November, 2015 Dispatch
It’s a Wrap
A few months ago I was sailing alone in the Gulf in my
cutter-rigged 37’ Tayana, the Starbound. When it came time to furl up the 130% jib I
found that the halyard had slackened so the roller furler wouldn’t roll it
in. What to do? The wind was coming into the channel so I
could conceivably sail in on a run, but I still would have the problem of
having to roll the sail up after arriving.
Here is what I decided to do: First I lowered the main. Then I went forward and cut the jib sheets
about 3 feet from the clew, leaving the jib to flap. Then I went back to the cockpit and started
the engine and locked the wheel so that the boat would rotate in the direction
which started the jib self-furling. I
ran forward and during the 180 degrees of the turn that I had before turning
downwind I was able to get the jib almost entirely furled. After completing the furling, I tied the jib
sheets around the sail in a (of course) square knot. I next brought the main halyard forward and
wrapped it around the jib, securing it in place. Then I was able to come in with the sail
furled. And I lost only a few feet off
of each jib sheet.
Moral: Never let
your jib halyard become slack.
Presence
On a recent occasion I was sailing on a 103/104 Combo with a student class on a Bristol out in the
Gulf. The weather was rough 20-25 kt. SW Winds, 4-6 seas. We had the main up – double-reefed and the
engine running. The boat had a four foot
keel with the possibility of dropping a centerboard which added 7 ft to the
draft. We left the entrance channel at
marker ‘6’ and headed NE past the North Jetty.
We found that the wind and waves were driving us towards the North Jetty
slowly, but we had enough forward motion that it appeared that we would be able
to clear it. We were making about 2
knots headway because of the counter-swells.
We decided to lower the centerboard to decrease our lee-way. Indeed, this did decrease the leeway but our
forward motion almost totally ceased because of the drag. So, again…what to do?
We were on a starboard tack and if we had tacked to a
port tack we would continue to have the problem of sliding into the Jetty, only
even worse.
So, we ultimately had to raise the centerboard and lower
the sail and motor back to the entrance channel. The only way to prevent a repeat of the
situation would be to motor further out the entrance channel so that when we left the channel and started
sailing our leeway would not be blocked by the Jetty. This is what we should have done in the first
place. By impatiently leaving the
channel early we put ourselves between a swell and a hard place – should have
anticipated this.
Im telling this story to make the point that you must
always keep your presence about you – not only within yourself but the overall
presence of the situation in which you find yourself – wind, waves, engine,
sails, channel, Jetty. This is what
makes the Galveston Entrance Channel so interesting and challenging.
Did Francis Drake Sail the Drake Channel?
I was recently speaking with Vernon, another instructor
at BASS. He made a comment about the
islands around Francis Drake Channel.
Afterwards, I thought, “There are no islands around Drake’s
Channel.” Who was right?
Well, as it turns out, we both were. He was referring to the” Francis Drake
Channel” in the BVI and I was thinking of “Drake’s Passage” south of Cape Horn.
So, did Drake sail through both of these?
Most certainly yes to the one in the BVI. But probably not in Drake’s Passage south of
Cape Horn. It seems that Drake went
around the tip of South America through the Strait of Magellan, but when he
exited the west side a storm blew him south to about 57 deg S. Latitude (about
the tip of the island Terra del Fuego).
When he returned to England after his circumnavigation, during which he had
pirated many Spanish settlements and ships thus winning Queen Elizabeth I’s
approval, he was knighted. He told
everyone, including the Queen, that he had named an island after her. In appreciation, after the English took over
the dominance of the sea from the Spanish, the English claimed the area south
the Horn as English – hence Drake’s Passage.
Empire has its advantages.
mWC
October 1, 2015
1st October Dispatch
Choosing a boat for cruising
If you have the good fortune to be able to choose any boat
for cruising then you don’t need to read this.
You’ll find many books and articles describing all the possible features
you can get on a modern boat and you will be able to spend a lot of money. (See
Rousmaniere, J. ed. Desirable and
Undesirable Characteristics of Offshore Yachts. By the Technical Committee
of the Cruising Club of America).
But if you are like most people who want to go cruising, you
will have to be very choosy. Again,
there are many articles and books which will describe and discuss features of
boats having to do with comfort and cosmetics, but I won’t repeat what they
will be able to communicate much better.
