’ll be able to put the boat back down on the trailer.
The paint we are using is EP 2000, which is one of the newer non-toxic antifouling paints, from the company called ePaint. (As always, I’m not receiving anything for mentioning this product by name.) I like this bottom paint because once it is on, it’s completely non-toxic, both for small creatures in the water and for people. No worries about letting the boat go down in the mud, or on a sandbar, and no concerns about rubbing off algae, or touching the paint with bare skin when swimming. It’s also nice for trailering, with a hard surface that doesn’t rub off on the trailer, and it’s unaffected by sitting out of the water for long periods of time. It works by reacting with UV light in sunshine, creating hydrogen peroxide, which the sea creatures don’t like. Algae is not perfectly deterred, but rubs off easily while swimming. My experience has been that barnacles do not grow on it, except for two or three on the entire boat over many months, and they come off easily using just a fingernail. That’s if there’s a decent amount of paint.
Last year, it was enough of a challenge to get paint on the boat at all, wherever it was possible to reach while the boat was resting on the trailer. The theory was that there was still a certain amount of paint on the hull, and leaving the unreachable parts with just the old paint would be a good test of how much paint thickness was needed in order to prevent growth. The paint is not ablative (the kind of bottom paint that continually sloughs off, exposing fresh surfaces), but in the process of the chemical reaction that creates the hydrogen peroxide, it gets “used up,” and gradually becomes thinner. We started originally with an alternate color for a marker coat, and that gray was beginning to show through the white, before painting last year. You can see this in the post from 2013 titled “kneeling camel,” when the boat was dried out on its side. (http://sailingauklet.com/2013/08/04/kneeling-camel/)
The results of the test are that more layers of paint are a good thing! Everywhere that got the new coats of paint last year made out fine over the course of four months in the water – and the places that didn’t, that were down to pretty much one layer of marker coat, eventually had a nice crop of small barnacles. They were easy to take off with a plastic scraper, but there were lots of them. Hundreds. This was the main inspiration for all the boat jacking this year (well, this and the big down-to-bare-wood ding in the keel, unreachable against the trailer).
Then there is the subject of ePaint’s fussy application requirements. At least 65° temperatures, and 50% or less humidity, for many hours after you put it on. On the bright side, if the temperatures are hot – 80 to 90° – the required number of drying hours is shorter. But still, in an outdoor New England setting, if you want to go sailing early, meeting those requirements can really set you back as far as timing. The folks at the company recommend having the painting professionally done… alas not so easy, so many miles from the coast.
[Note added after posting: actually, I misunderstood the temperature/humidity guidelines, in the process of following the table for required drying times. The temperature must be at least 60° throughout the drying time, and the humidity must be below 85%. Effectively, if one is doing this outdoors in the Northeast US, the daytime temperature must be warm, and the humidity low, in order for the paint to be truly done drying before the temperature drops below 60° overnight, which it almost always does in the spring.]
Last year was also a test of whether or not we had achieved something close enough to the various application requirements to work. The answer is “sort of.” One side of the boat worked out fine. But something must have been less than ideal on the starboard side (oddly, this was the warmer, sunny side of the boat in the driveway), because swimming with a scrub brush, taking care of algae at the water line, white stuff was coming off. Eventually I figured out it was the paint, but only on that side of the boat. I could scrub all I wanted on the other side, with no sign of sloughing. For the rest of the season, I cleaned algae on that delicate side very gently, and the paint agreed to stay put, continuing to prevent barnacles from moving in. It’ll be really interesting to see how things go this year – especially because some of that paint was of course still left (though less, after regular prep sanding), and we have now painted over it. Hopefully this has glued the remainder back in place! We’ll be finding out…
The other thing we’ve learned, through observation of the original paint that was done during construction, is that this paint really cares about being on top of either its own primer, or some other epoxy finish. Where it was painted on a bare bronze fitting, and then, as we found by jacking the boat up, where it was painted on bare wood on the bottom of the keel, it had cracked and curled, coming away from the surface. This is of course no fault of the paint – it’s a standard thing, for paints to need primers that they like. But it was interesting to see that it does indeed really matter. The guidelines actually say that it can be painted directly on bare wood, with a thinned first coat. We have no idea if that was done for sure, originally, but it probably was – and yet, the paint was busy removing itself. Coating the wood with epoxy feels like good insurance for the wood, as well as likely to be helpful for the paint.
