Messing About In Sailboats

Wednesday was a day of firsts - Part Deux

As regular readers of this blog (Ha, who am I kidding?) will know, I recently joined Raritan Yacht Club. It has taken us a while to find our feet and figure out how to get racing. With a bit of prodding from the extremely able Rear Commodore, we got our asses down to the club early on Saturday, hung around the dock and within 5 minutes, we were snatched up by Howard, the skipper of a C & C 35 MK III, Knot Again who was on the look-out for a few select athletes to add to his top-notch crew list.

We went through a rigorous interview process, which involved ensuring that we were breathing regularly, that we vaguely knew the sharp end of the boat from the stubby end and did not suffer from hydrophobia. The next thing we knew we were crewing in a 2-day regatta run by Keyport Yacht Club. I am happy to report, that we won all three races in our class. I was going to say because of my contribution but despite might be more accurate.  I think I managed 10 over-rides on the starboard winch.

I want to give Howard huge kudos for his post-race libations. Rather than the usual six pack of coldies, Howard provided some delicious wine and a fantastic spread of cheese, pate and other fine comestibles. Class!

On Wednesday, I turned out for the mid-week evening race.  This was the first of what I hope will be many of these. What a frickin' blast. The racing was a lot of fun. There were a ton of boats out with 4 classes of boats crewed to the gills. Although we put in a valiant effort we did not fair as well as we had at the weekend.

We were not helped that after a late sail change, yours truly stepped up to re-tie the jib sheets and took 10 minutes (that felt like 40) to tie the sheets to the clew. This is typical! When there's no pressure, I can tie a bowline, eyes closed, one-handed behind my back with a flourish. If there is an ounce of pressure, forget it, I tie 'em wrong every time.

Suffice to say, the end of the evening was a highlight. Dark and Stormies in the bar. Some celebrating of Sinn Fein's accomplishment and huge amount of mirth at my expense.

Hey this sailing club thing is working out well!

Wednesday was a day of firsts - Part 1

Yesterday was a big day for firsts. the first "first" was a blog meet. What's a blog meet? Well it's when bloggers meet in real life.

As readers of The Peconic Puffin will know, I had lunch with "His Puffiness", Michael Alex yesterday. We had a great time. I suspect we both approached this with trepidation. Would the other guy have two heads? What if we had nothing common and spent an hour talking about the weather? Actually we talked about the weather a bit but an interesting way.

Michael and I found that we had a ton in common. Our lives have followed similar paths. We both started our blogs for the same reasons and at about the same time. The Puffin gets a lot more traffic than mine and Michael works a lot harder on his blog than I do. He is a very smart guy about he builds his community.

I have no doubt that we will be repeating this. And if any of the other NY area bloggers want to have a blog meet, and Joe or TMan happen to be Gotham, lets do a big blog meet. Now how cool/nerdy would that be?

And Tillerman, Bonnie and Joe, I don't care what Mike says about you, you are alright in my books*

*Just stirring here

Great Sailors and Their Boats - Troubled Affairs, Part 3

Part 2.

At the far end of the spectrum of the relationship between Man and Boat are the tragic affairs. In a perverse way, they are probably the most interesting. One of the most famous examples were the cases Donald Crowhurst and Nigel Tetley’s relationships with their trimarans Teignmouth Electron and Victress in the Golden Globe race of 1968. They were identical boats and considered cutting edge speed machines that theoretically would win the race.

Crowhurst mortgaged his house and bet his business in constructing the boat that he thought would bring him fame and fortune. It was tricked out with the latest in marine technology manufactured by Crowhurst’s own company. To the outside world, his boat was a floating advertisement for Crowhurst’s genius, his business and the future of sailing.

Behind the scenes, it was a different story. The boat was constantly, behind schedule, not built to Crowhurst’s specifications and certainly not ready to cross the start line of the Golden Globe race by the October 31^st 1968 cut-off. 

Underway, the electronics never worked properly and the boat started to delaminate early in the race. She leaked like a sieve taking on water, very seriously in one pontoon. He knew early on that his boat would fall apart in the Southern Oceans. It was desperate. He just couldn’t do it and his boat as well his own abilities had let him down. Rather than face the shame and financial ruin of abandoning the race, Crowhurst had a different strategy. He stayed in the relative safety of the Atlantic radioing in false positions. These showed him still in the race. His aim was to sail in circles till the other racers returned to the Atlantic and then rejoin the race taking second in the prize for fastest time to complete the race. Well, that was his plan.

