Cargo by sail? It's the latest thing

Good bight, Irene.

Thanks to "Hartley 18" at anything-sailing.com for this story.

We bought a steel full keeler for a number of reasons: strength, capacity, tankage, strength. We didn't buy it for speed, even though it's not as pokey as one might assume. We also considered that as we sought independence from the shore (involving making our own power and water and carrying a full complement of spares and tools, including the ability to fabricate some items) that we might wish to do a little informal cargo or passenger transport in some of the more remote Pacific atolls we are likely to cruise.

Note that these transactions would be of the "put the diesel drum on the deck, and the roast pig in the galley...thanks, man" type. Cash, not so much.

Alchemy, irrespective of her other fine qualities, is undeniably a capacious steel boat with pipe railings, light-duty crane potential and space to carry several 55 gallon drums on deck. I could safely carry in mild conditions quite a bit of gear or a couple of people willing to kip on deck.

It has occurred to us, therefore, that inter-island transport of essentials outside of the usual cargo freighter runs (or carrying a few passengers in return for a roast pig or something) might be a possibility for us, even in a 41 footer.

Then I read this story.

Y'arr, set course for Carrot Common, ye dogs.

As for large-scale sail cargo, sure, why not? The 400 foot steel barquentines worked until 1939 at a profit hauling guano and wheat. Mechanization could mean a four-master could be run with a dozen guys. I can see "charter cargo" for carbon-credit types or the richer sort of greenie. Coffee at 20 bucks a pound barely scratches the guilt of some people. Shipping under sail is a perfect fit for shade-grown coffee picked by sponsored orphans...or am I being cynical? Too bad. I just want to see working tall ships come back.

You know what? Screw being a floating restaurant  Anchors aweigh!

Not everything needs to get there in 10 days. If you can wait, you can get it by sail. Next up: freight Zeppelins.

Links in the chain

Seem familiar? Yeah, that's why I got the job.

I belong, like most recreational sailboaters, to a yacht club.  Most recreational power boaters, by contrast, seem to belong to marinas. I don't know why this is, or even if it's just my mistaken observation, but as I belong to both a yacht club and rent a dock at a marina, I can say that the general tenor of each place seems different.

A yacht club, apart from the general perception that its focus is on rich guys swanning about in fake admiral's rig notwithstanding, is premised in most cases on a certain amount of member participation in the dirty work. This usually means volunteering to keep the facilities in order and to tend to the club's equipment and seasonal tasks, which are many. Most yacht clubs will have volunteerism extracted in the form of "club hours" or some other commitment of time and labour to avoid, defray or lessen the cost to all of hiring outside, paid help.

Generally, this works well, but with the average age of YC members creeping ever upward at the same time as the world continues to get busier, seemingly, for all of middle aged and older, it is sometimes difficult to co-ordinate even the well-meaning volunteer, or to utilize them once co-ordinated.

After about 10 years of editing the club newsletter (not a stretch for a professional writer/editor/publisher, frankly), I decided to switch things up a little and to join the "Mooring Commitee" at my club. This is the team responsible for maintaining, repairing and replacing as needed the various floating tires, ramps and other assorted bits and pieces that are chained to railway wheels at the bottom of the club's basin, the acreage devoted to mooring non-dock-owning boats.

Lake Ontario is not particularly benign, nor is our mooring field particularly sheltered. There is usually damage requiring attention: strained, stretched or corroded mooring chains, sunken tires, rusty hubs, and assorted debris. We have two main tools to aid us: a purpose-built, self-propelled pontoon barge with a hydraulic crane to hoist the railway wheels on and off the bottom, and a venerable, approximately 65-year-old work boat named Storm King.

Storm King: Not dead, merely rusting.

I am going to be taking over the care and feeding of this old boat shortly, as the fellow who was doing it has time commitments elsewhere. I'm already the driver of the barge, "driver" in that case meaning "just don't hit anyone", as its steering characteristics resemble that of a saddled three-legged pig.

