Drogue therapy

This is a Jordan Series Drogue as built by Angus Coleman of Ocean Brake in the UK.

There's a surprisingly long list of items, some quite expensive, one hopes never to use as a sailor. These include obvious ones, like a SOLAS-grade flare and the liferaft, to more cryptic items, such as drogues, warps and sea anchors.

Amusingly, the drogue, which weighs about 18 kgs., came wrapped in two very big IKEA bags.

The idea of a drogue is to slow the pace of a boat running off in heavy weather. Running off is the opposite tactic to that of heaving-to, in which the jib, main and rudder are all set so as to sail the boat slowly upwind. Heaving-to as a tactic is largely passive: one can tie off the wheel or tiller and essentially doze, if not entirely comfortably, as the storm passes over or even to delay a harbour approach until daylight reveals potential complications. Heaving-to is something some boats do more readily than others, and requires practice to fiddle with the sails in order to balance the desired slow forereaching that keeps the boat slowly "crabbing" forward.

The forces of the sails and the rudder nearly cancel each other out and the wave train is therefore met with "the pointy end" and at a low speed. Expect a twisty ride, but not a dangerous one. Diagram (C) Sail Magazine

To run off in a gale or a storm situation is a more active strategy requiring active steering, but it also allows more options in terms of reacting to worsening weather. Running off means to steer downwind at a slight angle to the wave train and (usually) the wind aft in order to make more speed either away from the storm or gale, or away from the dangerous quadrant of the storm or gale. The problem with running off is essentially the same as the problem with heaving-to: eventually, the winds and wave heights may exceed the usefulness of the given tactic and at that point, the transition has been made from "heavy weather sailing" to "survival conditions". Not good.

The IKEA bags reveal the drogue elements of bridle, leader, cones and tail. And the bag (black mesh) in which to store the lot.

If the skipper and crew have opted to run off in heavy weather, a problem that will soon be made apparent is that of too much speed. Even in conditions of reduced sail, or even bare poles, a boat can travel faster than its hull speed, at which point the rudder can lose its effectiveness and/or the hull can "surf" and be prone to broaching, capsizing or pitchpoling, all dangerous outcomes at sea.

The bridle "legs" are shackled to the chainplates bolted to the stern and meet at the drogue leader, after which the cones deploy.

The best option, once running off has been decided upon, is to ready a series drogue should the sea state intensify to the point where the boat may become uncontrollable. While this will vary from vessel to vessel and depends on hull type, design and less quantifiable aspects such as windage, the outcome desired is to slow the forward progress of the boat to allow the waves to roll beneath it. The boat is still sailing actively and is still moving, presumably away, from the worst parts of the storm conditions, but its speed has been reduced by the drag of a long, trailing line with fabric cones that act like a large rubber band to retard forward movement smoothly and which, thanks to a weighted end, will stay submerged in the advancing wave faces.

Now, this doesn't mean a carefree ride. Note all the complexities of retrieval of the drogue in a chat between sailors Randall Reeves and John Harries in the video above. And even the drogue won't necessarily keep you dry: The aft part of the boat can still be smacked by a pooping wave and the motion inside the boat can still be considerable. But if the boat is sailing actively, even in heavy conditions, the odds of not only surviving, but of preserving the rig and gear and avoiding injury or worse among the crew increase.

The black straps attach the cones to the drogue's single leg.

Series drogues exert great stresses on themselves, which are transferred to the hull. We therefore ordered ours with Dyneema cores, which made the drogue both lighter and more compact and stronger than the nylon-line alternative. Angus Coleman, the amiable contact at Ocean Brake in the UK, actually dissuaded us from buying the drogue last year as he was on the verge of introducing all Dyneema-core drogues and wanted us to have the opportunity to order that style. Of course, the Dyneema aspects makes the drogue less stretchy than nylon line, but I suspect this is not going to be a particular problem with our steel sailboat. Nonetheless, I am mindful that the attachment points must be engineered correctly so as to transfer all the shock loads that may arise non-destructively. So we are going to have chainplates fabricated to accept the estimated (by Coleman) nine-tonne working loads on the stern. We actually have beefy bollards that can likely handle these loads, but outboard chainplates throughbolted to the hull won't have anything to chafe on, nor will they have much of a chance to catch on the windvane or the transom-hung rudder.

So this is another piece of the puzzle of preparedness. While we will do a practice deployment or three, let's hope, as with the liferaft, we need never use the thing.

Droning on about drones

Vista enhanced: The view from a drone. Photo still (c) http://www.captaincurran.com/2014/11/how-to-fly-drone-from-your-boat-1.html

Small, reasonably priced, remotely controlled (by either smartphones or dedicated console) camera drones are not just for annoying people and pets in public parks with their high-pitching whining. For the cruiser, they offer some practical advantages...if you can keep them free of the rigging. Not to mention your delicate flesh.

The advantages of the drone aboard the cruiser go quite a bit beyond boat selfies and bringing a bit of local colour to one's passagemaking blog. Some of them can be flown in fairly stiff breezes (although retrieving them can be tricky), and a range of several miles, using drones as "eyes in the sky" could reveal approaching weather or marine traffic, or even, when used as a "virtual crow's nest", reveal potential obstacles, such as wrecks or coral heads, that could ruin an otherwise beautiful lagoon visit.

