Marigold’s Adventure

25 Friday Nov 2022

Posted by shemaya in Great Auk, Sailing/Boat Handling, the other boat(s), Trips

Marigold kept me company on the trips this year, almost always in one or another of the little boat’s accustomed spots: when at anchor either on a line off the stern or right alongside Great Auk, or underway trailing behind over the waves.

Marigold at sea

A bit about this little craft: Marigold is a Portland Pudgy, made of roto-molded plastic, designed to work as both a dinghy and as a lifeboat with sailing capabilities. (https://portlandpudgy.com/ – included for reader convenience; I’m not receiving anything for posting.) While I’m traveling I don’t bring the sailing rig, which I have used for fun around the bay.

Since I’m not going offshore, the sailing rig for intercepting shipping lanes in lifeboat mode has not felt crucial to carry – but I love that it can be done. The Pudgy is also self bailing, with a compression plug that goes in for regular rowing so no water comes in through the drain, which otherwise happens when there is weight in the boat. But being double-hulled the Pudgy floats high and dry when unloaded, including with the plug out. Self-bailing comes in especially handy when there are showers – or storms – so the rain runs out by itself, with no additional effort required. With weight in the middle of the boat water will generally come quickly in through that drain, if it’s not closed off,but the compression plug is easy to put in.

It actually works to leave the plug out if you just stay in the bow, for example while scrambling down to get rockweed off of Great Auk’s outboard motor propellers when at anchor. With weight shifted forward, the drain at the stern is lifted completely out of the water and the boat stays dry. Three separate people I know have taken it as a point of pride to not bother to put the plug in, and to maneuver the boat with the scupper out of the water, keeping their weight forward. Learning by imitation, I’ve started to do some of the same… It’s a secure little boat, unsinkable if its double hulls are not breached, and comfortable and steady with the plug in and rowing regularly or sailing around the bay.

Marigold in Joy Bay. This is a custom mast and junk rig; the stowable version available from Portland Pudgy is a little different. See December 2018 post in this blog for how we made this one.
Photo credit: Deb Lyons

On the way south in May, our little Marigold was put to the test. The boat went on a foray of its own, thanks to a 2 AM interaction with a large fishing trawler off of Kennebunk, in the Gulf of Maine.

I’d like to start by saying that this story has a happy ending. It also has lessons, for me and perhaps for others who might avoid something similar through the retelling. It’s embarrassing to make mistakes, but hopefully useful to be shared. Marigold did a stellar job of coming back to a friendly beach to make the ending especially happy.

When Great Auk and Marigold and I left Gouldsboro Bay in early May there was a marvelous easterly wind, which carried on for over a week. With such abundance, and based on having gotten so overdone and tired last year from sailing overnight to catch favorable wind, I even stopped at night, anchoring for proper sleep. The wind was very reasonable at 10 to 15 knots most days. We had a serious complication with the wheel steering cable, which came apart off of Swans Island, but things went back together and we were able to carry on the next morning.

Leaving Burnt Coat Harbor on Swans Island, after steering cable repairs.
Photo credit: Shemaya Laurel

There was a nice night in the farther Mosquito Harbor, at the southwest corner of Penobscot Bay, and from there we set off with hopes of Damariscove Island, more or less south of Waldoboro, Maine. Although the wind was comfortable, there were small craft advisories for days for the seas, which were varying between six and 10 feet, the result of a distant storm that was keeping its stronger winds far offshore. Waiting for the advisories to go away would mean losing the east wind, so even though those waves had built up, we ventured out of Mosquito Harbor for a test, knowing that we could run back into the nearby Muscongus Bay if things did not feel right. The boat actually handled the seas just fine, which were by then in the range of 6 to 8 feet, and we sailed on.

The tricky part about those big seas is really not out on the open water – they weren’t breaking, by themselves, and the boat rose up and over them just fine. The problem comes near shallows, and in narrow entrances to shelter that lead straight off the open water. There those big waves rise up and break, with quite a bit of drama and hazard.

Just outside the entrance to the harbor at Damariscove Island. This photo doesn’t do it justice.
Photo credit: Shemaya Laurel

Harbor entrances that are normally mild and easy become places of significant danger in these conditions, with huge breakers on the rocks on either side, and the waves even rising up and crashing above nearby shoals that are 12 to 15 feet deep. Shoals like that are normally completely insignificant for a boat that draws 3 feet with its leeboards and rudder down, but they become the site of dramatic breakers in those big seas.

In light of this, the entrance to the tiny harbor at Damariscove Island showed itself to be completely out of the question for stopping, and the deeper reefs in its vicinity, with crazy intermittent breakers, made for a serious game of dodge’ems. Looking back, after ruling out Damariscove we could have turned into the wide, safe entrance to the Sheepscott River. From there, a few miles in it would be easy to turn into a protected cove. Ah hindsight!

As it was, we let that opportunity go by. It was early in the afternoon, with such good wind, and Casco Bay seemed like a reasonable second option.

One by one, potential stopping places in Casco Bay were ruled out. First because of breaking seas too close to the entrance, then because of darkness, when approaching the openings that should have been okay felt too insecure with so little visibility. I didn’t want to try them in the dark, unable to see for sure what the waves were doing before being too close to get away.

These safety calculations were influenced by the configuration of this particular boat. The motors are limited – intentionally, to meet electricity usage and weight on the stern considerations, and also because this arrangement is satisfying to my general sense of working with conditions rather than overpowering them at whim. But it did make it tricky when it came to how to get in to a sheltered spot through complicated, tight entrances with current and crosswinds, together with those adjacent breakers. This is after all why they issue small craft advisories for seas, even when the high waves are long and rounded; it’s the dramatic upheaval when those waves meet the shallows and the shore that can trounce a comparatively small vessel. I found it illuminating when I learned that the “small craft” in small craft advisories refers to vessels under 30 feet.

A motorboat with big, powerful outboards on the back would have other options in those precarious entrances, but Great Auk is not that. In wind and tide, it’s a negotiation where this boat will steer, and when. I find that interesting, especially as I have learned more about what to expect and how to work with it, but appropriate caution is crucial to success.

So I stayed out, deciding to sail through the night. This had been a possibility all along – the forecast wind was favorable and not too strong, and the seas on the open water had shown themselves to be just fine. If this had not felt like a reasonable option I would have made other choices well before this point, staying somewhere more sheltered from the outset.

I actually love night sailing. I haven’t been doing it as much lately, because I find I don’t have the resilience these days, physically, after staying up like that, but it’s a treat whenever there is a good enough argument to go ahead and sail through the night. There are opportunities for rest, out far enough for no traffic, especially having the radar detector that will start beeping when somebody else’s radar hits its antenna. This generally happens when other vessels are at least 3 miles away, and even farther for bigger boats with radar mounted higher above the water. Finding that Great Auk is up to this sort of extended trip, I have been really missing the AIS that we installed on Auklet, but that’s another story.

Once you know they are out there, one way to make sure that you will pass with plenty of space from other vessels is to use a hand bearing compass to take bearings on the other boat. If those bearings change over time, you know that you are not on a collision course. Another way is to look for navigation lights, but those are harder to see at a distance. Bigger working boats often have loads of white deck lights, also obscuring the comparatively fainter red and green on port and starboard.

However, a beautiful thing about small craft advisories is that there’s a lot less traffic when they are going on. Added to that, the sensible course from Casco Bay to Portsmouth – another wide river with reasonably easy entrance in big seas – cuts across the curve of the shore of the Gulf of Maine, leaving a good cushion away from the shore itself. We were off of Portland when it was really getting dark, and the nearer options I had looked at were either not sensible because I would not be able to check the seas in the dark, or much too far out of the way, curving around into Casco Bay at that wide entrance between Cape Elizabeth and the islands near Portland. Especially with this nice alternative, it made more sense to stay out and use that perfect wind.

So off we went, headed for Portsmouth, about 45 miles away. Once it got really dark there wasn’t a scrap of traffic, just the distant lights at the shore, with the prominent lighthouse at Biddeford showing clearly. We angled across the curve of the shoreline, and after a while were about 6 miles out. At about two in the morning the Merveille radar detector started beeping. It shows the direction of the signal it’s receiving, and it indicated that there was a boat out ahead of us. Looking through the windows in that direction, there was a small white splotch of light visible in the rather far distance.

The right answer at this point was to get up and go across the boat to the hanging bag on the starboard side of the forward cabin door, to get the hand bearing compass. The seas were now 8 to 10 feet, and not perfectly gentle, and the motion of the boat was impressive. It had been a long day, and half the night, and I was daunted by the prospect of moving across the boat yet again, with everything jouncing around so thoroughly. That was a mistake! (Now the hand bearing compass lives alongside my berth, easily in reach without any scrambling at all.)

Instead I kept watching. You can also line up the distant vessel’s light with some part of your own boat, and see if the mark changes or stays the same, where the far target lines up on something like your own window frame… But Great Auk’s orientation was constantly varying in the waves, so this was not definitive. It was also incredibly hard to believe that in all that wide open water, completely dark except for the faraway shore and that one, single boat, that we could possibly be on a collision course. That was another mistake.

Binoculars are handy – and stored where perfectly reachable – and as the distant white splotch got closer I would take looks to check if there was any more to see with magnification. For the longest time it was still just white stuff. But eventually, and clearly getting closer, I could actually see red and green navigation lights. This is bad. When you can see them both, it means that the boat with those lights is headed straight toward you.

Turning to starboard – the proper direction in an unknown situation – was going to involve gybing the sail, which was going to be a bit challenging. But I should have done it anyway, right when I saw those two lights. I was concerned about whatever the other boat’s plans were, and another approach in that situation is to get on the radio and confirm the intention to pass port to port. I had fears of turning without that confirmed agreement, and that they might for some reason turn in the same direction. Both that concern and the one about gybing were “moderate” – and somehow combined to become enough to opt for trying the radio first. But it was just like so very many stories, “But there was no answer.” And again: “There was no answer.”

Three tries, no response, and the boat oncoming. We put the wheel over, turning to starboard. Great Auk did not pick up speed quickly, what with the waves and the new heading, including gybing. Marigold was on her long towline off the stern. It helps to have a really long towline out in open water, so the dinghy does not tend to run up on the stern of the sailboat as they both go over the waves. Marigold’s line was about 35 feet long.

Apparently the folks in that big fishing trawler were below deck somewhere, also thinking that it was completely impossible that there was anybody to run into on that dark night. Somewhere in there we also gave five blasts – the danger signal – on our handheld airhorn, but I have always found it hard to believe that anybody in a boat with big engines can possibly hear that.

It’s slightly possible that the oncoming boat also turned at the last moment, but I didn’t see that happen. They passed across our stern – we had turned about 90° to starboard – and there was the sound of a thump–bump. Two quick beats. I was at the forward wheel in the cabin. It’s possible that my perspective was off, but the other boat was very, very close. All I could see was the sheer vertical face of the side of their hull, straight off the stern, and it looked to me like if I had been at the transom with an extended boat hook – which goes to 8 feet – I could have touched the fishing boat’s hull. No words for that.

As the fishing boat passed and started to draw away, its bright deck lights illuminated the water behind it, and there was poor Marigold, bobbing upside down on the dark water in those enormous and roiling waves. The towline had snapped right near where it was fastened on Great Auk. There was nobody on the brightly lit stern deck of the other boat.

I briefly thought about trying to go back for Marigold, but in the distinctly un-gentle waves – and the dark, as the fishing boat continued steaming away at speed – it felt both too dangerous to try and regardless unlikely to succeed. Marigold was now upwind, which would mean motoring, and motoring upwind in waves and a good breeze is exactly what Great Auk will not do. Heartbreaking as it was, Great Auk and I sailed away, and little Marigold disappeared in the night.

Of course the worst, scariest part of the story is not Marigold. Great Auk – and I – really did come a whisker away from getting squashed. I wasn’t sure that the motors hadn’t been hit, raised as they were for sailing, extending a bit behind the transom. In hindsight I’m sure I would’ve felt it if they had been, but I just had the sound of that clunking in my mind. I went back to check, but other than the missing Marigold, and the broken line, all was as it should be. The white lights were continuing to recede off our starboard quarter.

Thinking about it afterwards, I believe that what happened is that the fishing boat crossed Marigold’s towline, yanking Marigold against the far side of their hull – the thumping sounds I heard – and pulling hard on the towline until it snapped. I had a hook arrangement high on the back of the post that supports the starboard corner of the cabin top, to keep the towline up and away from the outboard motor. It’s a carabiner tied open, that was tightly lashed to the back of that 2 x 3 post. In the night I thought the carabiner was gone, but the next morning I saw that it was pulled completely to the starboard side of that post, with gouges in the corners of the wood from the seine twine lashing. I didn’t feel Great Auk shift when Marigold’s line was broken, that I remember, but there were a lot of waves making for a lot of shifting already. It must’ve been quite a yank, but very quick.

Afterwards we readjusted our course, and I took about five minutes to catch my breath and consider. Then I got on the radio to the Coast Guard, as it was important for them to know that if somebody found Marigold floating around out there upside down that there was not a person who needed rescue. At the same time I got to tell them what happened, and there was a slight possibility that if that other boat happened to by now be near the radio they might hear about it also. The Coast Guard was appreciative, and suggested we talk on my cell phone, because the signal from my handheld VHF radio was not very strong. So we finished the conversation by phone, with them taking contact information and a description in case Marigold was found.

While that conversation was going on, the white lights from the fishing boat turned, and circled back to where we had been – Great Auk was sailing at about 3 knots, so we had covered a bit of distance from that spot. Then they turned, as if to come up behind us, maybe a mile or two back. This completely freaked me out – the last thing I wanted was to go through that again! – so we gybed again, moving at an angle away from their new course. Eventually they turned again and really went away. Who knows if they heard the radio conversation, and circled back to look for Marigold.

Although I made the mistake of not turning much sooner, technically that fishing vessel was at fault. Primarily, they were not keeping watch, and secondarily they were not actually engaged in fishing, which made Great Auk traveling under sail the “stand on vessel.” It’s not just that you have the right of way – it’s that it’s your responsibility to keep going on your original path, so everything is predictable, and the other vessel is supposed to give way, and adjust their course. But if there is risk of collision, then the give-way vessel is regardless supposed to change course to avoid it – which we did narrowly, with not nearly enough cushion for my taste. And counting Marigold being collided with, we were at fault also for not avoiding the whole thing entirely. There is a book completely devoted to these rules, for anybody who is unfamiliar and wants to get into it:
https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/navigation-rules-amalgamated is the online version.
It’s also available in print from various marine supply stores, including this one (nope, not receiving anything for posting): https://www.starpath.com/catalog/books/1832.htm

Of course in the real world, usually the bigger vessel does what it’s going to do, and the littler one gives way. But according to the actual rules, that fishing boat had really screwed up, so it’s not such a surprise that they were not getting into a discussion about it on the radio that would identify them. Especially since they would have known from the radio exchange with the Coast Guard that there was nobody in the water needing rescue, or anything like that. So they have stayed a mystery – I never did see a boat name through all that.

Once the Coast Guard call was done, from there we carried on through the night. By dawn I could see Portsmouth in the distance, and by 9 AM we were in the river. Somehow I just couldn’t get my head around the near miss. I was terribly sad about losing Marigold, and whatever emotions I had about the whole event were completely focused on that. I felt like I had let the little boat down, not taking care of Marigold properly, and we have had such a companionable relationship.

But this is what stays in mind: one often wonders why so many people have boats that sit on their moorings or at their slips for almost the entire season. I think that this is a big part of the reason: besides embarrassing maneuvers, like blowing dockings and missing moorings with an audience, things happen on boats that give you pause. Through your own and/or others’ mistakes or inattention, the stakes can get high, sometimes surprisingly fast. It’s letting go the lines that means you take that chance of relying on your own capabilities for a good outcome.

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I said that this story has a happy ending, and it does.

After I arrived in Portsmouth I called Portland Pudgy, thinking about what I was going to do about an alternate dinghy. The really nice woman who answered the phone, besides remembering Marigold from the blog post about the junk sailing rig, which I had shared with their office, told me that it had twice happened that somebody’s Pudgy had been lost, and when found by some kind person the company had been contacted with the serial number from the errant boat. Portland Pudgy keeps files on who has bought them, and was able to reunite both of those lost boats with their owners. A friend with a trailer-sailing boat had even had his more substantial boat come back to him, recovered just off a beach in Florida, after a long story of it having been abandoned far out at sea after a rescue. I took some heart from this, but continued making plans for what to do to replace the dinghy.

Meanwhile, the easterly wind had run itself out. Trade-offs in the design of Great Auk mean that this boat sails primarily downwind, with perhaps a beam reach in the right situation. With the wind shifted south and southwest, I wasn’t going anywhere for some time. That was fine by me – I was ready for a rest! I set up to do some visiting, and settled into a nice anchorage on the Kittery side of the harbor.

A couple of days later, wouldn’t you know I got a phone call! Somebody had reported to the harbormaster in Kennebunk, Maine – about 25 miles from Portsmouth – that Marigold had been found on the beach. The harbormaster went to investigate, called Portland Pudgy with the serial number, and next thing you know the harbormaster and I were having a conversation. Me being in the Portsmouth area, I had been in touch with Luke Tanner – regular readers might remember him from the previous post. He and his wife Merrilea drove to Kennebunk with their trailer! Faster than you can say I can’t believe this happened, there they were in Kittery sliding Marigold down the gangway to the public dock, with the sturdy little boat barely the worse for wear. Perfectly, perfectly miraculous.

Now Marigold has a special sticker with contact information, for an even more direct line than the kind folks at Portland Pudgy. Many thanks to Dave Estes, harbormaster in Stockton Springs, who offered that sticker after I told him this story. But we dearly hope that Marigold will stay close by from here on out.

Here’s the track for the territory covered in this story. With endless gratitude to Dave McDermott, of ofmapsandmapping.wordpress.com for this beautiful rendition of where we went.

I took this whole experience to be a little like falling off a horse – and that it’s important to get back on soon afterwards. When a north wind eventually came around we set out from Portsmouth and on to Cape Ann, near Gloucester, Mass. After another few days of waiting for the next favorable breeze we continued south across Massachusetts Bay, which led to another night sail, this time across Cape Cod Bay (see previous post for more on how that came about).

I went into that second overnight passage with some trepidation, but with the feeling of it being important to get back on the horse. There was actually a good bit of traffic on Cape Cod Bay the first half of that night, but on the upside, in all that traffic nobody running those fishing boats was asleep below deck, for exactly that reason; there was enough surrounding activity to keep their full attention. The hand bearing compass was right beside me, and in regular use. Proper distances were kept throughout, and I came away with renewed faith that we could sail at night and be okay.

Nowadays Marigold feels extra chummy. The boat used to stay on the starboard side of Great Auk, at anchor, keeping the slapping of the little waves at a bit more of a distance in the night. But now I rather like it, in my berth, hearing the bit of splashing and seeing Marigold right there out my window. Such a steady companion.

When tied alongside like this for the night there are no unexpected clunks waking a person up, which sometimes happens with a dinghy left on its painter off the stern. And it makes me so happy, looking out the window from my berth, to see Marigold, home snug from that big adventure.
Photo credit: Shemaya Laurel

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Postscript

This blog entry has languished for months. It’s now closing in on the end of November, and both I and the boats are off of the water, as of mid-October. But there was another story before that happened:

One evening in September I sailed after dark in upper Penobscot Bay, leaving Stockton Springs at about 9 PM for various reasons of weather and wind. We were bound for the very snug harbor a short distance away at Holbrook Island, around the corner from Castine. This is a trip of about 6 miles from Stockton Springs, doable in about two hours with a decent breeze.

One part of this little hop involves crossing a very low-traffic shipping lane, that leads up the Penobscot River. It’s possible to go all over these waters for weeks and never see a ship in this particular track. But wouldn’t you know it. As I was about halfway to the harbor entrance by Castine, there was the Merveille sounding that it was picking up a radar signal, and an indistinct white splotch was visible out ahead, about 3 miles off. My preferred course involved angling across the shipping lane marked on the chart, and I was in it.

Out came the hand bearing compass, and the binoculars. The white splotch started to reveal itself as a very thoroughly lit cruise ship, and the bearing stayed the same. You couldn’t have made this up, that a second time I would be out at night with zero traffic, only in this crossing for a scant two hours, and would be on a collision course with the only ship out on this track for days.

You can bet that I turned instantly. Dropped both motors into the water for additional speed, headed perpendicular to both the marked shipping lane and the approach of the cruise ship, and zipped toward shore. This not only took Great Auk quickly out of the shipping lane, but for good measure led into water too shallow for a cruise ship but plenty deep enough for us. When we were safely near the shore and well out of the track marked on the chart for ships, we turned to parallel the land, also staying safely away from the rocks.

It’s a tight area, where the shipping lane is marked, and there was a time when we could see both the red and the green navigation lights on the cruise ship. Their crew was wide awake, and at one point shone a spotlight in our direction (we also had our giant inflatable radar reflector at the top of the mast, as we had on that other less fortunate night). I believe they turned, in order to leave a better cushion, as they had loads of deep water to work with on the other side of the shipping lane, away from the shore, and then they straightened out again. With both of our course changes we passed at about a mile away, with no drama other than Great Auk’s quick skedaddle toward shore, long before the other boat was close.

But seriously! As in, really?!?

I did appreciate the opportunity to do it right, and I appreciated the previous lesson, so there was no question of disbelief, and no hesitation in taking immediate action. Funny, how the Universe provides.

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Anchor Rode Marking

22 Saturday Aug 2020

Posted by shemaya in Great Auk, Sailing/Boat Handling

≈ 2 Comments

When anchoring, it’s important to know how much line, or chain, or combination of the two that you have out. The overall combination is called the “rode,” whatever you use. There are calculations for determining how much rode you should let out, based on the depth of the water, the height of the tide, and the height of the boat’s bow off the water; the term for that ratio is “scope.” I’m not going to go into that calculation here, but for those who would like a reference here is one, and many more can be found with a quick round of Internet searching. There is a little more about scope added on at the end of this post.
https://www.boatus.com/expert-advice/expert-advice-archive/2019/january/how-to-calculate-anchor-scope

Once you know how much rode you ought to have out, there is the question of how your rode is marked, so you’ll know how much you have sent overboard.

There are colored plastic marking tapes sold at marine stores, which go into three strand anchor line quite well. But you can’t read them in the dark. They also don’t attach well to chain, and putting them into “8 plait” anchor line (one of the tradenames is Brait – nope, not receiving anything for that) does not seem friendly to the line, with possibilities for chafe. That’s the last thing you want to worry about, chafe at regular intervals in your anchor line. I switched over to 8 plait a few years ago because it doesn’t kink, as well as that it takes up a lot less space in its locker than three strand. I’m very happy with it, but the marking question became an issue, which led to the approach described here.

The old-time traditional way of marking anchor line involves different types and colors of fabric, and leather, in a specific sequence, which seems much too complicated, and also not good in the dark. So far as I know, nobody else besides me is doing the version described here, but maybe it will be helpful for those who are interested. I’d like to thank Dave Zeiger of Triloboats.com for his post about his approach to lead line marking, which inspired my thinking for the arrangement I settled on. Dave’s version, for his and Anke’s lead line in the deep waters of coastal Southeast Alaska, is found here: https://triloboats.blogspot.com/2012/03/our-lead-line-plumbing-depths.html

My version uses small knots and big knots: small ones represent 30 feet or 5 fathoms, and big ones stand for 90 feet or 15 fathoms. My charts all use feet, here on the New England coast, so that’s the unit I’ve learned to think in, and that’s what I’ll refer to from here on out. (Those who think in fathoms could easily switch it over.) A string is tied into the line every 30 feet, with knots in the string that correspond to the length of the line from the anchor.

I ordinarily use 60 feet of chain for the first part of the rode, so the chain is marked at 30 feet with colorful wire ties on a number of links, to make them easy to notice on the way by. Sixty feet is marked by the transition between chain and line, and then the strings start at 90 feet; all of these can be seen in the photo at the top of this post.

The kind of string that has worked well for this is tarred nylon seine twine, which I discovered thanks to the the author of The Complete Rigger’s Apprentice, Brion Toss, who talks about using it in many ways. Thanks to the Internet I was able to find it years ago, and now I use it in many ways also. It is sturdy, comes in multiple thicknesses, does not rot, and holds a knot without slipping. I’ve used it for lashing in many places on the various boats, where the seine twine is still going strong after years in the weather and many miles of use. (Not receiving anything for posting this link – it’s just here for readers’ convenience)
https://www.memphisnet.net/product/2192/twine-tarred-seine

Here’s what the markers look like, tied and ready to be added to the line:

On three strand line, I think it’s worth looping the marker around one strand of the anchor line, and back through itself, and then weaving it over and then under the next two strands, so it is well-fastened. On 8 plait, I loop it around one pair of strands and back through itself, and then work it over and under a couple more times. With this weaving in mind, when you tie the markers it’s good to leave enough length for those extra tucks. It’s important to tuck the knot that forms the big loop, to avoid confusion.

One of the things I like about this particular arrangement of knots is that it works roughly even when one is tired and “stupid” from cold or too long a day, or whatever else. The first big knot is “about 100 feet,” two big knots and one little one are “200 and a little,” two big knots and two or three little knots are “200 and some,” or “200 and a lot,” and three big knots are about 300 feet.

The funny thing about this arrangement is that 90 feet can be represented by either 3 small knots or one big knot. The reason I do it this particular way is to keep that pattern that roughly follows the number of feet in hundreds. Fatigue and impaired thinking are nothing to mess around with, and it helps to have systems that work easily even when thinking has gone fuzzy.

I had never drawn this arrangement out on paper until pondering trying to explain it for my friend Janine, who is starting in on her new-to-her sailboat. But now I’m happy to have the printed key. I think I’m going to laminate a copy and post it by the anchor lines on Great Auk.

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A couple of thoughts on scope:

Unlike the link that I posted above, almost everything one finds suggests that one should generally use a minimum of 7:1 scope for anchoring. But then you go out and anchor where there are other boats, and find that people look at you like you’re a crazy person, if they ask how much line you have out and you tell them the amount that correlates to 7:1. They are also affronted, because it means there’s not really enough space for them, when everybody swings around. People I’ve talked with who anchor routinely in very deep water use a lot less – sometimes as little as 2:1 or 3:1. That seems iffy to me, but things probably work differently when anchoring in something like 60 or 100 feet. And some folks in regular anchorages use those small amounts. Though dragging in regular anchorages is more common than it ought to be.

Further, it really matters what kind of anchor you use, when calculating needed scope, and this does not seem widely addressed. Danforth style anchors really do need 7:1 to bite in properly. At the other end of the spectrum, fisherman anchors, also called yachtsman – the kind that people put in tattoos – do fine with quite a bit less. And other anchor styles seem to fall somewhere in the middle. There is a really nice video about this, at the video subscription publication Off Center Harbor. I believe that you can see an abridged version of the video without subscribing:

Anchoring a Boat, Part 2 — Reliability & Versatility of a Danforth vs. a Yachtsman Anchor

So those are some additional thoughts, when it comes to working out how much rode one should put over in the first place.

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Fatigue and Seamanship

14 Tuesday May 2019

Posted by shemaya in Sailing/Boat Handling

≈ 1 Comment

[Photo: Kent Mullikin]

[This post was mostly written about three years ago, but did not make it onto the blog until now. In hopes that it might be pertinent, and perhaps useful, to Race to Alaska participants, this has seemed like the perfect time to put it up.]

Sometime in 2016

The subject of fatigue has come up before in this blog, and now here it is again from this last trip in the Peep Hen, SERENITY. I’m not talking here about general, everyday tiredness, or sleepiness, or health issues, but rather about the broader impact of lack of sufficient rest when it comes to seamanship.

Specific effects of fatigue as it relates to seamanship involve impairments in several functions: decision-making; mental processing ability, including the time required for that mental processing; and the ability to hold multiple aspects of one’s surroundings in mind at the same time, or “situational awareness.” Lack of sleep, or of quality sleep, is the most obvious source of this kind of fatigue, but extended, continuous strain, for example from long hours of tricky navigation, and/or challenging weather, can also contribute significantly.

On this past trip, I came away understanding that my cruising routine has substantial room for improvement in the area of getting enough sleep, as well as with prioritizing something like regular eating. Both of these are more complicated in the Peep Hen than they are aboard AUKLET. For one thing, SERENITY is not nearly as forgiving in an uncomfortable anchorage. For the same size waves, with SERENITY being so much smaller, and flat bottomed, there is quite a bit more motion, compared to AUKLET, and it takes a good bit of getting used to. Buzzy-headed seasickness while at anchor was a new experience for me, which included waking up in the morning with no inclination for eating, for most of the day.

Additionally, eating itself is complicated in SERENITY, while underway. Having no electronic self steering is satisfying, and I enjoy being off for weeks on a boat with no 12 volt electrical system, but there is a price to be paid for that simplicity. In a fairly broad range of conditions, the boat will steer itself with the tiller lashed and the sail and centerboard adjusted just so. But being such a small boat, as soon you shift your weight – say, to go into the cabin to get some food – the balance is completely disrupted, and off the boat goes in a different direction. In open water and minimal traffic this doesn’t matter as far as running into anything, but it can really make a dent in progress with a nice breeze. Often enough, I’d opt for waiting until sometime later to eat… Which often led to “sometime later” meaning after anchoring at the end of the day. A better organized individual – which I hope to become – would be placing midday food in the cockpit before raising the anchor. (I did get better at this.)

As for sleep, my sense of how to plan for a truly serene anchorage in SERENITY is developing. That will go some way toward improving the quality of sleep that is achieved; there is still the issue of quantity. Sailing a distance – say, to go the 60 or so miles to visit in Penobscot Bay from Gouldsboro – involves working with the tides. If the tide starts going the right way in the early morning, that can easily mean waking up at 3 AM. If you read the little clock wrong, and you think it says that the time is 0245, but you missed the microscopic “1” at the front, it’s a sad moment an hour later when you find out that you started your morning not all that long after midnight! Somehow, this happened twice on this trip (yes, I should be using the clock with the giant numbers). In combination with a string of already early days, those extra-early mornings put a real dent in the overall sleep tally. In spite of this, it can be very hard to decline a good tide and a fair wind, and off I would be again, first thing in the next almost-day, with only the occasional periods of time completely off.

The effects of these patterns of missed sleep are cumulative. There is fascinating reading in the book, Bridge Resource Management for Small Ships, by Daniel Parrott, on this subject (link is included for readers’ convenience – I’m not receiving anything from it). The book was written for larger commercial shipping captains and crew, such as folks on ferries and tugs, but a tremendous amount of it is relevant for the small boat sailor, and I recommend it highly. Among other things, the author discusses the deterioration of abilities that comes with lack of sleep, and the necessity for those lost hours to be recovered, in order to thoroughly regain one’s abilities.

On this trip, nothing dire happened as a result of all that missing sleep. But there was an event that I spent some time pondering over, and eventually recognized as exactly the outcome of this kind of shortage of rest.

While visiting with friends, and the night before having had an actual good, restful night for the first time in a little while, I was not thinking about any of the above issues. As the day unfolded, I was presented with a sailing situation that was unfamiliar, and that would have benefited from a simple, straightforward adjustment to the plan that had already been made. This would have saved my friend in the dinghy a lot of rowing! And my other friend on the shore from having to watch the craziness of what unfolded.

Oddly enough, considering that what I do is small sailboat cruising, more or less without a motor, I’m a creature of habit. The sailing thing works for me because of the ridiculous amount of time I spend thinking through how this or that maneuver, or process, or situation might be going to unfold. Sailing keeps life interesting, because of course there are multitudes of events that do not go according to how one might have thought, and then one gets to think through how to handle a similar situation in the future, for a more desirable outcome. In a perfect world, the cumulative effect of all that thinking would result in a certain amount of flexibility, applying previous knowledge and understandings to new situations, and arriving at the preferred approach the first time through.

This is where the effects of fatigue come in. Addressing new situations involves both thought processing, and a certain amount of speed for that processing, in order to come up with an appropriate decision within the timeframe of the event that is taking place. The dullness of thinking that is the trademark of lack of adequate rest can appear in such novel ways!

This particular situation developed from a planned stop at a half-tide dock, with the tide now falling, and the time having come to depart, before the boat would be aground. A lovely visit had been had, and departure was going forward in order, with the idea that I would anchor in the more protected corner of the cove some distance away. Another friend had been delayed, and was unable to come over for this rare visit before the tide made it necessary to go off. There was discussion that I would go anchor, and the other friend could row out in the dinghy later on.

About the time that the boat was away and under sail, there this friend was on the dock, and shortly afterward, as I was sailing down the cove, I could see that he was setting out, rowing in the dinghy. He has been very kind in accepting my apologies for what happened next! With a perfectly nice, mild breeze, and myself stuck in the plan that I would anchor and we would visit, for a ridiculous amount of time I continued tacking toward the anchoring spot. This with my friend (in his 70s) rowing – into the wind, no less – following at a distance much too far for talking. He has gallantly, and kindly, maintained that he really wanted to get a feel for more distance rowing of this particular dinghy, which our friend, the owner of this Peapod, is so pleased with for its rowing abilities. That opportunity has certainly been had, much to my chagrin. Watching from shore must’ve been even worse than rowing.

At the time, I thought, “There’s a right answer to this question, and I don’t know what it is.” After a bit, I finally hove to, my friend caught up with me, and as the two boats had started to drift toward the rocky shore we had some fun sailing away from it, the dinghy held alongside the Peep Hen as we sailed, and then tacking toward that anchorage goal. Of course, good sense might have dictated that once we were away from the hazard of the shore, we could have again heaved to, and had a peaceful few minutes visit until, being on a tight schedule, he needed to head back to the dock. Alas, this was another flexibility in plans that did not occur to me until later.

The right answer in that situation was that there was a perfectly fine, mild sailing breeze, showing no signs of imminent demise – and I was in a sailboat. There were no time considerations on my end, and no tide considerations. It would have been perfectly easy, and fun, and nice, to have sailed right back to that dinghy, as soon as it became clear what was happening. Conversation could have been had about the best next step – given the timing of the moment, probably heaving to together for a visit, and then each of us going to our appointed destinations. With fewer time constraints, my friend might have climbed into SERENITY, and we might have towed the dinghy, anchored, and visited until it was time for him to row back to the dock. Or if the climb was pesky, SERENITY could have easily towed the dinghy with my friend in it back to the anchoring spot.

Of course, the sensible approach is not what happened. It all worked out, if with a ridiculously thorough rowing test of the Peapod, and many wishes on my part for having done things differently. It took about two days for me to realize that, in fact, the unfolding of that event was a classic fatigue issue. There was a perfectly sensible resolution to what was for me an unfamiliar situation. That resolution included the need for a change in plan. As well, the pace of the unfolding situation required processing speed that I was not able to muster.

There have been times when I have declared myself “grounded,” as far as sailing any further, until I have rested enough to feel properly functional again. In the past, my criteria for staying put have included certain levels of not being able to solve basic navigational math problems in my head, or observing myself with noticeably slowed thinking and action for everyday routines. This last can be seen in tasks as simple as basic dental care or food preparation, and a rather surreal sense of slow-motion.

From the above rowing/sailing experience, I am coming to understand that my “fatigue evaluation criteria” need to be adjusted, to be somewhat broader. I now see that there is a middle ground where one is basically functional, but noticeably compromised for adjusting to unfamiliar situations. Also of note is that one good night’s sleep can be exactly what puts a person into that second category. Typically one thinks, “now I am rested,” after that first good night – but my experience has been that the day after that first good rest is when fatigue issues that are the result of the longer, cumulative deficit can especially lead to impaired functioning. It’s counterintuitive, after that good night’s sleep, but I have learned to watch for it.

The cost of the above experience was embarrassment and chagrin on my part, and hopefully no blisters or other effects for my rowing friend – as well as discomfort, I am sure, for the friend on shore, observing all of this. In the grand scheme of things, one would like it to be different, but, so far as I know, there was no serious harm done. The lesson, however, is about what could happen with the same degree of being compromised by fatigue, in a situation with higher stakes for the boat or boats, or their occupants. I am now, again, putting serious thought to the question of managing rest.

Boats are often uncomfortable; one adjusts to living with a certain amount of discomfort, and often simply ignoring it. But the discomfort of fatigue is not so simple as ignoring it and going on. For the safety of the entire operation, it’s important to say, “oh, this is *significant* fatigue discomfort – it’s time to stop!” This isn’t so easy to do, with a perfect wind, but it looks like it’s time for me to develop that ability. And at bare minimum, knowing that one is in that condition of “fatigue impairment,” it’s possible to be particularly vigilant for its effects.

A lot of this could be looked at as a singlehanding issue, and partly it is. But managing fatigue is important for everybody in a sailboat, and opportunities for fatigue abound. It’s my hope that by writing out this pesky tale, perhaps it will resonate with other sailors, and contribute to the idea of managing rest, toward the safety of all of us.

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[Woodblock print: Dave McDermott]

Judgment

04 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by shemaya in Sailing/Boat Handling

≈ 4 Comments

Note to self: if there are no sails, and the wind is blowing, but not toward where you want to go, do not entertain the idea that you can yuloh wherever you want! Rig the sails… Or stay put. Wait for glassy calm, and while you are waiting, rig those sails!

Looking on the bright side, the most interesting thing about “motorless” is the opportunity to further develop one’s judgment, by collecting completely new experiences. I’ve never claimed to be a fast learner – I’m just determined. Each new set of circumstances has so many intriguing, and significant, factors.

The new circumstances these days have to do with both launching the boat motorless, and being the proud keeper of a mooring that is close to 1/2 mile from our shore. The distance has to do with the location of the channel, and the substantial mud flat at low tide, that leaves everything but the channel high and dry (or muddy) when the tide goes out. It’s a bit of a task, to get back and forth across that distance.

The right answer in this combination of new circumstances would have been to work on rigging the boat on the mooring, and then to go back to shore (before the tide went out) with the dinghy that got me and Suzanne out there in the first place. Instead, I had the idea that it would work to bring AUKLET back to the float under yuloh power, to do the rigging more conveniently where one could climb around, on and off the boat itself. Now that the storm of the other day had passed, the boat would settle just fine in the mud at low tide alongside the float, being both accessible and easier to work on. With this in mind, as the afternoon breeze died back we let go the mooring and AUKLET headed for shore, with the dinghy in tow.

In a flat calm, propelling AUKLET by yuloh is both pleasant and effective. The boat moves along well enough for good steering with the tiller and makes quite reasonable progress. Somewhere in the range between glassy calm and larger wavelets there is a transition from easy and pleasant to difficult to steer. Some wavelets/wind is doable; then there’s a crossover point, beyond which the wind catches the high bow and cabin, making any steering a compromise at best. The other day I was reminded about all of that, as instead of dying back further the breeze strengthened when we were halfway across that open expanse between the mooring and our float. Headway was slowed, steering diminished, and there was no turning the bow the 20° closer to the wind that would have put us back on course.

This reminder of yuloh and steering limits led to an evening on the shore, about 450 feet downwind of our destination, in spite of all our best efforts. As the shore got closer, and being too far downwind, we anchored. Scrounging around, Suzanne and I tied together every spare line on the boat, and then dinghyed toward the float, running out of length about 100 feet short of the goal. We retrieved some extra line from the float, and led it back along the shore to where the dinghy had stopped. Altogether, with one long pieced-together mish-mash laid out between boat and float, we were eventually in position to pull the boat upwind to its berth.

Did I mention the tide was falling? After hauling the anchor back up, and pulling on the long line toward the float, that same breeze pushed the boat into the shore, where with very little ceremony it was soon contentedly stuck. Using the dinghy, we put the spare anchor out in deeper water, so that when the tide came back it would be possible to keep the boat off the shore (it would have been handy to have done this earlier). We adjusted our patchwork line to the float, and settled in, putting our weight on the shore side of the boat so it would go down in that direction, happily observing that it would be a soft landing on mud and grass.

With nothing better to do for the afternoon, we got the mizzen sail rigged…

The neighbors came to visit, checking that all was okay, and it was an easy walk on the now-drying shore between the boat and our house. I stayed with the boat, Suzanne went for supper, returning with a delightful thermos of hot food, and we counted out the calculations for when the water would be back.
On the theory that there was no reason whatsoever for both of us to spend all those hours in the fun-house angles of the beached boat, Suzanne went back to the house for a nap, and I settled in to the low side of the cabin to do the same thing. Sometime around 11 or 11:30 that night the boat would be floating again, ready to pull to our original destination.

What a production! The anchor line for keeping the boat off the shore was rigged with a buoy – really, a spare fender – so that it could be let go in the night and retrieved at another time. We agreed on a flashlight code (one flash for “pull,” two flashes for “stop pulling”) and that I would call on the cell phone when the boat was floating. Suzanne asked how I would be sure to wake up, and I responded confidently that I never sleep through the boat starting to float, because it is both noisy and jouncy, with small creaks and slapping water noises, and shifts of position as the interior of the boat comes back to horizontal.

At five minutes to midnight, there I was sound asleep, awakened by the ringing telephone. Thank goodness! With the boat not completely outfitted, I had no alarm clock. The night was perfectly flat calm, and I had slept soundly right through the boat coming up! Fortunately Suzanne had woken up at 10:30, and had been waiting, ready to go. On the one hand, that was a long wait. But on the bright side, instead of rushing our trip across barely submerged rocks, the tide was now an hour before an astronomical 13.6′ high, with the water deep, and perfectly still. Stars reflected on the glassy surface, and what had been so hard, and impossible, in the afternoon, was now an easy, relaxed pull on that long line, gathering it in as the boat moved quietly through the moonless but starlit dark. In the end we used no flashlight signals, and were soon near enough to talk softly, hoping not to wake the neighbors. The anchor line out to deeper water was unneeded, and after it was stretched out the fender/buoy went over the side, to be picked up in the daytime. Moving the boat took about ten minutes, with everything laid out and the water so peaceful.

After AUKLET was tied alongside the float, including lines from the masts to make sure that the boat would lean toward the float when the tide went out, we spent a little time admiring the stars, and said goodnight. I stayed on the boat, to make sure that it would go down okay when the water left again around 0430. It was chilly – 37° that night – but satisfying to sleep on board with the boat properly snug.

For the future, I will know that at the very least the mizzen sail must be rigged before trying the yuloh in a breeze. If we’d had that tidbit of sail area at the stern it would have been much simpler to correct for the steering difficulties. But really, the right answer is that even though getting a junk rig set up and ready to go is a little fussy and time-consuming, don’t plan to go anywhere before it’s done! Motorless, in a sailboat, really does mean that you rely on the sails. Don’t leave home without them…

Peep Hen Capabilities and Limits, part two: Shifting and Gusting Winds

16 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by shemaya in Sailing/Boat Handling, the other boat(s)

≈ 14 Comments

Arriving in Rockland Harbor anchorage, after quite a flurry. Yes, the clew on that sail could use an additional line down to the boom… Photo credit: Teeter Bibber

The most alarming thing that happened in the Peep Hen this year had to do with sailing in quite strong wind gusts, that were blasting in from radically different directions compared to wherever the last one had come from. In this situation, the boat can go a long ways toward ending up right over on its side. Being a Peep Hen, with heavy ballast in its box keel, it does reliably come back upright, but it’s the one situation in this boat where, from my perspective, things really are not fun. It’s worth considering the details on this possibility, if one is inclined to test the limits on this particular boat.

Ordinarily, the Peep Hen does very, very well. Especially when loaded for cruising, it’s comfortable, and easy to sail in a perfectly reasonable range of coastal conditions. It’s a little snappy when it’s not loaded, but water, food, and gear for multiple nights take care of that nicely. Twice this summer, both times in harbors in Penobscot Bay, things got more complicated. Both happened in strong, gusting northwest wind. I have friends who decline to sail their bigger boats on those days in this area, and I’m understanding that thinking quite a bit better lately.

The first time this problem came up was after a half a day of sailing on a beam reach, going south from Belfast and headed for Rockland. The wind increased as things went along, but the boat was fine. The handheld anemometer showed gusts to about 18 knots, right there at cockpit level, but they arrived more or less from the same direction, and the boat was already making good speed in the steadier wind of 12 to 14 knots. Eventually I put in a reef, which settled things down nicely.

A bit later I was working my way into Rockland Harbor, and without realizing it had happened, picked up a lobster trap buoy and its line, hooked on the rudder. The boat steered funny, and was slow, and three times I looked over the stern, expecting to see something amiss, but nothing showed. In the past, hooking a lobster trap line (called a “pot warp” in this area) has stopped the boat dead, unceremoniously turning the bow away from the wind. This day, the wind was so strong that we (boat and I) were towing that lobster trap behind us, all the while tacking into the inner part of the harbor. Good grief.

This would have been enough complication for one day (never mind with the problem still unrecognized) but the next thing that happened was that ferocious wind gusts came blasting from the land, toward the mouth of the harbor. Just like that, the boat was well over on its side, and not nearly as inclined to come right back up as is usually the case. Having such high topsides, water did not quite pour over the gunwale into the cockpit, but very nearly. The boat was over well past 45°, but as there is no clinometer (yet!) we don’t have figures for it.

Ordinarily it has worked out very well in this boat to sail with the main sheet wrapped in a couple of figure eights around a vertical pin in the tiller. We have used that pin to replace the clam cleat that the boat came with, because the clam cleat was prone to jamming. The pin arrangement is easy to release, but stays put.

Fastening the main sheet at all goes against conventional wisdom, which says that on a small boat one should never have the main sheet cleated; rather one should be somehow holding it, so that it can be released instantly in case of problems.

My experience with this particular boat has been that it’s possible to get away with fastening the sheet in most situations, because when there is a big gust of wind, simply turning the boat into the wind with the tiller is enough to release the strain and let the boat get back on its feet, which it does immediately. The only situation where I’m in the habit of holding the sheet is if there’s not enough room to make that turn, either because of other boats, the shoreline, or stray rocks and other obstacles. Otherwise, it has worked out fine to have the sheet wrapped on that pin.

Not so, on this day! There was of course a cure for this alarming heeling in the gusts: to go back to holding the sheet, so that it could be quickly released when the boat started to get pushed over. It also helped to leave the sail set further out than normal for sailing upwind, and both of these things I eventually did. But it was still shocking to have had the boat go over so far, to put the tiller completely to leeward, and to have the boat not come up immediately, and it took more than one round to begin to figure it all out. It was as if the boat had no headway because of recovering from the previous pushing-over, so the steering had no effect, and the rudder was unable to turn the boat into the wind and let it come back up. In hindsight, it’s also possible that the boat was over so far that the rudder was out of the water anyway. Either way, the lobster trap interfering with forward motion was not helping the situation!

Eventually I looked, yet again, over the stern, and this time could see the line stretching down into the water, and the buoy pinned tightly to the lowest part of the far side of the rudder, where it had been well hidden from my vantage point on the other side of the boat. Five minutes later the buoy and its line were popped loose with a boat hook, and the boat was free, though it was still a bit of a project to get to the upwind corner of the harbor where I had planned to anchor.

During the worst of this whole production, the wind on the handheld anemometer registered gusts of 22 knots, and sustained wind of 18 knots. Heaven only knows why, with all that going on, one of my priorities was holding that gauge up in the air for its little propeller to catch the wind! Though it can be comforting, because though the numbers are somewhat high, you would swear that the wind was something like 35 or 40, and of course it wasn’t. Seeing those objective figures helps with relaxing about the whole situation. A gauge mounted at the top of the mast probably would have read about 5 knots higher, based on my experience with wind speeds reported by NOAA, but the handheld one is in the ballpark.

The biggest question, analyzing this experience after the fact, had to do with whether the lobster trap was the primary cause of the problem, or if the high gusts coming from such different directions would have created all that trouble by themselves. I was happy to live in suspense about this, rather than repeating those particular conditions. There were whitecaps everywhere, in spite of the wind only having a couple of hundred yards of fetch as it came off the land onto the water, and it wasn’t a storm. Sheesh.

As it turned out, a few weeks later, again in Penobscot Bay but this time at Holbrook Island, there was enough wind, shifting and gusting, to try it again. Too bad! But it was fascinating. This time there was definitely no lobster trap, and the wind was not quite as strong, but I unfortunately started out with a full sail, with no reefs. Gusts registered 16 to 18 knots on the same meter, but like the previous time, their direction was shifting dramatically, and in between the gusts the wind was barely blowing. In the same way as before, the boat would have no speed, because of the lull between the gusts, and then blam, we would be a whisker away from taking water over the side.

On a boat with more average topsides, meaning the part of the hull between the waterline and the gunwale, taking a little water over the rail happens a lot more often, because the boat does not need to be over nearly so far before the rail is dipping into the water’s surface. Because of the design of the Peep Hen, this is not true on this boat – taking water over the side means that your other biggest concern is keeping yourself from falling right out, because the boat is over so far. Though the tiller makes an outstanding handhold.

At any rate, during this new rendition of the same test, the original goal was to move across the relatively small, enclosed harbor from the visitor float on the public access island, to my destination of a particularly well-protected anchoring spot a few hundred yards upwind. The breeze had come up quite a bit while the boat was at the float, and although there were no whitecaps the gusts were strong, and shifting dramatically. Setting out from the float it seemed sensible to keep some sail area, in hopes of making progress in tacking upwind to the anchoring spot. Reefing ahead of time would have been better!

As it was, once again the boat was being instantly flattened in the giant gusts. Releasing the sheet helped, but because the boat was getting no speed in between being pushed over, it did, indeed, not work to turn into the wind to relieve the strain of the gusts. Extraordinary.

This all went on for close to an hour, this second time around, and included putting in a reef and eventually inching up the inside of the island to my anchoring destination. The effort was successful, but not pleasant. I missed AUKLET, both for the junk rig which is so easily reefed, and for the better behavior of the larger boat in this sort of wind.

In hindsight, I’ve learned quite a bit, both about how to read the conditions, and what to expect from the Peep Hen based on what I am seeing, as well as about how to judge the options of a particular moment, in order to stay out of this kind of situation in the first place. That’s all to the good, and in fact I’m happy to have had the opportunity to learn all of this. There were many, many sailing days this summer and fall, and only a small part of two of those included this kind of unpleasantness. In both of those problematic situations it would have been possible to make other choices and to have avoided those experiences entirely, if I had known what I was getting myself in for. Now I know!

The takeaway from all of this is that strong wind in this boat is okay if it’s something like consistent, allowing the boat to be up to speed for handling gusts. Trying to sail upwind in strongly gusting harbor wind, with dramatic shifts in direction and minimal wind between the gusts, is a recipe for a good bit of difficulty. It’s not likely to be nice in pretty much any boat when that sort of thing is going on, but it’s a real hazard in the Peep Hen. In the future I will sit tight, not pulling up the anchor if those conditions are going on or forecast, and will modify destinations if I’m already out, so as to sail across the wind. Further, if need be I will accept a perhaps rolling anchorage rather than insisting on an upwind attempt at that time. It’s much clearer to me now, where the hazards lie, and as a result those hazards are much more avoidable.

The boat is still great. It is after all 14 feet long, and there are limits. It’s good to know more about where those limits are!

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Note: complications with lobster trap lines are also mostly unnecessary, for this style of sailboat, with the addition of a small piece of material at the back of the keel: a section of sail batten or similar plastic, or metal bar, which is fastened to the underside of the keel, and will guide lines harmlessly across the gap between keel and rudder. This is in the works for SERENITY, now that the boat is up on its trailer.

Peep Hen Capabilities and Limits, part one: Tacking

03 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by shemaya in Sailing/Boat Handling, the other boat(s)

≈ 6 Comments

[photo credit: Sarah Bliven]

The Peep Hen is, after all, quite a small boat; it was interesting, this summer and fall, to find out a little bit more about what works, and where the limits start to show, for this design. SERENITY is out of the water now (photos from the nice day we had hauling it are coming sometime soon) and I’ve been reflecting on what I learned in these last months.

In average conditions, the Peep Hen does fine. It is sturdier than most boats its size, because of the ballasted keel, and is very dry, and generally a lot of fun.

Then there are the considerations that come up when the wind and/or water are something other than average. There are three main categories for the new information gained: tacking in less than ideal conditions; strong wind that is gusting and shifting; and drying out on soft surfaces. This post will address tacking, with each of the other issues appearing in their own blog entries over the next few days.

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Learning to tack this boat reliably has been fascinating. Many thanks to folks on the Hensnest Yahoo group (https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Hensnest/info), who offered crucial advice after a day when I had troubles in stronger wind and a steep chop, finding it impossible to get the boat to go about. This was only sorted out by turning all the way around in a circle and jibing; the boat was on thin ice as far as its happy home, by the end of that experience. But as so often, this had more to do with the operator than the boat.

There are several strategies which help with tacking that I was already using: watching the waves for the least disruptive moment to turn; picking up speed before going about; and shifting weight across the boat to leeward as the turn is being made. Additionally, in general it’s a good idea to put the tiller only partway over, letting the rudder do the job of turning without being far enough to the side to act as a brake; I was doing that gentle turning too.

Having one sail and a centerboard has been new for me, and this is both a big source of the problem, and where all that good advice has been particularly helpful. I have now learned that, first off, letting the centerboard all the way down provides a better pivot point for the boat, which helps it to turn. Second, when the sail is sheeted in tight it will help the wind to push the back end of the boat around. The nuances of this second adjustment only became clear gradually.

The Peep Hen has a boom gallows, that wooden bar above the back end of the cockpit, supported by a couple of poles and some bracing. (On my boat this is lowered to match the original drawing – on most production Peep Hens it’s taller, which might or might not interfere with the boom coming across the cockpit. It’s also pretty much wrapped up in the stowed green cockpit awning, in the photo below.) One of the bonus advantages of either version of this gallows arrangement is that it provides a very accurate reference point for the position of the boom relative to the centerline of the boat. Ordinarily, when sailing upwind it is my habit to keep the boom adjusted 3 or 4 inches to the outside of the gallows. If you sheet the sail in too tight, the sail looks great, but boat speed is seriously diminished. The outside position seems to work as the best compromise for upwind progress.

After receiving all the great advice from the Hensnest folks, a few days later I was again out in windy and choppy conditions, sailing upwind and needing to tack. I put the centerboard all the way down, and was delighted to find that tacking worked like a charm, every time. This was vastly different from the previous round, and led me to believe that the centerboard position was doing the whole job. Because I was sailing alone and it seemed like a lot to manage, I did not try pulling in the sheet as I was going about, and was quite happy to see the whole business work without that extra step, repeatedly.

Some time later, different day, more wind, more waves, I confidently made sure that the centerboard was all the way down, went to tack, and failed, falling back on the original tack. Fortunately this was not a problem, with the shore at a good distance. Three more tries, still no successful tack. The waves were fairly large, and chaotic, in the oversize tide rip that happens at the north end of Penobscot Bay between Stockton Springs and Castine, with a good strong wind of 15 to 20 knots, against the tide. Not that I would do that twice!

As this non-tacking was going on I was reflecting on those various bits of Hensnest advice, and eventually realized that because of the hefty wind, I was sailing with the sail adjusted farther out than normal, so that it would be luffing a little bit. There was already one reef in, and that bit of luffing made the boat more manageable, especially in the gusts. The sail was out about 6 inches farther than usual, which in the grand scheme of things is not that much. Still, adjusting it closer in was worth a try. In came the sheet, bringing the boom to its more customary position, and next try the boat turned through the wind as if it always did that. And every time after, in that same chaotic wind and waves. Just a few inches of adjustment made all the difference in the maneuver working or not.

Since that time I have discovered that for extra push, as the boat goes around it’s not too hard to grab one line of the sheet where it runs between the block on the boom and the one on the back end of the tiller, and to just pull on that line sideways as one moves across the boat during the tack. It sounds awful, but it’s really not so hard, and it draws the sail in tight without any other adjustments. Then you just let go once the boat starts to come across the wind. (The main sheet on SERENITY is typically cleated – more on this in the section on large gusts.)

With all of these strategies, the Peep Hen has become a boat that tacks reliably. I’m delighted to not be using the motor to assist with failed tacks, which is what I used to do in those trips a few years ago. Even the designer has been quoted as saying that it’s good to keep the motor running for sailing upwind in this boat. Having to do that was going to be a dealbreaker these days, perhaps sending the boat to a new home, and I’m very happy to find that it doesn’t have to be the case.

Originally, in taking the Peep Hen out I missed having a second sail, whether jib or mizzen, particularly for making turns. Over these last months it feels like I’ve become a better sailor, understanding more clearly what drives the boat; I’m looking forward to seeing how this new understanding opens up possibilities for more nuanced sailhandling, when next I’m out in a boat with more than one sail!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Motorless at Last

15 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by shemaya in Sailing/Boat Handling, the other boat(s), Trips

≈ 10 Comments

[photo credit: Suzanne Jean]

Earlier this summer the motor finally came off the boat. “Motorless in training” was a long-term process, involving gradually less and less use of one or another small electric motor, on one or another of the various boats. With the launch of the Peep Hen this summer, the motor was tried for the short trip from the boat ramp to our float. However, the wind was strong, and clumps of rockweed found their way into the propeller in fairly short order, completely stopping progress, and leaving the boat vulnerable to being blown into the shore. In the end it was more effective to anchor, shut off the motor, and finish rigging the sail, in order to go the rest of the mile or so across the Bay. As it worked out, that was the last time that the motor was turned on. After sailing around and about in Joy Bay and Gouldsboro Bay, and then a month of sailing to Penobscot Bay and back, all without further use of the motor, it seemed doable to simply take it off the boat.

What a relief that was, coming home and putting the motor on the dock! No more snagging lines, and the boat sailed better, without that 30 pounds perched right on the transom. Even better, nobody expects you to use your motor if you don’t have one. A real transition came, in the “motorless in training” process, when I found myself using the motor only because I felt like other people might be aggravated if I didn’t.

This was in contrast to many previous rounds of cranking up the electric propulsion, when I would use the motor because it would get me out of a situation that was less than ideal. With each time that happened, there was an opportunity to think through how to avoid that series of events in the future, and gradually those motor uses became less and less frequent. There was left only convenience, and usually somebody else’s.

As this came about, I realized two things: The “graduate level” of motorless in training is how to sail motorless without inconveniencing other people. And the point where the only reason for running the motor is convenience means that one has made some headway in learning to manage the boat by relying on sails, current, and human propulsion of one sort or another. With those thoughts in mind, it felt reasonable to take the leap.

Not that this wasn’t a little bit nerve-racking! There’s comfort in having a motor available for just in case, even if you never use it. But it was also fascinating.

A couple of weeks after getting home from that first long trip, and then taking the motor off the boat, there was a good weather opportunity for making a trip back to Penobscot Bay. East wind is a special thing in this area in the summer, and it was forecast to go on for days. In that previous trip I never did get to Belfast, in the northwest corner of Penobscot Bay, and I was sad to have missed visiting there. That east wind was an opportunity to jump on the metaphorical bus. Three days later I was at Holbrook Island, and the day after that made the relatively short hop across to Belfast. Just as fast, the wind went the other way, and after a number of lovely visits, folded like origami into a very short time, it was back toward home.

The return trip happened in record time, thanks to an ideal wind, combined with the turning of the various tides coming at just the right moments to make it all possible. Eight days after leaving home, I was back at the float in Joy Bay. All of this with no motor, even as decoration.

What I learned while covering all that territory was that taking the motor off the boat actually made me a more careful sailor. I had already tended toward caution, and I had already thought that having a motor on the boat was a bit of a false security – motors that don’t start, or quit when one was hoping they wouldn’t, are after all a fact of mechanical life. Boat motors that quit when they shouldn’t have caused all manner of problems, probably since they were first invented, and some of those problems have involved very sad endings. Still, and even knowing that, sailing with the motor clamped onto the boat does make one think that one can try things, on the theory that if that slightly uncautious idea doesn’t work out you can always turn on the motor to (figuratively) bail yourself out.

For example, there is the combination of current and dying wind, or traffic and dying wind, or rocks, and waves, and you guessed it, dying wind… Take the motor off the boat, and each one of those possible events should rightfully make your stomach skip, and inspire decisions that will keep yourself and the boat out of harms way, including if the wind quits. Really, it’s not a bad idea to sail in that way even if you do have a motor, but if the motor works almost all the time it can be easy to bet the house on it, becoming a certain kind of complacent.

On AUKLET there is the yuloh (Chinese sculling oar), and on the Peep Hen, SERENITY, one can scull fairly effectively with the rudder, pushing the tiller back and forth repeatedly, to drive the boat forward. Both approaches are very useful when the wind dies, but there is a limit to how much current they can overcome. It’s important to think ahead, starting to scull away – or across the current – from a hazard well before it is close enough to be actual trouble. If there is a motor on the boat, one might wait, thinking something along the lines of “well, if this maneuver doesn’t work I’ll just turn on the motor, which has plenty of power to do the job.” Take the motor off the boat, and that kind of procrastination looks a lot less appealing!

All in all, sailing motorless is incredibly engaging. I hope to be able to do it well. There has now been another trip, of about a week, in and out of various bays and harbors over toward Jonesport, some ways east of here. It’s amazing how much ground you can cover, with a small boat and a bit of sail. I never really believe it’s possible – it’s as if all the time that the motor was sitting there on the stern, doing absolutely nothing, it was actually involved in propelling the boat. Sailing without it, covering 50 or 100 miles or much, much more, feels like perfect magic, in the literal sense. On a puff of wind, that you can’t even see! Extraordinary.

Portland Pudgy

22 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by shemaya in Sailing/Boat Handling, the other boat(s)

≈ 15 Comments

Now that there’s a mooring, and a place to live by the water, the next question has been how to get back and forth in a reasonably stable way, good for those who are not necessarily water rats, like some of us. Quite a bit of pondering has gone on, and then recently the sale of the old place in Holyoke went through. That did it – now we have the new tiny rowing/sailboat.

The Portland Pudgy came along as an idea a number of years ago, when I first read about it in one of the boat magazines, though at that time you still couldn’t get one. It’s been on my mind ever since, and then last year in Belfast a couple of folks were rowing by in one and stopped to talk, on the way back out to their sailboat. The Pudgy looked even better in person than it had in all the literature and articles, and the occupants were very happy with it.

This boat is specially designed as a rowing and sailing dinghy at the same time as being able to be converted into a lifeboat, out at sea. A tremendous amount of thoughtful detail has gone into all of its various aspects – it is sturdy, and surprisingly stable; it rows well, is self bailing when unloaded, and it has a sailing rig. Made of roto-molded polyethylene, the same stuff used for plastic kayaks, it’s tough enough to be bumped around and not care. Self-bailing counts for a lot – left at the float in the rain, the boat will not be half sunk when you come back three days later. Bailing after every rain is a task I have been particularly opposed to adding to our boat fun. If you were to tow it, there would also be no worries about filling with water in the waves.

It’s not actually in my plan to tow this dinghy in back of AUKLET. The inflatable packraft is good enough, and stows easily, deflated and rolled up. I find it much too nerve-wracking to have a dinghy in back of the sailboat when the weather gets interesting, and AUKLET is much too small to carry one on board. But this new little boat is going to be great for going back and forth between the mooring and the shore. Even better, it’s perfectly lovely to sail by itself, for the pure fun of tooling around the Bay, when most other sensible boats are still snug in a boat shed, or under a tarp. The Pudgy can come out to play for the odd warm day, with very little fuss at all, and is secure enough to make one feel that the idea is not utterly ludicrous from a safety perspective.

This boat is also double hulled, with flotation between the sole and the outer hull. When I read about this, thoughts of the insulating value of that arrangement came to mind, as I contemplated sailing on a warm day on otherwise very cold winter water – and it’s true! When we launched the boat this morning, actually taking it sailing wasn’t first in mind. But it became so easy that shortly after the boat was floating, the sailing rig was on, and off we went. More of a jacket would have been nice, but the warm spot was down in the boat, even though the water temperature is something like 40° F at the moment. You can see the gray closed cell foam that we also put in, to keep from getting wet with water in the channels – I’m sure that helped too, but regardless of where I touched the plastic, there was never that “bare feet touching freezing cold surface” feeling that is so familiar from other boats on cold water. I’m a happy camper.

The sailing rig that comes with the boat is nice in many ways, including that it can be stowed in a compartment within the hull, accessible through the transom. The only tricky thing is that the sail is held up by a sleeve that goes over the top of the mast and gaff. Having no halyard, the sail cannot be lowered in a pinch. Reefing is done by either raising the bottom of the sail or shortening the mast with a telescoping adjustment, and gathering the lower part of the sail. The rig moves the boat quite nicely, and I might very well get the hang of furling the sail up against the mast without standing (which is a pretty unstable thing to do, right up there in the bow), but it’s not simple.

Regular readers of this blog will already have an idea where this is headed… And somebody has already done it! Junk rig on a Portland Pudgy! Here’s a link to a blog post by Annie Hill that includes discussion of PUGWASH, a junk rigged Portland Pudgy that is regularly found sailing together with the bigger junk rig boats in New Zealand. This could happen here…
http://anniehill.blogspot.com/2015/04/another-junket-and-tall-ships-regatta.html

So that’s the latest. AUKLET and SERENITY (the Peep Hen) are snug in the boat shed, with thoughts percolating for sometime soon. In the meantime, hooray for sailing!

[As always, I am not receiving anything for talking about particular companies’ stuff – including the Portland Pudgy – on this blog. For anybody who’d like to see more about this boat, the website for it can be found here: http://www.portlandpudgy.com ]

Many thanks to Suzanne Jean for all of the photos in this post, except for the one of PUGWASH, which I have taken the liberty of lifting from the Internet.

Safety Tethers Update

16 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by shemaya in How Does This Work, Sailing/Boat Handling

≈ 8 Comments

The bear is clowning around, but the issues are serious.

Some time back, I put a post on this blog about safety tethers and harnesses (http://sailingauklet.com/2014/03/23/safety-tethers/ ). Following is an update on what I actually did, after all that pondering, and how it has worked out so far.

As far as the harness question, in the end I settled on a two-part approach. For time in the cockpit in rough weather, an upper body harness marketed to sailors has felt the most doable. For going forward in the kind of conditions that feel truly worrisome, I have started carrying a climbers full body harness on the boat. I chose this one, for being relatively lightweight, and for the good support across one’s back: http://www.rocknrescue.com/cgi-bin/sh000001.pl?WD=petzl%20harness%20avao%20bod&PN=Petzl-Avao-Bod-Harness.html#SID=206 (yup, it costs a fortune, and no, I’m not getting anything for including the link. But I do like this store, and they had a significant sale that took about $70 off the price.) Trying this harness on, it does indeed feel like one is extremely well supported, and much less likely to be injured by falling into it. If I were to do this again, I would get the optional opening leg straps. This would make it much easier to get into the harness while wearing foul weather gear. I had chosen not to get the opening straps because of possible added weight, added complexity, and more bits that could catch along the way on the boat; in practice, it feels like the benefits of those opening straps would outweigh the downsides. Either way, it’s a workable piece of equipment that packs relatively small, and it’s been relaxing to have it on the boat.

On the tether subject, I made up two adjustable Purcell prusik tethers (see previous post on this, linked above), one somewhat shorter, one somewhat longer, out of 7/16″ braided nylon. The shorter one adjusts between about 18″ and 28″ long, and the longer one adjusts between about 22″ and 38″ long.

Clipped onto a dedicated pad eye low in the cockpit, whichever one I’m using can be adjusted for wherever I will be working or resting, such that it is not possible to move beyond the edge of the boat. The longer tether has gotten more use in the cockpit, and the shorter one for trips forward, clipped to the jackline over the cabin. Technically, 7/16″ braided nylon does not have the breaking strength that one is supposed to have for this job. Thicker line seemed unwieldy, and the 7/16″ line feels strong; using it is a chance I’m willing to take, especially given that the entire point is to NOT fall a distance, creating those high loads.

After spending some time fiddling with attachment hardware marketed to sailors for tethers, it seemed that climbers’ aluminum locking carabiners would be more workable. The sailboat tether clips were incredibly stiff to open, and required a good bit of combined strength and dexterity in order to operate the double latch. Aluminum carabiners with a threaded locking collar, on the other hand, have been much easier, and are lightweight, and strong. Though I had been concerned about possible difficulties opening these, so far they have not been a problem – the threads are very smooth, and they work easily, including in the cold. Carrying a survival-style knife is my escape-strategy, since a carabiner can be impossible to unclip under load. Testing the halyard-clip style of tether attachment, generally used at the harness connection for release under load, it felt like it was perfectly possible that it would not open either, because of having such stiff action, and in an emergency I’d be back to the knife anyway. Here’s an example of the carabiners (nope, not receiving anything): https://www.rei.com/product/737862/petzl-amd-screwgate-carabiner
In this picture, you can see the very clear red stripe that shows when the lock is not fastened, and that disappears when the lock is completely closed.

In thinking about the elasticity question, I looked into shock absorbers used by climbers, but when deployed in a fall, all of the ones that I found extend to at least 42 inches. On my boat, this would put me over the side, and is thus not workable. For now I’m counting on the nylon for a little bit of stretch, and am paying very close attention to adjusting the tether length for only a few inches distance-of-fall. I would like to be able to add something like a rubber connector, that would provide stretch but would be too strong to break. This could perhaps be combined with climbers’ webbing, so that after full extension and a good bit of shock-absorption, if the rubber did break the webbing would be the backup. I hope to be able to figure this out in the future.

As described in the original post, the jackline is run down the top of the cabin, slightly to the starboard side, which is the side of the boat that I use for going forward. So far, this line has been rope. I never walk on the cabin top when the boat is in the water, so rolling underfoot is not an issue; otherwise, webbing would be important. I’ve been using polyester, to avoid stretch when it’s not wanted, but I’d feel better about this if I already had the stretchy section for the tether itself worked out.

In actual practice, after experimenting with being tethered in more moderate conditions, I felt very aware that psychologically it contributed to “losing my edge” as far as vigilance about not falling off the boat. It actually felt safer to not use the tether in moderate conditions, and so to keep that full-time vigilance properly in order. In the end I opted for using the harness and tether only when conditions were such that I felt there was a danger of being thrown off the boat even though I was vigilant, because of wave action. Further, in those kind of more feisty conditions, it could be possible that a wave could sweep across the cockpit. In that case the tether would be far stronger than any grip one might have on the boat, and the possibility of that kind of wave became my other criterion for using a harness in the cockpit.

It’s extremely rare that I go forward while underway in this boat; all the normal tasks of sailing are set up to be managed from the cockpit. But it does happen occasionally, and I’ve been quite happy to have the harness/tether arrangement in better order. It’s far more common that I am in the cockpit, and in more boisterous weather I’ve been very happy to have a workable tether that adjusts snugly to wherever I am.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Recent references on the subject of tethers include the following very sad story, and resulting efforts to test tethering arrangements and retrieval of crew who are overboard while on a tether. Adjustable tethers are not mentioned; it is my fervent hope that the sailing community will start to consider adjustable tethers, inboard jacklines, and appropriately supportive harnesses.

Is it safe to use a tether?

Under Full Sail

20 Tuesday Oct 2015

Posted by shemaya in Junk Rig, Sailing/Boat Handling, the boat

≈ 4 Comments

[both photos above: WR Cheney]

Earlier this year I had the great pleasure of sailing alongside two friends who came out under sail to meet me, when I was on the way to the island where they live. Both took pictures, and I am delighted to be able to share these photos of AUKLET under full sail, with the new junk rig.

Now getting toward the end of October, with many months, and hundreds of miles, of travel under sail I can say wholeheartedly that the junk rig is a complete success. True to what everybody says about the more traditional versions of this rig, sailing upwind is not it’s greatest strength. Regardless, I have sailed many miles upwind, including entertaining myself by tacking into or out of narrow harbor entrances against a bit of tide. Going with the tide is of course better, but it was comforting to know that with flat water (and a tremendous amount of tacking), it could be done the other way. Against the tide and with a chop, one might as well not bother to try, but this can be easily overcome with planning and/or patience (the tide always changes!) Though I sure do wish for detailed tide charts for the coast of Maine, like there are for some areas farther south.

On those long runs across open water, sailing upwind in 5 to 10 knots is ideal, and upwind is actually preferable, as the boat will steer itself with sails set and tiller fastened, with the boat adjusting its heading on its own for minor changes in wind direction. The boat will steer itself in stronger winds too, but bashing along into the waves isn’t so much fun, and there’s less windward progress as the boat is thrown back by the waves. The junk rig makes it perfectly easy to adjust the amount of sail area on each sail, and to tinker with the position of each sail forward or aft on its mast, in order to move the center of effort one way or the other. The boat responds to that, and it’s been fun.

All other points of sail are a perfect joy, as far as progress. As mentioned everywhere in discussions of junk rig, reefing is especially easy. Ironically, I’ve found that the effect of such easy reefing is that I don’t reef as early as I used to. Nowadays I reduce sail based on the angle of heel of the boat, or when going downwind, in response to difficulty steering, as well as for overall boat balance. In the past, with other rigs, I reefed based on those considerations, but even more, based on how difficult it was going to be to carry out the reefing procedure as the wind got stronger. I hadn’t realized just how much that last consideration was playing into those decisions until it became a non-issue. Lately I’ve been having quite a bit of fun sailing with more sail area than I used to for a given amount of wind.

Connected to the above, I’ve been learning that the boat makes much better progress upwind with extra sail area. Because it’s so easy to change the amount of reefing, it’s been easy to compare the effects of one amount of sail area or another – reefing because it seems sensible, observing the poorer upwind progress, and putting that sail area back up, having the opportunity to see the boat make noticeably better headway toward the wind.

On the subject of sail area, it’s been just wonderful having these enormous sails. It had been a question during the rig change, whether or not to go with larger sail area, and I debated it both ways for a long time. It was really a coin toss at the end, and I am now very, very happy that the final decision was to go large. The progress in low wind conditions is significant, showing forward motion when there is hardly a sign of a ripple on the water.

The problems I had in the Connecticut River with steering issues, related to the large sail area in following current and shifting, minimal wind, have come up two or three times since then, but not nearly so much as I would have thought. Primarily this occurs when the current is both following and changeable, with eddies and/or shear. The boat will still do pirouettes in very light winds under full sail in these conditions, and it is still true that the problem can be resolved, counterintuitively but completely effectively, by reducing sail area. Under most low-wind conditions, the boat simply sails, with the full sail area, and maintains easy steering. It’s a delight.

One of the more unique arrangements for this version of the Reddish-style junk rig on AUKLET is the ability to let each sail swing substantially forward relative to the mast.

This works using a running tack hauling parrel, a running luff hauling parrel, and standing batten parrels that attach farther aft than normal on each batten so as to allow for this movement. This is described as moving the sails forward for convenience in understanding, but the practical use for this maneuver is when sailing downwind, so that the sails are actually moved across the masts side-to-side, ending up almost centered on the masts in an arrangement a little more like a square rigger.

Ordinarily, in sailing downwind with any given sail sheeted out perpendicular to the centerline of the boat, the center of effort for the sail ends up far off to the side, beyond the outside edge of the hull. The effect of this is to make the boat want to turn, pivoting from that pressure off to the side, and this is felt as weather helm, the boat wanting to turn toward the wind. Having one sail out to each side can help to counteract this, but if the sails are radically different in area it’s not a perfect solution. Steering is more difficult under these conditions, and this is particularly noticeable when it comes to using an autopilot, which will typically veer wildly to one side and then to the other of the intended heading.

Adjusting the sails across the masts makes a huge difference in this issue. It’s extraordinary to feel the weather helm go away in that one moment, as the sail is eased across the mast by letting out the tack hauling parrel (the luff hauling parrel is left loose beforehand, though it can be adjusted later to take away wrinkles). The autopilot is the most sensitive measure of getting this right. By tinkering with sail area on each sail (reefing), position of each sail across its mast (tack hauling parrel), and the angle of each sail relative to the wind (sheet) it is almost always possible, in a relatively steady wind, to get the boat, at least this one, to steer reasonably straight on the autopilot while going downwind. For somebody who travels distances, particularly single-handing, this is huge. Prior to this rig, on this boat it was almost never possible.

In planning for this maneuver, I had originally guessed wrong on the appropriate position for the “windows” in the batten pockets on each sail, that allow for fastening the aft ends of the standing batten parrels to the battens; the standing batten parrels did not allow the sails to come across the masts nearly far enough. This became obvious during sea trials in the fall of 2014, and over the winter we put in new windows and made longer standing batten parrels. The new fastening positions were defined by the position of the attachment for the inner lazy jack on the boom, which it didn’t make sense to cross. This meant that the standing batten parrel on the boom came something fairly close to one half of the length of the boom. The yard does not change position relative to the mast when you move the sail across like this, so the line of windows angles up toward the halyard attachment, from that deep position on the boom.
[photo: WR Cheney]

When this arrangement is put to use, the sail swings across the mast, with the clew dipping toward the water, and the tack rising. It’s extremely helpful to have lazy jacks that adjust from the cockpit, so that the clew can be easily raised away from the waves. I originally thought that having both port and starboard lazy jacks led to the cockpit was a little much, and that one would do the job, with the other fastened. In use, however, it’s been extremely helpful to have both (which I had, thankfully, put in after all).

On AUKLET, the original mizzen mast was tall for the size of the new junk mizzen sail, so lazy jack adjustments are not needed when letting the mizzen sail come across the mast. The sail is simply hauled high on the mast with the halyard, and the boom angle is not problematic, being well above both the water and the deck.

It’s been interesting to note that when it’s time to jibe the mainsail, one might first think to haul in the lazy jacks to raise the clew. If this has already been done because of waves, then everything is fine and it’s not a question. But in very light winds, when one wants every bit of sail area available, it can be advantageous to leave the clew low, thereby keeping the lowest panels of the sail completely extended. It turns out that it’s much easier to simply haul in the tack hauling parrel temporarily (which raises the clew), bring the sail across to the other side, and then let the tack hauling parrel out again after the jibe is complete. On a boat with a sufficiently high mainmast this would not be an issue, as the sail could be raised high enough on the mast to clear the cabin regardless. In the interest of passing beneath low bridges, the new mainmast on AUKLET was cut to the bare minimum length/height. I would not do this again – an extra 2 feet of height would not have made a difference with the crucial bridges (which, alas, still do not clear), and the additional mast height would have helped enormously for the size of this sail. Still, it all works, if with a bit of fiddling.

All in all, the new junk rig has been fantastic. It took quite a while to come upon the opportunity for underway photos of the new rig with sails completely raised, and I’ve been perfectly delighted to see them. Many thanks to Bill Cheney and to Kent Mullikin for the photos, and for the fun we had sailing around alongside each other!