The goal: raising the boat above the trailer enough to be able to work on the bottom of the keel, as well as to put more non-toxic antifouling paint where the trailer bunks prevented doing that last year.
Bottom line, it worked! Though there was a small amount of drama along the way, providing opportunities for learning. The boat is now up on blocks on top of the already blocked trailer, accessible for the needed work.
As none of the three of us (myself, Theo, and Suzanne) have ever done this before, I think we did fairly well. Extensive cribbing for the single jack forward of the keel, and two Brownell motorboat stands (nope, not receiving anything) at the stern, provided both lifting and stability.
Going up went very smoothly. Alternating quarter turns on the stern jacks kept everything balanced, and the hydraulic house jack forward, seated against a cradle made to straddle the skeg forward of the keel, worked well. The learning opportunities came with the process of the slight lowering of the boat so that it could settle down onto the 4 x 4 blocks that had been placed on the trailer keel support, under the keel.
Letting the forward jack down, we discovered slightly after the fact, had just barely lifted the stern, so that it was no longer firmly supported by both stern jacks. Not good, as one of their jobs is providing lateral stability! During very gradual and slight lowering of the bow jack, to let the boat settle onto the blocks, there was a very small shift of the hull, whereupon we stopped to investigate. Attempting to adjust the stands at the stern, the starboard one was jammed and not responding to the giant “wingnut,” which was completely loose. That was alarming… It made me wish for a third stand, to brace that part of the hull and release the pressure from the one that was jammed. As it was, after additional blocking along the bunk boards, we tried a gentle lean to push the hull to the other side, which it did and then settled back again to starboard. But the brief release of tension was enough to free up the jack stand threads. After that it was easy to put tension on both stands, and to adjust the leveling of the boat. It wasn’t off-level enough to see, but putting a carpenter’s level across the stern showed what was happening.
Lessons learned: First off, I think that the jack stands are overextended. They are still within their working range, but if we were to block up their bases even just a few inches it would be more secure, and perhaps would also help to prevent jamming. During any lowering action, continuously monitor stern jack stands for constant load, especially while adjusting forward jack. Focus on maintaining weight on stern stands at all times, and be alert to see-saw effect of raising or lowering forward jack. The boat cushions that show in the photo, between the boat and the guide-on post, should be in place during settling of boat onto blocks – we figured that out after the fact. During raising, we had been keeping temporary blocks at the bunk boards, but felt that these would create problems during lowering, as we wanted all the weight to bear on the keel, and not to trap blocks at the bunks. The guide-on posts are great in this situation – if we didn’t have them, I’d want to think up another alternative for providing redundant side to side stability. Theo gets the prize for quick thinking and action when the boat wanted to tip – but I would rather see a process that feels entirely, solidly under control throughout. So we learn!
Meantime, now the boat is up, and this phase of the project is underway. It’s a good thing – access to the underside of the keel is revealing both scrapes down to bare wood, and paint in need of help. It’ll be great to see it more in order!
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Additional Resources:
There’s quite a bit of material on the Internet if you do a search for “lifting boat off trailer.” The following was particularly helpful. (As always, I’m not receiving anything for referencing this video, which is put out by Jamestown Distributors.)
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Below, in the “comments” section, there is an exchange with a sailor named Martin. Here are a couple of photos of his junk rigged Bolger Micro (check out the fleet!):
The good news around here is that the first daffodils have started to open. Crocuses have come and mostly gone, and little bits of green are showing up here and there. Then last night it snowed, with a hard freeze coming tonight. Good thing the daffodils are adapted to that sort of thing! By the end of the week it should be getting more reasonable again, up toward 60 during the day.
Last week, when it was nice, we took the cover off the boat. That was satisfying! And the snow melted away in the sun this morning, so it’s all working out just fine. It seems time for a bit of a report.
Boat tinkering has been continuing through the winter, but I had the idea that it would make sense to write about the more significant projects after they were completed and could be described fully. Of course they proceed in fits and starts, waiting for weather, or parts, or the appropriate moment in the paint shop, or their intermittent turns in the list, often involving waiting for something else to be done ahead that will make it all work out well. Progress happens, but it seems like it’s always sometime around the actual launch when they each come to their conclusion and get checked off as really done. That seems like a long time to wait for a report!
Complicating matters further, I’m back in the land of laryngitis. This interferes with writing (speech recognition on the computer) as well as with all the other ways that talking comes in handy. So for the most part I’m saving up voice for the most crucial details. But we’ve been taking pictures of projects along the way, and I’ve been thinking that it would be fun to share some of those, with minimal explanation. Pictures being worth so many words, and all!
This post is the introduction – the next ones coming up will make a beginning on the rudder repair, and on the junk rig conversion, both of which have been making significant (if gradual) headway over these last months. Maybe a few other odds and ends will find their way in also…
Happy Spring, to all in the northern hemisphere – after a seriously cold and seemingly interminable winter, those of us in the northeast US sure have earned it! And elsewhere too, I’m sure. In the southern hemisphere, I hope you’ve been having a lovely summer!
(If you’re noticing that the weather report doesn’t quite match this story, that’s because it’s being posted a day late :-)
And here’s a little of what’s been going on indoors:
A couple of months ago, in the letters section of the January, 2014 issue of Practical Sailor, a man named Tripp Presnell laid out a number of significant concerns to do with safety tether systems on boats. (“Thoughts on PFD Design,” found on p. 7.) This is something I’ve thought a lot about, but without proper background, I’ve had only my intuitive sense with which to back up my own concerns. It was great to see a coherent explanation of the problems, and potential solutions.
First, the problems. The issues are: harnesses that concentrate strain in unsafe locations on people’s bodies; distance of fall in a typical sailboat tether arrangement; and lack of elasticity in the tether system. My own concerns had been related to distance of fall, the abrupt stop at the end of the tether, and the problem of getting back aboard as a single-handed sailor on a moving boat, dragging. Yikes.
I’ve responded to these concerns by trying, though not terribly effectively, for shorter tethers to prevent actually going over the side, and then by giving up on tethers almost entirely. Instead, I have focused on maintaining heightened awareness of not falling overboard, knowing that if I do, that will be the end of the ride, but measuring the risk of that bad ending against the concept of falling overboard with a tether, massive injuries to my rather delicate physical well-being, and the prospect of a truly horrific end of the ride. Obviously, neither possibility is anything one would want to do.
The letter-writer in Practical Sailor brings rock climber background, as well as sailing knowledge, to this question. His letter was a great beginning, and with the clue to look at rockclimbing materials, I have since found a lot more good information on the Internet. He also talked about tree workers, and folks doing construction, and I found some interesting discussion coming from those groups, as well.
The bottom line is that falling any distance – even 2 feet – into an abrupt stop on a harness creates enough force to cause serious injury to muscles, bones, and organs. There are formulas for calculating this force, truly surprising in the magnitude of their results. Added to that, if the harness is inappropriately fitted, so that the horizontal strap around the torso is too low, floating ribs are extremely vulnerable, can be snapped, and then even worse, their broken edges can be pushed into organs, causing great damage and internal bleeding.
With an average sailboat tether arrangement, it would be more than easy to fall a distance greater than 2 feet. Further, sailing harnesses are often combined with inflatable PFDs. The appropriate position for anchoring the PFD is not immediately below your armpits, where an ideal tethering harness would be located, but lower. A woman of average height is likely to find that an inflatable PFD strap rests right at, or below, her floating ribs, just where it does not belong as a tether harness. There is a warning that comes with this gear, that users must be at least 5’8″ tall, but with no explanation of why – I hadn’t remembered that it was there (and it’s not included in the catalogs where they are sold). The bottom line is that tether harnesses, problematic in themselves, are seriously problematic for the average person when arranged as part of an inflatable PFD, except perhaps for tall individuals. Even then, it’s not ideal, just not quite as dangerous.