It's important to note, however, that most drones are limited by their software as to the altitudes to which they can ascend; this is for practical reasons, such as the safety of aircraft, which also restricts drone operators as to where they may be flown at all. At sea, however, and away from land-based air traffic, there are fewer restrictions beyond battery runtime. Even so, a height of 100 metres is significant from sea level and is five to six times higher (and therefore gives a great "height of eye" distance to the observable horizon under fine conditions) than even the view from the top of the typical mast. For instance, our approximately 15 metre tall mast on Alchemy allows me to see an object of sufficient size on the horizon at 13.8 kilometres away; 100 metres of altitude on a drone would allow nearly 36 kilometres. And that's for relatively low objects; a ship of sufficient height could be seen even farther away, and a squall line thousands of metres tall would be obvious even further away and long before those on deck perceived the dark line of it approaching. This interests me, and not just because I've yet to install a lazyjack setup.

Mast steps galore: The smaller one's feet, the smaller the step can be; but the shorter the crew, the closer they'll have to be. Photo (c) Don Street/Cruising World.

In the past, the only way to get this sort of vantage point was by sending up the sharpest-eyed crew on mast steps, which was more convenient than just a bosun's chair alone and arguably safer as the last ones at the mast top gave the crew a place to more or less stand while repairing light fixtures or other mast-top fixtures, or examining standing rigging or freeing a snagged or damaged furler part.

The most esthetically pleasing mast step, as well as the least-likely to snag sails or lines, is the folding type.

But mast steps add weight and complexity aloft and can be expensive to purchase (depending on how many you require, which is a function of leg length and mast height) and laborious to install. (In the link provided, the fasteners are rivnuts, which I use with the solar panels; rivets or tapped machine screws are also possible choices). There's also a concern present in my mind of putting so many holes in one's mast and whether that has a compromising effect on its strength.

I would not hesitate to place a pair of mast steps near the mast top (particularly ones that are simple to fabricate, would be unlikely to snag anything, and would fit my huge feet), because I can see the point of that when combined with that bosun's chair. But installing mast steps all the way up just to get a better view? Perhaps the drone as nav aid makes more sense. Much as AIS complements RADAR, it strikes me that a live feed from a drone ahead of the boat would complement the forward-looking sonar we are already using. 

I think that the most productive use of drones at sea, apart from littering one's blog with stunning aerial shots, would be in noontime approaches to gaps in reef walls to confirm the least-tricky turns and the presence of uncharted coral heads. It was about two years ago that I realized drones were becoming cheaper than a full set of mast steps, and, because they can look directly down from well in front of the bow, are better for spotting keel-threatening hazards. I can easily see when an overlay of GPS co-ordinates and virtual AIS markers could use live drone inputs sent directly to the plotter so the tech-savvy could steer safely in undercharted areas by "live charting". Perhaps someone is already doing this: it seems like the future.

Logically, the most compact drones with the longest ranges and flight durations would be preferable for onboard use, but compact and long flight times don't always appear in the same models. Another consideration is the danger of losing something that costs one thousand dollars or greater into the salty sea; few current drones are capable of water landings (or take-offs or easy COB-style retrieval) and that's also going to restrict their use to fair weather and plenty of on-land practice prior to on-deck snatches) and the ones listed here seem too toy-like (or expensive) to take to sea, or to crash into it.

This is indeed wee. Photo (c) Steve Mitchell/Sailbits.com

Ocean cruising is a niche activity, and drone use during it is a niche of a niche, so word gets out quickly as to what works and what doesn't. A popular drone maker, and not just at sea, is DJI; their Mavic Pro and Phantom models seem to have quite a few fans, and I like how compactly the Mavic model can fold down to the size of a shoe for stowage. In January, I attended a rigging seminar with Andy Schell and Mia Karlsson of 59 North.com and the good ship Isbjörn. Andy and Mia run a popular charter business aboard their Swan 48 and they travel to some seldom-frequented latitudes worthy of shooting in high-definition with their DJI Phantom drone.

The DJI Phantom 4 drone: It's the handles you want to reach for.

After the seminar, which featured quite a lot of cinema-grade footage of Isbjörn underway, I asked Mia about the Phantom's performance parameters. She suggested the "big loops" of the Phantom model seemed superior in terms of safe retrieval; its maneuverability, being a larger drone, made it easier to control. I was surprised to learn that the drone could be flown easily at 15 knots apparent wind speed, although Mia suggested this was a big power drain and made retrieval increasingly difficult. 

There's plenty to consider before we ante up for a drone, but I think before we leave, I will have it sorted out for consideration as another useful tool in the navigational armoury. After all, if it's good enough for Paul and Sheryl Shard, who am I to disagree?

When friends go offshore

S/V Giulietta in Cascais marina a few days ago.

The first saltwater delivery I crewed on was on the then-new Giulietta off the course of Portugal in 2007, as related here. Giulietta is a custom-built Delmar Conde 1200 (in other words, a 40-footer), and she is not only a strong and well-conceived design, but is still impressively competitive, as her proud owner, who goes by Alex Gman on Facebook, will tell you.

A hot boat, and well-crewed.

He's right to do so. His well-crewed (mostly with youthful, fearless dinghy sailors) boat is very competitive in ORC class sailing in Portugal and in fact took first place in 2013, as in "best ORC boat in Portugal" and may do so again this season. This is pretty impressive given that 40 feet is not a huge race boat and that Giulietta's competitors are a bunch of larger Swans and other big ocean-rated vessels between 50-60 feet LOA. He's sponsored by a number of firms, including our mutual friends at Fortress Anchors, who I daresay are getting their money's worth out of the deal, given the steady improvement and persistant podium appearances of their logos.