This paint is also considered pretty toxic during application. It is water-based, but according to the can, a Tyvek outfit, real respirator, and goggles, are considered appropriate precautions for the painter. This has something to do with zinc…
So now the bottom of the keel has had dings repaired, remaining old paint scraped away, and a coating of epoxy. Most of it has been painted, and now that the wood blocks have been shifted, the remaining spots have been scraped and epoxied and are ready for their own turn, to be done along with some more coats on the rest of the “trailer section” of the hull in the next few days. What a production! Suzanne is the brave soul with the scraper and the paint roller. “Gratitude” is such a thin word, in the face of all that!
The goal: raising the boat above the trailer enough to be able to work on the bottom of the keel, as well as to put more non-toxic antifouling paint where the trailer bunks prevented doing that last year.
Bottom line, it worked! Though there was a small amount of drama along the way, providing opportunities for learning. The boat is now up on blocks on top of the already blocked trailer, accessible for the needed work.
As none of the three of us (myself, Theo, and Suzanne) have ever done this before, I think we did fairly well. Extensive cribbing for the single jack forward of the keel, and two Brownell motorboat stands (nope, not receiving anything) at the stern, provided both lifting and stability.
Going up went very smoothly. Alternating quarter turns on the stern jacks kept everything balanced, and the hydraulic house jack forward, seated against a cradle made to straddle the skeg forward of the keel, worked well. The learning opportunities came with the process of the slight lowering of the boat so that it could settle down onto the 4 x 4 blocks that had been placed on the trailer keel support, under the keel.
Letting the forward jack down, we discovered slightly after the fact, had just barely lifted the stern, so that it was no longer firmly supported by both stern jacks. Not good, as one of their jobs is providing lateral stability! During very gradual and slight lowering of the bow jack, to let the boat settle onto the blocks, there was a very small shift of the hull, whereupon we stopped to investigate. Attempting to adjust the stands at the stern, the starboard one was jammed and not responding to the giant “wingnut,” which was completely loose. That was alarming… It made me wish for a third stand, to brace that part of the hull and release the pressure from the one that was jammed. As it was, after additional blocking along the bunk boards, we tried a gentle lean to push the hull to the other side, which it did and then settled back again to starboard. But the brief release of tension was enough to free up the jack stand threads. After that it was easy to put tension on both stands, and to adjust the leveling of the boat. It wasn’t off-level enough to see, but putting a carpenter’s level across the stern showed what was happening.
Lessons learned: First off, I think that the jack stands are overextended. They are still within their working range, but if we were to block up their bases even just a few inches it would be more secure, and perhaps would also help to prevent jamming. During any lowering action, continuously monitor stern jack stands for constant load, especially while adjusting forward jack. Focus on maintaining weight on stern stands at all times, and be alert to see-saw effect of raising or lowering forward jack. The boat cushions that show in the photo, between the boat and the guide-on post, should be in place during settling of boat onto blocks – we figured that out after the fact. During raising, we had been keeping temporary blocks at the bunk boards, but felt that these would create problems during lowering, as we wanted all the weight to bear on the keel, and not to trap blocks at the bunks. The guide-on posts are great in this situation – if we didn’t have them, I’d want to think up another alternative for providing redundant side to side stability. Theo gets the prize for quick thinking and action when the boat wanted to tip – but I would rather see a process that feels entirely, solidly under control throughout. So we learn!
Meantime, now the boat is up, and this phase of the project is underway. It’s a good thing – access to the underside of the keel is revealing both scrapes down to bare wood, and paint in need of help. It’ll be great to see it more in order!
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Additional Resources:
There’s quite a bit of material on the Internet if you do a search for “lifting boat off trailer.” The following was particularly helpful. (As always, I’m not receiving anything for referencing this video, which is put out by Jamestown Distributors.)
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Below, in the “comments” section, there is an exchange with a sailor named Martin. Here are a couple of photos of his junk rigged Bolger Micro (check out the fleet!):
The good news around here is that the first daffodils have started to open. Crocuses have come and mostly gone, and little bits of green are showing up here and there. Then last night it snowed, with a hard freeze coming tonight. Good thing the daffodils are adapted to that sort of thing! By the end of the week it should be getting more reasonable again, up toward 60 during the day.