The ideal tether harness, according to various sources, is not simple. Rock climbers use a harness that carries their weight at their hips, with wide, load-distributing straps around waist and legs. These are like the gear that some folks use for going up a mast. Chest harnesses as sole support for rock climbers have long since been abandoned, after numerous disasters. It turns out that worn slightly incorrectly, in a suspended fall a chest harness alone can compress a person’s rib cage, causing difficulty breathing, and resulting in very sad outcomes. Among rock climbers, upper body chest harnesses are only used as an additional, secondary part of the system so that a person is held upright in a fall, while their weight goes into the lower body harness. And often, rock climbers use only a lower body harness.
On a boat however, a lower body harness, alone, is not appropriate. The tether attachment point ends up below a person’s center of gravity, which is a terrible hazard if a person is in the water, potentially being dragged by the boat, oriented head-down. That outcome is unacceptable, so the alternative that has been adopted is the upper body harness, with its risks of poor support during a fall, and the potential for resulting internal injuries.
Apparently (though I haven’t done follow-up research on this), equipment failure in boat tethers used to be a big problem, due to the forces involved in a fall on a boat. Nowadays, the equipment is more heavily built; the equipment no longer fails, but injuries resulting from abrupt stops have escalated. Somewhat more ideal than the standard upper body harness is the strongly built upper and lower body harness for sailors, but gosh, what a production – and you still have the problem of abrupt stops. I’m still puzzling on the harness question, thinking about how the various considerations combine with the issue of the tether itself, and how to avoid ever going far enough in a fall to experience the problems of an abrupt stop.
This brings us to the subject of the tether itself. The letter writer in Practical Sailor discussed rigging a chest-high jackline – which I took to mean over the cabin, but it’s possible that he meant something more like a chest-high lifeline along the perimeter of the boat. Either way, this would be an alternative to the typical sidedeck placement. If the jackline is down on the sidedeck, where it is often found, the problem is that the tether needs to be long enough to reach up from the deck to one’s torso. With the jackline so low, if you do go over the side there is a much longer fall – double the length of the tether – before that abrupt stop. This is much farther than the 2 feet that is already such a serious risk. If the jackline is led over the top of the cabin, the jackline is then closer to chest height, as well as allowing for a snugged up tether that only allows you to fall toward the boat, rather than going over the side at all. I have personally opted for a more central jackline, but have used a commercially available tether, which was of course much too long.
The answer, once provided, seems completely obvious (like so many things, after you understand them!) And brings us back to the rock climbers and tree workers. These folks work with adjustable tethers, as a matter of course. There is an elegant knot for assembling one of these – the Purcell Prusik, really an arrangement that includes two different knots: a Prusik hitch for the adjustable loop, and a double fisherman knot for the larger, overall loop. The Prusik hitch works somewhat like a rolling hitch, but better, for this application, being more secure (it has more wraps), and holding its adjusted position under strain from either direction. The overall arrangement provides an adjustable loop on one end, to clip to one’s harness, and a loop at the other end to clip to a pad eye or jackline. Here’s a video about how to make a Purcell Prusik:
(I have no idea why sometimes the blog program puts a link, and sometimes it puts a video, all ready to go…) http://www.outdoorsafetyinstitute.com/index.php/news/single/make_a_purcell_prusik/
And another, focusing in more detail on the Prusik hitch itself:
Rock climbers use carabiners for the end attachments, but to me it seems worth considering using the typical specialized attachments on commercially produced boat tethers – a snap shackle with a beaded pull cord for emergency quick release at the harness end, and a clip requiring two maneuvers for opening, at the boat attachment end. Climbers use locking carabiners at the tether ends, which are secure but very tough to manage with wet, cold fingers, and when under strain they cannot be released at all. This is a serious consideration on a boat, if one were to be entangled under water. Snap shackles, on the other hand, are more likely to be releasable under load. Either way, a sailing knife close to hand is not a bad idea.
The overall tether can be made at whatever length is appropriate to the situation, and with attention, the potential distance of fall can be negligible. This I like, and overall, I’m anticipating a more secure season of sailing.
The letter in Practical Sailor also talked about elasticity in jacklines and/or tethers, as a way to reduce the force of a fall. I do think that perhaps the author was reversing things, on this, as he talked about nylon jacklines being a problem, and that polyester would be stretchier, and thus better. Numerous references state that nylon has more stretch, and polyester much less (nylon dock lines/polyester halyards, etc.). He did not get into that whichever material is the one with stretch, the characteristic of stretch is actually a bit different from elasticity.
My own experience has been with commercially available nylon webbing jacklines which do stretch, but not when you want them to. You set them up snug, they get wet, and then need to be retightened (repeatedly). Stretch during a fall would be nice, but better would be a snug jackline with some give in the event of a fall. Something to do with a slightly elastic section built into the system somewhere. There is more to study on this, but for now it’s clear that if nothing else, the tether itself should be made of line with some stretch (I would choose nylon), and should absolutely not be made from low stretch material such as polyester/dacron, or the newer high-tech stuff. Rock climbing websites emphasize this point. My personal experience with nylon jacklines is from over 10 years ago. I see now that at least some commercially available jacklines are actually polyester. This seems problematic, unless elasticity is built into the system in some other way.
Construction workers also use harnesses and tethers for protection from falls, and there is quite a lot of material about this on the Internet as well. Some construction tethers incorporate heavy shock cord to deal with the issue of abrupt stops. There are also many discussions related to dangers of being suspended in a harness for as little as ten or fifteen minutes after the initial fall, because of disruption of circulation by narrow straps. This has sadly led to many deaths. It’s not an easy subject, the safety tether issue, and has a surprisingly wide range of considerations, with possible severe outcomes if one does not get it right.
The take-away from all this, for me, has been the focus on adjustable tethers that make it possible to keep oneself securely held on the boat, with minimal slack, thereby preventing falling even against the harness on the boat, as well as specifically preventing being able to fall over the side. A midships jackline and/or pad eyes, and a Purcell Prusik tether, with elasticity included one way or another, seems most promising.
Meanwhile, the other interesting tidbit that I came across recently, related to safety tether strategy, is in Roger Taylor’s book, Mingming and the Art of Minimal Ocean Sailing: More Voyages of a Simple Sailor. This is another concept that is perfectly obvious once somebody says it, but had not occurred to me.
Ever since sailing a 24 foot Bristol Corsair, I’ve spent a lot of time puzzling over how to be secure on the foredeck of a boat. I had a near miss on that boat, singlehanding in the dark – and on the bow of most any small sailboat the possibility of going over the side is ridiculously close, in three directions.
One friend likes tethering to the mast, but from my perspective, that’s not quite so good for if you need to be right up toward the bow (tether too long, and worse, behind you). On the other hand, there was Roger, discussing going forward, with TWO tethers. This is common, for leapfrogging forward, with one tether always attached. However, what Roger did is that once he arrived on the foredeck, he sat in the middle, with one tether clipped in on each side, port and starboard. (Maybe everybody but me knows this?) From there he proceeded to carry out his jib project. How is it that I never thought of that??