Alex with old-man sailor beard and silverware, with his more appealing and charming wife Julieta beside him.

Alex and his crew have a new challenge at the moment: getting the light (12,000 lbs.) and generously canvased Giulietta to the Azores for some more racing. As far as I know, Giulietta has not been on an actual ocean crossing, although the Portuguese coastal waters can be brutal enough, as well as sporting a near-continuous line of cliffs and pointy, hard parts.

Alex doesn't believe in reefing...he says it just slows the boat down.

Giulietta is going to the Azores to participate in the Atlantis Cup Regatta in Horta, also known as "the Autonomy Regatta", perhaps because you have to sail across a quarter of the Atlantic to get there. Regardless, I thought it might be interesting to note that Alex, who was once self-described as "not a computer guy" (which is strange as he's a very successful engineer working worldwide) has gone over to the tech-savvy side of sailing, and is using a DeLorme InReach device (think "Spot Messenger" with Twitter-like text capabilities), and is also visible via AIS when within VHF range from the Marinetraffic.com site and also via Vesselfinder.com here.

A fairly typical outcome: Giulietta is in the lead.

Of course, a lot of this fine tracking technology will be turned off (and probably unplugged) during any actual racing, as Alex's hesitations about using AIS and these fairly recent tracking technologies was, as he said to me, "not wanting to give the competition any clues". Which, if sail racing is your sport, is very understandable.

As of July 18, 2014.

Now, Alex is currently reporting (it's around sunset on July 18th as I post this in the eastern Atlantic) strong winds on the bow, i.e. westerly winds. As he has a fine crew, a strong, well-equipped vessel, and is himself an excellent sailor, I have few worries for his five- to eight-day passage, but I do find it intriguing how easy it has become to actually see, more or less in real time, where a little boat on a great big ocean is...and to have them say something to the world from their deck.

Evidently, closehauled on starboard

Would that I could be there...I was graciously invited, but the timing is wrong for work and airplanes and boat fixing. But I find it encouraging that I can follow along, even from the pilothouse of my own docked boat.  Boa viagem e bons ventos, amigo!

UPDATE 14.07.21:  They've arrived in one piece.

When is a skipper a captain?

"Arr, matey, I be parallel parking this scurvy scow!"

Clearly, despite the eclipsing in most senses of the Age of Sail, the allure of the rank of Captain remains culturally intact, if at times nautically dubious. Now, as a title, it's never gone out of style as a military rank in various armed forces, nor is the usage of Captain a thing of the past for the commander of commercial, merchant vessels. But those uses are essentially professional in nature.

Slicker, peaked cap, spoked wheel and manly facial hair: Most male cruising sailors are using "old salt" as a style guide.

Is the skipper of a private yacht in any sense a captain? I've been called that, usually by someone trying to sell me something boat-related, but also occasionally by marine police or Coast Guard officials by way of inquiry. But despite a plethora of nautically themed headgear that imply a sort of braid-accessorized naval authority, I am unsure whether anyone in a sailboat (or powerboat, for that matter) is, unless such an individual is an actual current or former professional mariner or ex-Navy member, a "captain".

So, Captain Douchebagge, we meet again.

Certainly, as has been seen with the sad and disappointing cases of the captain of the cruise ship Costa Concordia and the recent sinking of the South Korean ferry, expectations are quite high and seem to include that "the captain stays with the ship" ...or at least isn't on the first boat off. Whether they are legally obliged to linger until they themselves are in danger of drowning is another question. Being captain is a job, not a holy office, despite what centuries of naval literature have suggested. Nonetheless, it's a rare job that has some real power when actually at sea. Not to mention a nice hat.

So the bumboat boys know who to pester

I've encountered holders of Royal Yachting Association (RYA) Yachtmaster qualifications who don't object if you call them "Captain"...but that's not quite the case, is it? "Yachtmaster" sounds a bit kinky when shouted across the deck, and yet that's most accurate. Harder to fit on a hat, though.

I see the YM course as a qualification, but not as a licence like a "ticket" from a marine school or institute. Some sailors obtain either through youthful employment or via military service or working on tall ships or coastal boats, certifications like a "60-tonne Master Limited". But generally, this pro or semi-pro level of mariner education is not pursued by those who wish to just sail their own boats, or, at best, run a rather limited sort of charter operation, 

But the lure of the title remains: The "ticket", leading to the stepwise attainment of the rank of Captain, is a sort of guild distinction. In the British Merchant Navy it's like being in a trade (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Navy_%28United_Kingdom%29); you have to take both shoreside courses and "work study" aboard vessels if you want to get to second mate.

A Captain able to find rum before it's gone and all the occult treasure and seamonster one could wish. Docking, not so much.

Similarly, I don't think the licences the MCA issues are equivalant to RYA certifications in the sense that the person successfully completing the course is a licensed mariner. None of my research on RYA courses, despite a lot of informational crossover, lead me to consider them STCW qualifications.