Last week, when it was nice, we took the cover off the boat. That was satisfying! And the snow melted away in the sun this morning, so it’s all working out just fine. It seems time for a bit of a report.
Boat tinkering has been continuing through the winter, but I had the idea that it would make sense to write about the more significant projects after they were completed and could be described fully. Of course they proceed in fits and starts, waiting for weather, or parts, or the appropriate moment in the paint shop, or their intermittent turns in the list, often involving waiting for something else to be done ahead that will make it all work out well. Progress happens, but it seems like it’s always sometime around the actual launch when they each come to their conclusion and get checked off as really done. That seems like a long time to wait for a report!
Complicating matters further, I’m back in the land of laryngitis. This interferes with writing (speech recognition on the computer) as well as with all the other ways that talking comes in handy. So for the most part I’m saving up voice for the most crucial details. But we’ve been taking pictures of projects along the way, and I’ve been thinking that it would be fun to share some of those, with minimal explanation. Pictures being worth so many words, and all!
This post is the introduction – the next ones coming up will make a beginning on the rudder repair, and on the junk rig conversion, both of which have been making significant (if gradual) headway over these last months. Maybe a few other odds and ends will find their way in also…
Happy Spring, to all in the northern hemisphere – after a seriously cold and seemingly interminable winter, those of us in the northeast US sure have earned it! And elsewhere too, I’m sure. In the southern hemisphere, I hope you’ve been having a lovely summer!
(If you’re noticing that the weather report doesn’t quite match this story, that’s because it’s being posted a day late :-)
And here’s a little of what’s been going on indoors:
A couple of months ago, in the letters section of the January, 2014 issue of Practical Sailor, a man named Tripp Presnell laid out a number of significant concerns to do with safety tether systems on boats. (“Thoughts on PFD Design,” found on p. 7.) This is something I’ve thought a lot about, but without proper background, I’ve had only my intuitive sense with which to back up my own concerns. It was great to see a coherent explanation of the problems, and potential solutions.
First, the problems. The issues are: harnesses that concentrate strain in unsafe locations on people’s bodies; distance of fall in a typical sailboat tether arrangement; and lack of elasticity in the tether system. My own concerns had been related to distance of fall, the abrupt stop at the end of the tether, and the problem of getting back aboard as a single-handed sailor on a moving boat, dragging. Yikes.
I’ve responded to these concerns by trying, though not terribly effectively, for shorter tethers to prevent actually going over the side, and then by giving up on tethers almost entirely. Instead, I have focused on maintaining heightened awareness of not falling overboard, knowing that if I do, that will be the end of the ride, but measuring the risk of that bad ending against the concept of falling overboard with a tether, massive injuries to my rather delicate physical well-being, and the prospect of a truly horrific end of the ride. Obviously, neither possibility is anything one would want to do.
The letter-writer in Practical Sailor brings rock climber background, as well as sailing knowledge, to this question. His letter was a great beginning, and with the clue to look at rockclimbing materials, I have since found a lot more good information on the Internet. He also talked about tree workers, and folks doing construction, and I found some interesting discussion coming from those groups, as well.
The bottom line is that falling any distance – even 2 feet – into an abrupt stop on a harness creates enough force to cause serious injury to muscles, bones, and organs. There are formulas for calculating this force, truly surprising in the magnitude of their results. Added to that, if the harness is inappropriately fitted, so that the horizontal strap around the torso is too low, floating ribs are extremely vulnerable, can be snapped, and then even worse, their broken edges can be pushed into organs, causing great damage and internal bleeding.
With an average sailboat tether arrangement, it would be more than easy to fall a distance greater than 2 feet. Further, sailing harnesses are often combined with inflatable PFDs. The appropriate position for anchoring the PFD is not immediately below your armpits, where an ideal tethering harness would be located, but lower. A woman of average height is likely to find that an inflatable PFD strap rests right at, or below, her floating ribs, just where it does not belong as a tether harness. There is a warning that comes with this gear, that users must be at least 5’8″ tall, but with no explanation of why – I hadn’t remembered that it was there (and it’s not included in the catalogs where they are sold). The bottom line is that tether harnesses, problematic in themselves, are seriously problematic for the average person when arranged as part of an inflatable PFD, except perhaps for tall individuals. Even then, it’s not ideal, just not quite as dangerous.
