Blog 2019

You’ve been sailing awhile and in what you thought were familiar waters, when, you hear that terrible sound.

Here’s a great article by William C. Winslow, the Division 5 – Staff Officer Public Affairs, First District Southern Region, for the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, the all-volunteer, non-military arm of the Coast Guard, teaching boating safety education and conducting search and rescue operations

Crunch! You have just run aground. You feel embarrassed to do so in view of your family and friends, and your ego is dinged.

Welcome to the club — you’re not really a true boater until you have experienced a scraping. What distinguishes an old salt from a newbie is what you do to minimize your bad luck, and how you get unstuck when you’re in too-thin water.

Skippers’ errors turn into trouble when they ignore signs of danger or indulge in risky navigational behavior such as not paying attention to where they are headed.  So how to keep the captain alert?

1. A depth finder should be standard equipment on all but the smallest craft. The depth finder should be set so an alarm rings if the water drops to a predetermined depth (be generous with that setting by allowing an extra three to four feet). Even the smallest runabout should have a boat hook or even an oar to gauge the water’s depth.

2. Have paper charts aboard. They provide the big picture of bottom conditions in far more detail than electronic ones often do and help the helmsperson plot a course around potential hazards.

3. Know the sea conditions for your boating day. When is high and low tide? How strong is the wind and where are the currents and locations of known rip tides? Make use of all information known before you set out and use electronics and available apps to monitor any changing conditions during your cruise.

4. Know the environment you’ll be boating in by checking the slope of tidal sand bars. If they slope gradually, they will likely continue quite a way under water. If you spot birds wading out some distance from shore, conclude that they are in shallow water. Risking a shortcut over a sandbar may work one day, but subtle changes in tide, wind, and/or waves might spell disaster during another trip.

What if you have been cautious and you still got hung up? The kind of bottom you hit and how fast you were going play key roles in whether you’ll successfully free your vessel quickly with the loss of little more than a bit of bottom paint.

At the first sound of grounding you should cut your engine to avoid plowing in deeper. Then the skipper or a knowledgeable crewmember should check to see if the vessel has been holed. Even a two-inch gash can let a lot water in. Plug that hole with anything you have, including clothes, rags, towels, life jackets, and sails.

A soft landing indicates you’re in sand or mud, but look over your railing to confirm: If you’re sitting in mud or sand, you may have some wiggle room. Retracing your route makes sense here — until you scraped, you were in clear water, so backing out may be all that’s needed. If that doesn’t work, try turning around 180 degrees. You just might be able to bull your way through because your engine is more powerful in forward than reverse (first make a quick choice as to whether deeper water is to port or starboard). If your boat is a small open runabout with a draft of no more than a foot or so, another way to get free is to have everybody get into the water and push the craft back into deeper water.

Rocks confront you with a different challenge as they are unforgiving. Moving forward or back may do serious damage to the keel; once on a rock, always on a rock until the tide changes.

There are a number of other options for the level-headed skipper to consider. If the tide is coming in, you can float off, but put out an anchor to hold the boat in place so the wind or current doesn’t push your vessel into deeper danger. If the tide is ebbing, you will be spending up to eight hours immobilized while facing an increasing list. As this could flood the boat, it’s time to call for a professional tow. Though you hope you’ll never need it, it’s smart to buy unlimited towing at the beginning of each season.

The relationship between the wind and the waves is very important to boat to skippers. So important  that a completely new classification system was designed as a guideline incorporating both wind speed and the wave conditions most readily found at those speeds. This system, called the Beaufort Scale, was developed in 1805 by Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort of the British Navy. It is a guideline for what can be expected in certain conditions and a weather classification system. It assumes open ocean conditions with unlimited fetch.

Aside from just wind speed, temperature is also a factor in creating waves. Warm air (which rises) moving over water has a less acute angle of attack on the surface than does cool air (which sinks). A cold front moving across open water will create much steeper waves and hence create breakers sooner than a warm front moving at the same speed.

Also, a change in wind direction over existing waves can create confusion and hence larger waves. If a wind has been blowing northeast over an open body of water for three days and suddenly switches to northwest over that same body of water, new wavelettes will form within the existing system of waves. The energy of both systems will multiply to create larger waves.

When a wave system meets a current flow one of two things can happen. If the wind and current are both going the same direction, it tends to smooth out the waves, creating long swells. If the current and wind are moving in contradicting directions, it will create much steeper and more aggressive waves.

MAKING SENSE OF THIS

So, what does all this mean? Why is it important to know how waves are made? Well... You can determine several things from waves.

One of the things you can tell based on waves, is boat speed. This assumes that your vessel is a displacement ship, like a keelboat, and not a planing one like a speedboat. When sailing a displacement vessel, the boat is constantly displacing a large chunk of water as it moves along. The heavier the boat, the deeper the trough it carves through the water. Now, along with the physics of waves we discussed above, we can add that the faster a wave travels, the longer it is. As a boat's speed increases, the number of waves that it pulls along the hull decreases until the boat is actually trapped between the crest and trough of a single wave that it has created itself moving through the water.

All to often, I hear stories about boat buyers, or sellers for that matter, getting scammed. here's a few red flags that should make you suspicious.

Any one of these red flags should be enough to make you very cautious — more than one or two should be enough to make you slam on the brakes:

• An offer to send a cashier's check for more than the purchase price, and a request that you send the difference back to pay for shipping — almost always by instant electronic money transfer, such as Western Union, which can't be reversed once the money is picked up. Sometimes scammers will have imaginative reasons to need to have a return of excess money, such as they just got a settlement and they want to send you the check and ask you to return a portion. Ironically, this tends to foster confidence — surely you'd trust someone who trusts you enough to return some of their money. This is the brightest of red flags and always signals a scam. Never agree to send excess money back to a buyer.
• The buyer's lack of interest in inspecting the boat, verifying paperwork (often not even mentioning it), or negotiating price, even on expensive boats. Scammers are busy and usually have multiple scams going on. They don't have time to negotiate back and forth, and often forget which person they're dealing with. If a buyer isn't interested in title, registration, or a survey, and makes a full-price sight-unseen offer, stop.
• Buyers, banks, and shippers from multiple geographic areas. If a buyer says he is from Connecticut, and his check is drawn on a bank in Texas, and the shipper is in Florida. The check may be a forgery. The Internet makes buying across the country easy, but scammers often work together in separate areas to better hide from authorities.
• Communication via odd-sounding email addresses. Scammers prefer emails, though many will now use text and even phone calls. Emails, especially those with foreign domains (such as .ru) make hiding identities easier. But now, scammers often buy "burners" — prepaid untraceable phones — for calls and texting. These phone are bought with cash and then tossed after a few scams.
• Demanding fast payment. Scammers may say that the shipping company will be in town soon, and you need to pay them right away or the deal's off. Ironically, some scammers will negotiate the amount for you to send back to them (anything they can get is a success), even if they won't negotiate the boat price. Their only goal is to get some of your money before you become suspicious. If you're not comfortable, it's OK to delay the sale. Dragging your feet might save you a bundle.

Great article for BoatUS By Tim Murphy
Illustrations By Joe Comeau

Leaving your boat in a slip doesn't have to leave your brain tied in knots — here's how.

Simple and neat, and tied to a cleat. A proper cleat hitch goes a long way toward tying up quickly and easily.

Tying up at a dock is one of those techniques that's most elegant when it's done simply. The trick is to get the fewest number of docklines serving the greatest number of functions. And doing that means paying attention to three things: Strong points, a good hitch, and the right combination of lines.

"Notice anything different?" the skipper bellowed. The houseboat's rail — we'd tied our stern line to it — was now just a mangled pretzel of aluminum, thoroughly separated from the rest of the boat. The boat's builder had secured the rail to the deck with nothing but short self-tapping screws. The lesson: Make sure all your lines are tied to a strong point — both on the boat and on the dock. Usually this is a cleat, but a strong point may be a ring or an eye; it may be a bollard or a bitt; it may be a piling. The important thing is that whatever you tie off to needs to be stronger than the loads coming from the docklines. A good cleat or other strong point will be bolted through the hull or decking, with robust fasteners finished off with a nut, fender washer, and backing plate on the underside to spread the load. The lifting or towing eyes on a runabout are good strong points.

The Cleat Hitch

Walk down any dock, and you're bound to see a bad cleat hitch — either a tangled mess of excessive line or a series of insufficient loops that will slip apart under strain. Among charter fleets, the number of dinghies lost to bad cleat hitches is beyond counting.

The trick to a good cleat hitch is to keep it simple: Three turns around the cleat's horns; no more, no less. Pass the line once completely around the cleat's base (under the horns); next, make a figure-8 over the two horns; finally, turn the line under itself to make a half hitch.

Often you'll see people layer on the turns, crossing and recrossing the cleat. Extra turns provide no extra holding strength. None. What's worse, they may make it more difficult to untie if things start moving fast.

Docklines — Tying Up Alongside

Docklines limit a boat's motion. That motion can be either in a fore-and-aft direction or a transverse direction — or a combination of the two. The key is to identify the fewest number of docklines that will limit the boat's motion in every direction. Breast lines (lines that come off the boat at a right angle to it) limit how much the boat can move toward or away from the dock. Springlines (lines that run at a shallow angle along some portion of the length of the boat) limit how much the boat can move forward or backward. Bow lines and stern lines (lines from the bow forward to the dock or from the stern aft to the dock) may do some of each.

A glossary of all possible lines.

Figure A shows virtually all the possible docklines you could use — but hopefully not all at once! Docklines are named according to this convention: [direction from boat] [position on boat] [line's function]. So, a "forward quarter spring" is a line that runs forward to the dock from the cleat at the boat's stern quarter; it prevents the boat from moving astern. An "after spring" is a dockline that leads aft; it limits the boat's forward motion.

But when tying up the goal is to use only the ones needed to safely secure the boat.

For a short stop alongside a dock, you should be able to tie up with just three lines (Figure B). Breast lines have a disadvantage in places with tidal ranges or even wakes from passing boats: being so short, they limit a boat's vertical motion. Even stepping on the gunwale to get out of a small boat may strain a breast line. The best combination of docklines is typically at least one springline, plus a bow line and a stern line. If you run the bow line forward and the springline aft, you'll limit the boat's motion in both directions yet still allow for some motion up and down. Likewise, run the stern line aft from the side of the boat farthest from the dock. This will limit both transverse and forward motion. Place good fenders between the boat and the dock, then tension up the lines. For heavier weather and longer stays, add a second springline in the opposite direction of the first.

Docklines — Tying Up In A Slip

Tying up in a slip typically works best with four docklines: two bow lines, and two stern lines (Figure C). As for leaving room for the water to move up and down, the same caveats still apply. Try to avoid breast lines. Instead, run your bow lines forward a bit and cross your stern lines. This way, all the lines are working together to limit motion forward, aft, and side to side. If your boat is over 35 feet or you expect lots of wind or current, add a set of spring lines. 

Great article to help you estimate distance.

By Dick Everitt

Got a tape measure and a piece of string? You can use them to find out how far away you are from, say, a lighthouse.

In this example, I know from my chart that the height of the center of the light is 100 feet above sea level. So holding a vertical ruler 60 cm from my eye, I measure from the center of the light to sea level, which is 20 mm. Using the formula below, I multiply that by 10 for a total of 200. Then I divide 100 (the height of the light) by 200, which equals 0.5. That means I'm about half a mile from the light.

Distance off by vertical sextant angle is an old navigation technique used for keeping a safe distance from an object of known height, such as a lighthouse, the height of which is shown on a chart. With modern GPS, there's no longer need to know how to calculate this, but it's a fun trick to show the kids, and it's a useful backup if you're ever forced to use basic navigation techniques. But as many of us don't carry a sextant, or a set of tables, we can copy what the ancients had been doing for centuries before the sextant was invented. They simply exploited their knowledge that the ratio of 60:1 is equal to an angle of 1 degree. To find this distance, simply measure the angle of the center of the light above sea level and look up the "distance off" in a set of tables, such as those found in a nautical almanac, or use a simple calculation (below). The center of the light itself, not the height of the top of the tower, is used because that's the height marked on the chart. Usually we can forget any tidal height allowance, as less tide will put us farther off in safer water.

In its simplest form, you'll use something that measures 60 units from your eye attached to a vertical ruler marked in the same units. (Using a metric rule to do this exercise makes your math calculation simpler because you can work in whole numbers instead of fractions.)

Hold a piece of string 60 cm (about 2 feet) in front of your eye. (I find a loop of string of the correct length around my neck more comfortable than holding a knot in my teeth.) Sight across the ruler and measure the height of the center of the light above sea level, in millimeters. Then use the formula below.

It's a rough-and-ready technique, but one day it might save you being set in too close to a nasty reef or rocks.

This weekend is Memorial Day and unfortunately that usually means multiple mishaps on the water, I feel compelled to address safety on the water.

Few things are more enjoyable than being out on the water to watch a special event, but when it's over, it may be dark, and there'll certainly be lots of other boats all trying to get home at the same time. Here's how to make sure that your summer outing stays fun from start to finish:

This excerpt from an article in BoatsUS Reports is dead on.

Manage the guest list. An overloaded boat doesn't handle well, and when this gets combined with washing machine-style wakes generated by a pack of boats making their getaways, it can lead to swamping or capsizing. Be mindful of your boat's capacity, keep extra people off the flybridge, and have a properly fitted life jacket for everyone aboard.

Check your navigation lights. In the dark, the only way for another boater to determine your boat's direction is by tracking your navigation lights. Fix any broken lights before you go, and make sure that nothing blocks any part of the arc of the light. If your boat has a combination bow light, check that the lens hasn't been reversed during installation. Make sure you're showing red on port and green on starboard.

Don't paddle your own canoe. Standup paddleboards, kayaks, and canoes are great — but not in the middle of a crowd of boats after dark.

Boat responsibly. Wait until after you've tied up for the night before consuming alcohol. Operating a boat while under the influence is illegal, and in some states it could cost you your car driver's license, or worse.

Steps To A Season of Eating

Cleaning  Tips to Get Your Grill Party-Ready

The weather has finally broken, It's about time to fire up your grill for another season of outdoor cooking.

What Materials You’ll Need  

• heavy-duty grill scraper
• abrasive grill brush
• scouring pad
• sponge
• microfiber cloth
• dish soap
• warm water
• large, plastic bucket
• latex gloves or work gloves
• natural grill degreaser (optional)

Assess the Mess

Determine if you need to simply clean or replace the grates and burners. Rusty or crumbling grates require disassembly and replacement.  Be sure to check your owner's manual, and take a photo before you pull the grill apart. And, always turn off the gas when disassembling a grill

Warm It Up

For a basic deep clean, keep the burners in place and focus your attention on the grates. First, turn on the grill to warm up the unit.

Start Scraping

Once warm, use a heavy-duty grill scraper to remove the top layer of cooked-on grit and grime.

Scrub Warm Grates

Scrub the heated grates with a wire grill brush. If you need more power, opt for a battery-powered model. When you're finished, turn off the grill.

Soak Grates

Once the grates are cool to the touch, place them into a bucket of warm, soapy water. Soak the grates for a few hours, then scrub off any excess grime using a scouring sponge.

Degrease

Use a degreaser to clean up the grates as well as the grill’s exterior. Wipe clean with a damp sponge, then dry with a fresh microfiber cloth.

Shine It Up

Shine up the exterior with a stainless-steel cleaner or equivalent if not stainless; this will also help protect the exterior in the coming months.