Attachment points may need to be added to the boat in the right places, to accommodate this idea, but that’s a relatively small matter once you know what you need, at least while the boat is still in the driveway. There is even another project in mind that could make double use of attachment points in those locations. Aboard AUKLET, this might or might not make perfect sense – the bow area is so small, and the mainmast so very close – but I sure wish that I had come across this concept when I was sailing a sloop, with a foredeck that made it a real puzzle. The “two tethers” strategy could come in handy in a number of situations.
As a result of all of the above, I am feeling like the lights have finally been turned on over this question of safety tethers. It’s a good thing – it’s never been safe going without, nor has it been particularly safe going with. I’m perfectly delighted to finally feel like there’s a roadmap to some more satisfying answers to this question.
Practical Sailor http://www.practical-sailor.com at this writing, there is a glitch with the online version of the January 2014 letters section – hopefully they’ll straighten it out, as the letters appear to otherwise be available to non-subscribers.
Note: just like everybody says everywhere, the ideas presented here are personal reflections, and do not constitute any kind of professional advice. It is each individual’s responsibility to use their own judgment regarding techniques and equipment for staying safe on boats, or on land. For professional advice and expertise, seek these from a professional – not from a personal boating blog! Above all, pay attention to what you are doing, use redundant methods for critical applications, and think through the potential consequences of whatever strategies you put to use.
Today we put the winter cover on the boat. I neglected to get a photo of the giant green tarp with little tidbits of trailer noticeable under the bottom edge, but you can see the frame in the photos above. Now with the tarp on, when we start getting snow it will fall right off, and it’s all very satisfying.
In the previous two weeks, the boat and trailer went up on the winter blocks. This keeps the tires off the ground, and makes it possible to turn them now and then so the brakes don’t lock up with rust. Normally the boat is not so high off the ground, jacked up just enough to take the weight off the tires. But this year one of the big projects is rudder repair, so the cribs that support the trailer are built higher, and last week we let the rudder down and completely off the boat.
Originally I had the silly idea that the rudder repair would be quick, the rudder would be reinstalled, and we would put the boat back down in its normal lower winter position. Alas, as these things often go, more is going to be involved to put the steering right. With the prospect of the boat staying up high for the winter, catching wind on the giant tarp, we added those extra supports made out of two by fours that you can see nearer the front of the trailer. Now the boat is much more solid all the way around, so we should be good even in the winter storms, while still being able to fuss with the rudder.
The tarp frame is made from inch and a quarter PVC pipe, using some special fittings made specifically for building frames out of PVC pipe, rather than for plumbing. These fittings come from Peaceful Valley, and the really special ones are called “slip T’s” which mean that you can have one very long ridge pole, with easy connections for vertical supports. The tricky thing is that it works best if you get inch and one half slip T’s, if you’re using 1 1/4 inch pipe, so the slip T’s can really slide easily. Otherwise, they freeze in place over time, and it’s really hard to take the frame apart and reassemble it the following year with any new adjustments. (Yup, that would be the voice of experience…) Using the larger ones, they are a bit loose, but it’s easy enough to tie some lightweight line to anchor them in place. Here’s what they look like: http://www.groworganic.com/slip-t-1-1-2.html
And then there are these, after the tarp is on, which make a real difference in keeping the tarp and the ridge pole from shifting around in relation to one another: http://www.groworganic.com/rowcover-clamps-1-1-2.html
(same as always, these references are included for folks’ convenience, and I am not receiving anything for posting them.)
Meantime, the rudder project will get its own proper post, as we make more progress. Digging into this has been inspired by deterioration at the top of the wooden stock, and the discovery of a farm for marine growth, from barnacles and mussels to tubeworms, inside the rectangular well that serves as a rudder tube. Between the farm, and the wear taking place on the lower part of the stock and on the epoxy/dynel/plywood where the stock passes through the bottom of the boat, adjustments are in order! Additions of copper may be involved…
Anyway, for now the boat is snug. I miss getting to see its details out the window, but am delighted at the thought of watching all the snow slide to the ground, all by itself. We have lately been having some really cold weather – one night with single digits, and incredibly cold wind – so I’ve been particularly happy to be home!
On a boat in the cooler weather, it’s nice to have some kind of heater for warming up the cabin. There are quite a number of ways to achieve this, from stoves that burn diesel, to charcoal, to tea lights, among others. And there are safety considerations, also worth discussing. Following is a rundown of a number of those boat-heater choices, along with my experiences with some of them.
When I sailed the Falmouth cutter, NEW SALT, it had a marvelous Dickinson diesel stove. It was a cook stove with a cast iron top and an oven, and a slow drip diesel firebox on one side; the whole business fit right into the spot where people often put a propane stove on a Falmouth cutter. You could cook on this stove, but that only made sense when the weather was cool, because it threw a lot of heat, which it was after all supposed to do. The boat had a 3 gallon diesel “day tank” installed high on one side of the stern locker in the cockpit, with a fuel line run forward to the stove.
When I got the boat there was no fuel pump, but the stove didn’t run well at all. Studying the manual, there wasn’t enough “head” from the fuel tank, and the manual suggested that if raising the fuel tank wasn’t practical (which it wasn’t) then a pump would be necessary. I wasn’t too happy about this, but wanted to be warm! In the end, the small 12 V pump was fine, with infinitesimal draw on the battery. It made a clicking sound as it worked, which increased in frequency from every several seconds to quite a bit more often as the stove started burning more enthusiastically. As it turned out, the pump noise was great, because it let you know how the fire was doing without having to go open things up and actually look. The fuel use was tiny – I think that I only refilled that tank once, sailing spring and fall up to Maine and back for two years. Being cast iron, the stove held lots of heat for quite a while after the fire was put out.
I’m going into this in such detail because I’ve been reading an interesting blog lately, http://www.artofhookie.org done by a man who’s been living aboard a Falmouth cutter, and he’s been writing about being very cold! Since heaters have been on my mind anyway, it seemed like a good time to write about them.
On the Chebacco, AUKLET, I considered a diesel heater, but in the end my priorities were smallest size and least smell, which took available diesels out of the running. Light weight figured into the wish list also. The heater with the smallest footprint turned out to be one that burns lump charcoal – not briquettes, but the stuff that people use for fancy barbecuing, that is made of actual chunks of wood turned into charcoal. When burning well there is no smoke at all, and it uses a very small diameter stovepipe. There is a company in England called Bengco that fabricates these from stainless steel sheet, and it seemed worth the fuss, and the expense, to get ahold of one.
With this stove, in addition to the narrow stovepipe on the inside of the boat there is a special fitting that goes in the cabin top. The interior stovepipe connects to this fitting, and then on the outside there is a removable cap. When you’re going to make a fire you take off the cap and replace it with a short section of exterior stovepipe. Underway, the cap is back in place, lower than the boom and keeping out all water.
For starting the fire, Bengco makes a fancy wick holder that’s built into the removable ash pan on the bottom of the stove, and they suggest that once you’ve put charcoal into the hopper, you get the charcoal burning by putting alcohol in the wick, lighting it, and replacing the ash pan, so the alcohol flame comes up through the grate under the charcoal. It seemed like it was going to be hard to do this as a regular thing, especially with the stove mounted low the way it is in AUKLET. And I wasn’t wild about the alcohol, both burning and not. Instead, we decided to try long-burning firestarters, or a variation on that idea.