The ideal tether harness, according to various sources, is not simple. Rock climbers use a harness that carries their weight at their hips, with wide, load-distributing straps around waist and legs. These are like the gear that some folks use for going up a mast. Chest harnesses as sole support for rock climbers have long since been abandoned, after numerous disasters. It turns out that worn slightly incorrectly, in a suspended fall a chest harness alone can compress a person’s rib cage, causing difficulty breathing, and resulting in very sad outcomes. Among rock climbers, upper body chest harnesses are only used as an additional, secondary part of the system so that a person is held upright in a fall, while their weight goes into the lower body harness. And often, rock climbers use only a lower body harness.
On a boat however, a lower body harness, alone, is not appropriate. The tether attachment point ends up below a person’s center of gravity, which is a terrible hazard if a person is in the water, potentially being dragged by the boat, oriented head-down. That outcome is unacceptable, so the alternative that has been adopted is the upper body harness, with its risks of poor support during a fall, and the potential for resulting internal injuries.
Apparently (though I haven’t done follow-up research on this), equipment failure in boat tethers used to be a big problem, due to the forces involved in a fall on a boat. Nowadays, the equipment is more heavily built; the equipment no longer fails, but injuries resulting from abrupt stops have escalated. Somewhat more ideal than the standard upper body harness is the strongly built upper and lower body harness for sailors, but gosh, what a production – and you still have the problem of abrupt stops. I’m still puzzling on the harness question, thinking about how the various considerations combine with the issue of the tether itself, and how to avoid ever going far enough in a fall to experience the problems of an abrupt stop.
This brings us to the subject of the tether itself. The letter writer in Practical Sailor discussed rigging a chest-high jackline – which I took to mean over the cabin, but it’s possible that he meant something more like a chest-high lifeline along the perimeter of the boat. Either way, this would be an alternative to the typical sidedeck placement. If the jackline is down on the sidedeck, where it is often found, the problem is that the tether needs to be long enough to reach up from the deck to one’s torso. With the jackline so low, if you do go over the side there is a much longer fall – double the length of the tether – before that abrupt stop. This is much farther than the 2 feet that is already such a serious risk. If the jackline is led over the top of the cabin, the jackline is then closer to chest height, as well as allowing for a snugged up tether that only allows you to fall toward the boat, rather than going over the side at all. I have personally opted for a more central jackline, but have used a commercially available tether, which was of course much too long.
The answer, once provided, seems completely obvious (like so many things, after you understand them!) And brings us back to the rock climbers and tree workers. These folks work with adjustable tethers, as a matter of course. There is an elegant knot for assembling one of these – the Purcell Prusik, really an arrangement that includes two different knots: a Prusik hitch for the adjustable loop, and a double fisherman knot for the larger, overall loop. The Prusik hitch works somewhat like a rolling hitch, but better, for this application, being more secure (it has more wraps), and holding its adjusted position under strain from either direction. The overall arrangement provides an adjustable loop on one end, to clip to one’s harness, and a loop at the other end to clip to a pad eye or jackline. Here’s a video about how to make a Purcell Prusik:
(I have no idea why sometimes the blog program puts a link, and sometimes it puts a video, all ready to go…) http://www.outdoorsafetyinstitute.com/index.php/news/single/make_a_purcell_prusik/
And another, focusing in more detail on the Prusik hitch itself:
Rock climbers use carabiners for the end attachments, but to me it seems worth considering using the typical specialized attachments on commercially produced boat tethers – a snap shackle with a beaded pull cord for emergency quick release at the harness end, and a clip requiring two maneuvers for opening, at the boat attachment end. Climbers use locking carabiners at the tether ends, which are secure but very tough to manage with wet, cold fingers, and when under strain they cannot be released at all. This is a serious consideration on a boat, if one were to be entangled under water. Snap shackles, on the other hand, are more likely to be releasable under load. Either way, a sailing knife close to hand is not a bad idea.