Tetley and his wife lived aboard their trimaran, Victress. He was the last to enter the Golden Globe race, practically doing it on a whim, quickly outfitting it for the circumnavigation. The fact that he was able to get her ready that quick was a testament to his Royal Navy training.  For most of the race his boat performed well. He started late but gained ground gradually. As racers like Chay Blyth and others abandoned the race, he found himself one of four competitors left and in third place. He knew that he wouldn’t win the prize to cross the line first as either RKJ or Moitessier looked like taking that. It seemed a certainty that Moitessier would also win the prize for fastest race.

Then a bizarre thing happened. In a spiritual epiphany, Moitessier abandoned the race, turned south out of the Atlantic and headed east for the Indian Ocean. There were three boats left: RKJ heading for home and line honors, Crowhurst who was ostensibly in third and Tetley in second place with a certainty of winning the prize for fastest time.

His boat had other ideas. He was in the Atlantic and on the last leg home when like Crowhurst’s, Teley’s trimaran started to delaminate. Thinking that Crowhurst was on his tail he pushed Victress too hard. She took on too much water and started sinking. Tetley was forced to radio for help, abandon his boat, his home and his opportunity of glory 1,200 miles from the finish. Tetley returned quietly home, was awarded a 1,000 GBP consolation prize and was pretty much forgotten.

Crowhurst, meanwhile was faced with a huge dilemma. With only RKJ left in the race, he could definitely claim the prize for fastest circumnavigation but he was horrified by the prospect. He knew that he would never get away with it. If he had come in second in the time race and third overall it was less likely that his logs would be scrutinized by the race committee led by an already suspicious Francis Chichester. Even then it was a big gamble. If he won the speed prize, his records would be pored over and he knew that he would be caught out. Crowhurst was a brilliant mathematician and had done a spectacular feat in calculating plausible false positions for months on end but he knew though that tough scrutiny would uncover his fraud.

In the end, was driven mad by the lie he had created. Had his boat performed he would most likely have completed the race. He would not have won but at least he would have kept his dignity. The shame and desperation was too much for him. His boat was found floating unmanned in the Caribbean. Crowhurst had thrown himself or fallen overboard.

Tetley’s story is less well-know but equally tragic. After the race  he took his consolation prize and started to build a boat called Miss Vicky with the intention of completing his circumnavigation. He was never able to raise enough to outfit her for the vessel. On a quiet afternoon in 1972, Tetley went to the end of his garden and hanged himself from a tree. He left no suicide note so one can only speculate why. It seems likely that the deep loneliness of his attempted circumnavigation had been especially tough on him. Followed by the desperation of failures and his sinking, one can guess that this as too much for him.

PART IV COMING SOON – HAS THE ROMANCE GONE

Great Sailors and Their Boats - Troubled Affairs, Part 2

Part 1

One of the most surprising relationships between Man and Boat was Francis Chichester and Gypsy Moth IV. Gypsy Moth IV is mythologized in England. She sits (sat? I think she may have been moved) next to the Cutty Sark at Greenwich, within spitting distance of the Maritime Museum and the Greenwich Meridian. She is a monument to Chichester’s circumnavigation and British maritime accomplishment.

In reality, Chichester had a very fractious relationship with Gypsy Moth IV. She was built for him with the single purpose of racing round the world.  She was long, thin, high off the water and light. At the age of 64 and in poor health, Chichester was very concerned that he could handle Gypsy Moth’s 54 feet for the hundreds of days his circumnavigation would take. He braved the longer waterline in the interest of speed.   

She should have been a delight but from the start it was a troubled relationship. She was a rocker. Even on her mooring, she would hobbyhorse, presaging perpetual seasickness for Chichester. She was very tippy. During her sea trials, she healed too far over in fairly moderate conditions and had a tendency to broach. Chichester was worried sick that she would capsize.

He had substantial weight added to the keel. So much weight, that it diminished her speed to that of a boat with a much shorter waterline.  So he had a boat that was longer than he wanted to handle that went slower than a boat several feet shorter. Not a great start.

During his circumnavigation, it is clear from his autobiography that handling and fixing the multitude of gear failures caused Chichester a huge amount of stress. It was rare that he spoke of Gypsy Moth IV with affection during the first half of his circumnavigation.

In the end, she did the job and with some significant changes to the keel length and rigging at his stop-over in Sydney, he made her easier to sail on the homeward leg, even surviving a capsize in the Southern Pacific.

I still find it surprising that a boat that is generally regarded as a symbol of the highest British sailing accomplishment, a boat that is more famous that Robin Knox-Joshnton’s Suhaili, let alone Ellen Macarthur’s boat, BQ/Castorama was actually a bugger to sail and worried Chichester sick.

PART 3 TOMORROW - TRAGIC AFFAIRS

Great Sailors and Their Boats - Troubled Affairs, Part 1

There is an old saying that the happiest day of your life is the day you buy your first boat. And the second happiest day is the day you sell it.