Storm King is not appreciably better, having no real neutral gear, a permanent list, insensitve helm, a 1950s Chysler block with various leaks, cracks and "little ways", and a hull of sub-optimal thickness. It's clear that we need a new workboat, and soon, nostalgia for this otherwise useful and stalwart little tank notwithstanding. Storm King also provides tows for boats with engine trouble (not uncommon) at the club's launch and haulout, even though its keel is laughable and the towing process is like making a complicated bank shot in snooker, underwater, via robot arms.

What James Bond might use to dive on a mooring. The landing craft gate at the front would make an excellent dive platform.

Storm King is simply very worn at this stage. No amount of rehab or maintenance of the non-cheap variety could reasonably be expected to overcome the many deficits of this vessel, at this stage. We can likely (I certainly hope as I will be driving the thing) keep it from exploding, sinking or otherwise making a dramatic exit for this season, and there are many attributes to the boat specific to our existing duties everyone involved would like to see carried on with a successor work boat (see the picture above), but there's no feeling at this stage that replating the hull or putting in an efficient diesel makes economic or functional sense.

The fact that I am rehabbing my own steel boat, using hoists, modifying hydraulic steering gear and so on, is not at all coincidental. This job, such as it is, plays very close to my own activities and interests, even if it's of the patch 'n' mend variety.

We'll see as the season progresses if a series of pallative measures renders further insight on the best method to keep a younger boat in better condition for the years to come. Certainly, if I were at a marina and not a club, I wouldn't get to volunteer for a position that dovetails so snugly with the sort of stuff I'm already doing/learning/trying not to lose a finger at. It's all, puns intended, links in the chain.

Arise, O diesel! Alignment awaits!

The greatest hoist ever executed.

This post describes, in graphic-heavy detail, how I've built what I hope will be a durable engine gantry for the new diesel mounting, coupling and alignment procedure. It turned out to be yet another in a long line of "boat learning experiences". I'm posting this with loads of photos as I was asked to relate my experience with this project, so please bear with the load time.

Getting the diesel into the boat recently was comparatively easy...about an hour's work with a guy on the Polecat crane, me and a friend shifting and using radios and whatnot.

The typical marine diesel engine, for the uninitiated, must sit on four "motor mounts" bolted to engine stringers, fore-and-aft steel girders (in Alchemy's case; f/g boats have either solid or wooden-cored engine stringers covered in a thick, reinforcing layer of fibreglass), and aligned between the engine coupling (the heavily built spinning disc at the back of the engine), and the propellor shaft coupler, a similar metal disc about 12-15 cm wide at the inside end of the propellor shaft.

Typical motor mount

Typical vibration-reducing coupler

In most boats, this has meant a quite exact alignment, as the flat surfaces of the shaft and engine coupler must "mate" as close to exactly as possible.

The reasons are twofold: The couplers' surfaces are very smooth and are secured by three or four or even more bolts; a more close-to-perfect fit means a tighter fit, meaning the bolts are evenly stressed. The second reason is that misalignment, even below the level of casual observation, can induce both vibration and destructive wear on the engine's drivetrain and the "stern tube", the glass or metal pipe that encloses the prop shaft on the way out of the boat.

Misalignment can wear all the parts of the drive train, from the crankshaft and bearing inside the engine, to the prop at the far end. The engine prematurely wears, the stuffing box can overheat and fail, the expensive shaft can become scored and worn, and the prop' s blade can wear. The cutlass bearing can fail. Worse case could be an engine seizing or the shaft failing: Boom, you can have a nice chew out of your rudder as water comes hosing into your engine compartment. You do have tapered wooden plugs and a prayer shawl back there, right?

So the so-called "solid" coupler requires careful alignment using an interesting little device called a "feeler gauge". Essentially a little jacknife with several little slips of metal of differing thicknesses, this gauge tells you how close to ideal the coupler surfaces are. Considerable dinking around with the engine mounts can be involved, little 1/8th turns of the heavy, and by that stage, load-bearing bolts in the motor mounts, to raise or lower the engine fractions of a degree to obtain as close to "completely aligned" as is possible.

While it is quite possible to do all this with wedges, crowbars, foul language and a small quantity of blood sacrificed to the sea gods, my particular situation called for some inventiveness. In short, I needed an engine gantry, something to allow me to haul the engine up and down over its stringers (the longitundinal beams to which the motor mounts are bolted) and forward and aft until I found the exact spot needed.