The overall tether can be made at whatever length is appropriate to the situation, and with attention, the potential distance of fall can be negligible. This I like, and overall, I’m anticipating a more secure season of sailing.
The letter in Practical Sailor also talked about elasticity in jacklines and/or tethers, as a way to reduce the force of a fall. I do think that perhaps the author was reversing things, on this, as he talked about nylon jacklines being a problem, and that polyester would be stretchier, and thus better. Numerous references state that nylon has more stretch, and polyester much less (nylon dock lines/polyester halyards, etc.). He did not get into that whichever material is the one with stretch, the characteristic of stretch is actually a bit different from elasticity.
My own experience has been with commercially available nylon webbing jacklines which do stretch, but not when you want them to. You set them up snug, they get wet, and then need to be retightened (repeatedly). Stretch during a fall would be nice, but better would be a snug jackline with some give in the event of a fall. Something to do with a slightly elastic section built into the system somewhere. There is more to study on this, but for now it’s clear that if nothing else, the tether itself should be made of line with some stretch (I would choose nylon), and should absolutely not be made from low stretch material such as polyester/dacron, or the newer high-tech stuff. Rock climbing websites emphasize this point. My personal experience with nylon jacklines is from over 10 years ago. I see now that at least some commercially available jacklines are actually polyester. This seems problematic, unless elasticity is built into the system in some other way.
Construction workers also use harnesses and tethers for protection from falls, and there is quite a lot of material about this on the Internet as well. Some construction tethers incorporate heavy shock cord to deal with the issue of abrupt stops. There are also many discussions related to dangers of being suspended in a harness for as little as ten or fifteen minutes after the initial fall, because of disruption of circulation by narrow straps. This has sadly led to many deaths. It’s not an easy subject, the safety tether issue, and has a surprisingly wide range of considerations, with possible severe outcomes if one does not get it right.
The take-away from all this, for me, has been the focus on adjustable tethers that make it possible to keep oneself securely held on the boat, with minimal slack, thereby preventing falling even against the harness on the boat, as well as specifically preventing being able to fall over the side. A midships jackline and/or pad eyes, and a Purcell Prusik tether, with elasticity included one way or another, seems most promising.
Meanwhile, the other interesting tidbit that I came across recently, related to safety tether strategy, is in Roger Taylor’s book, Mingming and the Art of Minimal Ocean Sailing: More Voyages of a Simple Sailor. This is another concept that is perfectly obvious once somebody says it, but had not occurred to me.
Ever since sailing a 24 foot Bristol Corsair, I’ve spent a lot of time puzzling over how to be secure on the foredeck of a boat. I had a near miss on that boat, singlehanding in the dark – and on the bow of most any small sailboat the possibility of going over the side is ridiculously close, in three directions.
One friend likes tethering to the mast, but from my perspective, that’s not quite so good for if you need to be right up toward the bow (tether too long, and worse, behind you). On the other hand, there was Roger, discussing going forward, with TWO tethers. This is common, for leapfrogging forward, with one tether always attached. However, what Roger did is that once he arrived on the foredeck, he sat in the middle, with one tether clipped in on each side, port and starboard. (Maybe everybody but me knows this?) From there he proceeded to carry out his jib project. How is it that I never thought of that??
Attachment points may need to be added to the boat in the right places, to accommodate this idea, but that’s a relatively small matter once you know what you need, at least while the boat is still in the driveway. There is even another project in mind that could make double use of attachment points in those locations. Aboard AUKLET, this might or might not make perfect sense – the bow area is so small, and the mainmast so very close – but I sure wish that I had come across this concept when I was sailing a sloop, with a foredeck that made it a real puzzle. The “two tethers” strategy could come in handy in a number of situations.
As a result of all of the above, I am feeling like the lights have finally been turned on over this question of safety tethers. It’s a good thing – it’s never been safe going without, nor has it been particularly safe going with. I’m perfectly delighted to finally feel like there’s a roadmap to some more satisfying answers to this question.
Practical Sailor http://www.practical-sailor.com at this writing, there is a glitch with the online version of the January 2014 letters section – hopefully they’ll straighten it out, as the letters appear to otherwise be available to non-subscribers.
Note: just like everybody says everywhere, the ideas presented here are personal reflections, and do not constitute any kind of professional advice. It is each individual’s responsibility to use their own judgment regarding techniques and equipment for staying safe on boats, or on land. For professional advice and expertise, seek these from a professional – not from a personal boating blog! Above all, pay attention to what you are doing, use redundant methods for critical applications, and think through the potential consequences of whatever strategies you put to use.
It has come to my attention that, as a result of the Grease Pencils post, my trustworthiness in the vicinity of other people’s oars and unlocked doors has come into question. Tongue-in-cheek, but still!
This has to do with how I acquired said grease pencils. At the time, during the original supplies search, I had been successful only in finding a box of 1000 for sale on the Internet. What is the ethical solution for this? Probably to have tried harder, in locating a smaller number. Now they are at Staples, but I believe that we tried that, at that time, with no success. My solution, shady action at the health food store, and reimbursing the store by not correcting register errors in their favor, was still not fair. (I had asked to buy some grease pencils, but was told that they didn’t know how to do that, so, no.) Just because I needed those pencils, it doesn’t mean that the store should part with them, even though we know for sure that this happens accidentally all the time (and another employee suggested this solution).
Over the course of time I’ve had more than one assistant who accidentally left my home with everything from good mechanical pencils to Salvation Army style forks and spoons, using them during lunch breaks and forgetting that they were not their own, as they packed up their stuff. The fascinating part was that in each case, those individuals truly did not understand why this mattered to me, after we figured out what had happened. Because it was clearly important to me, efforts were made to sort it out, and all was resolved well. But I could see clearly that for them it was a reach, to understand my perspective.
And yet, I lifted grease pencils! Feeling pressed by need, and rationalizing in assorted directions, from secret payment, to the known poor treatment of staff by the large-chain health food store (nope, not really related). So are anybody’s oars safe, if I’m in the vicinity, if any of these rationalizations are acceptable?
This has nothing to do with boats, except for the oars, and that my desire for a workable navigation system is what prompted this action. This all took place quite some time ago – how would it be now, older and perhaps a little wiser, minus the modern Internet making finding things so easy?
All I can say in my defense is that this action bothers me too, and has been the source of much soul-searching. Maybe that’s why I wrote up the original post in that way, bringing the subject to light. After all, one could have just said something about that these special grease pencils (plastic, and impervious to water) used to be hard to find, but now here they are on the Internet. Instead, the mention is there, and is the very part of the post that has received notice, prompting gentle encouragement from the universe that I might like to get my act together. Thank you universe, and thank you friends!
Now that it’s incredibly cold and snowy around here, but with the solstice long past, the garden folks are working on seed orders. With that in mind, here are some reflections on how the boat farm went in 2013.
Overall, progress was made. It’s still experimental, and a source of treats, rather than a tremendous amount of food, but that’s mainly because it did not get my full, undivided attention. The next round will be easier, with a specific plan in mind, and a firmer sense of what works.
New planting: sunflower, peas, and buckwheat
For starters, being diligent about planting every few days would pay off nicely. Sunflower sprouts fill in well, and once they get going one can harvest each day for about a week from one planting, picking the taller individuals in each container, with new ones growing to harvest size by the next day. They feel substantial when you eat them, so a handful of thinned plants actually makes you feel like you’ve had some fresh vegetables. While the weather is warm, and there are many hours of sun each day, they grow quite enthusiastically. Clouds do not seem to be a big problem, but the shortening days in the fall brought about a gradual end to the success of this crop. This stands to reason, considering that they are SUNflowers!
Once the weather got cooler and the days shorter, I started to focus more on buckwheat sprouts, also planted in a thin layer of soil. These grew quite nicely, so long as the buckwheat was fresh. Old buckwheat that had been in my cupboard for a couple of years (how can that happen??) did not sprout well at all, and was better for cooking. But buckwheat with hulls, bought recently in bulk from the natural food store, grew just fine. This is a more delicate plant, with leaves that don’t have a lot to them. The leaves are broad, but tissue paper thin. Still, they are tasty, with a mild, unspicy flavor. With a diligent planting schedule, and being careful to not let them dry out in the sun, they are a worthwhile effort. Nothing beats sunflowers in their favorite season – thick-stemmed, with sturdy leaves, and growing like a shot – but once the season goes by, it’s time for other possibilities. Buckwheat fills the bill.