I can’t relate to this. I have only ever owned one boat, a very used Cape Dory Typhoon. She was 12 years old when we bought her, solidly built, fairly well-maintained, a little grubby and her sails were functional but old. My wife and I loved her. We gave her, her first name Alad (a contraction of our first names); we cleaned her up, worked on her teak, and then tried to clean the teak stains I had created.  We bought her presents like new cushions and a sturdy British Seagull outboard engine. Above all we sailed her. Every weekend we could, without fail on “lovely” Galveston Bay.  Never more than a day sail but she was our sanity and a very important part of our early marriage.

When our son came along, we sold her. It was a sad day. We were blue for weeks about it. We still miss her.

Since then, it’s been renting and reading. Chartering whenever we can and reading pretty much anything written about sailing (lately, especially the backs of the sailing magazines. At some point Alad II is going to happen).

Mostly I have been reading about the great sailing adventures of the single-handers: Chichester, Knox-Johnston, Slocum, MacArthur and even Donald Crowhurst, poor guy. The thing that struck me most about these stories is the range of relationships these sailors had with their boats.

Like love affairs, they come in many varieties, from the spiritual to the down-to-earth nature of a long solid marriage, from the troubled short-lasting affair to the tragedy of a flawed relationship.

At one end of the spectrum was Bernard Moitessier with his speed machine, Joshua. She was a model of functionality. Built out of steel with a telephone pole for a mast, not especially beautiful to look at but Moitessier had an almost spiritual relationship with her. In my view, Moitessier seemed have spiritual relationships with just about anything except living humans. Moitessier had the opportunity to be the most famous sailor ever. He had a shot at winning the first and fastest son-stop solo circumnavigation in the Golden Globe race of 1968. Instead, he abandoned the race and rather than return home to his real wife, he stayed at sea to be at one with Joshua, the sea and nature.

Then, there were the more down-to-earth relationships that Knox-Johnston had with Suhaili and Slocum with Spray. Like a comfortable long-standing marriage, they knew their boats well, what they could expect from them, cared for them and were grateful for what they got in return. Nothing too flashy or passionate, the relationships just worked, They weren’t especially sentimental about each other but like a good marriage it was based on trust. Man and boat, counting on each other, protecting each other.

PART 2 TOMORROW. – FRANCIS CHICHESTER AND GYPSY MOTH IV

Why do we love this sport?

_DSC0405, originally uploaded by Limpographics Artistry.

They are wet, cold. The weather sucks. They have capsized twice. They are at the back of the fleet and probably have been all season. But they hare having a blast? It takes a different kind of mentality, I guess. A different attitude to what fun is.

I have read most of Tristan Jones' books. If you haven't tried them, you should do. He is not the best writer in the world but he tells a great sailing story and he had so many amazing adventures. He grew up in North Wales,  the son of a merchant seaman. He went to sea as a boy, joined the navy and then spent the rest of his life sailing various vessels, none of them remotely luxurious.

One of the things he said, later in his life, by which time he had lost a leg to illness and was in a pretty decrepit state, was that he had never know comfort. He wasn't complaining, just observing that this was the only life he knew.

Perhaps we are all masochists but there is somethings satisfying about braving long periods of wet and cold. If you play rugby, your scars and stitches are your badges of honor. If you ski, it's about an amazing downhill run or a spectacular jump. For sailors it's all about hardship and braving the elements

The Bored Meeting

Adam Turinas - CEO of Messing About In Sail boats: "We need to talk. We have a bit of a crisis on our hands. After consecutive months of growth, Messing About In Sailboat’s traffic is flat. More concerning, the number of sites linking to us has dropped off a cliff. Our Technorati ranking dropped from 42 to 28. What the hell is going on guys?"

Adman Tunasalad, Marketing Director: "Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.  It’s probably a seasonal thing."

CEO: "Seasonal? 33% fewer sites link to us."

Marketing Director: "Well, I have to admit it, this is a little worrying. At first, I thought that it was a few of those zombie spam sites disappearing and there was a rash of sites that stopped operating."

CEO: "And…"

Marketing Director: "Maybe it’s a content thing. You know. Maybe people don’t like us that much anymore."

Adrian Torinos, Editor In Chief: "Oh, I hardly think that's the problem. Look we were ranked as a Top 10 site by The Tillerman, not to mention that nice Mr Rouse’s Popeye Award last year. And we got that award from Platial for the Map. And don’t forget that we had that article published in Lats and Atts. Oh no! We have a very sound editorial policy."

CEO: "Which is what exactly?"

Editor In Chief: "We find nice photos we like on Flickr and then we post them on our site. You know, sailboats, old guys with beards and dogs. The dogs on boats thing is very clever. Everyone likes dogs. Then on Fridays we find a nice music video from Youtube and we post that."