Ideal, but expensive and way, way too big to fit in the pilothouse.

Great for a car, not for a boat with a "diesel pit": you can't lower the engine past the legs.

I was not sure I wanted to drill holes in the pilot house deck, bolt, back and brace this underneath. Cool gadget, however.

I solicited advice from my fellow sailors, and seriously considered making something out of steel pipe and Kee Klamps, with which I am familiar from work in the film industry...

Not cheap, but reusable and essentially man-sized Meccano. It was hard to resist.

Oh, Kee Klamps, we would have been good together...but you cost top dollar.

I even did Version 2, beefed up at the corners

 I even had some "thinking out of the box" suggestions, like a tripod affair:

Not enough spread on the load bearing surface, and the engine would snag the chains.

I'd have to take the roof off.

but in the end, decided to build in dimensional lumber: Two triangles, cross-braced and bolted, should do it.

So I got "designing", a dignified term for engineering of the level usually found on the back of a napkin.

I started by modifying my engineer friend's basic design.

Then I actually took measurements and made modifications.

Then I smoked crack. Things got a little out of hand.

The opportunity to learn through building and the chance to save a bit of money (I estimate I spent $80 on all the bolts, screws and lumber) meant I could live with inelegant and heavy if it was strong enough to persuade me to get under the suspended engine. No joke...I could get killed in a fairly vivid fashion (arrgh, pump the bilges...) if I failed to cobble together something sufficiently strong.

I went with KD-grade construction spruce 2 x 6s, about five 12 foot lengths.

Reminder: Sweep garage

Using my table saw top as a work area, I first cut the cross-beam, which would end up "floating" and held only by the engine weight, on braces. 

One of my oldest and best-performing power tools, plus a very manly drill bit.

This was to enable me to easily reposition the beam, and thus the hoist's vertical drop, some short distance fore and aft.

That very long racheting wrench thingie was a deal. The radius means you can crank fast enough to warm up the nuts, and what man wouldn't like that?

The beam itself was made from hemlock 2 x 4s I salvaged from the rebuilding of our breakfast nook off the kitchen (it used to be a drafty, sinking "mud room"). Unlike modern lumber, these were a lot closer to being 2 x 4 inches, and hemlock is strong. Thinking I'd double the thickness, I eventually decided to triple it. I did not wish to here a single creak. Through-bolted with six inch long, half-inch thick SS bolts, washers and nuts, it seemed pretty well tied together.

I liked using a template, to a degree

I decided I wanted a pair of 2x6s for each of the four "legs", and that the base 2 x 6 should be mortised in between them, and then double-bolted for strength. This required a bit of geometry to compensate for the angled legs, so I made a rough template.

Not as inaccurate as it looks.

I saw things above plastic because beneath is the drain for the horse piss: my garage was built as a stable. Not that I intend piss of any kind to happen in the garage. That's what the garden is for.

Dicking about with these cuts took some time. Knowing what you want and having the experience to take a shortcut, or to see that one might exist, are different things. 

Fortunately, years of low-grade house repairs mean I generally can lay hands on the right tool.

It's Black and Decker, a crap brand. However, it was on sale for $29 and the tippy plate thing comes in quite handy when the alternative is a plastic mitre box and calories.

Or the "right now" tool.

Eventually, I had four more or less equal-length gantry legs with mostly similar trapezoids cut out of their insides.

Like your prom date, it's even worse up close.

I had a slight change of plan when it came to making the "triangles". 

I needed good light and level concrete for this bit. I got good light.

I decided I wanted ones with brushcuts.

Apparently, I was on the level

Things were coming together. The keen eye will note my Honda 2000 genset. I run a crappy line to the garage, just for lights, pending the rental of a backhoe to dig the requisite legally deep trench, and I don't like to run power tools AND lights in there as it could trip a house breaker 100 feet away. So I use the Honda. Handy little bugger.

The year IKEA hired the Special Olympians

So I had a brace for the forward face, a brace over the top, and two "keeper" planks to center the hemlock triple-width beam.

So clean! (Not the garage, the gantry)

So that was basically that. The "open" side would allow the transmission to clear the gantry, or so I thought.

This is the reality of two boats, no car, folks. And yet if I had a car, I probably couldn't swing even one boat.