I think the equivalency might be "private Cessna jockey" versus "commercial airline pilot", or private car driver versus the tractor-trailer driver of road freight. If I fly a Cessna for fun, it doesn't qualify me to fly a DC-3 for money, although if the DC-3 pilot has a heart attack, the Cessna pilot is probably the best option for experiencing a flame-deficient landing. The YM Offshore, which a good sailing friend of mine has recently achieved and is happily using on his sailing adventures, isn't a commercial or a professional certification, whereas a Captain is a sort of trade description, as well as a title or rank. Interestingly, until the mid-18th century, a naval Captain could be any titled lubber, Court hanger-on or Army guy, and was the person who made "naval" decisions based on the advice of the ship's master, the non-dilettante career sailor actually responsible for the sailing-not-sinking part. It took a series of reforms to professionalize the Royal Navy and to get the "place-men" reduced, although advancement still favoured the well-connected and the aristocratic.

If this is your charter captain, switch to a walking tour.

Anyway, while it's harmless to call yourself "Captain", I find it imprecise and allusive to professional attainments in an area other than pleasure craft operation. I would allow that the owner and skipper of any given vessel is its Master, but one doesn't need the RYA or the CPS to tell one that. Any warm body with a PCOC is an "operator" in front of the water cops, and a "master" in Admiralty law. I can claim salvage as a master of a sailing vessel, should I wander across something not under command or 'clearly adrift', although this is a very nuanced topic in law, and there are many who would suggest that the line between righteous salvage and vile theft is permeable. Skippers or captain, beware.

I have seen a documenton official RYA stationary in which the "am I now a Captain" question was answered with "we take no stance" is an attempt to say "call yourself Captain, because it doesn't matter".  If people think they are captains, or even armchair admirals, it's going to have some sort of persuasive effect on RYA course-taking, even though that is *never stated* in the literature; it's sold as "the opportunity to improve one's seamanship skills" (which it is, of course), or the opportunity to evaluate one's existing skills (which it also is, as in the case of professional mariners who can "challenge" the higher YM exams and basically get passed into them for the purposes of post-career mucking about in boats.  

Another fictional old salt, only this one is just "Skipper". Note the cardboard signage on "S.S Minnow". Good grief.

So while I'm happy with "Skipper", I'll leave "Captain" to the pros. The simple fact is that there are different expectations that are bundled up with "Captain", and if you screw up, as one does, it seems worse surrounded by braid than when one is just "Skipper". And as for the hat, I'll bow to my pasty Celtic ancestry and just go with something that keeps the melanoma at bay.

Also good for garden work, I would imagine. Gold braid and anchor badge optional.

 

All is unseamanlike

It's like there hasn't been a clearance sale at West Marine since 1980.

Darwin denied his due. That's what I thought, probably with characteristic harshness, while watching the survival film All is Lost, which has been widely admired as both a technical tour-de-force and a heartwarming triumph of acting for Robert Redford, nameless aside from a credit calling him "Our Man". R.R., all craggy and sun-aged, at least has a boat of his own vintage: a typically worn, late '70s Cal 39 that looks as if it was last updated in '81, right down to the brown plaid cushions. It looks fitted out for Lake Ontario on a 15-knot day. It does not appear to be adequate for solo sailing in the Indian Ocean. The two are different activities. Significantly so.

My wife and I watched this film with some trepidation; we suspected it would, like almost every sailing narrative film we know of, be a little slack on the seamanship details, and in this we were not disappointed, except that we were. Again.

When one is a person who is trying to live his or her passion, and, intending to continue to live, has internalized those habits of mind and of safety best suited to keeping them alive, it's clear that when one is watching a movie that takes unnecessary shortcuts with reality, the effect can be jarring and can take you out of the narrative flow of the movie.

The experience of watching the dramatic and admittedly well-shot (and good sounding; we thought the sound effects were well-composed and mostly "realistic") visuals was therefore akin for these sailors to telling a martial artist to "fall awkwardly" after years of doing breakfalls: it's incredibly difficult to remember how to do things wrong when doing them right is internalized!

Warning, loads of spoilers ahead: Some clangers that killed the narrative thrust of All is Lost include a scene, for instance, where Our Man's fallen mast is freed by a couple of swipes of a blade through a halyard; both my wife and I said simultaneously "where's the bolt cutters?" Why did he not lift up his flaming half-jerrycan of burning paper, or have it held over the water? Where was his pump handle? Where was his bucket? Where were his ditch bag and EPIRB? Where was his PFD or his jacklines? Why did he sail on port, bringing in yet more water that overtopped his batteries (I assume) to get back to his sea anchor? He could have "chicken-gybed" on starboard to get to the same place! I'm not even sure that a Cal 39 would stay inverted given its ballast ratio.

I could go on. And on. You get the drift.

Foulie play: Our Man must have superheroic upper-body strength...and lifelines don't work that way. Jackstays do.

Sure, it's easy to be critical, and it's easy to acknowledge that stressed people screw up things that should be ingrained, but the overall impression is that whatever other qualities "Our Man" had that (ultimately) led to his survival, preparedness and basic seamanship were not uppermost. At sea, you make your own luck (John Vigor's black box theory). Active prep is superior to reactive MacGyvering.

And that is what took us  crash-gybing right out of a film that could have been better if it didn't star a non-sailor, and hadn't been written by a weekend sailor. There were things shown that wouldn't have made sense to a general audience (how a sea anchor works, for instance), and other things not shown that made a sailing audience cringe. I would say it's the recent immersion in all things RYA that might have made me more touchy, but I think I would have been about 80% bugged by this film even 10 years ago, when I had fewer sea hours and much, much more to learn about safety and seamanship.

