A plea for segregation over integration...at the helm

Wave factor five, Captain. Setting winches to "fabulous!"

I am currently involved in a mostly civil debate on the merits or lack of merits in integration of the autopilot and the GPS/plotter aboard the modern cruiser. I suppose not supporting integration is to implicitly support segregation. Thus are my views on human society and boat operation different.

For the uninitiated, a modern chain or hydraulic-type autopilot (AP) steers the boat using parameters derived from some sort of compass (usually a fluxgate type capable of sending data). One figures out from a chart or a chartplotter or a visual bearing to a landmark one's desired course, say 270 M or due West (magnetic). Assuming the wind is with you (or the motor works if no wind is for you), the boat goes more or less due West. Eventually, and assuming you are keeping a proper watch, you should be where you intended, realizing of course that you can't likely go on AP straight into your dock; at a prudent distance you will have to hand-steer as traffic increases and land draws near. Land kills more boats, generally, than the sea. Watch out for it, kids.

Now, if you dial in 270 and end up where 260 would have put you, Something's Going On. It could be a tidal effect, a current, leftover sloppy waves pushing the boat off, or maybe your gear isn't precisely calibrated or you are reading True instead of Magnetic or vice-versa. Your job is to find out why. The AP working as it should has revealed an anomaly to you, and Your Brain, Eyes and Hands can rectify this unscheduled detour.

By contrast, slaving the GPS to the AP means the AP steers to a waypoint selected by the skipper (I almost wrote "the operator"). The waypoint (WP) is a designated lat/lon often selected because it's proximate to a nav aid like a big shiny buoy, something even the newest sailor might recognize. The current doesn't matter, the waves on the beam are irrelevant...the AP will auto-correct and will steer unerringly to the designated point. Very nice.

And yet...

If the wind shifts, you could gybe as the GPS instructs the AP to turn "more to starboard!" If the wind dies, the GPS could lose "lock" because they do not do well in the lower half of boat speeds (sub 3 knots SOG, in my experience). This could cause radical steering corrections. Also, one wouldn't wish the MFD (multifunction display) to go wonky, or not to have a separate control panel for the AP. But that is the way some of the newer systems are set up: black boxes and leads going to a display unit or the "master black box".

For the insider's view on how getting gadgets to play together nicely can be a chore and then some, I refer you to The Marine Installer's Rant blog. Aspiring boat rebuilders can learn a lot from this guy.

The systems I am envisioning for Alchemy are stand-alone AIS, RADAR, depthfinder and autopilot, all of which can have their displays or their numerical values going to a PC-based solution. I am encouraged testing out cheapish, low-draw "netbooks" running OpenCPN, although I wouldn't object to running something like Rose Compass or others if they were a better choice.

That is key to understand here: it's not a money issue...well, not entirely. I would buy the best solution if I thought it was the best solution, but to me, that solution is about flexibility and redundancy, not necessarily centralized control and monitoring.

As we have a pilothouse, I intend only to have a cheap weatherproof plotter outside as a sort of slave display/backup; the real setup will be, I hope, largely out of the weather. Because I have easy and immediate access to the engines and tankage, the sort of "command center" console displays found on the flybridges of million-dollar fishing boats is of limited interest to me, as is the ability to know at the tap of a finger the exact RPM of the engine or the internal temperature of the alternators. "Integration", where I set the AP to sail to a GPS-determined waypoint, would be possible, and desirable, if I was in an open ocean current, for instance, and wanted to motor with the least amount of leeway made, but generally I would prefer to "steer to wind" or just trim properly to make the AP work the least.

My contention in the online forum I'm on is that integration, while a boon to, say, the single-hander who is presumably an excellent mariner to begin with, puts the unlearned or inexperienced sailor in the position of having several sources of information appearing in a realistic format, but which itself is only a representation of an idealized chart, and not necessarily what's in front of the boat.

Here's a "clip" from today's discussion:

Poster ColemJ said: Again, seamanship and good practices have NOTHING to do with electronics, autopilots or how they are integrated. Nothing.

I am not meaning to be argumentative or personal with you Alchemy, it is just that I remain confused and confounded why the seamanship argument keeps being made.


To which I replied: Integrated electronics allow stupid people to look smart until they hit something easily avoided, perhaps killing themselves or others in the process.

Integrated electronics are part of the process of turning a skipper into a "passenger".

Integrated electronics also discourage a stupid person, or rather an ignorant person, from educating themselves into competency. A boat with a tiller and a compass and a Windex and maybe a VHF (90% of boats until maybe 15 years ago) is a relatively mute thing. It gives you messages in ways by which you can't help but notice the nuances of wind, waves and weather. The "Star Trek" helm, by contrast, will allow even a near-blind child to steer the boat, but that child will not necessarily learn anything in the process.

So I am not impugning the skilled and seamanlike sailor for whom integration is a convenience only and is merely an extension to the existing and familiar boat operation aids, but I will and do impugn the growing number of boaters who rely on such gadgets because they know very little seamanship.

Those people are trouble for the sport/lifestyle, trouble for the SAR and a bonanza for those who know how to fix boats. We get reports here and elsewhere about sailboats calling MAYDAYs because they've run out of fuel, or going out without doing a weather check, or running into nav aids because waypoints weren't understood, or being unable to dock because the bow thruster's busted and they have a boat with grotesque windage.

Like the stories of people dying in the wilderness because "the GPS told them to go this way", individuals, to paraphrase Franklin, who give up their autonomy in order to secure a little convenience deserve neither.

See, told you I'd gotten ornery! Half the guys who taught me how to break down engines and do CN are already dead of old age, and the number of bozos at the helm continues to be high where I live. These days, it's bozos texting on smart phones as they enter basins. I use the ship's horn more than I used to, just to pry their eyeballs up from the glowing screens.

Sailing should be learned in electronics-free boats, in my view. Once you understand on a visceral and seamanlike level which aspect of boat operation the electronics mimic ...and the limitations of that mimicry...fine, go nuts, turn the helm into Mission Control. If you know how to sail safely, it's no matter to me. But I find that is not always the case, and guys in driveways seen fixing their own cars have just about vanished from North America. As has in some respects the experiential method of acquiring seamanship via, you know, actually sailing by hand and eye.

Colemj said: Yes! In fact, that's how we use ours 80% of the time (non-integrated - simply steer to compass). I am just having problems with the conflation of lack of seamanship and integrated systems.


I replied : I think we are essentially discussing the same thing from two ends. You are advocating the use of integration as just another tool available to the already skilled seaman, and I am saying that integration aids and abets the presence of underskilled skippers and crew and unseamanlike behaviour in conditions that can turn unpleasant rapidly.

The fact is that I've used integration of the "patch it in as needed" type myself...and liked it. But I have also seen it break, as I've seen windvanes and AP break offshore. Stuff happens: Seamen know how to get back to basics because they've experienced such basics. It seems of late, however, that people are dying or requiring rescue because their electronics-laden boats break in the real ocean, and they have no knowledge base from which to extract themselves from danger or distress.

I can see everything except the argument for slaving the AP to the GPS.

Now, I could be wrong on all this, and I could be persuaded otherwise, but when you see people, as I do in my car-free lifestyle, literally stepping off curbs into traffic or literally walking into planters and utility poles because they have their noses in their iPhones, it makes me think that it would take a sort of discipline to avoid staring at the screens and instead to stare at the sea, as one should. That's one of the reasons why I would have something quite minimal at the helm, plus a compass...it's distracting me from the sensory inputs fuelled by soup. Going below to the pilothouse is fine for bad weather and consultation with the LCD oracles, but really, even when the boat's on auto-pilot, the prudent watch stander should be scanning the horizon, listening for changes in the wind or waves, and sniffing for better sailing weather.

Not seen: Mark I eyeball

I'm not convinced further automation of the sailing experience will encourage that tendency. One might as well take the bus...or become a jet pilot. I'm no Luddite, but if stuff breaks at sea...and it does, without exception...why make life harder by putting all one's nav aid/boat operation eggs in one basket? If I had a little boat going distances, I would probably for reasons of space and power opt for the all-in-one MFD, all-singing and dancing solutions...and it would probably be Furuno with Maretron black boxes...but for the moment, I would rather have stuff I can use when needed and "integrate" on an ad hoc basis.

Of course, even older electronics with life (and the benefits of long familiarity) still left in them exist and are capable of a form of integration.. While I will be getting new instruments before we depart, I have resisted the urge to buy "integrated packages", slick as many seem. I still prefer to have stand-alone instrumentation (particularly radar and depth) that can work alone, OR can "report" to a PC or tablet to exhibit integration when desired and as described. I find the idea of a multi-function display (which, if it "goes down", leaves one staring at a bunch of mute black boxes) a little absurd: I find it akin to telling an orchestra member they have to wear several headphone sets from each section of the pit in order to figure out where they are in the score. Better (from my point of view) to maintain more discrete displays and to integrate them wirelessly or via multiplexed connectors. But realistically, except for the very useful "radar over plotter" display (charting errors immediately manifest!), how often does a skipper do more than glance at depth, course and RADAR indicators before going back to Eyeball Mk. 1? If I had all the bells and whistles going, I might be tempted to stare overlong at some of the "overly comprehensive" displays available at reasonable costs these days...which I find not very seamanlike. I will take "a watch augmented", but disdain "a watch once removed".

The great levelling, or six degrees of remediation

"A certain sinking feeling" is something no sailor wants to experience, and yet during Alchemy's extended stay on land, that has been a increasingly common perception. Perhaps it was the rainwater pooling in the self-draining cockpit, or flowing past the scuppers to leave grubby puddles by the gunwhales, but it was clear that the good ship's attitude was getting low, specifically down by the bow.

I attributed this to a combination of soft ground (it's just backfill, really, as the whole club property is entirely artifical and not particularly well-draining) and to a slight, but critical, misplacement of the boat when laid to rest, making it a tad heavier than needed on the forepart of the cradle.

The result can be clearly seen even from the spring: The whole operation is trying to make like a lawn quoit and sink into the gravel. I had to lash things, including the new engine, to the rails and bollards to keep them from rolling or shifting forward. While this was annoying from the view of painting and walking near open hatches, it wasn't likely critical or dangerous...until the time approached for putting in the engine. "Zeroing" an engine on its stringers and mounts so that it is very, very close to having its rear coupling mating firmly and evenly with a similar coupler on the non-propped end of the shaft is the key to avoiding wear on the transmission, shaft, prop and important, moving and expensive bits of the diesel...and it makes the boat considerably quieter. The tolerances involved are near those found in getting a new crown for a tooth...hundredths of a inch. Now, the use of a CV coupler joint mitigates this need for exactitude somewhat...but you still have to be close. Having measured the pitch angle of Alchemy at sixdegrees and likely advancing, I thought that trying to line up a seven-hundred pound engine and a five-foot steel shaft would be problematic...so I thought I'd move the boat by hand.

Don't giggle now: this actually worked for a bit. It's a 20-tonne hydraulic bottle jack (due to the shape), and it moves a sturdy piston up by tiny amounts with each manly crank of its inadequate handle. The problem was that the boat's at least 15 tonnes, and wants to get closer to the core of the Earth when out of the water. Cranking on the handle basically drove the jack into the yielding ground and especially into the various planks and boards I shoved under it to spread the load. I was able to get in a few steel shims, but even after I started to have better results after lobbing a sack of marble-sized gravel under the boards, I didn't like the alarming noises everything made, nor the extreme leisure with which things actually happened due to the ratio of arm-pumping to real-world lifting. Note that the theory was sound but the execution lacking, and let that be a lesson to all sailors.

Eventually, this past weekend, I prevailed upon my club's "Haulout" committee to fix the problem properly by hoisting Alchemy upwards a few feet and pulling the whole cradle out of the hole it had dug for itself, forward a couple of feet to improve the balance of the boat over its pads, and onto some strategically placed lengths of lumber.

The difference was immediate and gratifying. Water long trapped on deck gushed profusely out the stern scuppers and off the side decks. The "lifts" on the front of the cradle did not immediately sink into the ground, probably because the cradle move rolled a lot of my gravel forward in a helpful fashion.

While the whole operation took a crew of volunteers and plenty of semi-learned discussion before and during the cradle repositioning (which took place on a cold and damp day at dawn as the first hoist of a busy day for the club), it was executed perfectly. Nothing inside the boat budged, although I had made attempts to brace toolboxes and paint drums adequately.

 

This shows how far forward the cradle moved. The boat went up and down largely in the same position.

Evidence of success. The boat is now about one degree high at the bow...but I fully expect it to sink a few millimeters, which will put me where I want to be.

 

The new attitude: Up, up and aweigh anchors.

So here again is another learning opportunity. What I know about levers stopped at the see-saw I last rode as a tyke. But basic principles properly understood gave me a workable, if tedious, answer (the bottle jack, which I will use in the engine installation and elsewhere to lift really heavy things small distances), but also showed that the lift was a safer and much, much faster option, once I had worked out, in consultation with other amateur engineers among my club friends, the best way to shift 15 tonnes of beached boat.

 

A process of recovery

One of the things I've noticed about the boating game is that the prospective voyager has to possess, if not expertise, then a passing familiarity with various trades. This is not only so that one may perform the endless and varied tasks to keep the vessel afloat and in good repair and reasonable comfort, but so that one can recognize when outside help is doing a decent job fixing what is beyond one's own abilities.

So I've had to become handy in ways I've never had to be handy before. I may have mentioned in older posts that I never took "shop", as "Industrial Arts" was once known (is there still Industrial Arts? Given the dire prevalence of TV fix-it shows and the cultish admiration of hammer-wielding tradesmen, I suspect not.). Instead of lathing a newel post (would be nice for a binoculars bin), or dovetailing a lovely map chest (for a map chest), I was in theatre class, trying to impress high-breasted, long-legged and usually disinterested-in-me females.

Well, at least I learned blocking, which sounds vaguely woody.

After school, I continued in the arts field with a series of wordy or word-friendly jobs involving fast typing and smart-assery, but very little call for wielding of hand tools. Problems in the rental units in which I lived much beyond changing a light bulb were referred to the landlord, as was good and proper. My hands were soft and my head empty of all things mechanical, electrical, motorized or fabricated. I didn't even own a car. I had a moped when I was 16, but that mostly involved a level of engineering only slightly above servicing a bicycle.

Then in short order, I bought a creaky old house and a creaky old sailboat. Fear of Having to Call Someone This Time caused my wallet to seize shut. I had to get skills, and I had to get them quickly. Particularly, it must be said, when I blew up my first Atomic 4 by neglecting to open the cooling water intake.

It hasn't been easy, and the process is continuing. Thirteen years after buying an 1890-built house and 12 years after acquiring a 1973 sailboat, I no longer consider myself absolutely feeble. My screw-ups and ignorance have been (and in some fields continue to be) the foundation on which I've built a Temple of Near Competency. I even seem to have a knack for small motor maintenance and minor fabrication, and can glass, shape aluminum, make a crude but functional cabinet and can grind, router, wire, hoist, chisel, sand, mount, drill, unseize, hammer, wedge, bolt, saw and buff without threat to maintaining an even number of fingers. Yes, I now sport some minor, if lurid, scars and my fingernails are rarely entirely free of some industrial-strength goo, but it appears at an embarrasingly advanced age that I have become Officially Handy.

Just as well, because I couldn't bloody well afford to pay people. I will, however, recognize when I can't do the job properly (like welding...yet) and will hire when needed.

More often, however, I will simply try out the task myself on something innocuous...a practice run, so to speak, in order to see if I can combine a (usually) economically-oriented idea with non-idiotic execution. Such was the case with the breakfast nook chairs.

Dire, isn't it? I bought these shave-above-IKEA chairs about 25 years ago in a quest to uplift my station in life by not eating off furniture salvaged from either my parents' basement and/or the 1960s. That tatty blue rag is covering the original shredded seat cover and its crumbling foam filling.

The table top I had sanded and coated with unused Cetol, a marine-style wood varnish-type liquid that goes on exterior teak bits. The chairs remained nasty and increasingly brutish. Cabin Boy is seen applying small but keen arms to the task of removing the nasty and likely Swedish buttock buffer.

I replaced this with 3/4 inch thick closed-cell insulation I purchased for about ten dollars. Cut into sized rectangles, it provided a firm, if somewhat Calvinist, bedrock for bums, and would logically wear better than the dusty, nasty stuff it replaced. Covering that and carefully using little galvanized tacks gave a pleasing, if neutrally coloured, result.

The bonus is that the insulation will go nicely in the pilothouse roof. The second bonus is that I learned a little bit about recovering furniture, which will come in handy when I redo the aft cabin sleeping arrangements. The third bonus is that the fabric covering was free to me as it is burlap carefully cut from large sacks for roasted coffee, kindly rendered for the asking from the nearby cafe where I buy my beans.

I think it's cute and "urban", but then I would, wouldn't I? Worn-out chairs are suddenly "found design". Would that boat stuff was so cheap to fix.