The firestarters that you can buy are pretty smelly, mainly because the reason they work is that they’re made of wood with a lot of pitch in it. But a lot of years ago, when I used to heat with wood stoves all the time, a friend told me about a recipe for homemade firestarters: cardboard egg container, with all the little cups for the eggs, lint from the clothes dryer, and melted paraffin wax. Pack the lint into the little cups, pour in the melted paraffin (in the US, “paraffin” means hard wax, like for making candles or sealing the tops of home canned jelly jars – I’m NOT talking about pouring what we would call liquid kerosene into the egg cups!) After the wax hardens, you cut the egg container so you have separate lint/wax-filled cups, and when you want a fire you light one with a match or a lighter, and put it into the materials that will become your fire.
It turns out that one of these lint and wax balls works great for lighting charcoal. The only thing we changed was that we added a cotton string about 6 inches long, placing it in the cup along with the lint before pouring the wax. This is not a wick – rather, it’s a handle. Charcoal goes in the stove; firestarter goes in the hopper while still holding the string; long lighter, like for barbecue grills, is used to light the firestarter; and once lit, the whole business is dropped down onto the charcoal and the hopper is closed. The string burns away along with the firestarter, and most of the smoke from the whole process goes up the stovepipe. It has worked really well.
People complain about the bulkiness of fuel for solid fuel stoves, but that’s another reason that I’ve liked charcoal. It’s compact compared to wood, for the amount of heat produced, and not terribly heavy for its bulk. We’ve been getting the 7 pound bags and then repackaging them in gallon Ziplocs, which makes things less messy and easier to manage, as well as keeping the charcoal dry. A hard-to-reach locker is mostly dedicated to charcoal storage, with a couple weeks worth (about a half a bag a day, or less, when it’s chilly but not seriously cold – more when it’s colder) kept where it’s easier to get at, which has worked out fine. It’s not a smelly liquid that could spill, nor a gas that could explode, a characteristic that I’ve found very relaxing.
This stove has worked, in general, quite well. It has a well done vent on the front side of the bottom ash pan, with a threaded cover, so the airflow can be completely controlled. The hopper has a gasket, and the theory is that it’s an airtight stove that can be turned very low and will hold a fire overnight. In practice, those gaskets are fragile. The photo above shows tinfoil being a temporary gasket section, but this year I have learned better. After replacing the broken gasket last winter with a new one from the manufacturer, even with careful attention I broke the new one pretty early on in this trip.
This time I decided to try using the stove without the gasket at all, and it actually works pretty well. I made another tinfoil piece that goes over most of the top and the upper front of the stove, easily removable and covering the face of the hopper. It’s not a gasket; rather, it slows down any airflow that makes it past the ungasketed but fairly tight hopper door. It’s been satisfactory, and is easier to do than another gasket replacement. With the tinfoil cover on and the lower vent completely closed the fire will go out entirely, saving charcoal for next time. The glue-on gaskets that you get in the hardware store could be worth a try also, but I haven’t wanted to mess with the process of the glue burning in.
This stove is also useful for heating water, and food. I have a tiny teakettle for heating water, and a 7 inch diameter pot that will also perch on the top of the stove. There’s a propane camp stove on the boat for when the weather is warm, but the charcoal stove does a great job whenever the temperature is cold enough for wanting heat.
Nowadays, I have rather wished that I had put in this other version of charcoal stove: http://rwrope.com/davey/stoves-and-stove-fittings/davey-company-hot-pot-stove.html (nope, not receiving anything.) I considered but rejected this stove originally both because of weight and because of its somewhat larger size. Also, it needs a larger diameter stovepipe. But that larger stovepipe seems more doable now, and the trade-off for all of these issues is a stove that can burn several different fuels, including charcoal, wood, and real coal. It might be worth a look, if somebody is considering the possibilities.
There are other, lower tech options too, especially in very small boats. Candle lanterns – the kind that include three candles, like this: http://www.campmor.com/outdoor/gear/Product___80350 – throw a surprising amount of heat along with their light, and don’t spill when the boat rolls. I used two of those in the Falmouth cutter, but I’m not good with the gases from burning candles, and ended up with a pretty intense ongoing cough until I figured out that the candles were actually the problem. I considered making a vented “candle lantern box” for AUKLET, but decided that the charcoal system was easier. Still, it can be done! I was intrigued with the idea of a double vent system – intake and exhaust, one inside the other, made from flexible truck exhaust pipe – maybe one of these days.
Now there’s a whole series of stuff on the Internet about using tea lights and inverted, nested clay flowerpots. This is cheaper than the candelier lantern above, both originally and for ongoing candle supplies. And I think that the flowerpot system would be more effective for feeling warm because of the radiant heat from the terracotta, in addition to the overall space heating that candles do. The flowerpot folks talk about getting tea lights by the hundred, at very low cost, and that they burn for four hours each. This still doesn’t solve the problem of combustion gases, but with a little thought one could work this out. I especially liked this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzKbFzUEWkA because the nested flowerpots are both held with a bolt. But it would still need more work in order to be safely restrained on a boat.
Another alternative that is used by quite a few boaters is to simply put an inverted clay flowerpot over the burner on the propane or alcohol cookstove, held in place, and therefore quite stable, with the usual potholder for cooking. I think that this is probably effective for heating because, like the tea light system, it is changing a good bit of the heat from convective to radiant, so you feel warmer for the same amount of minimal fuel use. But you still have to watch out for carbon monoxide, and oxygen depletion, when running the stove for so long.
In NEW SALT, I originally thought that “adequate ventilation” was achieved by cracking the sliding hatch two or 3 inches, so this is what I did when I was running the diesel stove. At the time I was also using a kerosene lantern for light, and one evening the flame kept getting lower. I kept turning up the wick, and much too soon, the flame would get lower again. I finally put together the information in front of me and tried letting in a bunch of fresh air, whereupon the flame shot right up, now having way too much extra wick. That was a sobering experience, and from then on if the diesel stove was running I left one of the three drop boards out of the companionway. That was enough that there was never another problem with the lamp flame.
Nowadays I don’t use a kerosene lamp, or candles, and have tried to be particularly careful about ventilation, since there’s no handy flame indicator. I invested in a handheld replaceable-battery carbon monoxide tester (Testo 317-3), and have been happy to see that it stays on zero consistently. But you still have to keep enough oxygen not to pass out…
Another safety consideration is heat shielding. In the photo above, if I was doing it again I would extend the back heat shield further to the left – that bulkhead can get overly warm. Regular aluminum foil works well for temporary heat shields, and when the stove is running nowadays I put a piece of foil in front of the tool bag and water storage that are somewhat near the stove, also to port. On NEW SALT, tinfoil was good behind the stovepipe, where there was a hotspot when the stove ran for quite a while. Then it was easy to remove the foil when the stove wasn’t running, and have easier access to the storage space back there. Heat shielding is incredibly important – and fortunately, it’s also easy!
All in all, I still sort of miss the diesel stove, but I don’t miss the smell of burning diesel coming out the stovepipe, and anyway the diesel stove was never going to fit aboard AUKLET. The charcoal stove has been a good alternative. When the weather is cold in the spring, and again in the fall, whatever stove that’s on the boat is my very best friend!
A couple of articles have appeared in print magazines this year related to these trips in AUKLET. Each has been reprinted in another publication (including with a photo on the cover, for one!) and as a result the articles are presently both available electronically as well as in the print editions of the magazines. There was a fun letter to the editor that just appeared in one of those print magazines, the November 2013 issue of Messing about in Boats, and with the publisher’s permission I am copying that letter here. Following, I’ll add the links to the electronic versions of the articles and where they can be found on actual paper.
Hats off to Her
When I saw that dumpy looking boat on the September cover I thought, here we go again! After reading about its skipper I then thought, quite a lady, made her coastal cruise seem like a trip around the harbor. Hats off to her. Most guys would write about aches and pains and DANGER. She was relaxed, made it look like child’s play.
The boat fascinated me. 19′. You owe your readers a page showing Bolger’s plan, making a silk purse out of what looks like a mishmash.
– Stan Markocky, Port Washington, NY
[MAIB] Editor Comments: We showed the plan in our November 2012 issue, page 41, in brief article about meeting Shemaya in Gloucester, “Glasshouse Chebacco Shakedown Cruise.”
I do feel compelled to respond to the part of the letter referring to “that dumpy looking boat … looks like a mishmash.” I take full responsibility for the mishmash part of that – I think he’s really referring to the rig. The mizzen mast and sail are as designed by Phil Bolger, but the mainmast and mainsail are not. The mainmast is short, and the sail is the design for Paradox, done by Matt Layden for that boat. This is explained in the article.
Further, the two sail colors are my responsibility, but there is a reason! Tanbark sails are much more visible, during daylight, than white sails are, especially when the boat is out at sea and surrounded by whitecaps. But then in the dark, you want some white sail area so that, in addition to navigation lights, you can shine a strong light on the sail and make sure that surrounding traffic is noticing your tiny boat. Aesthetically I would love to have both sails tanbark – but every time I’m out at night and there is traffic approaching, I bless that white sail as I’m shining the floodlight on it.
Mishmash it is! But maybe not dumpy…
The articles:
“Cruise of the Auklet” with article and photos by W. R. Cheney, first appeared in the June 2013 issue of Points East magazine, and is available through that magazine at this link (article begins on page 48): http://issuu.com/pointseast/docs/june2013-issuu
Information on this magazine is available at: http://www.pointseast.com
This same article was reprinted under the title “An Extraordinary Voyager” by W. R. Cheney (with cover photo by W. R. Cheney) in the September 2013 issue of Messing about in Boats.
In the January 2013 issue of Messing about in Boats there was an article by Dave Zeiger, titled “The Able Bodied Sea-Person: Expanding the Notion.” This article (with photo by Bob Hicks) has since been reprinted in the online magazine Duckworks, and can be seen here: http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/13/outings/shemaya/index.htm
Both of those articles are about the trip in 2012. Word has it that there will be a bit of an article about the 2013 trip appearing in an upcoming issue of MAIB.
Messing about in Boats is a monthly print magazine published by Bob Hicks, with information available at: http://www.messingaboutinboats.com or by contacting Jane Hicks at: maib.office@gmail.com. As these things go, MAIB has a small circulation, but its readers are devoted. Up and down the coast I met individuals who were familiar with AUKLET as a result of this publication. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing a treasure!
The following question was posted in a comment. Since the answer turned out to be substantial, I’m putting the whole thing up as its own post…
S:
One question (more to follow I’m sure): what was your biggest/most worrisome anticipated breakage problem? What precautions did you take in regard to it (them)?
Hi Whalen,
The biggest worry was myself breaking down, physically. Precautions included careful judgment about what to do when, prioritizing boat/gear arrangement, and having a plan for if, regardless of best efforts, it happened anyway. My solution for repercussions due to exceeding physical limits is to stop, and wait for things to get better. The post titled Kneeling Camel, from August 4, is partly an example of that process. If something happened involving myself breaking down while I was on one of the big (for me) passages, my plan was to manage to fully reef the sails, once, and proceed toward a harbor at whatever speed the boat would do without my attention, strong wind or light. Or if the weather allowed, since I was completely supplied for many weeks, to stay out in a restful mode until things were better. Fortunately I didn’t have to put either strategy to the test.
As far as mechanical equipment, I was most concerned about the autopilot, and as mentioned sometime before, I carried a spare. There is a problem in the plug/socket for the autopilot, with an intermittent loose connection that I thought we had fixed before departure this year, but it turned out that it still wasn’t right, but responded to jiggling the plug. I carried electrical tools, including marine crimp-on connectors and a ratcheting crimp tool, so that if that plug had completely given up I had the materials for a tight hardwired connection into the electrical system. That intermittent issue surfaced repeatedly, and was becoming more troublesome by the end of the trip, but I didn’t have to resort to Plan B, which I was glad to avoid because it had its own problems. The real solution is a more reliable plug, and driveway time for sorting it all out.
Being prone to worry, and in a small boat with a half an inch of plywood between the inside and all that water, I carried quite a bit of stuff for emergency hull repair (besides having a sturdy, well-built hull to begin with): Pieces of plywood with holes drilled for lines to hold them against the hull, and two-part putty (“Splash Zone”) that can be applied underwater to layer on together with the plywood, or for use by itself for smaller issues. Also a tarp that did different jobs, but was available for sliding down the outside of the hull to stop water while making repairs. And one of those squishy orange cones designed for stopping up holes in boats. I also did “preparedness drills” in my mind, keeping track of locations of rags for quick stuffing if water was flooding in through a crack or break, and how to quickly get access to any part of the hull, or to block off an area so that only that section would flood. There is a range of bilge pumps on board as well, including electric and high volume manual. None of these strategies were put to the test, I’m happy to say. The trailer for that movie “All is Lost” that’s presently making the rounds scares me to bits, regardless, even though that guy is making so many obvious mistakes, and the movie is obviously set up to scare people.
One of the things that gave me more immediate, real-life pause was the unstayed mainmast and the lightweight yard. Both held up fine, but I occasionally did practice runs in my head about what I would do if one of them, or the boom, were to break. I had the 12 foot push pole aboard, which with gentle use could temporarily substitute for the yard – and two masts, which were unlikely to both break, so there would have been someplace to carry some sail, to get over to shore. There’s calling Boat US/Sea Tow, being almost always relatively near shore, but how tacky! As it was I almost always reefed quite conservatively, partly because of these concerns. Gybing with too much sail area was another practice that I tried to avoid… I wasn’t always perfectly successful with that, and apart from general alarm, it was both interesting, and then heartening, to see that the spars all held up through a small number of pretty energetic clunks. At home in Holyoke we had both a replacement yard and boom, built at the same time as the ones I was using, in case they were needed.
Sail chafe was a problem, particularly with the reefed sail rolled around the boom and then rubbing against the mast on a port tack. I carried sail repair tape, and used some. When I realized what was happening (after the first HOLE in the sail) I started varying the number of turns around the boom by a little bit every so often, to spread the wear. After two seasons of hard sailing, the mainsail is in serious need of attention (including a reinforcing strip where it presses against the mast), which it will get before any further sailing.
Navigation lights… these were a problem last year, and a new tricolor was installed this year, but after the trouble in 2012, and less than satisfactory battery backups, I had limited confidence. The new tricolor worked fine for the whole trip, but I also carried a new version of LED battery powered nav lights, with lithium batteries, and mounting plates already installed on the boat (the new lights come with strong magnets for mounting when needed). The wired in anchor light at the top of the mast did quit, with evidence that the problem was at the top of the mast, so not easily accessible. I carried a battery light suitable for an anchor light, just in case, which I then used, and then Bill at Swans Island sent me off with one of his solar yard lights that also works quite nicely, and has the lovely benefit of turning itself on and off.
I guess this response to your question includes at least as much about problems that actually happened and their resolutions, as it does about worries and precautions – that’s probably because it’s being written after the fact!
Quite a few years ago I sold what had been my most favorite boat of all, a Falmouth Cutter 22, because I felt that it was unlikely that I would be able to sail it again, primarily because of knee issues that resulted in quite significant mobility limitations. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about the boat thing after that, but kept reflecting on a chapter in the John Dowd book titled Sea Kayaking: A Manual for Long Distance Touring, that I had read some time before. That chapter discussed how a man who had been a sailor, and then had an accident and was paraplegic as a result, had come to Dowd for some help with strategizing solo kayak cruising. Dowd wrote a really good chapter about the ensuing process and that man’s cruising experiences, and the story has stayed with me ever since.
For myself, with illness-related upper body strength issues as well as associated back stuff and the knee thing, extended kayaking wasn’t going to work. But we all have different strengths, and for me a sailboat was much more likely to be manageable, one way or another. So I took off on the “accessible cruising sailboat” tack. This was a direct result of having read that chapter about the fellow in the kayak, and my many thanks go to that kayaker, and to John Dowd for writing it up and putting it in a book. Here’s how my version of accessible cruising boats has been arranged:
The Peep Hen, SERENITY, was adapted enough for me to simply be on the boat, which was enough of an adventure at the time, but the boat wasn’t entirely arranged for independent sailing. AUKLET, on the other hand, was originally built and then set up for solo sailing, by me. In both cases, the adaptations were not particularly exotic. Rather, they made use of standard boat equipment, applied in very particular ways to fit the situation.
SERENITY has a cockpit bench/berth made higher by several layers of closed-cell foam, and a board between the cockpit benches that serves several purposes: slide board for crossing the boat without standing; cockpit table; and underneath the top cover, head seat. Halyards and anchor line are led to the cockpit, but for independent sailing (by me) it also needs a winch for those lines, and an autopilot. This may happen…
AUKLET, the Bolger-designed glasshouse Chebacco, has a raised port berth, the head described in a previous post, halyards and anchor line led to the cockpit, and an enormous two speed manual winch. There is also an easily movable cockpit slide board, and a “tiller pilot” style autopilot that fits into a socket in the starboard cockpit bench and connects to a pin in the tiller. The port cockpit bench has tapered cushions to create a flat, level surface, rather than following the curve of the sheer and the lateral drainage angle, so there’s a very flat level space for lying down, which I find helpful. The main halyard leads through a rope clutch, which holds any strain on the line until the clutch is released, and we added a special curved rubbing strake so that the mainsail can be hauled up from a sitting position across the cockpit, without tearing up the corner of the companionway.
I tried a Winch-Rite portable electric winch handle, but it wasn’t a good fit for my abilities, so we took it back off the boat. At 6 pounds it was heavy to move into and out of position, and required long holding of its trigger from an awkward position while it slowly turned the winch. And it’s very loud. With a different winch position it does have potential, but not in the way that AUKLET is presently set up. A 10 inch manual winch handle with a two-hand grip, however, made a really big difference over the standard 10″ winch handle. It’s the Lewmar “one-touch powergrip winch handle.” It allows one’s upper hand to be oriented palm facing down, which is very helpful for getting the most out of available weight and strength.
Some of the above items were fussy to install, particularly the anchor line which runs over the top of the cabin. But the parts are all garden variety stuff from the boat catalogs or the hardware store. Several of the parts are generally used on larger sailboats, in order to handle big-boat loads using average strength – applied to the smaller loads of a small sailboat, the jobs become possible with less than average strength. Mostly, making the boat “accessible” was about moving around in and on it, and then placing lines and gear so that distances and angles were comfortable for my particular habits of getting about and doing things. The only difference between this and other more average situations is that if a gear arrangement doesn’t fit my particular habits, it’s quite possible that for me it won’t be doable at all, or not as a repeated maneuver. So we took quite a bit of time sorting out details of how to set things up in a workable way within the fixed structure of the hull, deck, and cabin.
We had tried, on the suggestion of Phil Bolger, opening up the cockpit footwell. This creates potential for rolling access between the cockpit and cabin, and for walking between the cockpit and the cabin without any up-and-down steps. I really liked this arrangement, but as it turned out, especially with the extra cushions on the port seat, even with a grate in the footwell a step was needed to be able to get up onto the cockpit seat at all (I’m about 5’7″ tall). It became easier to instead keep the footwell hatch in place and scramble from the cabin to the cockpit, and now that footwell hatch is fastened down semi-permanently, which also has the advantage of making it a lot more watertight.
The rest of “accessible sailing” in this particular situation has as much to do with patterns of activity as with particular equipment. For me, this especially means not too much hand steering, and plenty of time to rest! But here’s the cool thing: the way you achieve those requirements is by sailing off on the open water, which just happens to be my favorite place to sail. In my world, it’s about a million times easier to sail all day at about 5 miles off the coast, than it is to follow a perfectly easy but narrow channel between islands or up a river that means hand steering for an hour or two. I like sailing close in when I have the pep and it doesn’t go on for too long, but I’m in sailboat heaven when the wind is right for the autopilot and it’s easy to relax in more wide-open spaces.
The glasshouse Chebacco is particularly ideal for those wide-open runs, because you can spend a lot of time inside the cabin while still having excellent visibility all around. It’s restful to get out of the wind, and at the same time it’s also possible to do a good job of keeping track of traffic and navigation. When I saw the design of this boat originally, in the magazine Small Craft Advisor, bells went off immediately – my accessible boat! The details are done with further access in mind, but it’s really the design that makes it work for my particular situation.
There are a couple of bits of equipment that have also been especially helpful. One, that’s pretty funny, is a cardboard periscope from the Edmund Scientific catalog. It works like a charm for checking on traffic, or buoys and shorelines, without getting up every 5 minutes. This would not be nearly so effective in a boat with tiny portholes! And the autopilot is my best friend. I carry a brand-new spare, for just in case it quits. The boat will also self-steer, when going some version of upwind, by holding the tiller in place with the autopilot adjusted but turned off, and fiddling with trimming the sails. That is both entertaining, and a useful backup skill in case of electrical disaster, besides saving electricity.
Because the electrical system is so important, this system also has built-in redundancy. 150 amp hours are in one bank of six 25 amp hour, 12 volt, Group U1 size, AGM batteries, and there is a separate 50 amp battery bank (two of the above batteries) for just in case. (The small Group U1 batteries fit the available space, and have been a lot easier for people to move around.) So far it hasn’t been necessary to use that second bank, but I like knowing that it’s there, especially for the autopilot, but also for navigation lights.
This system is recharged by a 55 watt Ganz solar panel on the cabin roof, which is more than adequate for keeping up with loads from the autopilot, LED nav lights, AIS, and cell phone, VHF, and dry cell charging. If I were to use the electric Torqeedo motor very much, especially when the sun is lower in the fall, I would need more charging capacity, but as things are this arrangement has worked out fine. The motor is there primarily as a safety backup and for the last little stretch of getting into and out of marina dock systems, and for this use the existing solar panel has worked out well.
The other big adaptation aboard AUKLET has been the mainsail and its reefing system, which works from the cockpit by roller-furling on the boom, and is borrowed from the Paradox microcruiser design by Matt Layden. However, this sail is not entirely perfect in this situation (for which, after all, it was NOT designed!) In heavy conditions, probably because the installation is not identical to the one on Paradox, you have to do the furling just right or the sail does not roll smoothly onto the boom. This can lead to inefficient sailing, but worse, it can create uneven strains on the sail, with potential for tearing. Further, when the wind and waves are really going, and even more so in the dark, it can be downright scary to consider taking in another reef. This is not good!