Now, where did I leave my ditch bag? Never mind, I look fabulous for 77!

Coincidentally, we also saw Gravity last week, which one Web wag dubbed All is Lost in Space, and while that film was even more impressive than All is Lost (or at least, less familiar) in terms of visuals,  the problems for us were the same: the idea that three space stations and the Hubble orbit at the same altitude (also the same altitude and vector as satellite debris, apparently) and within sight of each other wrecked that film for me, as well. Space doesn't work that way, and neither does single-handed sailing, as depicted in All Is Lost. The fudging or the actual wrongness of the details treat the suspension of disbelief like the cratering of the bridge over Tacoma Narrows. Sailors can't bear the goofs, and non-sailors won't realize they are watching How Not to Do It: Marine Edition.

Bumps in the nightwatch

Nobody said global trade was going to be painless

Under the list of "problems facing the cruiser that are unlikely to go away soon" are paperwork and visa issues, the question of when it is worth it to bribe officials, and how to protect oneself, one's crew and one's boat from the debris floating in the sea. To date, I've run aground inside a buoyed channel with supposedly sufficient depth, I've run aground on a sand bar where I should've known better, and I've hit large branches and sucked plastic into the motor. I've also reported, several times now, the position and surmised course of floating picnic tables, shipping pallets, tree limbs and trunks to the Coast Guard. If there's garbage in the water big enough to sink a boat locally, there's likely worse at sea, if (one hopes) far more dispersed.

I've covered off in a largish post last fall the topic of strainers and the sealife and smaller debris that can hamper them. But this is more about steel and timber and tsunami debris that can do more than go bump in the nightwatch. Sure, most of it either sinks to the bottom or washes (and is plundered in the time-honoured traditon) ashore, but thanks to the sheer volume of world shipping, it's a non-trivial amount of junk afloat. While it's been said that if you worried about everything that could kill you at sea, you'd never cast off, it's part of seamanlike prudence, I think, to consider whether an unlikely event is worthy of planning for or of instituting a Plan B (beyond a life raft, which would be Plan A, I suppose).

Self-containered?

Apart from some practical steps to keep the water out (would you bother to fother?), what would be a reasonable game plan for dealing with a sea with roaming, hard to spot nautical hazards? Questions like this aren't theoretical for us: it's part of the reason we chose steel over fibreglass, and we've already had some useful, if unwelcome, confirmation that steel can take blunt-force impacts more successfully than can many other boat hull materials. Dunno about super-duper Kevlar or carbon-fibre boats, but that's not us nor likely to be us.

By the way, I encourage all sailors planning on going out of sight of land to watch the above two videos. The comments section, unusually in my experience of YouTube's offerings, has interesting and lively suggestions on keeping afloat after a hull breach.

This topic arises because the seas aren't getting any emptier of the now-universal containerized cargo vessel. Numbering around 10,000, this vast fleet of slab-sided sea trucks plies the oceans in calculated courses designed to minimize diesel usage and therefore cost. The crews, whatever their seamanship, are generally not well-paid nor numerous. As we read in Ninety Percent of Everything, an intriguing treatise (and a book I will be reviewing shortly) by Rose George on the "invisible" shipping industry, we often don't even know how much or of what nature is inside those containers, each of which is about the size  of Alchemy, and potentially much heavier. 

“When MSC Napoli grounded off a Devon beach in January 2007, its burst boxes of motorbikes, shampoo, and diapers attracted looters and treasure hunters. It was also a rare opportunity to compare what was declared on container manifests with actual contents. In 20 percent of the containers, the contents and weights were wrong.”--Rose George, Ninety Percent of Everything

Mate Johnny C. and myself share a awestruck fascination for bad weather as expressed in isobars squeezed tighter than a chilled gymnast's backside. You can argue whether the terrible oceanic weather of late is the fault of humankind all you want, but don't let it interrupt your bailing.

And this was before the last six.

Regardless of the human toll on property and infrastructure, those who can read these sort of synoptic charts can imagine (or recall in some cases) what these weather systems can do in the open ocean.

An imperfect storm.

One known and anticipated effect of bad weather in the more high-traffic parts of the sea is damage to those contain ships, which tend to lose, predictably, containers.  At over five hundred containers in the sea, it can be assumed that many sank more or less immediately, but nonetheless some continue to float for significant periods of time, to the point where they become known hazards to shipping.

Cigarettes: now in seafood flavour!

Of course, some are more or less safely beached, but considering their sometimes-hazardous cargo, safety is relative. It's clear that more bad weather has the potential, and maybe the probability, of increasing the number of containers in the sea, or conversely, the amout of debris that's supposed to be affixed to the shore cut loose into the open ocean.

This is better than hitting something awash below the WL, but it would be a different story in a 0300 h gale. Photo (c) Ocean Navigator

And while the loss of multiple containers doesn't happen every day, it happens frequently enough to make one wonder about what sort of watchstanding would protect against hitting voyage-wrecking debris, or if there are technological solutions worth the bother. Radar, forward-looking sonar or some sort of electronic beacon or tag on the containers themselves hold promise of varying degrees. It's not so much a matter of whether the tech exists; it does, but given that criminals are already exploiting the technology of container tracking, would a conscientious, budget-minded shipper not prefer to stick with the old paper manifests or their proprietary, closed cargo accounting?