CEO: "Do we ever write anything any more?"

Editor In Chief: "Oh yes. We have lots of writing projects. We have the Saving the Planet thing and don’t forget we are commemorating the Golden Globe. It’s their 40^th anniversary, you know."

CEO: "And how are these going?"

Editor In Chief: "To tell the truth…"

CEO: "That would be a refreshing change…"

Editor In Chief: "…We haven’t really followed up much on the Saving the Planet thing."

CEO: "And why is that?"

Editor In Chief: "Well, it was hard. You know doing something green every week was tough."

CEO: "And…"

Editor In Chief: "I got bored."

CEO: "And what about the Golden Globe"

Editor In Chief: "Well, that’s pretty boring too. And I am pretty busy too with my son’s rugby team blog and the, you know… the …er job thing."

CEO: "So what you’re saying is that since we got those awards, we have pretty much depended on ripping off other people’s photos, posting some crappy old videos from Youtube and we haven’t written anything worth a damn for six months."

Editor In Chief: "Well, when you put it like that..."

CEO: "Lets face it, we have become boring! B-O-R-I-N-G. Dull, dull, dull. I am bored even talking about this. We don’t write anything original anymore. Anyone have any ideas?"

Marketing Director: "I have an idea that I want to run up the flagpole. Thought I would throw it in the pot and see if the cat licks. It’s wild and crazy. It could be big. Why don’t we run some ads on Facebook."

Editor In Chief: "Here’s a radical idea. Are you sitting comfortably? OK, get this. How about pictures of cats on boats. Now THAT would be cool."

Marketing Director: "How about a competition? Maybe name that Sea Shanty."

CEO: "You're fired."

Editor In Chief: "Pigs on boats?"

CEO: "Oh, for the love of all that’s holy! Now this is what we are going to do. From now on, we won’t post anymore random pictures without a point of view about them. No more music videos without something vaguely interesting to say about them. We will start writing again. We won’t post as much as we used to. We may go weeks without a post but we are going to get back to why we started this blog in the first place. We are going to post stuff we like about sailing. We are going to share stuff that’s worth sharing and we are going to stop shoveling crap out there on a daily basis because we think we have to. Above all we are going to have fun with it. If it's not fun, we won't do it."

Editor In Chief: "So the cat thing is a no? Just checking."

CEO: "Aaaaaaaaaagh!"

British Identity Crisis

A great article in today's NY Times on Great Britain's identity crisis. Gordon Brown (he's the British Prime Minister for readers who aren't British or limeo-Americans like me) decided that it would be nice if Britishness was defined a bit more clearly.

Lets face it Britain is a bit vague on quite a few things. For example, there is no written constitution. Even with the help of Wikipedia, I struggled to explain how this worked to my 15-year old son.

Among Gordie's initiatives was the idea of having a motto. The French have one - Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. In the USA we have, et Pluribus Unum, so it's about time the Brits got one.

The Times (the London one) ran a competition to see who could come up with a 5 word motto for Britain. Here are some of the best ones. There are some real beauties:

Dipso fatso bingo asbo Tesco (Asbo stands for “anti-social behavior order,” a law-enforcement tool, while Tesco is a ubiquitous supermarket chain)
Once Mighty Empire, Slightly Used
We Apologize for the Inconvenience
Americans who missed the boat
At least we’re not France
My other car’s a Porche
Let’s discuss it down the pub
Great Britain: Mind The Gap

More in the post continuation...

Second best to messing around in sailboats..

is messing around with sailboats.  Sailing Dutch Uncle rigging his garage-built day sailer on a still January morning.  He's a rig-tinkerer.  Over the course of a mug of tea the plans for this one went from a gunter-rigged sloop to a gaff ketch.

By Peter McGrath

Top Secret: Prototype of the next America's Cup Design

A great post Sunday's BYM about the latest twist in the AC debacle. According to BYM, Golden Gate Yacht Club's challenge was to race a 90'x90' keel yacht. Technically that's a very big barge. I used to try to cross these in the Houston Ship Channel with my little Cape Dory. Let me tell you, these babies can shift!

Apparently, I am not alone in thinking a keel yacht is a monohull. There are a lot of people wondering why no one picked on this till  now. GGYC's Commodore goes to great length to dispel this as a pedantic quibble. Nigel Irens says not:

The terms 'Multihull' and 'Keel Boat' (or less commonly used 'Keel Yacht') are used to differentiate between two types of boat that are fundamentally different. A 'Keel Boat' derives its stability from the use of ballast whereas a 'Multihull' carries no ballast and derives its stability from its width. The term 'Keel Yacht' could, therefore, not be applied to describe a multihull.

I say they should compromise and start sailing these: