July 16, 2016
What I
learned on the passstge from Denmark to Iceland
I was
probably a little too negative about my recent passage from Denmark to
Iceland. Actually, parts of the passage
were worthwhile and a good learning experience.
So, let me recount the positive parts:
The passage
from Denmark to Sweden was easy and interesting. We went to Gotesburg which is a beautiful
port where there are many large and small sailboats which take full advantage
of the long days of light and are seen going out as late as 10 p.m. Also, a group of high school kids celebrated
their graduation party by shucking their prom dresses and tuxes and going
swimming in the what must have been 50 degree water. A hearty bunch.
Then back to
Denmark - Skagan - a major fishing port of the North Atlantic, certainly a
worthwhile stop on the way to Norway.
From Skagan
to Norway one sees where the Baltic meets the Atlantic and the currents thereby
generated. One really has to take these
into account when crossing over to Norway.
There is a fair amount of vessel traffic crosses also.
Norway,
itself, is worth an entire summer of cruising.
With a western coastline of over 1000 miles with innumerable fjords to
be explored. One thing that is clear is
that you must have the charts (Navionics has a good collection) to determine
where to go, because it is “green right returning” the intertwining fjords are
very confusing so one can easily get lost.
It is overcast almost all the time so careful attention to direction and
your chart is critical.
As I previously
mentioned, the passage to Iceland is mostly boring, but that is really only
after you pass the Faroe islands. You
must pay close attention to the waypoints recommended by Jimmy Cornell’s Ocean
Passages of the World, because the course between the Shetlands and the
Orkneys is actualy very narrow with riptides around both of the island
groups. If the wind is not conducive to
sailing you’ll have to motor through, and this will take the better part of a
couple of days. Once past the Shetlands
you have to keep an eye out for the North Atlantic oil platforms. They are not as numerous as in the Gulf, but
nonetheless they are there. Fortunately,
in the summer, the sun doesn’t go down until after 11 pm and rises again at 2
am, and they are marked by AIS, so you can pick them out from afar. But, even though the area is largely free of
vessel traffic one must keep a lookout at all times.
Beyond the
Faroes the water and sky just go on forever.
All one sees are sea birds (a peculiar blunt-nosed seagull), some
dolphins and some whales. As I wrote
before, you’ll need to bring along a lot of reading material. Fortunately, as you pass the Shetlands and
the Faroes you can get cell phone service.
Sometimes
you will come upon “Cardinal markers.”
These need to be studied in Chart Number One because, depending
upon their coloring they are telling you which side to pass, I.e., “pass north
of this marker,” or “pass south of this marker.” What they are designating is a line of rocks
out in front of some obstruction, so you must not only pass clear of the mark,
but specifically to one side or the other.
So, don’t
let my negative comments discourage anyone hearty (or crazy) enough to sail up
to the Arctic Circle, but be prepared to test all of your stamina and patience. Also, be aware that there is very little help
if you get into trouble. Each little
village along the Iceland coast maintains a Coast Guard vessel which is manned
by volunteers from the village but the vessels are able to travel hardly faster
than a sailboat. They do have
helicopters for rescue but the almost constant fog and rain keep them landbound
most of the time. Certainly not where
you should start your cruising experience.
mWC
July 12, 2018
Why more don’t sail to Iceland
As regards the previous question on how much sailing or
motoring would be required to reach Iceland from Norway, it turned out to be
about 60% pure sailing, 30% motorsailing and the rest pure motoring. It is impossible to get accurate weather
information beyond 4 days so we opted to try to get at least as close to
Iceland as possible. So, the first two
days were spent hard motoring directly into the wind. Thereafter it was relatively more sailing all
the way. We had one full day of a
starboard tack and one full 24 hours of downwind sailing. In that period we sailed for about 12 hours
wing-to-wing with a poled out jib and a preventer protected mainsail. We made 134 nm that 24 hours.
I can understand why few people sail to Iceland. There is virtually nothing to see. After you pass the Faroes it is nothing but
water and sky for days on end. There is
the North Sea oil field but it a piddling little thing compared to the Gulf of
Mexico. All the platforms are well
lighted, signaled by AIS, and, what is more, it never really gets dark, so they
are visible for miles.
What I learned is that I didn’t bring along enough to read
to keep from becoming stone cold bored.
Hour after hour of the same.
But, hey, Iceland is worth visiting if one wants to see a
Glacier and a lot of arctic tundra. I’d
however recommend you visit via Icelandic or Alaska airlines.
mWC
June 16, 2018
To Be or
Not To Be: A sailboat or a powerboat.
I’m writing
from aboard a 40 foot Wauquiez in a marina in Denmark. I’ve been engaged to assist the owner (Wallace,
a retired Canadian with considerable experience racing on the Great Lakes) and Aaron
(a custom home builder from New Hampshire, who has had loads of ocean-going
experience) deliver the boat from Denmark to America. I asked Wallace what his wife said when he
told her that he had bought a boat in Denmark and was going to sail it back to
Canada, and, as you would expect, it was, “Are you crazy?” I suppose the same response might apply to
current crew members.
Writing from
the vicinity of Helsingor (Elsimore) castle, the setting of Shakespear’s play,
we are engaged in our own decisional crisis.
But, instead of trying to decide whether or not to commit murder
(speaking at least for myself), we are trying to determine whether we are going
to be sailing or powering to Iceland.
Each of us use different wind-prediction apps: I use passageweather.com, the skipper uses
predictwind, and Aaron uses windy. But,
no matter how many ways or how long we look at the wind predictions we all come
up with the same two brutal facts:
1. There is a low-pressure cell
moving toward the Faroe islands with wind speeds up to 45 kts., and 2. The wind
directions are virtually impossible to predict from the Faroes to Iceland, with
what looks like a whirlpools within whirlpools.
We will be
carrying enough diesel to motor about 600 nm of the 700 nm distance, based on
the best estimate of the fuel consumption of the boat. We have little information on currents which
will also affect fuel consumption. So it
appears that our decisional crisis will not be resolved prior to embarkation. We will be literally deciding “on the fly,”
if you will excuse the pun.
More to
follow.
mWC
June ’17 dispatch
Cruising in Greece
Winds
of war
One
of the first battles of the Peloponnesian war was the battle of Naupacus which occurred in the gulf we now call the
Corinthian Gulf. Thucydides reports that
it was won by the Athenian general because he positioned himself so that the
wind he expected to arise at dawn in the Gulf would allow him to turn his ships
(triremes) towards the Spartan fleet and ram them. After sailing some time in Greek waters I can
appreciate the significance of capricious winds in Greek waters. There are several peculiar wind patterns. In the summer, the predominant winds come
from the north – from NE to NW, called “etesians”, from etos (arrival). These are also called “meltemi,” a Turkish
term. They are said to arise from
pressure gradient of the low pressure zone over Pakistan from the Asian monsoon
low and high pressure zone in the Azores. They are quite erratic and can vary from 5
kts to gale force in the matter of a few hours.
There
are also sea breezes which arise just like that which comes up in Kemah in the
afternoon because of the differential heating of land and sea. These arise in a manner which seems
unpredictable to the sailor on the water because of the erratic nature of the
coast line and mountains. If you look at
a map of Greece you’ll see the fingers of land sticking out into the Med,
between which the gulfs punctuate.
There
is also the occasional “sirocco,” the wind which comes from the Sahara in
Africa. It brings sand which illuminates
the sky a rosy color – in both the east and west – at sunset.
In
winter, the predominant winds comes from gales which cross the Med from west to
east.
Finally,
there are occasional “katabatic” winds blaring down from the steep mountain
slopes at night.
The
varied nature of these winds can play havoc with anchoring, especially if the
lay of the anchor is insecure.
Med anchoring (men [and women]
behaving badly
One
form of anchoring which is covered in the textbook of the Combo course is Mediterranean
anchoring. It is substantially different
from anchoring in any other part of the world and should be studied and
practiced before chartering in the Med.
There are two features of Med anchoring which distinguish it from other
techniques: One backs up to the dock, and one lays his anchor out in the water in
the course of the backing. Probably the
best way to understand the technique is to view one of the many available
youtube presentations. Describing the
technique: First you scout out an
appropriate spot on the dock. Then you
go well out into the water and get your anchor ready to be deployed. Then you start backing towards the dock. Several boatlengths (about 3 for most areas)
you drop the anchor while you continue backing.
You continue to play out your anchor until you are about one boat length
from the dock. When you arrive at the
dock you throw already prepared lines which are secured to your stern
cleats. Usually there is someone
available on the dock to catch your line and pass it around a dock cleat then
toss the end back to you which you secure to your stern cleat. Hopefully, you are secured forward with your
anchor and aft with the stern lines.
It should be obvious that there
must be several fenders along each side of your and your neighbor boat because
there are no finger piers.
This all is the theory: Unfortunately, I witnessed on several
occasions while sailing in Greece what can go wrong. One of the harbors was quite deep (15
meters), so several of the boats did not lay down enough road, making it such
that when a wind blew up they dragged anchor and the boats started banging into
each other. I was able to experience
loud cursing in Italian, French and German.
Even shoving and pushing and the threatening display of boathooks. The EU was not in harmony. The lone Englishman did not help and seemed
to be provoking the encounters. It
appeared that he not only wanted to exit the EU but sought to provoke
continental chaos. I think the others
were in favor of Brexit that day.
Fortunately, no real damage occurred and no blood was spilt.
The major conclusions I
drew: Arrive early and secure your
vessel well and, as always, lay down enough road to secure your vessel. Also: beware of Englishmen shouting “Let’s
you and him fight!”
I also witnessed the technique
required to unfoul an anchor from some other vessel’s anchor road. It requires a length of line which is passed
under the other vessel’s road and then brought back and secured onto your
deck. This line keeps the other vessel’s
road elevated as you lower your own anchor to disentangle it from the other’s
road. A slick trick.
A Suggestion Concerning
Chartering in the Med
I have sailed the Med three
times over the past 3 summers and it seems to me that the current contentions
between the various members of the EU are sadly being acted out on the
sea. At present, there are essentially
three groups in the EU – the British, who are lurching towards Brexit, the
Western Europeans (particularly France and Germany), who are the current
dominant players and resent the British, and the Eastern European countries
which are waffling between the liberal democracies of France and Germany and
the illiberal democracies of Hungary and Poland. It is not a harmonious family at present, but
is not yet so contentious that chartering and sailing the Med would necessarily
be a bad experience. Sailing the Greek
islands is certainly worth the effort because of the beauty and the culture,
but one must be prepared for some unpleasantness – and you can no longer expect
to be entirely welcomed because you are American – there is an undercurrent of
perplexity as to how to treat Americans today.
In the large cities virtually all of the signs have English subtitles
and most people speak a little English, but there is now a clear reluctance to
speak English, with a not unexpected tendency to expect the visitor to at least
try the local language. On the outer
islands, there is little English spoken or written, so it is worthwhile to get
to know some of the most common phrases.
References
Heikell R., Lucinda Michel, Ed.,
Imray Greek Pilot. Imray Norie & Wilson Ltd.
New York Times. International Edition. June 21, 2017.
mWC
March, 2017 dispatch
On risk-taking and circumnavigation
Risk taking
On a recent course we were
faced with the situation of needing to bring the boat from Galveston to
Kemah. NOAA reported that there were
going to be west winds up to 25 mph “with gusts to 40 mph.” On careful consideration the students and I
decided to forego the experience and wait a day to return the boat. It was not the steady wind of 25 kts which
was problematic, but the gusts, given the ground we were going to be covering:
The Houston Ship Channel is
quite shallow and has to be dredged regularly.
Therefore, there are “spoil banks” on either side of the channel,
sometimes on the west, other times on the east.
From about marker ‘36’ upwards the spoil bank is on the east side. Think about the implications of this before I
give our thinking on the subject.
So: One must always remember that a sailboat has
a lot of “appendages” hanging down below the waterline - keel, rudder,
skegs. A helmsman can handle a steady
wind by rudder control, but gusts of wind will often slam the boat over on its
side because of the amount of “freeboard” (boat above the waterline). If a gust has knocked the boat out of the
channel and it ran aground on the spoil bank then the boat could not be
controlled by the rudder. You would have
a situation where not only would there be a risk of taking water into the boat,
but there would be a considerable risk to crew since the boat would be at the
mercy of the wind and the waves and the ground spoil.
In consideration of this
situation (and others) we were in the position of considering risks. There have been psychological studies on
“risk-taking.” What leads some people to
take risks at one time, then choose to not take a risk at another time. Of course, there are the teenage idiots who
just have to experience a thrill of taking a risk, but I am talking instead of
rational people choosing to take a risk.
Think about it: When considering
whether or not to take a risk you are making a calculated guess as to what you
prefer - your current situation vs. one which might come about if you take the
risk. It turns out that people appear to
be willing to take risks if their current situation is relatively intolerable. And of course this makes sense. You don’t see a lot of billionaires buying
lottery tickets. People take risks
driving on the freeway when they just can’t stand being behind someone, even if
the risk of passing gains them only a few yards.
So, with the students on
issue of whether to return the boat that day, the fact that they had had a very
good day sailing the previous day and believed that they had already learned
all that they were going to get out of the course made it such that they were
quite happy thank you with their current situation and saw no reason to take
the risk. They did not wish to have the
experience. And this explains why
novices rather than experienced people tend to take risks. The experienced people have “been there, done
that,” so they see no potential advantage to taking the risk.
Circumnavigating
I was recently asked to teach a combo (103/104) to a couple on
their boat. They planned to
circumnavigate. They had a beautiful
Bristol and hadn’t taken her out into the bay.
So, this was my task: to show them how to heave-to and handle their boat
in a crowded marina. Of course, this is
bread-and-butter for the combo so I wasn’t really teaching them how to
circumnavigate, being something that I myself have not done. As the saying goes: “see one, do one, teach
one,” you need to have done one to teach
one.
It is not really surprising that a lot of people get into sailing
because they want to “sail around the world.”
It has a sort of romantic sound, I guess. I think that it has become so because of all
of the adventurous tales told about circumnavigation. For anyone interested in circumnavigating I
recommend that you read: Slocum: Sailing Alone around the World (a classic
written in high literary style); Tania Aebi Maiden Voyage (a young girl who has
had little experience sailing and no experience navigating sets out to
circumnavigate); Dumas: Sailing Alone Through the Roaring Forties (a great
story which might make you wary of your ambition); A Desperate Voyage (a great
read in which every mistake ever made is described graphically and humorously);
Jack London: The Voyage of the Snark (The already-famous author set out from
San Francisco in an incompleted boat, with inexperienced crew, a young wife and
no navigation experience. A steep learning
curve).
There are a lot of how-to books.
As far as ASA courses, the 105,106,107 and 108 all would add needed
experience and knowledge. The 107 is
celestial navigation and the 108 specifically deals with passage making and
dealing with emergencies at sea. The
exam is a bear and takes several days to complete.
Frequently when people say that they want to “sail around the
world,” the phrase is preceded by the phrase, “Some day Im going to quit this
job(cubicle, traffic…) and sail around the world.” That is probably not the right attitude for
circumnavigation because you are going to be fully employed in keeping bad
things from happening (not hitting something hard and keeping the water out of
the boat). It will be a full time job,
and by “full time” I don’t mean a 40 hour week, I mean a 24/7 job, and that is
assuming that you stay in the belt from 40 deg N and S latitude. If you go outside of that, then the real
adventure begins.
There are opportunities which arise to join sailors who are
circumnavigating for legs of the trip.
Just google “crew wanted” and you’ll find a lot of options for crew from
novice to “yacht master.”
Wayne Cooper
Dec016
Dispatch
Phase
Changes: The Caribbean, Your
Refrigerator and on being lost in the fog:
On
Columbus Day and the Caribbean
With
the passage of Columbus Day in October, I was thinking about the coincidence of
several things:
a.
The fact that the Caribbean is the first area Columbus visited on his voyage,
b. This is the area of piracy, and c. This is the most popular area for
pleasure sailing as well as the area most affected by hurricanes.
Are
these really coincidences?
It
turns out that the answer is No - because of a particular global effect known
as the ‘Coriolus’ effect. If you do a
Wiki search you’ll learn that this effect owes it existence to the Earth’s
rotation. It acts to the right in
Northern hemisphere and to the left in the Southern hemisphere (when viewed
from the North Pole). This means that
the predominant winds in the northern hemisphere in the Atlantic flow from the
Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal) to the Caribbean. Likewise, given the fact that the dominant
sails available to large ships in the 15th century were square
sails, which can only sail downwind, these winds will drive square riggers to
these waters. The Spanish found lots of
gold and silver in the “New World.” Given
the fact that they could not sail against the wind to return to Europe they had
to stage their return in the Caribbean and then follow the Gulf Stream up the
Atlantic until they could swing around and cross over the “pond.” The other powers in Europe refused to accept
the Spanish monopoly so they pulled a Willie Horton - they went to where the
money was. Soon after Spain and Portugal
were given a monopoly on the discoveries, Protestant England and Catholic
France decided that piracy was not considered to be an illegal activity in the
competition with Spain, but was sanctioned by the ruling powers of Europe,
particularly, Queen Elizabeth I, who stated: “The use of the sea and air is
common to all; neither can any title to the ocean belong to any people or
private man”. Her favorite pirate was Francis
Drake, whom she knighted after his circumnavigation, during which he named
“discoveries” after her.
The
stakes involved were enormous. On September 26, 1583, the treasure fleet from
the New World brought a shipment of fifteen million pesos in bullion.
So,
in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Caribbean was like
today’s Middle East, only the prize was not oil, but bullion, sugar and the
slave trade. By the end of the 17th
century, Spain’s territorial monopoly had been whittled down to Cuba, Puerto
Rico and the eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola and Trinidad.
And the Coreolis force drives hurricanes,
which arise in the Atlantic, towards this area.
The area bounded by Puerto Rico, Bermuda and Miami are known as the
“Bermuda triangle” and is famous for storms and lost ships and planes. That also accounts for the popularity of the
area for sailing in the season when there are no hurricanes - because there is
the constant “trade winds,” that is, the winds produced by the force. It is technically not a wind, but the
movement of the earth under the atmosphere.
More
on phase changes: Refrigeration and Engine cooling
The
Caribbean also figured indirectly into the discovery of the means of
refrigeration. In the early 19th
century, an enterprising New Englander came up with the scheme of cutting ice
from frozen lakes in Massachusetts and transporting it to the Caribbean. He made so much money with the venture that
he and others started experimenting to see if they could come up with a method
to transport refrigeration. Eventually,
It was discovered that a phase change from a solid to a liquid or liquid to a
gas cools the atmosphere.
What
he was doing was taking advantage of chemical “phase changes”, based on
Charles’ Law.
The
cooling system of a diesel engine takes advantage of the same chemical process,
only in reverse: The heat from the
engine is cooled by the antifreeze of the internal cooling system, which then
is cooled by the sea water in the external system. I have seen the phase changes used to deal
with snakes, when LPG is sprayed from a tank onto a wriggling snake to freeze
it solid to where it can be picked up like a stick and broken apart. Or if you let the snake thaw out, it will
wriggle away!
On
being lost in the fog and more phase changes
Recently,
on a combo course, we found ourselves enveloped in fog at one of the most
dangerous places in the ship channel - right at marker 16, going north. In clear visibility one can easily mistake
the red “2” marker of the Texas City Channel for the next red marker in the
Ship Channel, which is considerably further away. If you mistakenly go for the red Texas City
Channel you will be crossing the Ship Channel right in front of on-coming
traffic. Fortunately, my crew had
anticipated such a situation and had plotted the course to the next Ship
Channel marker, so that once the fog began to lift somewhat they were able to
proceed to it rather than wander across the Ship Channel dangerously.
Until
the fog lifted they also took the right action of staying around marker 16 so
that they were not wandering around in the fog.
This is the same principle used in entering a channel at night, that is,
one should have already plotted the course from one marker to the next and this
is the course which should be followed rigorously.
A
reminder: The sounds you are supposed to
make in decreased visibility (fog):
(a) A power-driven vessel making way
through the water shall sound at intervals of not more than 2 minutes one
prolonged blast (4-6 seconds.
(b) A power-driven vessel underway but stopped and
making no way through the water shall sound at intervals of not more than 2
minutes two prolonged blasts in succession with an interval of about 2 seconds
between them.
(c) A vessel not under command, a vessel restricted in her
ability to manuever, a vessel constrained by her draft, a sailing vessel, a
vessel engaged in fishing and a vessel engaged in towing or pushing another
vessel shall, shall, instead of the signals prescribed in paragraphs (a) or (b)
of this Rule, sound at intervals of not more than 2 minutes three blasts in
succession, namely, one prolonged by two short blasts.
One should recognize that, in case you encounter fog
the standard horn of compressed air may not last long, so one should always
have a spare.
What about a bell?
The rules state that a vessel of greater than 20 meters in length is to
carry a bell, but this does not replace the horn.
But
what causes fog?
Like pressure systems and wind, fog is caused by
differences in air temperature. Every
particle of air has a temperature, called the dew point, at which the air
becomes saturated with water. If the
particle already has a humidity of 100 % and is entirely saturated with water,
it is at its dew point. The lower the
humidity, the more the air must be cooled to reach the dew point. The converse is also true. A warm on shore
wind may blow across an upwelling of cooler water and be chilled to its dew
point. This is why fog develops in San
Francisco Bay, or in Maine in the afternoon.
Can fog be predicted?
To predict fog, you should know the dew point - the air temperature at
which fog will form. To help, there are
two devices - a wet-bulb and a dry-bulb thermometer. From the measurements taken one can consult a
table which will tell you at what temperature fog will appear. The Annapolis Book of Seamanship goes into
the details. One can purchase what is
called a “sling psychrometer, which measures relative humidity and dew point.
What
is more useful to have in fog?:
Horn
Chart plotter
Radar
Well, a horn is essential. A chart plotter will find the channel marker
and radar will find the vessels.
If you are in a channel, the chart plotter would be
preferable, but in a bay with mingling vessels, radar would be more useful.
References
1. Navigation Rules - International -
Inland. US Department of Homeland
Security. US Coast Guard.
2. Bohren, CF & Albrecht, BA. Atmospheric Thermodynamics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
3. Williams, E. From Columbus to
Castro: The History of the Caribbean. New York: Random House, 1970.
4. Rousmaniere, J. The Annapolis
Book of Seamanship. (New York: Simon
& Shuster, 1999).
June Dispatch: On Capri, Cats and the Schengen
The Horror that is Capri
I recently captained a 52.4
ft. Beneteau Sloop in the Tyrhennian Sea (visiting Procida, Ischia, Ventotene
and Ponza). Capri was on our itinerary
because it is one of the most famous islands in the Med. My crew was looking forward to visiting the
“Blue Grotto.” We arrived at the “Grand
Harbor”, on the north shore of the island, about 5 p.m. and dutifully called
the marina on the VHF. At first we
received assurances that there were slips available, but by the time we got to
the marina apparently all the slips were taken.
Rather than inform us of this situation the marina elected to not answer
our calls! Finally, we motored into the
entrance of the marina. It was
dangerously busy with powerboats, sailboats and ferries coming and going, none
of them seemingly attending to the rules of the road. Since we could see no apparent slip to enter
we elected to find the anchorage which is indicated in the “Italian Waters
Pilot” book as being just west of the entrance.
The book indicates that the anchorage is 10 meters deep. Unfortunately, the entire anchorage was
covered with small powerboats and dinghies and the actual anchorage was marked
as off-limits by yellow buoys. So, we
looked for an anchorage just outside of this area. There were a few boats anchored there, one
appeared to be about 100 ft. in length and another appeared to be about 50
ft. But we found that the depth was from
35 to 40 meters!. According to the
standard rule of the ratio of rode to depth, this would have required deploying
160 meters of chain or 280 meters of rope (that’s 840 ft. of rope). I know of no sailboat which carries that
length of chain or rope because of the weight and the problem of later recovering
the line.
Since my crew, which had been
a great crew all week, picking up the rhythms and responsibilities of cruising
very rapidly, had a strong desire to visit Capri, I decided, with misgivings,
to deploy our anchor, expecting that we could dinghy in to shore. It turned out that we had 75 meters of chain,
giving us not quite a 2:1 ratio. It
appeared that we held but I was anxious all night about the possibility of
dragging anchor. I had an excellent
First Mate (a retired US Marine Colonel – they don’t get any better than that),
who kept a close watch on the anchor. As it turned out, we did not drag anchor, but
that was just a random event in a universe of chance I suspect. It was too far to dinghy in to shore and a
water taxi that came out charged 20 Euro each way!