While the ability to get some sort of lat/lon data or other directional signal from an awash, overboard container at sea would be very handy on the nightwatch, I don't know how that would help you if you ran into a fleet of large logs. "Keep a good watch" has its limits! But the Russian timber ship video, which for some reason will not embed here, got me thinking of an interesting possibility that is already in play in Russia.

My understanding is that in Russia, the cops can be corrupt and the insurance companies can be very weaselly in order to avoid paying out on claims. So the habit of continuously recording via a small camera every second of driving from the viewpoint through the windscreen has become common. I believe you can record several hours of driving on a tiny device; afterwards, the old files are "re-recorded" with more current ones. As I understand it, the process stops and starts with the car. Or with the douchebag powerboater.

I can easily see this rather simple technology adapted for the cruising sailboat. In fact, my friend Alex in Portugal gets a plug here for his extensive and innovative use of Go Pro cameras to record his racing crew's performances.

One can easily imagine a "watch cam" that records the last 24 hours of sailing automatically. It could be mounted three metres up the mast, for instance. Or even at the spreaders or the mast top for such useful functions as "spot the poorly charted and greatly expanded since Captain Cook" reef. It needn't be expensive or technically complex.

Oh, look, a situation ahead demanding caution. Glad it was spotted it from a 15 metre height-of-eye. Photo (c) Brian Steiler

If the boat hits (or is hit) by debris or derelict cargo/containers, the incident would be captured. That's handy for insurance claims, if not exactly peace of mind. "Yes, Maersk (or other major shipping line) representatives, it was one of your poorly secured 20-tonne boxes of dollar-store crap that stove in our bow...here's the video and please note the logo on the side!" Or even the side of the ship.

This is the container ship MOL Comfort just prior to splitting fully in half. I find the name a little ironic.

Now, I already have a "rear-view bumper cam" so that I can safely dock portside from my pilothouse's starboard helm: it's a simple way to make sure I'm close enough for the crew to jump off with a line. This is simply that sort of deal with waterproofing and a MP3-grade recorder, a 12 VDC supply and some sort of a switch or timer.

And it's probably not beyond possibility to envision a time when a drone aircraft can be launched from a boat to view (in visible or infrared or perhaps even a limited form of radar) the seas ahead for possible debris intersections.

Of course, by "probably not beyond possibility", I mean "is already being done on a regular basis". Whether one considers it necessary or prudent to use such technologies aboard, and whether such technologies will work in heavy weather at night at sea, remain probably as much a matter of opinion as of investment. The odds are low, of course, because the oceans are very big and empty.

Not as much, however, as they used to be.

What could possibly go wrong?

The funniest part to me is "SECOND EDITION".

The above tome is regularly featured on lists of "most ridiculous subject matter/book title", and thanks to the spread of the Internet, the good Captain Trimmer's ponderings hold a special place in many a sailor's heart. Not that they've ever read Captain Trimmer, but that cover...it's memorable for all the wrong reasons.

Now, even though the redoubtable ship-avoider himself may have passed to Fiddler's Green, it turns out that his tactical advice may find new application in our new century.

Behold the crewless ship.

A cleverer monkey never handled a 200,000 tonne tanker via a tiny plastic joystick

Using the sort of logic that produced the "let the robots run things" dystopian science-fiction of my youth, the problems (and no doubt the expense) of finding competent crews for the world's merchant fleets are apparently giving rise to this no-doubt forward-thinking notion of vast, automated ships plowing indifferently through the world's seaways (link may require registration).

Vada a bordo, cazzo, indeed.

Now, examples abound of the historically fleshy sort of skipper screwing up, with huge and in some cases lingering consequences. It would be hard to argue that humans could do a better job than automation, just as no human helmsman can steer as well as even the more basic sort of autopilot. But as I've discussed before, no autopilot has an innate fear of death or even of losing the ship, and so when the good ol' AP starts to become overwhelmed at 30 knots, even a not-particularly skilled helmsman can usually muster up enough chops to avoid a broach, capsize or pitchpole, events that would be untroubling to even the most current of Raymarine's offerings. Would an automated passenger jet be able to pull off a "Captain Sully", a maneuver not in any flight simulation? I think not.

Machines don't care, and if the machine is being operated by remote or partial control, I would suggest that the person with the joystick is simply not as invested in the process as would be a crew deploying engine, anchor and trysail (or their equivalents) to keep off the rocks. Should shipping therefore become a glorified video game?

The captain will see you now.

Consensus, even among marine professionals, would seem to be hard to find. The technical hurdles, never mind the inevitable overhaul of the writing of the insurance policies, are enormous. But crewless ships can't be ruled out in a world with self-parking cars and robot air forces. Where does the sensible practice of small boat crew keeping a proper watch fall when there's no one at the bridge of the container ships plying the seas? It's already somewhat difficult to attract their notice; Neptune help you in a world of automated vessels if you take on water beyond SAR range. Or simply, if predictably, get stuck.

When things go wrong, one still needs a capable generalist. You can't program for the entirely novel.

We learn in the small boat game that every convenience has a cost, and that the cost is often related to the complexity of the convenience. I find it persuasive that at this stage in human development, and during a time in which the mere removal of electricity has crippled...and continues to cripple...large swaths of the city in which we live, that "crewless ships" is going to be a helpful idea. We may be the sort of jumped-up primate that will walk into traffic while texting, leading to an entirely new class of emergency-room visits, but even as idiot monkeys unable to master their own tools, we retain a certain self-interest that has been the hallmark of a life at sea. Even a robot's life.

UPDATE 14.02.19: The future is getting closer. The robot boat Saildrone One recently completed a San Francisco to Hawai'i voyage in a reasonable (for a 19-footer) 34 days. By the current rules, were we in its general vicinity, we could raft up to it (assuming we could catch it) and claim it for salvage as it is clearly abandoned. Perhaps "pre-abandoned"?
I wonder if you are hove-to and are rammed by this thing, who do you sue for absent seamanship? O brave new world/That has such vessels in't!

UPDATE 14.03.10: For those who prefer to listen than read, here's an interesting podcast from gCaptain on the topic of "robot" ships.

The real sea monsters

The good ship Alchemy does not feature, as do many recreational sailing vessels of her dimensions, a multiplicity of perforations in her hull. This is due to the perspicacity of the original owner and the designer: I had nothing to do with the cleverness, except that I appreciate fewer holes in boats for reasons less obvious than "less likely to sink".

Hey, two centimetres is still above the waterline, right? Dubious to me, but very common on all sorts of vessels.

As said, she does not have a whack of thru-hulls. Below the waterline, there is one "innie" in the form of a standpipe and two "outies", the head sink drain and the galley drain. This is not the usual state of affairs on boats.

This is from an Ericson 38: Too close together for my taste, although the rationale was probably "this is the only place one can reach".

This is, as depicted below. Everything that needs a drain or an inlet gets its own hole in the boat, some above but quite a few, alarmingly, below. I have changed a couple of seacocks in the water by plugging them from below, replacing the seacock, and knocking out the plug with a length of dowelling. It's never been a dry or soothing task.

A sea chest on a fishing boat: The idea is to have single valved hole in the hull from which several valves for various needs (engine cooling, washdown, keeping fish in a box alive) may be drawn. One hole in means just one hole to plug if things get over-damp. Missing: a softwood or rubbery plug on a string.

But there are options. Behold, above, the sea chest. This is a venerable sort of below the waterline grated box that allows in a controlled fashion outside (hence "sea") water to be made available for engine cooling, the flushing of heads, fire hoses, etc. The above model on a relatively small vessel is, in my experience, not the usual setup.

Proper thruhulls screw to seacock with flanged bases, which in turn are bolted to glassed in pads. (c) crusingonstrider.us

This is. Individual thru hull fittings screwed into seacocks, a nautical term for a bronze, brass or plastic valve, which is closed by (typically) a quarter-turn of its handle.

The usual choices made on modern yachts (and "1988" denotes a modern yacht, just not a particularly current one) is to punch a hole in the hull where needed, to insert an appropriate bronze or pretend-bronze or plastic thru-hull, and to top it with a bronze or plastic seacock, a sort of valve with a handle. This is to address the irony that while a boat is meant to float in the sea, there are many reasons to bring controlled amounts of the sea or the lake into the boat.

Such reasons include the cooling circuit of the diesel, either in the "raw" form, where sea water is sucked through the engine by means of an engine-driven impeller, or in the confusingly named "freshwater cooling", where the seawater is used in something called a heat exchanger (a sort of radiator) to transfer the engine's excess heat from a closed and pressurized circulation of antifreeze to the sucked-from-outside seawater, which is then propelled out of the boat with the pressurized exhaust gases. It's a generally robust system, even if the glycol mix in the sealed engine circuit isn't really "freshwater" at all.  The point of the glycol is twofold: Firstly, antifreeze, "Dex" or glycol is more effective at absorbing and yielding up the waste heat of the engine than is straight water. Secondly, it is less corrosive than fresh water (in terms of engine metals) and quite a bit less corrosive than seawater, which yields its salts and other crud-making substances at the relatively low temperature of 155F or so. If a diesel has to work inside a watery jacket, it manifestly prefers that jacket to be under boiling temperature, but not much...175F to 190F is typical.

S/V Alchemy's easily accessed standpipe withT-fittings for head, engine and A/C, plus a spare for saltwater supply to the galley. Also seen are the fuel tank manifold/valves to the right.

You may consider the following depending on the layout of your boat: a standpipe. Above is the one on Alchemy. It's essentially a vertical seachest, with the important distinction that the top of it is customarily well enough above the waterline of the boat to permit service and cleaning...without hauling the whole hull out of the water, or, conversely, going to a place with impressive tidal ranges.

Super-duper standpipe (c) setsail.com/Steve Dashew. This shows the strainer elements close to the pipe, plus a similar "cap" as to Alchemy's.

A standpipe is a straight metal pipe either welded directly to the hulll or screwed onto a thru-hull base. It can be secured by bracing if needed. As noted, it extends above the waterline and is capped with a gasketed (again, usually metal) cap. It resembles the old style oil fill tubes on the sides of North American houses from when oil was a common furnace fuel.


Down the pipe, below the waterline, are welded-on T-fittings threaded to take sea cocks. Put in as many as are required and can safety fit in regards to access.

The standard approach, but who wants to dive under the boat to remove a couple of screws?

The advantages are many in that you have only one "intake" hole in the boat. Fitted with a hinged screen or filter, you can, should you suck in fish and/or debris, open the top cap, see what's down there, and use a length of dowelling or a small-calibre weapon to clear the entire standpipe.

Getting there, but you still have to dive on the boat. Why not a heavy spring on that little door? It's a plot by skin divers.