I also tried peas, in that cooler time, but they seem slow-growing, both to sprout, and then to grow. This might have had to do with my soil – they don’t seem so slow in the regular garden at home, but maybe I haven’t paid proper attention. It could be that they take some time there also. At any rate, it was fun to have a few sprigs, but they seemed like more trouble. Chard seeds came up nicely, but then grew very slowly. I think that this is also a soil issue, producing stunted, slow-growing plants, which is not the norm for chard that is happy in its garden. I wish I was a better gardener, right off the bat! But experiments continue, and I’ll keep reporting…
One approach that was more of a success this year had to do with watering, for all the different plants. Originally I had the idea that when planting the seeds it was good to water the soil directly, making it thoroughly moist though not soaking wet. However, little bits of white mold were a frequent issue in both sunflowers and peas, and eventually I tried simply spritzing the top of the soil after the seeds were in. This was much more successful, and mold stopped being a problem. Who would’ve thought that seeds would sprout without soaking, and with such a light application of water! They were spritzed enough to be moist on top once or sometimes twice a day, but were definitely dry at times also. The soil underneath was barely moist – and yet this worked.
Another success had to do with learning to live with the fungus gnats. Though I was originally hoping for complete eradication, eventually I realized that the issue was more one of balance. Starting with fresh soil in the container with each planting made a big difference with this, and the only time that they became a problem again was when I neglected to harvest the sunflower sprouts that had quit growing in the fall, short of their normal harvest size (I kept hoping that they’d get bigger). Previous to that, the long-term pot of parsley did have a few gnats, but they didn’t go crazy, and they did not start to take over the other containers. I do think that the parsley, because it was in a long-term, deep container of soil, made it impossible for the boat to be fungus gnat free, but that parsley sure was good! One or two gnats every now and then felt like a worthwhile trade-off. Next time I’ll understand that when the sunflower sprouts stop growing, then it’s time to harvest the final crop even if they are only an inch high (rather than the normal 3 to 5), and move on to buckwheat. Fast growth, making for frequent changeover of container soil, pretty much took care of the fungus gnat issue.
Then there is the subject of fertilizing. This is really important for plants that are in containers ongoing, like parsley, and lettuce, and there are knowledgeable sprouters who say that it makes a difference for short-term crops in an inch of soil, also. I’d agree with that, for the sunflowers, and it was obvious with the parsley and lettuce. There is organic fertilizer, and compost, that are fertilizing options, either applied directly to the top of the soil, or soaked for “tea” that is then applied when watering. And I’m going to go out on a limb here and share that there is another source of perfectly healthy, and safe, fertilizer in abundant supply on a boat. This would be pee, which is a fantastic source of nitrogen. It has to be diluted with water at least 10 to 1, which takes care of the odor issue, as well as being important for the plants, so they don’t “burn.” If potted plants such as lettuce and parsley are given a soaking water with this diluted mixture once a week, they grow like crazy.
I have not gotten brave enough to try this on the indoor sprout plants – they seem too close to the ground that is being so watered, and beyond even my admittedly fringy comfort level. But it would probably be fine. Plants in the cockpit, that can drain over the side, do just fine, and it’s so simple!
It’s important to make the distinction between using urine for vegetable garden fertilizer and using humanure compost. Urine is generally sterile, while a much more involved process is required before composted solid waste can safely be considered for food plants, and some folks argue that it should not be considered for food plants at all, due to potential bacteria as well as heavy metals. However, urine is a different story, and can be very successful. Because we are talking about small boats, and self-sufficiency, it has seemed that the discussion of boat-farm fertilizer would be incomplete without mentioning it.
Another thing that I learned in 2013 was just how much very fine salt spray finds its way across the cockpit – and the plants don’t like it. Once I recognized this, I started moving lettuce containers into the cabin for sailing, and they started doing much better. Previously, I had just been covering them with a piece of sunbrella fabric when there was visible spray, and wondering at the little brown flecks on the leaves even when there had been no spray at all. Finally I started paying attention to that bit of mist that I could feel on my skin when sailing, even in very mild conditions, and the puzzle was solved. In the cooler weather it had been unnoticeable, with all the warm clothing, but was more obvious after the weather warmed up. Now, the shuffling of plants is a small chore, but very worthwhile.