So this winter we are going to try making a junk rig, most especially because of the very easy reefing that is a major characteristic of that sail design. If I wasn’t having so much fun with things like overnight passages some ways off the coast, this would not be an issue – the Paradox rig is perfectly fine on this boat in a fairly broad range of conditions. It just hasn’t been such a good fit for me in the somewhat wilder stuff, for which the boat is perfectly capable, that I’m also inclined to be out in. So we’ll see how that progresses…
Overall, it’s been very interesting working with both of these boats from an access perspective. They each have significant strengths. AUKLET has the large, comfortable cabin without requiring setting up, adjusting, and taking down canvas as a daily routine. But while lines are all led to the cockpit, there are still reasons to go forward now and then, and docking and undocking without help are much, much more easily done by stepping off the boat and walking a bit on the dock. At 20 feet long, there is a certain amount of territory to be covered. For my present abilities, that’s okay, and I’ve been enjoying it thoroughly. But all along I’ve been happy to have SERENITY in the garage, as my accessibility fallback plan.
The great thing about SERENITY– and Peep Hens in general – is exactly that small size (14 feet) in combination with the ability to get out of the weather. I would not take that boat straight across from Penobscot Bay to Cape Ann, but it is surprisingly sturdy for coastal sailing, and I’ve been out in winds of 15 to 20 and 3 foot seas and felt perfectly fine. It won’t make a lot of progress upwind in a chop, but with a relaxed schedule, thinking ahead, and carefully watching and working with the weather, it’s surprising what a person can do in that boat, including significant travel without much of a motor.
From a mobility perspective, the Peep has several advantages. When arranged for sailing from and sleeping in the cockpit, no walking is necessary at all, including for messing with dock lines. This is true because the boat is so short, and because of the cabin design, which means it’s possible to scoot onto the gunnel, sitting, and from there, while still sitting, to slide along the top of the cabin toward the bow, with feet over the side on the dock. I know this because on one of the previous SERENITY trips there was some miscommunication about dock line arrangement, and then the crew was away from the boat for a while. This took place during a time when I was doing no walking, but as it turned out I had a perfectly fine time scrambling around and securely tying the bow line to the cleat on the dock. Gosh I like that boat!
For solo accessible sailing, SERENITY would need a few more adjustments. The anchor line is led back to the cockpit, but the anchor does not drop easily from the bow roller. I have since learned that it matters quite a bit which anchor one uses, because a good deal of friction is developed when the chain part of the rode is lying on top of the cabin, and some anchor designs are weighted in such a way as to overcome that friction and fall on their own better than others. It also seems to matter, even within the same anchor design, what the weight is of the anchor being used. A 6 pound aluminum Spade will drop sometimes, but not reliably, on SERENITY. On AUKLET, a 15 pound Manson Supreme drops every single time, but the 10 pound version will not. Neither will the 13 pound aluminum Spade, nor the 33 pound steel Spade (yes, I have an embarrassing number of anchors!) This is something that would need further work for SERENITY, though I’m hoping that the 10 pound Manson will do the trick, because there is a shorter run over the tiny cabin and therefore less friction than on AUKLET. Reefing is another issue that needs to be more thoroughly addressed on SERENITY, and as I said earlier the boat needs an autopilot and a winch. But it’s all quite doable, and I’m having some fun thinking about it.
The other thing that we did shortly after SERENITY arrived involved the strong smell of fiberglass, which is typical of a polyester resin boat with no liner. That smell decreases a bit in the first couple of years after construction, but my experience has been that after that initial improvement, even 10 years later there is still a significant odor. I have chemical sensitivities, apart from the various mobility issues, and this has been a big deal. So when I first got the Peep Hen, and it was clear that this was going to be a problem, we coated the interior of all the exposed fiberglass that we could reach. To do this we used West System 105 epoxy with the 207 hardener, which allows about a half an hour of working time and hardens almost clear. In small quantities this stuff is not terribly smelly at all. By the time it was all over the interior of the boat, even after curing for two weeks it was still pretty strong. But the good news is that epoxy, unlike polyester resin, does completely offgas, and it’s an outstanding sealer. It took some time, and a good hot summer in the sun, but by one year later there was no smell at all inside that boat. It’s been a very worthwhile effort.
So that’s about all the adaptations I can think of. Each individual’s situation is unique to that person, so it’s an individual process to work out this sort of thing. But maybe there are some helpful ideas here, and above all, there is the idea that it might be possible. Bigger sailboats have been made that are entirely wheelchair accessible, including for overnight accommodations, lines and helm (see: http://www.disabledsailing.org/ and the book An Ocean to Cross, by Liz Fordred.) But if one’s various requirements allow, there is the “small boat and ditch the wheelchair” option. For me, there is nothing more fun than leaving the empty wheelchair at the dock – for months! These little sailboats have made it much easier to do exactly that.
[Note: there are quite a few references to specific equipment and books in this post. As always, I am not receiving anything for mentioning them, and am including their names simply because I think that it might be helpful…]
Using the yuloh on AUKLET has become quite matter of fact and routine. I don’t use it as much as I might, because it’s easy to overdo, but it’s a lovely alternative to the motor.
A yuloh is a curved, or bent, Asian sculling oar, used off the stern of the boat. It has a wooden socket in the middle of the loom (the long skinny part of an oar), somewhat nearer to the handle end, and that socket fits onto a metal pin on the transom. In this case, it fits onto a bicycle trailer hitch ball, roughly 1/2 inch in diameter, mounted on a post to get it up to the correct height. At the handle end of the yuloh there is a lanyard tied from an eyebolt in the handle to a low point in the cockpit.
In use aboard AUKLET, the yuloh is slid from its storage location along the port sidedeck and then slid off the port side of the back of the boat. Once the blade is floating in the water it’s easy enough to lift the handle and drop the loom socket down onto the transom pin/hitch ball. On this boat, the yuloh lanyard is generally stored tied to its padeye in the cockpit, so it’s easy to pick up the end and tie it to the eyebolt in the handle of the yuloh.
Most folks use a yuloh from a standing position, which is ergonomically nice, allowing for swaying side to side using bodyweight to provide the power. But it turns out that you can also operate a yuloh from a seated position, facing the center of the boat, and alternately pushing and pulling on the handle and the lanyard, also using bodyweight in the process. The lovely thing about the physics of a yuloh is that the combination of the bend in the loom, and the lanyard at the handle end, works to cause the rotation needed to make sculling work. This takes a lot of the strain off of wrists and elbows, and allows for a simpler push/pull motion.
When I finally got the details worked out, I was quite surprised and impressed with the way the boat moved. Compared to an open rowboat, which is most often the kind of boat seen sculled in this part of the world, AUKLET is large, and heavy. Regardless, with very modest effort I have moved the boat at about 1.5 knots for some distance. I am accustomed to occasionally moving the boat by sculling with the rudder – the boat moves MUCH farther with the yuloh, for the same amount of effort. A couple of times I have taken the boat more than a mile with yuloh power alone (being me, this involved a lot of rests). Anke and Dave have routinely propelled their motorless cruising sailboat for many miles in the long calms of Southeast Alaska, though lately they’ve also been making use of a pedal-powered propeller. See: http://triloboats.blogspot.com/2012/04/windless-running-on-grits.html and http://triloboats.blogspot.com/2014/04/yuloh-20-and-beyond.html
Getting the yuloh to work on AUKLET was a progression. Initially the biggest problem was that the yuloh tended to jump off its pin. I tried a Velcro strap, which of course the yuloh pulled right off. I tried different positions – in the original construction we included three sockets in the loom, not knowing exactly which location would be best. I tried different adjustments to the length of the lanyard. There was still a lot of jumping, and some frustration.