The problem now was to disassemble the thing and get it down to the boat.

Nice lashings, at least.

My customary mode was, to put it bluntly, overtaxed. Riding this over a little bump might, I thought, either kill me or snap my frame, bike or trailer.

Cockles, and mussels, and lumber, ei-oh.

The gantry weights over 100 pounds/45 kilos, after all. So a hand truck or dolly that can convert to a four-wheeler and can take 800 pounds of weight was needed. After the Makita drill, I use this thing all the time. A great deal I got for about forty bucks.

It only *looks* like a DIY trebuchet.

After much personal heroism and unappealing grunting, I humped this Frankenwood assemblage down to the boat, and used the handy deck crane.to haul these chunks aboard. Inevitably, they required even further deconstruction just to fit down the companionway.

Much unrecorded swearing, bolting, noting the base was one-half-inch too narrow for optimum, recutting, rebolting, drilling and screwing, the "wide stance" frame was in place:

Pit, but I hope no pendulum.

This length of line was fine for deposit via the Polecat crane, but I replaced it with a short piece of chain to lessen the gap between the beam and the engine.

Not much point if I can only get it partway up, said the actress to the bishop.

I cut some chain to fit the beam and...

Suitable for hoisting diesels or torturing heretics.

...making sure I was more or less centered over the engine's mass, so as to avoid a nasty swing when I cranked it free...

It shifted a bit because I'm not quite zeroed on with the hoist and chain positions. Easy enough to fix, however.

 ,,,hoisted away. The chain hoist is a one-tonne model I got from Fastenal on sale for $69. Needless to say it will come in extremely handy for a) installing water tanks, b) installing half a tonne of batteries and c) removing 600 kilos of lead ingots from the forepeak put there for trim purposes. Which infers the amount of tools, chain and anchor our boat is meant to sport.

WHEE!

DIESEL GOES UP, DIESEL GOES DOWN...yay...

The chain hoist is one of those devices (much like the similar winch) that you think you can anticipate how it works, and then you use it, and it is actually far easier. I can lift this engine with one hand on the chain, and lower it precisely. It's a fine thing, this hoist. Particularly on a steel boat. Looks the part, this part.

Ok, stop already. You can play with it tomorrow.

And the rather elaborate and painstakingly constructed (because I am clumsy, hence pain) engine gantry thingie? 

Fabulous. Nary a creak, not a shift, groan or wobble. The floor of the pilothouse is similarly unprotesting. I am well-pleased.

Four feet to the shaft seal? Where's my measuring tape?

As for the ultimate reason for all this levity, or rather levitation? To get the new engine on these flexible feet, to bolt the coupler to the Aquadrive unit, to bolt the Aquadrive unit to the shaft, gird as it will be with that PSS Shaft Seal thingie, and to clap on a four-bladed feathering propellor fit to power us off lee shores of exceeding remoteness.

Eventually, it should resemble this. This is very cool, if you understand the issues with motoring a small boat in a seaway. Saves vibration, wear on the drivetrain and shaft misalignment issues.

And that's the boat that Jack built, or is building. Further reports shortly.

Self-rescue: More reality checking

About two and a half years ago, I posted my thoughts, immature as they were, on what I suspected was the reality of self-rescue on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean. By "self-rescue", I mean a way in which the solo sailor, having fallen off, can reboard his/her vessel, or how a single and perhaps smaller member of a couple can retrieve the big dope that's slid overboard in the night.

It starts with understanding the difference between EPIRBs (a beacon for the boat) and PLB (a beacon for the body that has fallen off the boat). This video explains it succinctly:

It is quite conceivable that if you came up on deck 200 NM offshore to find your PLB-equipped crew missing, you would a) call a MAYDAY on your SSB and VHF, b) hit the EPIRB to get a plane in your general vicinity, and they would c) attempt to zero in on the PLB signal, which is normally weaker and of lesser range than a boat's EPIRB.

