Brain Retraining On Board

26 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by shemaya in How Does This Work, Trips, Why Go Sailing

Brain retraining is a set of techniques for promoting healing from long-term, chronic illnesses, and from various kinds of trauma. A previous post on this blog, from July 2014, goes into details of how this works, and includes an assortment of resources available for those who are interested. I’ve now been working with these techniques for about six months. It was a question, in getting ready for this recent trip, how the various practices of brain retraining would go together with sailing away on a boat. It turns out that it’s a good fit.

The basic concept of brain retraining has to do with the goal of calming one’s limbic system – the part of the brain that is responsible for the fight/flight/freeze response – so that other inner systems can function more freely, including those involved in all sorts of physical well-being: cellular healing, basic digestion, overall brain function, and a whole lot else. The brain retraining approach to calming the limbic system involves identifying thoughts that tend to put the limbic system on alert, interrupting those thoughts, and replacing them, in an organized, focused fashion, with the conscious experience of joy and peace. This then results in a calm limbic system, which is the primary goal for specific healing – it’s a perfect bonus, that one also gets all that experience of joy and peace to go with it.

There are loads of specific techniques for achieving limbic system calm. These include holding wonderful past experiences in mind, visualizing a positive future, and feeling all of those images here in the present, as well as practicing various forms of meditation and other mind-shifting exercises. Additionally, there is a process of identifying one’s patterns of thought, and making changes in those larger patterns, if their habitual form has been leading to specific thoughts that trigger limbic system alert. For example, one might have a habit of worry, or a habit of distress, or of dissatisfaction, or of fear. This is where it gets particularly interesting, as far as relating all of this to sailing.

In setting out again on the boat, I became aware of a number of the above sorts of patterns in my general internal routine, and I also started paying specific attention to the sometimes subtle distinction between “relaxed attentiveness” and “hypervigilance.” Boats are tricky – if one has a habit of hypervigilance, getting on a boat can be like offering cocaine to an addict. There are so many crucial details that really do need to be attended to, in order for all to go well. Safety issues – all that water, and making sure that it stays on the correct side of the hull, never mind putting up sails, or putting down anchors. Just imagining all that, from a secure location on solid ground, can be enough to rev up a stress response.

The trick is to recognize that the stress response is a choice, and that it may or may not be the most helpful, effective approach to the situation at hand. Occasionally there are times when immediate, intense, physical action is required – whether on land or at sea – and that’s what one’s limbic system is there for, keeping us safe, and well supplied with the resources to meet a physically challenging situation. But for all the rest of it, “safety” is best achieved by having a relaxed limbic system, in spite of habits to the contrary. A state of relaxed attentiveness lets in more information, makes mental room for clearer problem solving, and leaves one’s body rested, ready for any necessary action. All of these promote more safety than does an ongoing state of hypervigilant tension, which drains the capacities of each of those resources and more. So the question, for those who are habitually hypervigilant, is how one might do things differently.

This is where brain retraining comes in: once the patterns of maintaining limbic system alert are identified, it’s possible to actively make a change. Who would’ve thought! Thank heavens for all that recent brain research, which has contributed to figuring all this out, and for the individuals who have been using that new knowledge to put together practical, daily use sorts of techniques for influencing the inner processes of one’s mind and brain. (For specific references, see resources in the post from this past summer: http://sailingauklet.com/2014/07/28/brain-retraining/ )

The bottom line, coming from all of this, is that I have become a more relaxed sailor. Not less attentive, but learning the practice of relaxed awareness. One of the brain retraining folks, in talking about pacing as it relates to physical activity, discusses going through the brain retraining techniques before making a decision as to whether or not to do something that might or might not be too much for one’s present capabilities. I’ve found this approach enormously useful in making decisions about what action to take, in stressful situations that have nothing at all to do with physical capabilities (though it’s enormously useful for those questions as well). This calming process related to decision-making has been particularly helpful in sailing. Sailboat cruising is so filled with significant decisions, often with plenty of time available for the use of an assortment of tools to ease, and improve, the decision-making process.

An example of the way this can go, from this recent trip, had to do with a question about the safety of a particular anchoring location. It’s easy to worry, sometimes – to be downright scared – about being alone out on a boat, female, in what is so predominantly men’s space. Duck hunting season opened, I in one of those favorite creeks, unpopulated, except for sometimes surly men in camo clothing in camo boats, with firearms, passing by now and then. There were friendly kayakers, once, and a couple of regular motorboats, but mostly it was folks outfitted in camo, occasionally friendly, but generally not so much.

The thing is, I have, sometimes, been just as afraid in more populated places, wondering what the risks are. Combined with this, there is the issue of old fear, buried in the past, that can so easily come to the surface, seeking resolution by catching a piggyback ride on present day details. As the self-defense folks say, “fear is information.” But sometimes that information comes in code.

The funniest thing, there in that beautiful creek, was that I had been completely unafraid while anchored there for a couple of days and nights, but the third day did not feel the same. I had made the mistake of listening to the news on the radio that morning, which might have contributed, having heard horrible stories of bad behavior by a particular group of young men, and questionable community response. Or maybe something had changed – I do know that I felt very aware that my presence had been noted by quite a number of people, mostly hunters, who had by then had more time to think about it. But it was intriguing to also notice my own pattern of fear, and alarm, in spite of the lovely quiet water, the setting sun, the two anchors that were holding so perfectly, Bahamian style so that each turn of the tide would have one anchor holding the boat into the current, and between the two anchors, just off the nearby shore. Snug in this creek, so when the wind did blow, everything was perfectly fine. And yet I was worried.

It’s a great processing opportunity, when this kind of situation comes up. There’s EFT (the tapping technique, also discussed in a previous post, from August 2013), and now brain retraining. By morning, having practiced all my tools (at some length), and having experienced no interference from the other people out on their own projects, I could calmly say that I was no longer wildly stressed, and at the same time, I felt that it was wise to leave. In the past, that action taken, of following the tide out of the creek, would likely have been the same. The difference was that I felt fine. Calm, and appreciative of the beautiful morning. Passing a side creek with hunters flattened in their boat was good for a bit of a start, but once gone by, with a tall mud bank again between us, and a bit more inner work as AUKLET and I drifted toward the main river, relaxed attentiveness returned.

This is the practice – whether at home or on board. It’s been good to see that it’s possible to continue this work on the water, and it’s been even better to see that the work makes the time on the water, as at home, a much more peaceful place to be. Safer, and more comfortable – who would’ve thought that actively taking one’s alert system out of gear would have that effect. But I sure do like it. And I’m ecstatic that there is a way to put this process of brain retraining together with time afloat. It’s such a treat when all the parts of one’s life can go together.

Two Stories

21 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by shemaya in How Does This Work, Junk Rig, the boat, Why Go Sailing

≈ 4 Comments

So let’s get real, on the subject of fear. Now and then people say to me, or they say to my friends, something about me being brave, with all this boat stuff. And I have to say, it’s not exactly bravery. There’s something to do with psychic muscle – so many plans made, so many people helping, so much generosity received. Such an opportunity, not to be left to pass by, floating away down the stream. So you say yes, and get in the boat. But it gets harder to leave, every time.

Suzanne and I have bought a house – by the water, on the coast, in Maine. Gradually, through some combination of miracles that I cannot properly see ahead, I believe that we will actually move. But it makes departure from home – this home, of these last many years – that much more difficult, even just for a sail. The summer is so sweet: ignoring the city sounds, hearing crickets and katydids, and the soft summer smells, Massachusetts hardwood forest, and a yard full of plants, August-green. Never mind the traffic, and the music from the cars and the bar down the street. Katydids, and crickets. Daytime birds, and the night, late, when the street finally goes quiet.

How to leave? Knowing that I will probably not live again in this house, in August, with the summer smells, and night sounds of the raucous insects. I grew up in Massachusetts, and then went so far away, for so long. Utah, Arizona, California, and years in southern New Hampshire, not the same. Lived in the pine forest, in another corner of Massachusetts – beautiful, but no summer meadow. Arrival to the warmth of new friends is beautiful, and sweet. It’s the departures that I can’t stand.

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There was a date set: August 18, 2014. A Monday, with fine weather, and early in the week to avoid the heavy summer boat traffic on the river, and their big wakes at the ramp and adjacent dock. Melissa and Richard were set to bring their truck to Holyoke (from Maine – kind souls) to haul the boat and pop it in the water. Friends in Deep River were welcoming, with a spot at their dock all ready to go. And still, I was conflicted. For all the above reasons, as well as practicalities to do with the unfinished tasks. More rigging, especially – so much easier at home. Still, it could have been done.

On the Thursday before, as every day since we set this date three weeks earlier, Suzanne and I went off for projects – this particular morning, more work on the wiring in the mainmast. We completed the connections at the top of the mast, and with a small 12 V battery clipped to the lower end of the wires, confirmed, with satisfaction, that the Bebi-adapted tricolor and the anchor light both worked. Next it was on to the lower end of the wires.