Overall, while the boat farm is a work in progress, it is showing more and more signs of being workable. It’s fun to have the fresh greens, and sailing alone it’s rather nice to have the company. The little plants are festive in the cabin, green and growing in their special shelves, and I’m looking forward to expanding. Just think what a real gardener could do with this concept! I’d love to see.
There’s nothing like January in New England to inspire a person to be a little over-serious. Serious is good too, but it’s nice to remember things like the following, as well.
Earlier this winter I finally learned how to include photos in the blog wherever I want them, rather than having them always place themselves at the top of the post. The secret, for anybody else who has had this puzzle, is that WordPress does not like older versions of Internet Explorer. Running the blog site from my shiny new version of Mozilla Firefox, suddenly all the controls work! The possibilities are a little mind-boggling, but for starters, it means that I can start doing more with the many photos from those months of sailing in 2013. Here’s a beginning:
Jewel Island is in Casco Bay, which is the first big bay as you go north and east along the coast of Maine. It’s the one that has Portland within it, and South Freeport, with L.L. Bean, and the Harraseeket River, with my favorite seafood chowder anywhere. Casco Bay also has zillions of islands, ranging from protected and close-in to the mainland shore, to those on the outside, bordering the open ocean. Jewel Island is one of those on the outside edge of the bay, and is one of my favorite places, anywhere.
For starters, nobody lives there. The entire island is conservation land, open to the public, with a lovely network of trails, and numerous campsites along the shore. And it has a fantastic harbor, protected from most directions. All of these attributes make this spot enormously popular with a whole bunch of people besides me, and this can be a challenge. When I arrived in 2013, on a beautiful day, there was a lot happening there already. 10 or 15 boats were in the harbor, with camping groups going back and forth from boats to the shore, beer in hand. As the afternoon went on, more boats arrived.
On the bright side, everybody is in a good mood, and some fascinating vessels come and go, including everything from enormous and elegant sailboats, mixed in with the more predictable plastic, to a couple who rowed the long way out in a home built dory. There are campfires on the bluff along the shore, and folks to laugh with about how cold the water is, when they come by as you swim around the boat, rubbing algae off the water line. It gets quieter after dark, and in the morning the crowd begins to thin out.
The grand social event is fun, when not overdone. This time around, I had the great blessing of impending wet and foggy weather. By the next evening almost everybody was gone, and by the day after that I was the only one there. The harbor is not well protected from the northeast, but this storm very kindly came from the south, and gently, leaving me perfectly snug. Between showers I paddled around in the packraft, touching rocks, and the needles on overhanging trees.
Eventually I acquired a neighbor, and then the weather cleared. My next stop was the Harraseeket River, and that lovely chowder, along with a meeting for shore support. People talked about how bad the weather had been, but it seemed to lift their spirits when I said how incredibly happy I had been having Jewel Island all to myself, as a result of all those days of rain and fog. I would do it again in a flash, just that way.
Various parts are laid out on the workshop table. Some are obvious, like the tiller, showing it’s heavily scraped area where it rubs on the movable slide board in the cockpit. The chunky thing in front is cargo boom jaws, explained more in a moment. Other odds and ends have to do with the rudder stock repair, and resulting changes in the stock/tiller connection. There is also a short drop board, which has two jobs: holding the bracket for the gimbaled propane cookstove, and new this year, having a proper gasketed lip to make a little barricade for unruly bits of water sloshing toward the interior of the cabin, while underway with no big drop boards in place. At the back left, those are not boat parts – pieces of the house have been patiently waiting their turn.
There used to be a big plastic cleat on the mast, held with two screws, which has now been taken off. I’ve been averse to putting more screw holes in the mast, so the collar is going on with wedges, and is braced by that little stop block that uses the old screw holes from the cleat. Seizing will be going around the wedges, to keep them from going anywhere… It all feels pretty firm now, but we’ll see what happens in use. Belaying pins made from dowel, with little tubing stop-collars, will go in those holes. They too are just out of the paint shop, and are shown in the earlier photo.
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