Instead, I will focus on just two aspects of the choice.
As we all know, the dominant variable which affects both the
pleasure and safety of cruising is the weather.
At its most extreme, it will either keep you from going sailing or wish
that you had not. So we need to look at
features of boats which will prepare you for the extremes of weather: when it
is perfect and when it seems to have a grudge against you. Looked at this way, there are only two
questions to be answered:
1. In good weather, what is the largest sail boat I can
handle short-handed?
The answer to this question is fairly simple. === somewhere around 40 ft. Any sailboat larger than this will require a
lot of work for one or two people to sail.
The type of rig is relatively unimportant. You are unlikely to be considering a catboat
(though there are some good cruising catboats – the Nonsuch, for example), a
schooner or a yawl. So the choice will
be between a sloop or a ketch. Everyone
who takes the 101 class learns how to handle a sloop rig and all sloops up to who
knows how many feet handle the same, heave-to, tack, run down wind, etc. functionally
the same. Consequently, many people worry that they
won’t know how to handle a ketch. But
let me disabuse you of that notion. If
you can handle a sloop and understand the principles of sail balance, then you
can handle a ketch – in fact I would venture to guess that you would come to
prefer a sloop.
So, the answer to the first question:
A less than 45 ft. sloop or ketch.
2. The second question is for me more interesting. It is:
What boat do I need to get which will take care of me when
the weather and sea seem to want to kill me?
A well built boat will survive a storm long after the homo
sapiens on board given themselves up for lost.
So how do you find such a boat?
Again, you will be able to find a lot of very erudite literature on
sailboat stability. But we have got to
keep it simple. In a nutshell, what we
are asking is: If a boat is knocked down
by waves or wind, will she right herself?
You should quickly understand that I am speaking only of monohulls here,
for a multihull vessel is just as stable upside down as upright. (Need there be any other reason to not
consider a multi-hull for cruising?)
The two variables which are the most important in
determining if a monohull will right herself are:
Beam
Displacement
Put simply, a beamy low displacement sail boat might win the
Saturday regatta, but out in the deep blue, if knocked over, may stay upside down
like a plate. Anyone interested in the history
of this issue should read of the 1979 Fastnet race, in the book, Fastnet Force 10.
So, here is the equation:
Capsize Screening value:
To figure out a boat’s CSV divide the cube root of its
displacement in cubic feet into its maximum beam in feet. CSV = beam divided by the cube root of the
displacement in cubit feet.
A boat’s weight and the volume of water it displaces are
directly related, and that displacement in cubic feet is simply displacement in
pounds divided by 64 (which is the weight in pounds of a cubic foot of salt
water).
Example: A 35-ft boat
that displaces 12,000 pounds and has 11 feet of beam:
To find its CSV, first calculate DCF: 12,000 divided by 64 = 187.5.
Find the cube root of the result: 5.72
Divide that result into 11
CSV = 1.92
Any result of 2 or less indicates a boat that is
sufficiently self-righting to go offshore.
The further below 2 you go, the more self-righting the boat is.
www.wavetrain.net/boats-a-gear/471-modern-sailboat-design-quantifying-stability
accessed September 12, 2015.
Here are the CSVs of several boats which successfully
circumnavigated. You will be surprised
of some of the results:
Boat CSV
1. Crealock 34 1.68
2. Tartan 34 1.77
3. Bristol 355 1.76
4. Catalina 34 1.95
5. Contesa 35 1.87
6. Hunter 34 1.97
7. Baltic 35 2.07
8. J/34 2.29
9. Beneteua 51 1.86
Ref:
Leonard BA. The
Voyager’s Handbook: The Essential Guide to Bluewater Cruising. (Blacklikc, OH: McGraw-Hill, 2007), 65.
Hubris in the Pacific
Here is a trivia question I would have missed: Who was the first person to sail around the
world?
I would have guessed Magellan. But that would be wrong. Magellan was the first to plan a circumnavigation, but he was
killed in the Philippines when he provoked a religious war and got in on the
wrong side. This first circumnavigation
was actually completed by the 18 survivors of Magellan’s voyage. The Captain-General of the returning vessel,
the Victoria, was Juan Sebastian
Elcano (elected after Magellan’s death).