There are so many opportunities for mistakes in a complex, long project such as this, and they are inevitable. In the normal, unhurried course of things this is not a terribly big problem – annoying at the time, and/or embarrassing, but over the long stretch of months or years, not particularly significant. For example, cutting a wire too short. Sadly, or perhaps for the best, I did that with one of our mast wires. There are reasons that this happened, clear in retrospect, but that did nothing for the 12 V wire that was now going to need more heat shrinks, and fuss, and complications with needing an extra person to help turn the mast in the garage so doing all that would be possible. All this on Thursday, when Friday morning was our chance to go forward with planned help for the items assigned to that day – NOT putting scant time into resolving this admittedly small complication.

In a fit of frustration, I blurted out “I don’t even want to GO on this trip!” That has been so hard to prepare for, working these last weeks, Suzanne at least as tired as I, and equally frazzled. The ache of leaving, again. The boat not really ready, and myself either.

In the end, thanks to that pesky wire, and the two of us out there crying in the driveway, together we pulled the metaphorical plug on this launch plan. It’s the best decision I’ve made in ages. I miss the sailing, and seeing everybody, and the quiet water. But I don’t miss the strain of departure, and the difficulties of sorting out the boat necessities so far from our handy shop. Tables for stretching out the mainsail with all its long battens, in comfortable positions for attaching the rest of the zillion lines and fussy ties. Sawhorses for masts, in easy locations in the shade, happy in the yard, tying on halyards and everything else. And I don’t miss the fear.

A few days ago, Monday the 18th arrived, and passed, here at home. All day long I felt extra happy to be here. Now there’s a sign of a right decision! Work on the boat has continued, with comfort, and relaxed joy. Not without complication – it turns out that it’s really good that we didn’t leave, because drilling for the mainmast retaining pin has not been simple. And neither has raising and lowering that mast. There will be more to say about this, over time. But presently, the bottom line is that perhaps the boat will go in the water this fall, or perhaps not. It’s only August, and there are still September and October after all. Having missed the last two years of summer and early fall here at home, it might be just perfect to stay, and savor. The water is not going anywhere, and spring will come soon.

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Brain Retraining

28 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by shemaya in How Does This Work, Why Go Sailing

≈ 4 Comments

This discussion of brain retraining is sort of about sailing, and sort of not. It’s also part of the reason why the boat is presently in the driveway, in July, with projects happily going forward but still at home on solid ground.

“Brain retraining” is a technique for healing, based on relatively recent research on the workings of the “limbic system.” This system is mostly in the brain, and has quite a lot to do with humans’ – and other creatures’ – fight/flight/freeze responses. Limbic system processes, and appropriate function, are thoroughly intertwined with immune system activity, muscle tone, joint tension, digestion, and neurological function. Doesn’t that just cover the works!

For very many years, whenever the question of explaining my health situation has come up, I have done my best to delicately sidestep the entire subject. Over the course of decades, I’ve run through a variety of diagnoses, and some of them have been true – Lyme disease, for one. But my gut feeling has been that none of those labels tells the full story, and anyway, talking about it has just made me cringe. If things are going well, talking about it often messes it up, and if things are going in a more difficult way, I’d also just as soon not go into it, other than necessary basics so that people have a context for a request for some kind of help. It’s been hard to explain why I feel this way, but it feels best to honor that sense of things, and so for the most part, including in this blog, I don’t say a whole lot about it. Regardless, here’s this post… The subject of brain retraining feels important, as does a certain amount of context, for understanding why.

Sometime this past spring I heard, somehow in the right way, or at the right time for it to sink in, about brain retraining as it relates to multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS), chronic fatigue, and fibromyalgia. There are strong immune system connections too, which obviously have a bearing on long-term microbial diseases, but the folks who know a lot don’t have much to say about that. They’d probably be sitting ducks for problems with the medical establishment if they did, so the rest of us are left to put it together for ourselves. Fortunately, that’s not hard!

The big news is that two different people have, somewhat independently, created protocols for addressing MCS, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and sensitivity to electric/electromagnetic fields, by working with calming what’s explained as a vicious cycle/feedback loop of overactivity in the limbic system. By calming the limbic system, and thereby coming out of a constant state of fight/flight/freeze response, one’s body has a chance to heal. “Healing” is, somewhat ironically, shut down during fight/flight/freeze responses. This is because those responses are designed for things like escape from attacking tigers, based on the evolved wisdom that if you don’t get away from the tiger, diverting all resources to that task, nothing else is going to matter in the least. Healing/cellular repair, digestion, immune system/disease response all go on hold, while muscle tone, tightened joints, wide eyes, and everything else needed for alertness and quick getaways receives all the blood supply and everything else. Designed for a few minutes of use at a time, staying in this limbic system alarm state for the long term doesn’t work out very well. Muscles and joints tire, energy levels become depleted, and effects of ongoing diminished function of neurological, digestive, and immune systems add up more and more.

There’s a whole bunch of material about how one can end up in a chronic state of limbic system alert – childhood trauma can contribute, as can a variety of adult life experiences, including physical and/or psychological injuries, and life stresses. There’s lots to read on the subject, if anybody is interested, and references are listed below. There are also, now, some very good resources available about how to actively develop limbic system calm. Quite a number of people with serious, life altering health issues have been having enormous shifts, working with these practices. It’s dramatic. I personally know some of those people, and it was enough to get my attention when I heard about what they were up to, being seen out and about town, looking quite well.

One of the brain retraining practitioners refers to this constantly triggered limbic system issue as “limbic system impairment.” I have mixed feelings about considering another “impairment” identity, but the overall explanation matches my experience exactly. It even matches when things got better a number of years ago, and I was on my feet for several years – and then when that changed again, to getting around not so much. It’s amazing to see all the pieces drop into place. It even explains my experience of sailing (I really will get back to this).

When I experienced healing, a number of years ago – going from a number of years of full-time electric wheelchair use to walking the woods, folk dancing, and driving across the country – I never could tell anybody why it changed. I could point to this and that, but I had no idea what really did the trick. In retrospect, because of a combination of life circumstances, and people, my limbic system had the opportunity to relax – and then things just got better. Some time after that, my mother died, and then 11 months later, my grandmother. I felt things begin to turn, after my mom died, and by a few months after we all lost my grandmother, things with my health were increasingly complicated. That’s when I quit driving, because of reflex issues mentioned in that post about “sailing as accessible transportation.” I was still having a good time – the Falmouth cutter sailing was in there, after the driving was done – and then the Lyme thing went crazy, knees, etc. etc.

Now, over 10 years after the beginning of the knees thing, the situation has had ups, and it’s had downs, with some kind of pattern that was not readily discernible. Lyme fits in there, and so does working on issues related to surviving, and recovering from, childhood and adult trauma. Health issues typically addressed by the brain retraining folks are all everyday parts of my experience, except for perhaps electromagnetic sensitivity, which I prefer not to think about. Now, with this new information about limbic system function, it’s like lining up a transparent drawing over the jumbled, chaotic picture of my life, and watching all the shapes line up, between the transparency and the hidden lines in the full picture. The transparent drawing is a key, and it actually fits.

As I said earlier, there are a couple of people who have developed protocols for addressing health issues using this new understanding of limbic system feedback loops. There are similarities between the two protocols, and one of those similarities is that they both say “practice this devotedly for six months, and then assess if it’s working.” Some people see dramatic changes a lot faster than that, and for others it takes more time. Surprisingly, about 80% of those who stick with it experience either substantial, or complete, recovery of their health. Of course some people are probably dropping out because they can sense that for them it’s not the right thing, or because they have inadequate support, or for any number of other reasons – those who have dropped out are not counted in the 80%. Still, it’s impressive.

So then there’s that six-month commitment – one of the practitioners says specifically not to undertake this in the middle of some big life change, like moving, or starting a new job. I’ve taken that to mean that it’s unrealistic to try to retrain your limbic system for calm while in the midst of uncertainty and unusual demands. While sailing is fun, and satisfying, it’s also completely filled with uncertainty and unusual demands! There is tension that goes with good seamanship, and successful arrival at the next safe harbor.

On the one hand, one of the techniques of brain retraining is to ask new and different things of your brain – funny exercises that shake brain patterns out of old habits are a part of the work. For example one gets to practice the Stroop test, reading words for colors that are printed in ink colors different from the words that are written, trying to read the words, or trying to say the colors, without reverting to the contradictory input. It’s surprisingly challenging. “Yellow” might be written in blue ink, and darned if you don’t say “blue” when you’re trying to say the written words!