I was of two minds then, and I remain so today, with a couple of caveats and an evolving suite of MOB devices to blame for the rethink. My original position was, and remains, to stay aboard the boat. Sounds easy, right? Obvious, even. And yet people fall off boats all the time. On the Atlantic delivery I crewed after I wrote the original post on self-rescue and problems I saw with getting someone back aboard in bad conditions, the boat came off an odd and higher wave while the AP was on during my middle of the night watch. I had been watching the stars, so brilliant at sea and had been lying on my back. The boat slid, the cushion I was on slid, and suddenly my feet were under the lifelines and my backside was on the toerail.

Then the tether went twang. I stopped my slide with my feet washed by the waves of the sudden, clear-air gusts or rogue waves or whatever the hell it was that threw us over without warning.

I was able to quickly haul myself (and the cushion) back, switch off the AP, and actively steer back to our course. By the time the skipper appeared, all was well and I had re-engaged the AP.

But it was a lesson or a warning. I never failed to tether on in the Atlantic when on solo watch, because intellectually I understood that the likelihood of finding someone on a moonless night with 10-12 foot waves was pretty low. I could be pretty far astern, and injured, before anyone found me. The PLB might...might...have helped, but we were between Bermuda and the USVIs at about 63° West, and likely beyond SAR aid. Past Bermuda, I saw two ships, at a great distance. Maybe. Could've been a UFO.

So stay aboard. Don't cause your friends, or SAR personnel, or even your crewmates to play what I grimly termed "spot the corpse". Believe in your saviours: the tether, one hand for the ship, the PFD and the Personal Locator Beacon...wait, what about that PLB?

I still have that ACR "Res-Q-Fix" PLB. It lives on Valiente during the season, because while it's not an EPIRB, it's better than nothing. I wear it when I sail solo, again because it's better than nothing. But it's five years old now, and it's due for a battery replacement. I have to wonder, in light of PLB technology's "cheaper and more features", if it's worth bothering. (Since writing this, I found a place in Hamilton which will swap out the battery, so that and visiting HMCS Haida are reasons to go to The Hammer.)

The manual operation aspect is an issue, as well: If you are knocked out or have broken fingers (not a crazy assumption if you were knocked off the boat), you are going to have issues activating some of these units once in the water. It's a two-hander job.

So are the new style of near-range "life tags" the way forward? That depends, I think, on comparing features.

This link from Practical Sailor tells us

I don't know if devices like these are practical, but as we creep closer to our own ocean adventure, I do consider them.

While I agree that the majority of sailing done is coastal and within reach of such SAR resources, I am thinking specifically of offshore use, where the distance exceeds the range of SAR personnel, and the odds of a person being alone at the helm in the middle of the night is greatest, and it is this possibility of having to be the only possible rescue vessel in the area that I am thinking of.

The short form is that these beacons incorporate AIS and DSC signals to aid boats in turning around and locating people in the water. They can sound an alarm if the wearer gets more than, say, a boat length away from the AIS.

It's interesting, even if the two-mile range seems short to me. Obviously, it's only for multi-person crews able to physically retrieve people from the water, which means that a) there's a ladder or Lifesling or other means of getting them aboard, and b) they aren't so injured that they are unable to aid in their own climb back on deck, and c) conditions allow coming alongside a person in the water without slamming them further or chopping them to bits with the prop.

Point goes to staying aboard. On the other hand, with a "proximity beacon tied to the AIS,  you know if somebody is off the deck very quickly. Even if they are passed out and have a broken arm, guaranteeing a hard recovery, the search aspect would be the smallest part of the operation.

Different AIS-SART, same hand?

That aspect is better this than waving a sputtering penlight, I suppose.

On the other hand, in a heavily trafficked area such as Lake Ontario, I actually would prefer what I already have: a submersible VHF with which I can directly shout MAYDAY on Ch. 16. My Standard Horizon 850
gives me not only a radio that can float/take a dunking, but can also give me a lat/lon thanks to an integrated GPS. The likelihood on a summer's afternoon near Toronto is that I would be hauled out by another boater monitoring Ch. 16 and halfway back to my own boat before I saw the yellow helicopter.

But that's not really the scenarios for these gadgets. They are more-or-less designed for offshore. More presumptions include that:

a) all crew on deck are wearing these devices at all times.
b) the devices themselves are always charged and functional, meaning they are "always on" in a sort of "guard mode" until lack of proximity to the AIS transceiver sets them to "active mode".
c) that you keep your AIS on continuously in order to hear the alarm.