When it came time to retrieve
the anchor we were presented with a real problem. What is the weight of 120 ft. of ½ inch chain
connected to a 121 lb. anchor? According
to the West Marine catalogue the chain weighs 2.8 lbs/ft. All of this adds up to about 500 lbs. It is obvious that a human cannot haul up
this weight by hand, so one is entirely dependent on the anchor windlass. But the question then arises, what is the
capacity of an anchor windlass? Again
according to West Marine, an anchor windlass that will pull up ½ in. chain has
a maximum pull of 3500 lbs. So that
seems all right, right?
But, then something else came
into the picture – something called “duty cycle.”
As I understand “duty cycle”
it means the percentage of one period in which a signal or system is
active. What this means for an electric
motor is that all electric motors are designed to have a thermistor
(temperature indicator) which turns the motor off when it reaches a certain
temperature. So, the bottom line is that
you cannot pull up the anchor in one single period of running the motor. You have to pulse it ….on a few seconds….off a few seconds…on a
few seconds…etc., otherwise you will burn out the motor, then you would be in a
fix.
You do not necessarily know what
the duty cycle of a motor is. I’m told
that it can be as little as 10 (meaning that the motor will have to rest 90
seconds for every 10 seconds you run it, or it may be as high as 50.
One can google “duty cycle”
and learn a lot more good information about the issue.
The important thing to
remember is that when you deploy an anchor you must keep in mind how you are
going to retrieve it in case something occurs that makes you have to move in a
hurry (for example, you start to drag anchor in a squall and you are rapidly
closing the distance between you and the pristine wooden boat which seemed to
be a long way from you when you dropped anchor last night, and you cannot
arouse the occupants of the boat who were up all night partying, which you
chuckled about at that time but now find to be annoying because they are
obviously unconscious in an alcohol driven stupor. And it doesn’t help that one member of the
crew tells you that the owner of that precious boat is a lawyer who bought the
boat because he won a lot of money in a negligence law suit.
You may have to let your road
free.
Now, you will need to know
how much 200 ft. of ½ in. chain and a new 121 lb. anchor is going to cost. Ill let you research that on your own.
Cats and the Schengen
If you have had the good
fortune of visiting the office of Sackett’s Sailing (Bay Area Sailing School)
in Watergate Marina, you will have met Robinson. Robinson is in charge of everything. He is a big lovable cat who sees to it that
he knows what is going on everywhere, including on Glen’s (the owner and
operator) desk, who, in response to Robinson’s expectations, interrupts his
work to attend to his needs. Robinson
acts like he is a captive and if the front door is left open will bolt out the
door. But he doesn’t go far and waits to
be picked up and returned. He has his
duties to perform, you know.
You will also meet Zsa
Zsa. She is the official security
dog. You may not immediately see her –
she works undercover.
But this is not the kind of
cat I want to discuss. I want to
introduce you to the “catenary.” The
catenary is the curve made when you attach two rigid objects by a line, like
how a chain hangs between two posts. In
this sense, the term is used in anchoring jargon to designate the shape the
rode takes as it leaves the bow of the boat and proceeds to the anchor. This shape is why one can have a secure
anchor with chain by deploying only 4:1 ratio while rope requires a 7:1
ratio. Chain, being heavy, sinks down to
the bottom directly below the bow and the chain itself, being heavy, creates a
more square catenary than the curved one associated with a rope rode.
And this gives you some
information about dragging your anchor.
For your boat to drag its anchor it must pull the catenary out – in
other words, the curve must be pulled out straight before the anchor can be
moved.
If you can visualize this,
you will be able to understand another peculiarity to using chain rode. When you drop a rope road the boat will fall
back with the wind so that after you have deployed your expected 7:1 ratio the
boat will swing in an arc with that length of rode serving as the radius of the
circle of your arc. But when you drop a
chain rode, because it is heavy it will drop straight down to the bottom and
pile up on itself. It will be only after
several hours as the boat is moved one way then the other as a consequence of
wind and current that the whole extent of the chain will be deployed. What this means is that you might
UNDERestimate the radius of your swing when you first drop a chain anchor.
The Schengen
I would like to associate the anchoring
catenary with the Schengen agreement, the agreement in the European Union in
which if you enter one country in the Union you can travel freely to another in
the Union without having to go through customs or passport control.
I mentioned in the May
dispatch that Isaac Newton discovered the calculus in the 17th
century when he left Cambridge to escape the plague and found himself with time
on his hands. Well, actually, to be more
complete, it was not just Newton who discovered the calculus. On the Continent, a German philosopher,
Gottfred von Leibniz, discovered the calculus at virtually the same time. Leibniz actually published his findings
earlier, but from Newton’s notes it is clear that he had discovered it before
Leibniz. This simultaneity of discovery
and some other oddities caused followers of each to accuse the other of plagiarism. Nothing will arouse the emotions of a
scientist like a priority dispute.
Sociologists of science write that this is the engine that drives
science, scientists being as egotistical as the average guy.
One of the mathematical
challenges which arose was the solution by calculus of a curve which is similar
to the catenary curve. One continental
mathematician (Nicholas Bernoulli) presented the problem as a challenge to
mathematicians. After some time, Leibniz
and other mathematicians solved it, but the solution was not made public. Since the problem was so hard, Bernouli was
sure that he could prove the Newton was a fraud by demonstrating that he
couldn’t solve the problem. Newton
solved the problem in less than a day, staying up until 4 a.m., but submitted
his answer anonymously. His answer was
recognized, however, by one mathematician who stated, “one can tell the lion by
its paws.”
It is too early to know if
the Schengen zone is changed because of the Brexit, but I would suggest that
you should expect it. If it is, I hope
that this does not discourage sailors from cruising because they come to be
confronted by some of the same frustrations which caused them to think of
escaping the land in the first place.
I know that it sounds a
little preachy, but I believe that people living in the West have a moral duty
to travel and get to know the people in other countries, and there is no better
way to travel than cruising. As I have
said previously, when you arrive on a people’s shores you are treated
differently than if you arrive by bus or airplane. For, after-all, people who live on the shore
are of the ocean, meaning that much
of their livelihood is derived from the sea; everything from their home to
their food is affected by the sea. This
means that they already have something in common with cruisers, and as a
consequence more to share. They will be
welcoming and you will come to know them in a way which you otherwise would not
have been able to do.
I like to use a metaphor of a
window and a mirror. Think of sitting in
your lighted room during the day.
Through the window you can see the lawn, the mailbox and the street with
the passing cars. The window is
transparent. But as it gets dark, you
can see outside less clearly, and the darker it gets the less you can see. The window becomes a mirror – the darker it
becomes outside, the better you can see yourself inside the room. It is not coincidence that xenophobia and
narcissism are often compatriots. The
more you come to love and appreciate yourself, the less effort you make to come
to know those out in the darkness. But,
notice also, the darker it gets, the better those outside in the dark can see
inside your room. And they likely will
not see you as you see yourself in the reflection in your mirror. If you don’t like these physical facts then
you have only two choices: Blacken out
your windows and live as in a cave, or take your light out into the
darkness.
As I have said, I often meet
students who want to escape their world by cruising. Sadly, I often find that they imagine the
experience will be like it was for the original circumnavigators – Slocum, for
example. But Slocum accomplished his
feat in 1899. The world is not like it
was in 1899 – rain forest natives are known to wear Michael Jordan
tee-shirts! One of my responsibilities
as an ASA instructor is to show people how they can cruise safely. And it is a joy and a pleasure to do that because
virtually everyone who has this ambition is intelligent, articulate and a lover
of nature. Who better to be the
ambassadors of our country?
So, even if the Schengen zone
is abolished, don’t let this discourage you from cruising the Med.
You should cruise not for
escape but to acquire what the writer Andrew Solomon calls “social oxygen.”
mWC
References
- Italian Waters Cruising Guide
- Ibid, Katz, History of Mathematics.
- Hinz, ER. The Complete Book
of Anchoring and Mooring. Cornell
Maritime Press, 2001.