I tell this bit of trivia to reiterate what cannot be repeated too often: Hubris
has no place on board a vessel at sea. Be
pleased if you negotiate a tie with Mother Nature.
mWC
August 26, 2015
What LaSalle Didn’t Know and We Do, and Fluid and Electrolyte Replacement –
especially Potassium
What LaSalle did not know, but we do, and why it matters.
After [leaving present day Cuba] we
set course west and west –northwest until 2 o.clock in the morning of January 5
when, in sounding as usual, we found that the water was shoaling…When we found
that we were in more than six fathoms of water, we headed west-northwest,
risking even northwest. When we found
the water shoaling again, we sheered off…On Wednesday, January 10, the weather
cleared a bit and we took a latitude of 29deg. 23’. [near the entrance to
Galveston Bay]. At 2 o’clock in the
afternoon, the wind having picked up, although not constant, we got underway
and set sail. Not much headway was made
because the wind varied and changed several times; then it fell again all of a
sudden. We had to anchor because the
currents were drifting us toward land.( 1. Foster, WC. The La
Salle Expedition to Texas. The Journal
of Henri Joutel 1684-1687. (Austin:
University of Texas, 1998), 69-71).
The modern day chart 11340 reports
of the area between New Orleans and Galveston:
The hydrography within the heavy dashed black line was
surveyed by NOS in 2005. A shoaling
condition has been observed in relation to prior surveys. The density of the most recent survey data is
inadequate to rule out the possibility of shoaler depths or undetected
submerged features in these areas.
What
all this means is just what La Salle discovered.
In 1684, the great French explorer
Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle led an expedition from Europe to the
New World. It was his intention to
establish a military presence in Louisiana.
However, the expedition ended in disaster – both for La Salle, who was
murdered by his own men near the present-day Texas city of Navasota, and for
his ships, which either returned to Europe are were sunk. And a major cause for the disasters were physical
facts about the Gulf Coast which modern-day sailors of the region must take into
account every time they venture out from the shore. These physical facts are: the coastline of the Gulf is part of the
continental shelf of the mainland and is very shallow. It is swept by a strong current – the Gulf
stream – which when it flows over the relatively shallow salt domes produces
shoaling and irregular and unpredictable swells and currents. The other major physical fact is that the
weather pattern of the region is dominated by periodic cold-fronts which roll
down from Canada and pass out into the Gulf, like giant rakes which sweep
everything in front of them with winds from 25 to as high as 45 knots/
hour. And all of these facts had a
direct influence on La Salle’s plans, causing him to miss his goal – the
Mississippi – by several hundred miles and end up in Matagorda Bay, where he
lost his ships and lost the support of his men, some of whom murdered him. When a modern-day sailor contemplates sailing
from the western Gulf to Florida he too has to take these facts into
account. The Gulf Stream provides some
assistance in the venture, but the periodic cold fronts are a background threat
which must always be taken into account.
These fronts arrive in a periodic sequence separated by an interval of
three to five days. And the distance from,
say, Galveston to Tampa Bay, make it such that one must plan on being hit by as
many as three of these “northers” in the course of the passage.
So what is the best path to
take? There are three different
possibilities: 1. Inside, along the
intercoastal waterway, 2. Coastwise, in snatches from Texas to Louisiana to
Mississippi to Alabama to Florida with pauses for anchoring along the way or,
3. Out at sea along the Safety Fairway.
Each choice has its advantages and disadvantages.
1. ICW: Sailors hate,
just hate! travelling along the ICW – motoring! Arrggh! And there is always the possibility of
running aground at some point. As far as
advantage – one can tie up alongside a wharf and ride out a norther. And the ICW community is an interesting mix of
unique Americana.
2. Coastwise: This is
essentially the mirror-image of La Salle’s voyage – and we know what happened
to him. There are numerous places where
there is the danger of shoaling – the chart give data of 1 ½ fathom out several
miles from the shore. The winds and
currents coming from the several rivers are unpredictable and challenging. The anchoring would be on a lee-shore, except
when a norther comes through. The bays
are shallow (Galveston Bay is generally 7 to 10 ft throughout, with innumerable
places to run aground). There are
literally thousands of oil rigs between Galveston and Tampa Bay, some of which
are not marked on the chart and some of which are not lighted – so attempting
to pass at night is especially fraught with danger. And the mighty Mississip (the “father of
waters”) comes rolling far out into the Gulf, making for some interesting (to
understate the case) and challenging current patterns.
3. Outside along the Safety Fairway: This passage offers the advantage of being free
of oil rigs because it is the designated sea-highway for ships. But that reveals the obvious disadvantage –
lots and lots of deep-draft vessels. Of
course, one could go even further out, but this makes the passage a long one-
1500 nms.
At present, I have not decided which of these courses I will
take. I will probably mix and combine
the approaches, depending on the circumstances.
Ill let you know in the future.
Fluid and Electrolyte replacement in the summer heat.
I recently reviewed some articles on the issue of fluid and
electrolyte replacement in performing athletes.
While no one has done empiric studies on sailors performing in south
Texas in the summer I can make some general recommendations. Let me make a broad general statement
first. Then I will back it up with the
evidence.
GENERAL STATEMENT:
Like a Texas election, where it recommended that you vote early and
often, you should drink early and often.
For a weekend course (say, the Combo 103/104, which covers
three days) you should begin drinking Gatorade (or other “sport” drink) even
before you leave and continue until after you return. In order to prevent hypohydration and keep
performance up to its optimal you should drink 20 liters (! Yep, liters) over
the course of the weekend – that is 20 of the big jugs of Gatorade.
Since I am sure that no one routinely does this let me break
this statement down:
1. The first few days of exposure to high temperatures are
the hardest on the body which loses more electrolytes than water at first. Your thirst mechanism lags behind and is not
a sensitive mechanism for determining when you need to re-hydrate. So you need to pre-hydrate if you know you
are going to be in high temperatures.
2. Likewise, the recommendation for Gatorade. The kidneys are going to have an obligatory
loss of water, even if you are hypohydrated, so you will be hypodydrated before
you are even aware of it. After about
three days you don’t have to drink Gatorade because your body will extract the
needed electrolytes from the food you eat.
3. In the case of hypohydration, skeletal muscle has
proportionally more water than does fat, so your skeletal muscles suffer the
most when you are hypohydrated – hence the decreased physical performance.
4. The volume?
Empiric studies have shown that physical activity in 100 deg F
temperature required 8 liters of fluid replacement/day, hence the
recommendation of 20 liters for a three day weekend course.
5. If you become hypohydrated here is what happens:
Performance
suffers. Muscle will actually break
down, resulting in soreness the next day.
Skin
blood flow decreases, so your capacity to resist sunburn decreases
Kidneys
retain water as much as possible but still loses enough water to continue
obligatory potassium loss. This results
in skeletal muscle cramps (and eventually cardiac muscle cramps – otherwise
known as cardiac arrhythmia – risking sudden death ! I am not kidding you. The way the great state of Texas executes its
prisoners is by altering the potassium content of the blood, producing cardiac
arrest. They usually put the prisoner to
sleep – though not always.
Blood
pressure drops (hypotension) leading to dizziness on standing and the
possibility of syncope (fainting). When
that happens, you are already seriously de-hydrated.
6. If you happen to be taking a diuretic (most commonly
thiazides) for hypertension (high blood pressure) then all of the above effects
are exaggerated and the necessity to replace electrolytes, especially potassium,
is increased to the point of being an emergent situation. If you are tough guy and think you don’t need
to do this, then you need to get a defibrillator on board and instruct your
crew on how to use it on you.
7. Alcohol in any form is not a good replacement for
electrolyte replacement fluids. Alcohol
is actually a diuretic so you will lose relatively more water than electrolytes
and the soporific qualities (puts you to sleep) of alcohol might make you go to
sleep lying in the sun – an activity guaranteed to cause heat illness.
Next: Progress on the Starbound
mWC
References
1. Sawka MN, Montain SJ. “Fluid and electrolyte
supplementation for exercise heat stress,” in Am J. Clin Nutr 2000, 72 (Suppl)
564S-72S.
2. Casa DJ et.al. “National Athletic Trainers’ Association
Position Statement: Fluid Replacement for Athletes,” in Journal of Athletic Training 200, 35(2): 212-224.