It may be the case that the ideal solution is for a PLB/GPS combined with a two-mile COB beacon, allowimg the greatest number of options for "self-rescue" or thanks to the more typical guys with the slings in orange helicopters. I wonder if a simple clamp and extending, brightly coloured pole (like the sort on bicycle carts) on the PFD would increase the visibility of the COB and, if the beacon was on the top of a two-meter pole, would the range of the beacon then be much greater than two miles? I understand also that some PFDs inflate a "soft danbuoy", a sort of inflatable, brightly coloured plastic pole that deploys off one shoulder. That seems like a good idea, but would be only marginally better at night.

That "laser flare" is looking good at this stage. Certainly, what I currently have is enough for Lake Ontario (mostly) fair-weather sailing. But I follow developments with interest, as do I check up on the international standards.

It only looks like a bottle of rum

This AIS-SART technology looks promising, but is it translatable to the self-rescue set-up we are discussing? Dunno. Must learn. Maybe this would serve. It calls your VHF using Channels 16 and 70 via DSC, providing a set of GPS lat/lons. It also has a strobe and can be water-activated.

The "old school" trailing floating rope is an old trick from the days of cork-filled "life belts". I have read of a couple of cases where it worked (for obvious reasons, you don't hear about when it doesn't work). A refinement of this idea is attaching this trailing line via shock cord and a sort of pin and block to the control lines of a wind vane. The weight of the line is not sufficient to pull the pin, but the weight of a body on that line, being dragged at several knots, is. You pull the pin, the wind vane is disengaged, and the boat (hopefully!) rounds up. You haul yourself forward and hope you were clever enough to buy the sort of folding ladder you can deploy from the water's surface.

Again, you have to be fit and largely uninjured to accomplish this. If you've ever been towed behind even a dawdling sailboat, you know you'd have to have considerable arm strength to pull yourself forward. Adrenaline might help, but if the water's not tropical, not for long.

You could rig this "release and round-up" to a jib sheet, too, but I would have to look up how that works in the old 'single-hander' books I have. It might be only suitable for dinghies.

Needless to say, these methods are in no way guaranteed, but if I was single-handing on the open ocean in relatively easy conditions, I would consider trailing a floating line aft. It wouldn't induce that much drag, and it's cheap, if "last chance" insurance.

It's an interesting topic, to say the least of it. People who "self-rescue" get to tell their stories. Rarely is a single-handed boat found adrift and uncrewed in which it's clear how the skipper departed, or why.

The most convincing anchor test ever!

I own a Fortress, and frankly, I'm shocked! Although one might point out "needs all-chain rode", "not enough scope" and "cats", I think I need to rush out and buy the New Coke Rocna, made from pressed cans of New Coke.

If you don't find this amusing, congratulate yourself on never having wasted precious minutes observing "anchor tests" done on dry beaches using farming gear.

Thanks for making this, Brad, aka "Bene505" from anything-sailing.com.

Keeping 'em in stitches

Bob, bob, bobbin along

Perhaps not the most momentous post I've ever made, but to illustrate the sort of headspace I'm in, this little device was my Christmas present from my wife. The Speedy Stitcher may look like something acquired by using a time machine to mug a cobbler, but it's actually a handy little device that would have made my rode-driven Adventures in Whipping more effective than using a simple sailmaker's needle, as one does.

I just realized that last sentence will be somewhat confusing to my foreign readers. Twenty years ago, it would have been confusing to me. But I had to learn nautical English, which seems to have little to do with standard English, so you will have to, too.

I learned about this handy device on Anything-sailing.com, a useful and somewhat less bombastic and more practical sailing forum I frequent. Available at the esteemed Lee Valley Tools for a far more reasonable price than had I bought it from, say, West Marine, the Speedy Stitcher seems, on first use (on otherwise good jeans worn through due to winter bike riding), to be a practical addition to the sailmaker's tackle box I've always carried. I actually like fabric repair and will occasionally make simple clothing. I find it calming, and, as a sailor, very useful going forward in the sense of applying chafe gear, patches and sail repairs. There's always make and mend aboard: you might as well have the right tools.

Mukluks? Maybe with built-in flotation.