When it comes to sailing, there are a broad variety of considerations; sailing is so multi-faceted. On the one hand, there are many opportunities for high concentration involving new, unexpected input, which is just perfect for brain retraining. Sailing at night, for example, is like this, with the completely different look and feel of both landmarks and waves. And the motion of the boat, day or night, is a constant new experience for body and mind. On the other hand, there are completely stressful events, including things like ships moving unpredictably, weather changes (anticipated or otherwise), anchors that might be set – or maybe not. And there is the rather unrelenting attention required: “situational awareness,” keeping track of traffic, weather, and navigation, and basic but crucial details, like not falling off the boat.

It’s a funny mix, sailing, and I think that at times the balance has come out, for me, on the positive side as far as support for limbic system calm, and resulting health improvements. Other times, it’s gone more the other way. Last year, for example, in 2013, I had a whole bunch of wonderful experiences. At the same time, the stressful side of things was heavily on my mind, and physically the whole undertaking was much more challenging than the previous year. With my current understanding, I can see the snowball effect of my worry about the various stresses. This is the vicious cycle/feedback loop that can happen with limbic system alert messages, which go to the cortex for checking, and come back to the limbic system with the message that yes, there is a problem. Uninterrupted, the limbic system goes further into alert mode, with further checking and intellectual confirmation, and physical difficulties that result from ongoing alert become progressively worse. Prompting more worries, and more alert… On it goes, not particularly comfortably.

Interestingly, “brain fog” is another of the potential outcomes of runaway limbic system feedback loops. Brain fog was another issue with which I struggled while sailing in 2013, and it was the source of the Cog Dys post from January, 2014. While I still think that issues discussed in that post are relevant, I am fascinated by the interconnections between limbic system function, and brain retraining, when it comes to the experience of brain fog.

Learning a new way of thinking, it turns out, actually changes the physical size and distribution of neurons in the brain. Folks working on recovery from strokes, and traumatic brain injuries, have been demonstrating a whole lot about this (see the work of Norman Doidge, referenced below, and Jill Bolte Taylor). It’s pretty amazing – what a person thinks, repeatedly, actually develops the physical size of neurons. When you change your thinking, say from stress about pain, to thoughts of wonderful experiences, even though there happens to also be pain going on, the neurons associated with triggering that pain become physically smaller. Wow.

Busting out sailing, for the first time in years, there is so much delight to be had, along with mental challenges and varied experience; the combination can make for a lot of limbic system calm, and a lot of healing. I came home from seven months of sailing in 2012 in pretty good shape. That next winter, the wheelchair seen in occasional photos became a place to pile things up in the house. I didn’t hike all that far, but inside the house and outside to the yard, with places to lie down, was working out pretty well. When we launched the boat in 2013 I didn’t really want to leave, but felt like it was somehow important. And in fact, it was important: sailing into Gouldsboro, and Belfast; so many wonderful visits, up and down the coast; and all those whales, from Cape Cod to Maine. But I lost a bunch of ground, physically. No more piling stuff up on the wheelchair for months, and back to needing a good bit more help, once I got home.

Presently, about three months into a daily practice of brain retraining, there is positive change. It’s got potential. We do plan to launch the boat – I really want to see how that junk rig works – but I haven’t been in such a hurry. Now that there’s been time to become familiar with this new brain practice, it should be possible to carry it on board. But in the meantime, the mental challenges of a new rig and everything else we’ve been up to, right here at home, have been just perfect.

So we’ll see what happens, on all fronts…

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Brain Retraining Resources

Programs:

Ashok Gupta http://www.guptaprogramme.com/ This one has a really coherent explanation of how limbic system feedback loops work. That explanation is included in the introductory videos that are free on YouTube. The order of the videos is jumbled up – you can go from one to the next, in order, by finding the appropriate title on the page at this link: (The presentation starts with session 1, part one, which is probably all the way down at the bottom of the page.) https://www.youtube.com/user/GuptaProgramme/videos?sort=dd&shelf_id=0&view=0 Or you can sign up for free links through the Gupta Program website. In exchange for receiving some of their e-mails, you get links for the full presentations all in order.

Annie Hopper http://www.dnrsystem.com/ There are online videos here too, though they are not the actual beginning of her DVD program. This program is not as focused on meditation, and “supportive services” are particularly well developed. She also has quite a full schedule of in person programs available in various parts of North America and now in Europe.

Neither the Gupta nor the Hopper program is “perfect,” to my mind, but each includes an abundance of information, tools, and techniques for developing limbic system calm, and thus overall healing. Both are effective in themselves, and as resources for understanding the considerations and developing one’s own approach.

Neuroplasticity books/websites:

Norman Doidge
book: The Brain That Changes Itself
website: http://www.normandoidge.com/normandoidge.com/MAIN.html
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibpbkV7xc24
A YouTube search for Norman Doidge brings up a number of interesting presentations.

Jill Bolte Taylor
book: My Stroke of Insight
TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight
This is not strictly about limbic systems and brain retraining – but it’s an impressive and fascinating piece of work about brain process and experience, and healing.

Lissa Rankin http://mindovermedicinebook.com/videos/ This page has four videos – I found the last one particularly helpful on the limbic system subject.

Book list (many authors) from Annie Hopper http://www.dnrsystem.com/resources.html

There’s a whole lot more out there, available by following the Google trail for related terms, as well as references and introductory videos and text in the Gupta and Hopper website materials…

[A follow-up to this post, “Brain Retraining On Board,” appears in October 2014, and can be found here: http://sailingauklet.com/2014/10/26/brain-retraining-on-board/ ]

Hot Packs

17 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by shemaya in How Does This Work

≈ Leave a comment

On the subject of staying warm, here’s the other thing that has made a revolutionary difference for me: hot packs, the commercially available kind that are made of very basic ingredients that heat up when exposed to air. They don’t get prizes for sustainability or minimal cost, but they’re also not horrifying on either count. For me they’ve made the difference between shivering and being comfortable, over and over.

There are at least a couple of different brands of these things, but the basic ingredients are similar, and simple: iron powder, water, salt, charcoal and vermiculite. These materials are combined in individual packets sealed in plastic wrappers, and when opened, the contents begin oxidizing and producing heat. Apparently the technology has been known for many decades – I believe since the first world war. But prior to the widespread use of plastic it wasn’t practical, because once made it was almost impossible to store completely airtight, and in large quantities became a serious fire hazard. Personally, I’d prefer to have a world with no plastic and to live without these hot packs, but since plastic is everywhere anyway, the hot packs sure are nice.

My preferred brand is “Hothands Body & Hand Super Warmer,” which has virtually no odor, and heats for well over 12 hours (the package says 18). Another brand, which is what one gets if ordering from Campmor, is called “Grabber MyCoal.” This one also works, but it has more of a smell, and the old ones I used to get from these folks didn’t last nearly as long. The Hothands version is available on the Internet, and the cost comes down if you get a case of 40. http://www.amazon.com/HeatMax-Hand-Body-Warmer-Count/dp/B0007ZF4Q8 (Including this link for convenience, because the array of choices can get confusing. Like always, I am unaffiliated and not receiving anything for the reference.)

The packs can get quite hot – enough to get burned if you leave one against your skin – so it can be a good idea to put the packet inside a fleece sock or hat, and to pay attention to not leaving it against your skin if you’re going to be sleeping. Speaking from experience, it’s possible to wake up with a burn if you’re not careful about this!

Being a chemical reaction, it is sensitive to conditions, and its performance will vary accordingly. Mainly, it’s initially surprising how much air is stopped by various pieces of clothing. I once put the little handwarmer version inside big ski mitts with shells, whereupon the warmers stopped working completely. And when Dave and Anke were on the boat last year I carefully warned them about not getting burned, and then Dave said that his was just nicely warm, but not hot enough to think that there might be a problem. I puzzled over this, and later realized that the pocket where he had the hotpack was underneath an outer layer of coated nylon rain pants – apparently relatively air-proof! Those pants are the same ones I was using this year, and I had the same experience. Placed with better air access, the hot packs heat right back up.

Because of the air issue, it’s easy to “turn off” these warmers, to save them for future use. I have often started one in the early morning, and once the sun has been up for some time everything (including me) is then comfortably warm and it’s no longer needed. (AUKLET’s windows are outstanding for passive solar heating.) In order to get a good seal for “turning off” the warmer, I save one of the original packaging envelopes, put the warmer back in, fold the top of the envelope over carefully three times, pressing out the air, and then keep it closed with 2 or 3 paper clips. Once the pouch has cooled down, it then goes inside a Ziploc bag, also sealed, so there aren’t any slow leaks. I’ve come back and used these again, after storing them this way for weeks, with total success. The Ziploc bag is handy for storing the paper clips and all, along with spare new hot packs, so it works out pretty simply.

These things are normally about a dollar apiece, and I used to think of them as extravagant, buying just a few, and saving for emergencies, or for times of serious discomfort. Eventually I thought “what would this look like, if I used them at will, whenever I was cold? How many would I go through?” So I bought a case of 40 last year, and tried to relax my inclination to hoard and save for more dire situations. Gradually I got the hang of that, and it was nice to be warm, especially in the middle of the night and early morning when the fire in the stove was long gone, or it hadn’t felt cold enough to start a fire in the first place. Sometimes I even used two – one for cold feet, and one at my belly for overall warmth. They were especially useful during times of having been out in the cold for ages, and getting warmed up again. Eventually I learned to put one in the foot of my sleeping bag while I was still out, so there would be a warm place to come back to for cold feet.

Surprisingly, even with all this extravagance, and last year sailing long into the New England fall, the most I’ve gone through is about a case and a half in a season. This year I started with one case on the boat, and another stored at home. Only being out for four months, and much of that in the summer, I came home having only used a bit more than half of what I brought. As far as I’m concerned, this is a complete success. In the big picture, for four – or seven – months of onboard comfort it’s been quite worth it. Even when I choose not to crack one open, there is relaxation in knowing that I could. It’s just not necessary to be so cold.

Quite a number of years ago – 25, in fact – I lived outdoors in the US southwest, during the winter. This was because of chemical sensitivities, in combination with lack of resources, and it didn’t always go so well. For one thing, the desert can be quite cold at night in December and January. Outside of Tucson, where I was for one of those winters, the temperature went into the low 20s. For occasional winter backpacking, this is nothing. But it’s a different story when you live with it, and have been chilly day after day.

One particularly cold night I was in my sleeping bag under the crazy shelter that was serving as home, shivering. I remember telling myself that even though I was shivering uncontrollably, which meant that this was the beginning of hypothermia, that nobody dies of hypothermia inside a dry sleeping bag, out of the wind, with the temperature in the 20s (turns out it was 13° that night). Nowadays I wonder if that was true, that nobody dies in that situation, but the thought comforted me at the time, and in fact morning came and I was still there.

This story is a tangent – obviously not sailing – but I think it’s the reason that I am so utterly devoted to these little hot packs. With a good stash of these things on board, there will be no repetition of that kind of night. It’s nice to be warm.

Heaters

15 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by shemaya in How Does This Work, the boat

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Bengco, Charcoal heater stove, Flowerpot stoves

On a boat in the cooler weather, it’s nice to have some kind of heater for warming up the cabin. There are quite a number of ways to achieve this, from stoves that burn diesel, to charcoal, to tea lights, among others. And there are safety considerations, also worth discussing. Following is a rundown of a number of those boat-heater choices, along with my experiences with some of them.

When I sailed the Falmouth cutter, NEW SALT, it had a marvelous Dickinson diesel stove. It was a cook stove with a cast iron top and an oven, and a slow drip diesel firebox on one side; the whole business fit right into the spot where people often put a propane stove on a Falmouth cutter. You could cook on this stove, but that only made sense when the weather was cool, because it threw a lot of heat, which it was after all supposed to do. The boat had a 3 gallon diesel “day tank” installed high on one side of the stern locker in the cockpit, with a fuel line run forward to the stove.

When I got the boat there was no fuel pump, but the stove didn’t run well at all. Studying the manual, there wasn’t enough “head” from the fuel tank, and the manual suggested that if raising the fuel tank wasn’t practical (which it wasn’t) then a pump would be necessary. I wasn’t too happy about this, but wanted to be warm! In the end, the small 12 V pump was fine, with infinitesimal draw on the battery. It made a clicking sound as it worked, which increased in frequency from every several seconds to quite a bit more often as the stove started burning more enthusiastically. As it turned out, the pump noise was great, because it let you know how the fire was doing without having to go open things up and actually look. The fuel use was tiny – I think that I only refilled that tank once, sailing spring and fall up to Maine and back for two years. Being cast iron, the stove held lots of heat for quite a while after the fire was put out.

I’m going into this in such detail because I’ve been reading an interesting blog lately, http://www.artofhookie.org done by a man who’s been living aboard a Falmouth cutter, and he’s been writing about being very cold! Since heaters have been on my mind anyway, it seemed like a good time to write about them.

On the Chebacco, AUKLET, I considered a diesel heater, but in the end my priorities were smallest size and least smell, which took available diesels out of the running. Light weight figured into the wish list also. The heater with the smallest footprint turned out to be one that burns lump charcoal – not briquettes, but the stuff that people use for fancy barbecuing, that is made of actual chunks of wood turned into charcoal. When burning well there is no smoke at all, and it uses a very small diameter stovepipe. There is a company in England called Bengco that fabricates these from stainless steel sheet, and it seemed worth the fuss, and the expense, to get ahold of one.

With this stove, in addition to the narrow stovepipe on the inside of the boat there is a special fitting that goes in the cabin top. The interior stovepipe connects to this fitting, and then on the outside there is a removable cap. When you’re going to make a fire you take off the cap and replace it with a short section of exterior stovepipe. Underway, the cap is back in place, lower than the boom and keeping out all water.

For starting the fire, Bengco makes a fancy wick holder that’s built into the removable ash pan on the bottom of the stove, and they suggest that once you’ve put charcoal into the hopper, you get the charcoal burning by putting alcohol in the wick, lighting it, and replacing the ash pan, so the alcohol flame comes up through the grate under the charcoal. It seemed like it was going to be hard to do this as a regular thing, especially with the stove mounted low the way it is in AUKLET. And I wasn’t wild about the alcohol, both burning and not. Instead, we decided to try long-burning firestarters, or a variation on that idea.

The firestarters that you can buy are pretty smelly, mainly because the reason they work is that they’re made of wood with a lot of pitch in it. But a lot of years ago, when I used to heat with wood stoves all the time, a friend told me about a recipe for homemade firestarters: cardboard egg container, with all the little cups for the eggs, lint from the clothes dryer, and melted paraffin wax. Pack the lint into the little cups, pour in the melted paraffin (in the US, “paraffin” means hard wax, like for making candles or sealing the tops of home canned jelly jars – I’m NOT talking about pouring what we would call liquid kerosene into the egg cups!) After the wax hardens, you cut the egg container so you have separate lint/wax-filled cups, and when you want a fire you light one with a match or a lighter, and put it into the materials that will become your fire.

It turns out that one of these lint and wax balls works great for lighting charcoal. The only thing we changed was that we added a cotton string about 6 inches long, placing it in the cup along with the lint before pouring the wax. This is not a wick – rather, it’s a handle. Charcoal goes in the stove; firestarter goes in the hopper while still holding the string; long lighter, like for barbecue grills, is used to light the firestarter; and once lit, the whole business is dropped down onto the charcoal and the hopper is closed. The string burns away along with the firestarter, and most of the smoke from the whole process goes up the stovepipe. It has worked really well.

People complain about the bulkiness of fuel for solid fuel stoves, but that’s another reason that I’ve liked charcoal. It’s compact compared to wood, for the amount of heat produced, and not terribly heavy for its bulk. We’ve been getting the 7 pound bags and then repackaging them in gallon Ziplocs, which makes things less messy and easier to manage, as well as keeping the charcoal dry. A hard-to-reach locker is mostly dedicated to charcoal storage, with a couple weeks worth (about a half a bag a day, or less, when it’s chilly but not seriously cold – more when it’s colder) kept where it’s easier to get at, which has worked out fine. It’s not a smelly liquid that could spill, nor a gas that could explode, a characteristic that I’ve found very relaxing.

This stove has worked, in general, quite well. It has a well done vent on the front side of the bottom ash pan, with a threaded cover, so the airflow can be completely controlled. The hopper has a gasket, and the theory is that it’s an airtight stove that can be turned very low and will hold a fire overnight. In practice, those gaskets are fragile. The photo above shows tinfoil being a temporary gasket section, but this year I have learned better. After replacing the broken gasket last winter with a new one from the manufacturer, even with careful attention I broke the new one pretty early on in this trip.

This time I decided to try using the stove without the gasket at all, and it actually works pretty well. I made another tinfoil piece that goes over most of the top and the upper front of the stove, easily removable and covering the face of the hopper. It’s not a gasket; rather, it slows down any airflow that makes it past the ungasketed but fairly tight hopper door. It’s been satisfactory, and is easier to do than another gasket replacement. With the tinfoil cover on and the lower vent completely closed the fire will go out entirely, saving charcoal for next time. The glue-on gaskets that you get in the hardware store could be worth a try also, but I haven’t wanted to mess with the process of the glue burning in.

This stove is also useful for heating water, and food. I have a tiny teakettle for heating water, and a 7 inch diameter pot that will also perch on the top of the stove. There’s a propane camp stove on the boat for when the weather is warm, but the charcoal stove does a great job whenever the temperature is cold enough for wanting heat.

Nowadays, I have rather wished that I had put in this other version of charcoal stove: http://rwrope.com/davey/stoves-and-stove-fittings/davey-company-hot-pot-stove.html (nope, not receiving anything.) I considered but rejected this stove originally both because of weight and because of its somewhat larger size. Also, it needs a larger diameter stovepipe. But that larger stovepipe seems more doable now, and the trade-off for all of these issues is a stove that can burn several different fuels, including charcoal, wood, and real coal. It might be worth a look, if somebody is considering the possibilities.

There are other, lower tech options too, especially in very small boats. Candle lanterns – the kind that include three candles, like this: http://www.campmor.com/outdoor/gear/Product___80350 – throw a surprising amount of heat along with their light, and don’t spill when the boat rolls. I used two of those in the Falmouth cutter, but I’m not good with the gases from burning candles, and ended up with a pretty intense ongoing cough until I figured out that the candles were actually the problem. I considered making a vented “candle lantern box” for AUKLET, but decided that the charcoal system was easier. Still, it can be done! I was intrigued with the idea of a double vent system – intake and exhaust, one inside the other, made from flexible truck exhaust pipe – maybe one of these days.

Now there’s a whole series of stuff on the Internet about using tea lights and inverted, nested clay flowerpots. This is cheaper than the candelier lantern above, both originally and for ongoing candle supplies. And I think that the flowerpot system would be more effective for feeling warm because of the radiant heat from the terracotta, in addition to the overall space heating that candles do. The flowerpot folks talk about getting tea lights by the hundred, at very low cost, and that they burn for four hours each. This still doesn’t solve the problem of combustion gases, but with a little thought one could work this out. I especially liked this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzKbFzUEWkA because the nested flowerpots are both held with a bolt. But it would still need more work in order to be safely restrained on a boat.

Another alternative that is used by quite a few boaters is to simply put an inverted clay flowerpot over the burner on the propane or alcohol cookstove, held in place, and therefore quite stable, with the usual potholder for cooking. I think that this is probably effective for heating because, like the tea light system, it is changing a good bit of the heat from convective to radiant, so you feel warmer for the same amount of minimal fuel use. But you still have to watch out for carbon monoxide, and oxygen depletion, when running the stove for so long.

In NEW SALT, I originally thought that “adequate ventilation” was achieved by cracking the sliding hatch two or 3 inches, so this is what I did when I was running the diesel stove. At the time I was also using a kerosene lantern for light, and one evening the flame kept getting lower. I kept turning up the wick, and much too soon, the flame would get lower again. I finally put together the information in front of me and tried letting in a bunch of fresh air, whereupon the flame shot right up, now having way too much extra wick. That was a sobering experience, and from then on if the diesel stove was running I left one of the three drop boards out of the companionway. That was enough that there was never another problem with the lamp flame.

Nowadays I don’t use a kerosene lamp, or candles, and have tried to be particularly careful about ventilation, since there’s no handy flame indicator. I invested in a handheld replaceable-battery carbon monoxide tester (Testo 317-3), and have been happy to see that it stays on zero consistently. But you still have to keep enough oxygen not to pass out…

Another safety consideration is heat shielding. In the photo above, if I was doing it again I would extend the back heat shield further to the left – that bulkhead can get overly warm. Regular aluminum foil works well for temporary heat shields, and when the stove is running nowadays I put a piece of foil in front of the tool bag and water storage that are somewhat near the stove, also to port. On NEW SALT, tinfoil was good behind the stovepipe, where there was a hotspot when the stove ran for quite a while. Then it was easy to remove the foil when the stove wasn’t running, and have easier access to the storage space back there. Heat shielding is incredibly important – and fortunately, it’s also easy!

All in all, I still sort of miss the diesel stove, but I don’t miss the smell of burning diesel coming out the stovepipe, and anyway the diesel stove was never going to fit aboard AUKLET. The charcoal stove has been a good alternative. When the weather is cold in the spring, and again in the fall, whatever stove that’s on the boat is my very best friend!

Hot Flashes

13 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by shemaya in How Does This Work

≈ 4 Comments

Yesterday Kate was visiting, here in Holyoke. I told her that I had been thinking about writing a blog post about hot flashes, but had been hesitating because after all the blog, being related to sailing, has a pretty substantial male readership, and it seemed like thoughts related to hot flashes could seem non-inclusive – or something. She asked, “Do you know any man who has hot flashes?” To which I answered, well, one, who was having hormone treatments for prostate cancer. And then we both thought, well, bingo – we’re all getting older, and some of the men who I don’t even know about might be having the same experience. So here you all go: thoughts on hot flashes.

The reason I have anything to say about this at all is because it in fact relates to sailing, and living aboard in cold weather. Of course now I’m on shore, but it was true before I came home, both last year and this. Besides, it’s helpful at home in the cold weather also, like for sitting outside with Kate in the blustery fall.

Hot flashes are one of my best friends. This is partly because I spent a lot of years being consistently cold. Now in my 50s, for the last two or three years it’s finally easy to get warm! You just do things that you know trigger hot flashes – eat foods that fire them up, and then when cold, either temporarily wear some extra clothing, or drink a few sips of a hot drink, and bingo, instant sweats!

This works while sailing – or even better, in a snug berth that you know you have to get out of shortly. You pile on an extra blanket, maybe fleece over your head, and next thing you know jumping out in that nippy cabin looks really appealing. If you postpone too long, the flash goes away, but the good news is that they’re cyclical, so if you wait another few minutes, the next one comes right down the track. It’s just a matter of jumping onto the warm conditions bus at the right moment. Getting out of a cozy berth to start the charcoal heater – or to get up and go sailing – has gotten a lot easier.

I’m not quite sure why it’s a good idea to write this up and put it in a post, except for that I think it’s really, really funny. You have to get used to sweats, and nowadays I’ve resigned myself to a certain amount of damp clothing. But contrary to all that backwoods training about never letting yourself sweat when you’re winter camping, it doesn’t seem to be the end of the world. Maybe that’s because the next hot flash will just warm you right back up! Nowadays I’m really trying to tune into the ability that my body has to do this – I’d like to preserve this capability, preferably a little more at will. One woman I know is now 86 years old, and her hot flashes never stopped – this could be me! Because I like them so much.

So for all those who are worried about getting old enough to have hot flashes, or are looking for a bright side to the utter unpleasantness and distress of a nasty diagnosis and treatment, I’d offer you this: hot flashes come in really handy for sailing when the weather gets chilly. Some foods trigger them (different for each person, I expect) and refraining from those foods can make the flashes go away. Personally, whenever the weather starts getting chilly I’m reaching for the crackers and the beef stew. If I’m really serious, it’s break out the chocolate. What could be better than the ticket to warmth being to eat more of my favorite foods…

Next time I’ll write a bit about the charcoal stove, which has also been really helpful for keeping warm.

Whalen’s Question

02 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by shemaya in How Does This Work, the boat

≈ Leave a comment

The following question was posted in a comment. Since the answer turned out to be substantial, I’m putting the whole thing up as its own post…

S:
One question (more to follow I’m sure): what was your biggest/most worrisome anticipated breakage problem? What precautions did you take in regard to it (them)?

Hi Whalen,

The biggest worry was myself breaking down, physically. Precautions included careful judgment about what to do when, prioritizing boat/gear arrangement, and having a plan for if, regardless of best efforts, it happened anyway. My solution for repercussions due to exceeding physical limits is to stop, and wait for things to get better. The post titled Kneeling Camel, from August 4, is partly an example of that process. If something happened involving myself breaking down while I was on one of the big (for me) passages, my plan was to manage to fully reef the sails, once, and proceed toward a harbor at whatever speed the boat would do without my attention, strong wind or light. Or if the weather allowed, since I was completely supplied for many weeks, to stay out in a restful mode until things were better. Fortunately I didn’t have to put either strategy to the test.

As far as mechanical equipment, I was most concerned about the autopilot, and as mentioned sometime before, I carried a spare. There is a problem in the plug/socket for the autopilot, with an intermittent loose connection that I thought we had fixed before departure this year, but it turned out that it still wasn’t right, but responded to jiggling the plug. I carried electrical tools, including marine crimp-on connectors and a ratcheting crimp tool, so that if that plug had completely given up I had the materials for a tight hardwired connection into the electrical system. That intermittent issue surfaced repeatedly, and was becoming more troublesome by the end of the trip, but I didn’t have to resort to Plan B, which I was glad to avoid because it had its own problems. The real solution is a more reliable plug, and driveway time for sorting it all out.

Being prone to worry, and in a small boat with a half an inch of plywood between the inside and all that water, I carried quite a bit of stuff for emergency hull repair (besides having a sturdy, well-built hull to begin with): Pieces of plywood with holes drilled for lines to hold them against the hull, and two-part putty (“Splash Zone”) that can be applied underwater to layer on together with the plywood, or for use by itself for smaller issues. Also a tarp that did different jobs, but was available for sliding down the outside of the hull to stop water while making repairs. And one of those squishy orange cones designed for stopping up holes in boats. I also did “preparedness drills” in my mind, keeping track of locations of rags for quick stuffing if water was flooding in through a crack or break, and how to quickly get access to any part of the hull, or to block off an area so that only that section would flood. There is a range of bilge pumps on board as well, including electric and high volume manual. None of these strategies were put to the test, I’m happy to say. The trailer for that movie “All is Lost” that’s presently making the rounds scares me to bits, regardless, even though that guy is making so many obvious mistakes, and the movie is obviously set up to scare people.

One of the things that gave me more immediate, real-life pause was the unstayed mainmast and the lightweight yard. Both held up fine, but I occasionally did practice runs in my head about what I would do if one of them, or the boom, were to break. I had the 12 foot push pole aboard, which with gentle use could temporarily substitute for the yard – and two masts, which were unlikely to both break, so there would have been someplace to carry some sail, to get over to shore. There’s calling Boat US/Sea Tow, being almost always relatively near shore, but how tacky! As it was I almost always reefed quite conservatively, partly because of these concerns. Gybing with too much sail area was another practice that I tried to avoid… I wasn’t always perfectly successful with that, and apart from general alarm, it was both interesting, and then heartening, to see that the spars all held up through a small number of pretty energetic clunks. At home in Holyoke we had both a replacement yard and boom, built at the same time as the ones I was using, in case they were needed.

Sail chafe was a problem, particularly with the reefed sail rolled around the boom and then rubbing against the mast on a port tack. I carried sail repair tape, and used some. When I realized what was happening (after the first HOLE in the sail) I started varying the number of turns around the boom by a little bit every so often, to spread the wear. After two seasons of hard sailing, the mainsail is in serious need of attention (including a reinforcing strip where it presses against the mast), which it will get before any further sailing.

Navigation lights… these were a problem last year, and a new tricolor was installed this year, but after the trouble in 2012, and less than satisfactory battery backups, I had limited confidence. The new tricolor worked fine for the whole trip, but I also carried a new version of LED battery powered nav lights, with lithium batteries, and mounting plates already installed on the boat (the new lights come with strong magnets for mounting when needed). The wired in anchor light at the top of the mast did quit, with evidence that the problem was at the top of the mast, so not easily accessible. I carried a battery light suitable for an anchor light, just in case, which I then used, and then Bill at Swans Island sent me off with one of his solar yard lights that also works quite nicely, and has the lovely benefit of turning itself on and off.

I guess this response to your question includes at least as much about problems that actually happened and their resolutions, as it does about worries and precautions – that’s probably because it’s being written after the fact!

Questions are fun – thanks!

Boat Adaptations

22 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by shemaya in How Does This Work, the boat

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Tags

accessible sailing, glasshouse Chebacco, Matt Layden, Peep Hen, Phil Bolger

Quite a few years ago I sold what had been my most favorite boat of all, a Falmouth Cutter 22, because I felt that it was unlikely that I would be able to sail it again, primarily because of knee issues that resulted in quite significant mobility limitations. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about the boat thing after that, but kept reflecting on a chapter in the John Dowd book titled Sea Kayaking: A Manual for Long Distance Touring, that I had read some time before. That chapter discussed how a man who had been a sailor, and then had an accident and was paraplegic as a result, had come to Dowd for some help with strategizing solo kayak cruising. Dowd wrote a really good chapter about the ensuing process and that man’s cruising experiences, and the story has stayed with me ever since.

For myself, with illness-related upper body strength issues as well as associated back stuff and the knee thing, extended kayaking wasn’t going to work. But we all have different strengths, and for me a sailboat was much more likely to be manageable, one way or another. So I took off on the “accessible cruising sailboat” tack. This was a direct result of having read that chapter about the fellow in the kayak, and my many thanks go to that kayaker, and to John Dowd for writing it up and putting it in a book. Here’s how my version of accessible cruising boats has been arranged:

The Peep Hen, SERENITY, was adapted enough for me to simply be on the boat, which was enough of an adventure at the time, but the boat wasn’t entirely arranged for independent sailing. AUKLET, on the other hand, was originally built and then set up for solo sailing, by me. In both cases, the adaptations were not particularly exotic. Rather, they made use of standard boat equipment, applied in very particular ways to fit the situation.

SERENITY has a cockpit bench/berth made higher by several layers of closed-cell foam, and a board between the cockpit benches that serves several purposes: slide board for crossing the boat without standing; cockpit table; and underneath the top cover, head seat. Halyards and anchor line are led to the cockpit, but for independent sailing (by me) it also needs a winch for those lines, and an autopilot. This may happen…

AUKLET, the Bolger-designed glasshouse Chebacco, has a raised port berth, the head described in a previous post, halyards and anchor line led to the cockpit, and an enormous two speed manual winch. There is also an easily movable cockpit slide board, and a “tiller pilot” style autopilot that fits into a socket in the starboard cockpit bench and connects to a pin in the tiller. The port cockpit bench has tapered cushions to create a flat, level surface, rather than following the curve of the sheer and the lateral drainage angle, so there’s a very flat level space for lying down, which I find helpful. The main halyard leads through a rope clutch, which holds any strain on the line until the clutch is released, and we added a special curved rubbing strake so that the mainsail can be hauled up from a sitting position across the cockpit, without tearing up the corner of the companionway.

I tried a Winch-Rite portable electric winch handle, but it wasn’t a good fit for my abilities, so we took it back off the boat. At 6 pounds it was heavy to move into and out of position, and required long holding of its trigger from an awkward position while it slowly turned the winch. And it’s very loud. With a different winch position it does have potential, but not in the way that AUKLET is presently set up. A 10 inch manual winch handle with a two-hand grip, however, made a really big difference over the standard 10″ winch handle. It’s the Lewmar “one-touch powergrip winch handle.” It allows one’s upper hand to be oriented palm facing down, which is very helpful for getting the most out of available weight and strength.

Some of the above items were fussy to install, particularly the anchor line which runs over the top of the cabin. But the parts are all garden variety stuff from the boat catalogs or the hardware store. Several of the parts are generally used on larger sailboats, in order to handle big-boat loads using average strength – applied to the smaller loads of a small sailboat, the jobs become possible with less than average strength. Mostly, making the boat “accessible” was about moving around in and on it, and then placing lines and gear so that distances and angles were comfortable for my particular habits of getting about and doing things. The only difference between this and other more average situations is that if a gear arrangement doesn’t fit my particular habits, it’s quite possible that for me it won’t be doable at all, or not as a repeated maneuver. So we took quite a bit of time sorting out details of how to set things up in a workable way within the fixed structure of the hull, deck, and cabin.

We had tried, on the suggestion of Phil Bolger, opening up the cockpit footwell. This creates potential for rolling access between the cockpit and cabin, and for walking between the cockpit and the cabin without any up-and-down steps. I really liked this arrangement, but as it turned out, especially with the extra cushions on the port seat, even with a grate in the footwell a step was needed to be able to get up onto the cockpit seat at all (I’m about 5’7″ tall). It became easier to instead keep the footwell hatch in place and scramble from the cabin to the cockpit, and now that footwell hatch is fastened down semi-permanently, which also has the advantage of making it a lot more watertight.

The rest of “accessible sailing” in this particular situation has as much to do with patterns of activity as with particular equipment. For me, this especially means not too much hand steering, and plenty of time to rest! But here’s the cool thing: the way you achieve those requirements is by sailing off on the open water, which just happens to be my favorite place to sail. In my world, it’s about a million times easier to sail all day at about 5 miles off the coast, than it is to follow a perfectly easy but narrow channel between islands or up a river that means hand steering for an hour or two. I like sailing close in when I have the pep and it doesn’t go on for too long, but I’m in sailboat heaven when the wind is right for the autopilot and it’s easy to relax in more wide-open spaces.

The glasshouse Chebacco is particularly ideal for those wide-open runs, because you can spend a lot of time inside the cabin while still having excellent visibility all around. It’s restful to get out of the wind, and at the same time it’s also possible to do a good job of keeping track of traffic and navigation. When I saw the design of this boat originally, in the magazine Small Craft Advisor, bells went off immediately – my accessible boat! The details are done with further access in mind, but it’s really the design that makes it work for my particular situation.

There are a couple of bits of equipment that have also been especially helpful. One, that’s pretty funny, is a cardboard periscope from the Edmund Scientific catalog. It works like a charm for checking on traffic, or buoys and shorelines, without getting up every 5 minutes. This would not be nearly so effective in a boat with tiny portholes! And the autopilot is my best friend. I carry a brand-new spare, for just in case it quits. The boat will also self-steer, when going some version of upwind, by holding the tiller in place with the autopilot adjusted but turned off, and fiddling with trimming the sails. That is both entertaining, and a useful backup skill in case of electrical disaster, besides saving electricity.

Because the electrical system is so important, this system also has built-in redundancy. 150 amp hours are in one bank of six 25 amp hour, 12 volt, Group U1 size, AGM batteries, and there is a separate 50 amp battery bank (two of the above batteries) for just in case. (The small Group U1 batteries fit the available space, and have been a lot easier for people to move around.) So far it hasn’t been necessary to use that second bank, but I like knowing that it’s there, especially for the autopilot, but also for navigation lights.

This system is recharged by a 55 watt Ganz solar panel on the cabin roof, which is more than adequate for keeping up with loads from the autopilot, LED nav lights, AIS, and cell phone, VHF, and dry cell charging. If I were to use the electric Torqeedo motor very much, especially when the sun is lower in the fall, I would need more charging capacity, but as things are this arrangement has worked out fine. The motor is there primarily as a safety backup and for the last little stretch of getting into and out of marina dock systems, and for this use the existing solar panel has worked out well.

The other big adaptation aboard AUKLET has been the mainsail and its reefing system, which works from the cockpit by roller-furling on the boom, and is borrowed from the Paradox microcruiser design by Matt Layden. However, this sail is not entirely perfect in this situation (for which, after all, it was NOT designed!) In heavy conditions, probably because the installation is not identical to the one on Paradox, you have to do the furling just right or the sail does not roll smoothly onto the boom. This can lead to inefficient sailing, but worse, it can create uneven strains on the sail, with potential for tearing. Further, when the wind and waves are really going, and even more so in the dark, it can be downright scary to consider taking in another reef. This is not good!

So this winter we are going to try making a junk rig, most especially because of the very easy reefing that is a major characteristic of that sail design. If I wasn’t having so much fun with things like overnight passages some ways off the coast, this would not be an issue – the Paradox rig is perfectly fine on this boat in a fairly broad range of conditions. It just hasn’t been such a good fit for me in the somewhat wilder stuff, for which the boat is perfectly capable, that I’m also inclined to be out in. So we’ll see how that progresses…

Overall, it’s been very interesting working with both of these boats from an access perspective. They each have significant strengths. AUKLET has the large, comfortable cabin without requiring setting up, adjusting, and taking down canvas as a daily routine. But while lines are all led to the cockpit, there are still reasons to go forward now and then, and docking and undocking without help are much, much more easily done by stepping off the boat and walking a bit on the dock. At 20 feet long, there is a certain amount of territory to be covered. For my present abilities, that’s okay, and I’ve been enjoying it thoroughly. But all along I’ve been happy to have SERENITY in the garage, as my accessibility fallback plan.

The great thing about SERENITY– and Peep Hens in general – is exactly that small size (14 feet) in combination with the ability to get out of the weather. I would not take that boat straight across from Penobscot Bay to Cape Ann, but it is surprisingly sturdy for coastal sailing, and I’ve been out in winds of 15 to 20 and 3 foot seas and felt perfectly fine. It won’t make a lot of progress upwind in a chop, but with a relaxed schedule, thinking ahead, and carefully watching and working with the weather, it’s surprising what a person can do in that boat, including significant travel without much of a motor.

From a mobility perspective, the Peep has several advantages. When arranged for sailing from and sleeping in the cockpit, no walking is necessary at all, including for messing with dock lines. This is true because the boat is so short, and because of the cabin design, which means it’s possible to scoot onto the gunnel, sitting, and from there, while still sitting, to slide along the top of the cabin toward the bow, with feet over the side on the dock. I know this because on one of the previous SERENITY trips there was some miscommunication about dock line arrangement, and then the crew was away from the boat for a while. This took place during a time when I was doing no walking, but as it turned out I had a perfectly fine time scrambling around and securely tying the bow line to the cleat on the dock. Gosh I like that boat!

For solo accessible sailing, SERENITY would need a few more adjustments. The anchor line is led back to the cockpit, but the anchor does not drop easily from the bow roller. I have since learned that it matters quite a bit which anchor one uses, because a good deal of friction is developed when the chain part of the rode is lying on top of the cabin, and some anchor designs are weighted in such a way as to overcome that friction and fall on their own better than others. It also seems to matter, even within the same anchor design, what the weight is of the anchor being used. A 6 pound aluminum Spade will drop sometimes, but not reliably, on SERENITY. On AUKLET, a 15 pound Manson Supreme drops every single time, but the 10 pound version will not. Neither will the 13 pound aluminum Spade, nor the 33 pound steel Spade (yes, I have an embarrassing number of anchors!) This is something that would need further work for SERENITY, though I’m hoping that the 10 pound Manson will do the trick, because there is a shorter run over the tiny cabin and therefore less friction than on AUKLET. Reefing is another issue that needs to be more thoroughly addressed on SERENITY, and as I said earlier the boat needs an autopilot and a winch. But it’s all quite doable, and I’m having some fun thinking about it.

The other thing that we did shortly after SERENITY arrived involved the strong smell of fiberglass, which is typical of a polyester resin boat with no liner. That smell decreases a bit in the first couple of years after construction, but my experience has been that after that initial improvement, even 10 years later there is still a significant odor. I have chemical sensitivities, apart from the various mobility issues, and this has been a big deal. So when I first got the Peep Hen, and it was clear that this was going to be a problem, we coated the interior of all the exposed fiberglass that we could reach. To do this we used West System 105 epoxy with the 207 hardener, which allows about a half an hour of working time and hardens almost clear. In small quantities this stuff is not terribly smelly at all. By the time it was all over the interior of the boat, even after curing for two weeks it was still pretty strong. But the good news is that epoxy, unlike polyester resin, does completely offgas, and it’s an outstanding sealer. It took some time, and a good hot summer in the sun, but by one year later there was no smell at all inside that boat. It’s been a very worthwhile effort.

So that’s about all the adaptations I can think of. Each individual’s situation is unique to that person, so it’s an individual process to work out this sort of thing. But maybe there are some helpful ideas here, and above all, there is the idea that it might be possible. Bigger sailboats have been made that are entirely wheelchair accessible, including for overnight accommodations, lines and helm (see: http://www.disabledsailing.org/ and the book An Ocean to Cross, by Liz Fordred.) But if one’s various requirements allow, there is the “small boat and ditch the wheelchair” option. For me, there is nothing more fun than leaving the empty wheelchair at the dock – for months! These little sailboats have made it much easier to do exactly that.

[Note: there are quite a few references to specific equipment and books in this post. As always, I am not receiving anything for mentioning them, and am including their names simply because I think that it might be helpful…]

“Assistive Crew”

18 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by shemaya in How Does This Work

≈ 2 Comments

In the previous post about shore support, I talked a little bit about the crew, particularly on the Peep Hen trips. The role of those crew on board the Peep Hen, SERENITY, and during the initial launch of AUKLET in 2012, was broader than the ordinary crew definition. It deserves further explanation.

Folks have asked me, over time, about equipment and whatnot for making these boats accessible related to mobility issues. And there is a whole post about that coming. But the biggest, most important part of working out accessible sailing, for me, has been having help along the way. Folks who came to “crew” did so with the understanding that they would be involved in both boat handling and in helping me with tasks that were somewhere along the spectrum of “personal assistance.” Mostly this came down to passing a lot of stuff back and forth, and taking care of anything and everything that involved lifting, or tasks requiring strength that was out of my range, and anything to do with getting off the boat.

During the process of figuring out how to manage each of these boats, that dual role was a big job! It’s one of the reasons for the steady rotation of crew on board SERENITY, because as it turned out it was also a tiring job. As the boat became gradually more organized and outfitted for what we were doing, things became easier, and the last person to crew on that boat with me in 2009 said “what, this is hard?” But the interesting thing is, that same person – thank you Michele! – came with me for the first five days after we launched AUKLET. Which was again a big job, and at the end of it, when Suzanne came to give her a ride back to Holyoke, Michele too was seriously tired. So was I, but as the instigator for all of this, it’s not quite the same!

A couple of different things made being “assistive crew” in this particular setting a hard job. For starters, getting a boat organized for comfortable cruising is a substantial project anyway, and in some ways it’s a bigger project on a smaller boat, because everything has to be just so in order for it all to fit in such a constrained space. The Peep Hen is 14 feet long. It’s a miracle of microcruiser design, but still a small space for two adults and gear for a few weeks. I was set up for sleeping in the cockpit, and crew had the bigger berth in the cabin, but this all involved morning and evening rearranging. Head systems were tried, rejected, or adapted again. Cockpit covering for rain, and insects, involved a long process of refinement, and on and on. We did a lot in the driveway, but that only gets you so far.

While all that on-water development was proceeding, the most common feedback that I got was that it would have been better to have two crew, one for boat handling, and one for “personal assistance.” Most often, folks didn’t care which role they were in, but found it challenging to move back and forth between the two. Some folks didn’t care about the roles issue, but didn’t want to be solely responsible for the muscle side of both sailing and boat well-being, as well as what they saw as being responsible for my well-being. I think that this was more challenging because where I live is not a big sailing area, and as it turned out, the folks I had rustled up almost never had any sailing experience at all. So there was a lot of learning going on about basic sailing, on the part of the crew, and a lot of learning going on for all of us about how to best arrange the boat for both living and sailing. And I was learning how to sail that particular boat, which was new to me.

On top of all this, we were going cruising! And with a very minimal auxiliary motor, no less. In hindsight, I can see what an incredibly tall order all of this was. The miracle is the amount of fun that we had regardless.

In total, about a dozen different women came sailing with me on SERENITY, in five separate trips that overall totaled 63 days, including overnights. We went everywhere from the Connecticut River across the street from where I live, to the lower Connecticut River and over to Narragansett Bay, and on a separate trip, from the North Shore of Boston to Kittery, Maine, on the border with New Hampshire. Some crew came for more than one stint! Some came partly because it was a paid gig, and some came just for fun – or out of friendship, when they ordinarily were not knocking the doors down to go sleep in a tiny sailboat. The entire undertaking was a miracle of generosity and spirit of adventure, and looking back, I am utterly floored that it happened at all.

Nowadays, since the end of that initial five days with Michele after AUKLET’s first launch, I have primarily been on the boat by myself. Here and there Suzanne has stayed overnight, and a few different folks have come sailing with me, entirely for fun. It’s been relaxing to sail alone, and to have crew whose role is simply sailboat crew. But it never could have gotten to this stage without the enormous generosity of all those folks who came sailing with me before, when it was unclear exactly how the whole venture was going to work in the first place.

It would be incomplete to leave out the people dynamics that went with all of the above. I did those trips with folks I had known for years, and with folks I had only just met. Almost always, we had a perfectly fine time, and a good bit of fun. Some of us became much closer, as a result of spending that time together, and our friendships now are deepened by that shared experience. Some have drifted off – which often happens with “assistant” relationships, as people leave the area and move on in their lives.

One old friend and I attempted a plan of sailing together on the Peep Hen for a month. In the end, after two weeks I said that I could not do that together anymore, feeling that the level of conflict was more than I was up for. In hindsight, it has become clear to me that for one thing, the boat was not yet organized enough to undertake such a long single-crew stint. The strains of the disorganization added to the inevitable strains of being in such close quarters for such a long time, and from my perspective our ability to manage those strains in a good, livable manner was exceeded. We had been fine in two previous short-duration sails, of a few days, but not so much, when it came to weeks.

Further, from the broader perspective, sailboat crew/skipper relations are always a thing that might or might not work. Sailing stories are filled with incidents of crew joining and leaving a particular boat, sometimes because the crew leaves at the first available opportunity, or later, after a particular event, and sometimes because they leave at the request of the skipper. Boat compatibility, especially over time, is a miracle involving a whole bunch of varied dynamics.

Overall, I remain enormously thankful to everybody who came on board the Peep Hen as “assistive crew,” and made all of that sailing possible. It’s pretty amazing that it worked at all, and truly amazing that so much of it worked so well! That it led to the kind of sailing that has filled this blog is an extra special gift. My heartfelt thanks go to each one of those adventurous women.

Shore Support

17 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by shemaya in How Does This Work

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Each of the trips in AUKLET, and all of the trips before that in the Peep Hen, SERENITY, involved a tremendous amount of help from quite a few people. In SERENITY, I had crew along with me, quite a few different folks taking turns coming for anything from one or two days to five days or more, as I stayed aboard the boat for as much as three weeks at a time. (See http://smountainlaurel.smugmug.com/Sailing/Serenity-14-ft-Peep-Hen for more detail on that.) Making that process work, with transportation for crew changes, and organizing and bringing of supplies, involved another role generally filled by folks who were not interested in actually going sailing, but wanted to participate in the project. This is the role that we have come to call “shore support.”

As time has gone on, my goal has been to need gradually fewer shore support meetings. This has indeed been working out, and has made it possible for the kind of extended travel that I did this year. Sailing on my own has of course made a big difference with this, and the trip last year included a lot of testing of systems and supplies, with the goal of self-sufficiency in mind.

The big issue making shore support necessary is that for the most part I don’t get off the boat. If one is more mobile, it’s perfectly reasonable to tie up near a town and hike in for supplies, and that’s how it’s usually done. Packing for AUKLET has been more like preparations for a remote expedition, except for that if I goof up, it’s a lot easier to get help!

Last year Suzanne made trips by car from Holyoke to locations all along the New England coast, bringing food, water, supplies, and tools for projects. We would meet at marinas or a friend’s dock, exchange a tremendous amount stuff, and work on projects to get the boat more in order. While I was somewhat close to western Massachusetts these would be day trips, and sometimes Theo would come too, helping with specific boat projects of the moment.

By the time I was in Maine, Suzanne and I were meeting up about every two weeks, and she was staying over on the boat for a couple of nights, since the drive had become so long. At Belfast – five hours of steady driving from Holyoke – Suzanne said (very understandably!) that that was about as far as she wanted to go. What a gift it was, all those trips. That she did that made the entire seven months of me living aboard AUKLET last year possible. And while that was going on, I was studying, and thinking.

Ten years ago, in a different boat, I had sailed to Cutler. DownEast is my favorite place to sail, and I had very much wanted to go back. I love the rocks, and the northern trees, and the remote feel of so few boats on the water. Getting there again was my biggest motivation (besides making less work for my friends) to work things out with fewer shore support trips from home – and this year it worked.

The boat was more in order, and all that packing in the spring meant that I was very well supplied. Besides substantial amounts of food that keeps easily, I had seeds and soil for growing some greens, carrots packed in peat moss, and gear for collecting rainwater, as well as a carbon water filter to get the chlorine out of municipal water if need be, or to filter stream water. I had materials for washing clothes, and tools and materials for basic repairs and improvements. For everything other than extra greens and the occasional restaurant food, I was well-stocked.

The sweet thing that happened along the way is that a number of people wanted to help! So it turned out that even though I spent quite a bit of time beyond the range of my ordinary shore support, I had an abundance of lovely vegetables, and some really fun restaurant food. Thank you so much to everybody!

The bottom line is that for me, with my range of abilities, shore support is what makes this work. But we’ve been successful at getting the amount of shore support needed down into a more manageable range, and it’s been satisfying to become more independent. For one stretch of this summer Suzanne and I went six weeks between meetings, and got together after that span more because we wanted to see each other than because of any pressing need. I still have hopes of sailing into Passamaquoddy Bay, and perhaps to Nova Scotia. With the systems that are now worked out, this could be possible.

The process of figuring out ways for me to sail off beyond the horizon has involved an enormous number of people. This has included shore support, crew, and folks at home and along the way who have helped with all manner of things, from home canning chicken, and beef stew, to helping wire the boat, and organizing the million supplies. It has included help with me physically getting into and off of these boats, and moral support – both on and off the boats – during the process of seeing if it would work.

When we first took off on SERENITY, I was in pretty tough shape, on the physical plane. During the winter of 2007/2008, after a particularly difficult autumn, I had decided that if I was going to be in such lousy health, I might as well be in such lousy health while floating. A lot of people made it possible to pull that off. As I’ve gotten more strength, it’s become possible to go off on my own. But it’s been a progression, an exploration over the last six years, that has created the foundation that has made what’s going on now possible.

People have become part of this project in a number of different ways: Quite a few people have done assistant work for me over the last many years. I used to run ads on craigslist for assistants that included discussion of sailboat projects and shore support. It was a lot of fun just to get to write those ads. And even more fun to work with all the interesting folks who showed up as a result. Friends have helped, and acquaintances along the way. Folks who build boats for a living have done a tremendous amount of creating AUKLET, and making adjustments as the boat has developed. People with a lot of expertise have shared their thoughts and experience, as I sorted out particular ways to make things work, and this process is still ongoing. The broader definition of “shore support” includes every one of these people.

It can look like a boat is sailing off alone, with a solitary sailor. But the network that supports that boat is so much more than just the water. I think that this is true of just about every boat, in one way or another, but in this case it’s especially so. I feel like a beneficiary of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, although this project has no actual connection with that organization. But the feeling is there – serious health issues, and a great wish, and that wish fulfilled. My unending thanks go to everybody who has participated in making this happen.

Sailing AUKLET

~ Small sailboat cruising and related thoughts

Category Archives: How Does This Work

Brain Retraining On Board

Two Stories

Brain Retraining

Hot Packs

Heaters

Hot Flashes

Whalen’s Question

Boat Adaptations

“Assistive Crew”

Shore Support