An alternative, "belt and suspenders" approach would be to have a single, large seacock near the centerline/midpoint of the boat (to ensure it is always below the waterline, even on points of significant heel). Then, you could tap an appropriate pipe with the required T-fitting and smaller seacocks for raw water intake, A/C, seawater domestic supply, and head, and fit it to the seacock. Then, if a T-fitting fails, you can shut off the main seacock and fix it (or reroute its hose to a spare fitting) while underway.

There is no particular reason that the seawater intake must be forward of the engine, other than that forward is usually deeper in the water and less likely to be above the waterline or in agitated, bubble-filled water if the boat is heeled sufficiently. Getting "gulps" of air in the raw-water intake circuit could indeed lead to problems, so you have to figure out the angles. Generally, making the lowermost T-fitting on a well-placed standpipe the engine cooling feed would do the trick.

As for positioning, you can "hide" in under saloon stairs or inside a piece of galley cabinetry, just as long as you can reach all those seacocks/shut-off valves and can look down the standpipe to both see blockages and deal with them.

The standpipe in my steel motorsailer saved my engine when I noticed the engine temperature rising despite the proper functioning of the engine pump. I shut down the motor, looked down the standpipe and saw that we had sucked in a large, thin plastic bag obligingly occluding the raw water intake.  I was able to push it down and out with a stick designated for this purpose, and we resumed motoring with no further incident. 

Typical, but no good for steel without some way to keep the metals apart.

Some methods of stopping this sort of thing happening are above; most sailboats have a simple brass strainer of the type pictured. Others have rather more massive perforated grates for sea chests.

Arr, that'll keep ye out, Squiddy. (C) www.sbmar.com

Many folk are aware that a bag or a particularly gnarly weed or even small creature will get munched in the engine's water pump, which contains a fast-moving impeller capable of Cuisinart-like execution. To keep macerated "bits" out of the surprisingly delicate engine cooling passages, however, a further measure is needed:

Increasingly common on boats "pre-engine" and "post-impeller", this basket filter can save your engine if you suck in a bag or a significant amount of sealife or vegetation. (C) Colin Speedie

I have one of these on the plastic sloop, and have removed plant and animal life that would have otherwise entered the engine to no good end.

A relatively common sight on boats is the bronze raw water strainer. Here's Groco's factory-fresh version:

The Groco model. Aside from plastic versions made by Vetus et al that resemble coffee basket filters, Perko and Groco seem to have the market cornered.

Mine is made by the Perko company. There's not a lot of difference, except the Perko unit seems to me to be more sturdy and better physically supported. As part of the endless reengination process, I've had to service mine to maximize its critter capture qualities. First came a wash of the heavy acrylic housing.

This was opaque with greenish residue before a hearty soap-n-swill.

Then came the removal of some old, dry seaweed. The system works!

The filter works as advertised. Even in Lake Ontario, sea muck abounds.

I gave a light scour to the brass parts. It doesn't have to look like a Viking's tankard.

Don't expect that hatch floor to get cleaned. It's headed for the bin.

 And then back onto the backing board that bolts to the engine room's forward bulkhead:

I'll leave the Brasso rub for another time.

The fly in the ointment of all this wonderful diesel-aiding cooling process and planning and design is, like the fly itself, an invertebrate. And, without being overly dramatic, it may pose a greater threat to cruising than world economic collapse, rampant yacht piracy or even nautical zombies.

This is what's left when you gobble the top three tiers of the ocean environment.

I'm talking about jellyfish. The New York Times says they are taking over, and while I was aware that they (and a few other oceanic nasties) were taking advantage of human rapacity of their predators to breed like, well, jellyfish, I hadn't realized the extent of the problem.

Most of us, outside of certain Pacific island nations and Australia, where most of the wildlife seems bent on killing the inhabitants, likely do not consider the humble jelly, a varied and diffuse collection of species that have been doing their glutinous thing since the Cambrian era, a significant threat to human safety, or, Neptune forbid, the cruising lifestyle. Most of us would be mistaken.

No matter how downtown you think you are, do not place on genitals.

Here's the issue: the jellies are taking over because we've eaten a large percentage of what eats them.  Needless to say, this has implications for the overall health of the oceans, which some folk already believe is deeply compromised, and implications for little boats that wish to, say, motor through the doldrums.

We're gonna need a bigger filter.

Now, as humans, once we identify a problem, even the problems we can clearly originate in our own actions as a species, we tend to have solutions, some brighter than others. Or at least more stabby.

And who's to say our time-honoured traditions of eating our problems won't help here? But you can't catch everything, and as a person who wishes to dive coral reefs in the Pacific, I have to wonder about what's not eating this little fellow, and did he bring his friends? And, having turned the oceans into nutrient-free lubricant, will they find a way to leave Earth?

One wonders what the standpipes on Enterprise are like? Nice bits of kit, one hopes.

The future of "it's what's for dinner".

So the problem of jellyfish jamming up the cooling circuit occupies my mind. I may have to modify an existing strainer for the standpipe so that if I ever "inhale" some little deadly creature parts, I can use some sort of nautical Q-Tip to ream out the pipe and send it far away from my beloved diesel.

Oh, and we need to eat these buggers, too. And these excitable bastards. Along with rapacious fishing practices and a general curtailment of human population, of course. I like to think I'm fair.

But not when it comes to the cooling circuit? No compromises.