Finally it occurred to me, about the third time of getting the yuloh out and trying again, to try gentle pressure downward on the loom to see if it would make a difference. Gentle pressure down on the handle was helpful (pressure near the pin made little difference). Since I didn’t want to have to apply that pressure ongoing, it seemed like adding some weight to the handle might do the trick. I happened to have a spare 4 feet of 3/16″ chain already on the boat, and it was easy enough to wrap that around the handle and tie it with a stray sail tie. Bingo! Yuloh training wheels!
For the next many uses of the yuloh, each time I pulled it out I would then wrap the chain around the handle. Once, after a few rounds of this, I tried using it without the chain, but it was back to jumping off its pin. Another quite a bit of use went by, and then I had a peaceful opportunity to try it again sans chain. Two things had changed: I had become much more accustomed to the rhythm of pushing and pulling both the handle and the lanyard at the appropriate moments, and the socket in the yuloh loom had become worn on the sides, creating a more sloping shouldered edge. I expect that both of these changes had something to do with it, but whatever it was, I had graduated from training wheels to operating the yuloh without the additional weight. That sure simplified things!
I’m still working on getting better at steering – it seems tricky to get the same amount of force on both the push and pull stroke, and I spend a lot of time making steering adjustments by using my feet on the tiller. But I do think that this will improve also, and theoretically it should be possible to fasten the tiller and steer by adjusting yuloh strokes. I’m still working on that. However, it’s possible to go in a generally straight line, and to arrive at a chosen destination, even if the execution isn’t perfect.
Now, if the wind dies and where I want to be is somewhere not that far away, it’s easy enough to get there. Maintaining the motor as decoration is much more realistic and doable, since having the yuloh, and my sense of security if the motor were to fail outright is much stronger.
In Asia, it’s often the women who do the big yuloh work, including on enormous barges, and often with a baby on their back. First off, we know that those are hard-working women. But it’s also a testament to the mechanical elegance of this particular tool, and its ability to use available strength in a very efficient manner. It’s a lot of fun to be putting it to use in this setting.
Since my highest priority was to have the easiest use possible, adhering to as much traditional design as possible seemed like a good idea. I wanted a piece of equipment that could move a giant barge, on the theory that with the strength that I was dealing with it might make it possible for me to move my boat.
The credit for taking the principles in that article and turning them into concrete plans for a yuloh on AUKLET goes directly to Theo Fadel. The success of her interpretation is evident in the way the boat moves. Our yuloh is made from a Doug fir 2 x 8, selected by picking through the pile at Home Depot, rough cut on a bandsaw and then shaped with a hand plane and a router. The bend is formed by two glued scarf joints, afterwards covered with seine twine seizing for extra strength. Later, after I’m home again, Theo and I will come up with plans that show exact measurements. (See http://sailingauklet.com/2015/03/26/yuloh-plans/ )
We took very seriously the bit in the article about transom height, and made a “yuloh post” for the back of the boat. It’s kind of like a samson post, and is removable, in case it turned out to be in the way for sailing. In practice it hasn’t been a problem, and we’ve only removed it for access to the transom for other projects. The bicycle trailer hitch is mounted at a 45° angle on the top of the post, facing aft. That angle was our guess at the most sensible position given the working angle of the yuloh. I got the bicycle trailer hitch on the Internet from http://www.biketrailershop.com/radical-design-bike-trailer-hitch-p-1627.html
(Just like always, I’m including this link for people’s convenience, and I’m not receiving anything for the mention of this business in the blog.)
I wished that the article mentioned above had included more detail about the socket and the pin in traditional yulohs. More specific information about angles, depths, and diameters would have been helpful. [See update on this at bottom of this blog post.] We were concerned about weakening the loom by putting sockets directly into it, so we added a piece of teak with the sockets hollowed into that. It’s possible that this might have contributed to the jumping off the pin issue, because it takes the sockets away from the horizontal centerline of the loom. But since the jumping issue has now resolved, it’s also possible that it didn’t. I do like that the loom is stronger at the sockets, rather than weaker, with our arrangement.
Even with the chain weight training wheels, only one of those sockets made the system work without jumping. And the lanyard length was important. I stitched a couple of pieces of colored whipping twine into the lanyard as markers, where the lanyard was tied at each end, so that I could keep track of what length was working. Interestingly, this made it possible to see just how much the knots were slipping, as well as making it easy to get the yuloh into position with a minimum of fuss.
Anke and Dave made a new yuloh this year, and Anke mentioned that it really made a difference to use a thicker lanyard rather than a thin one, because it made it easier on your hand. Based on her saying that, I used a piece of soft braided 7/16 line for the lanyard, and have been happy with that. I tied a good-sized stopper knot about where I thought my hand would go to help make it easier to hold, and I have found that useful too. But nowadays I seem to like my hand placement somewhat above where the knot is, and I haven’t gotten around to re-tying it, and have been doing pretty well just holding the thick line. It’s that stuff called Posh, from R & W Ropes, and it’s particularly nice and soft and fuzzy. I think that the more slippery double braid wouldn’t be as much fun, requiring more hand-muscle to keep one’s hand from slipping when working the lanyard.
A nice extra thing about the lanyard is that when you prefer the blade out of the water, it’s easy to push the handle down and wrap the lanyard two or three times around the handle, which means that the yuloh will be at rest on its pin with the blade out of the water. This is convenient for taking a break, and also for those times when a little breeze comes up but it may or may not be going to last. It works just fine to sail with the yuloh in its raised position, until it’s needed again or it’s obvious that it won’t be needed and can be put away.
That’s about it for the yuloh details. Photos http://smu.gs/1b67GnD include the yuloh in position for use, the lanyard wrapped around the handle to raise the blade out of the water, and a close-up of the socket arrangement. So far we have no photos of this yuloh in real use, rather than at the dock, but hopefully one of these days when I’ve got it out to move the boat there will be somebody with a camera nearby!
More yuloh resources:
I had the pleasure of seeing the following because the page you’re looking at right now was listed! Some of the entries in this reference include links (also copied below) to video of yulohs in use. These have been particularly helpful for seeing how this tool is properly used – note hand placement on the lanyard, immediately below the yuloh handle, and body movement front to back, crossways to the centerline of the boat. In the first video below, in the canal, one of the yuloh operators has also added some interesting bits to the deck, for foot support.
I’ve recently had the pleasure of an e-mail exchange with Slieve McGalliard, who wrote the above linked yuloh article, and this gave me the opportunity to ask questions, as I’ve continued to puzzle over pin angles and socket depths. He shared a photo of a traditional yuloh pin, taken of a model in a museum, which I have since found here: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~fassitt/cranks/mar-mus_sampan.html (scroll down about two thirds of the page for that photo.) This pin is angled at about 30° aft. Regarding the question about the depth of the socket, one possibility is that traditional sockets are shallower than I would have thought – a little over half the diameter of the ball at the top of the pin. This could use some further experimentation!
Another excellent, detailed article about yuloh design, construction, and use, taking off from the article by Slieve McGalliard linked above, has also turned up, and is titled “The Easy Go Yuloh.” It has no author included, but the Junk Rig Association reference says that it was written by Bob Groves: http://www.junkrigassociation.org/Resources/Documents/Easy%20Go%20Yuloh.pdf
This article discusses that on their schooner Easy Go, Bob and Kathy Groves used a half-inch diameter pin, rounded but without a ball, set vertically (plumb). Their article does not include information about socket depth, but does say that the socket is angled at 45°, drilled into a board that is fastened to the underside of the yuloh loom (shown from the side in a photo near the end of their article).
I’ll include further yuloh updates, if and when I come across more information…
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