Anyway, that's another minor skill of which I can claim I'm not completely ignorant...and I didn't cut myself this time.

Fun advertisement

I don't drink Chivas, but I like the "spirit" of their sailing-themed TV ad.

Quite a number of posts in the pipeline, but it's a busy few weeks to come. More soon!

Frigate (insert own rude pun here)

While it's logical and indeed expected to note that the majority of my readers are American, some of them might not instantly recognize that I, my family and our boat are not. After all, we appear to speak a common language, and over large parts of the land mass that we share, after stealing it from the natives, it's often difficult to distinguish in a physical or geologic sense where one country ends and the other begins. Indeed, a bone of contention among some of the previously mentioned aborginals of North America is that they don't much care to flash passports at the Canada-U.S. border as in many cases their traditional tribal lands are on both sides of the imaginary line, much of which remains unfenced, and despite various security initiatives, unwatched.

Living in Canada and writing in English on the internet means a lot of contact with Americans, who, when they think of Canada at all, do not see us as a particularly belligerent bunch, as a sort of self-deprecating politeness seems to be our collective sociological trait, where we can be distinguished from Minnesotans or Vermonters at all (save for les Quebecoises, I suppose, whom Americans sometimes think are found everywhere in Canada in large numbers).

And yet like many other Commonwealth countries like Australian, New Zealand and even the Gurkhas of Nepal, we have been and continue to be quite a feisty bunch. The current debate about fighting in hockey in Canada would be unlikely to happen elsewhere, as apart from MMA and boxing, there are very few sports in which out-and-out brawling is considered part of the game. Even rugby is arguably less violent.

Which brings us to Canada's often-derided armed forces. We possess a vast country and a diffuse population, which, while wealthy on the scale of nations, is not really numerous or threatened enough to justify the sort of army, navy and air force that would impress a middle-rank dictator. Indeed, more than one American has alleged that Canada gets a "free ride" in terms of our own military defence, although one might say "a free ride from the enemies of America, perhaps", but that wouldn't be true, either.

The truth is that our compact military has been at it for years at the a large human and financial cost since the Second World War, during which Canada fielded disproportionately large navies and armies. We once had an aircraft carrier, for instance, but it has since made more sense to have frigates. Recently, as a "last day of summer holidays treat", we saw one of our own, HMCS Montreal. (The other treat was a honking fast sail in Valiente.)



Montreal and two smaller minesweepers are currently patrolling the Great Lakes...for what is not precisely clear, but I'm sure the crews appreciate not being in their usual Atlantic patrol areas in September.

Our son, Mr. Cabin Boy, appreciated the opportunity to see large red buttons reading "ARMED" and "FIRE" and to field-test the rigidity of the deck gun. For a non-taxpayer, he has some firmly held ideas on what constitutes value.

Dad, meanwhile, appreciated those aspects of a 480 foot frigate that have application in his own steel hulk of approximately 1/12 the length...and it's more than one might think. Their liferafts look bigger, but are still recognizably liferafts.

The ground tackle, while impressively sized, was also not radically different in design, although the forces involved in holding something this massive and lofty exceed my imagination.

The "devil's claw", used to secure the chain and relieve strain on the windlass (I guess "capstan" is more appropriate).

It's adjusted with this hulking turnbuckle thingie.

Which is in turn "adjusted" with a Navy-issue sledgehammer.

And the chain goes out via this suspiciously well-polished hawse pipe. Modern warships seem to favour a centerline chain deployment and anchor stowage.

Possibly the only compass I've seen that's nicer than our Ritchie Globemaster, but mine still has the hilariously named "compensator balls". The balls on this one must reside below decks, one assumes.

And clearly, one would prefer to "operate" this part of the ship. Alas, no.

As for navigation, I was gratified to see that they are no better equipped than ourselves in the paper chart department:

...although their RADAR is a bit more elaborate.

...and so is their plotter...

My favourite bit was spotted as we were leaving...HMCS Montreal has an interesting approach to deploying fenders:

No doubt effective!

While not personally particularly militaristic, I come from a family in which active military service has played a role, and I respect the work of our armed forces who are frequently given tasks at home and overseas for which our federal government seem unwilling to finance. The sailors aboard were courteous and well-informed, and seemed to welcome the opportunity to mingle with the public that pays for the ships. Given a world in which future conflict is likely to persist, I hope "big city visits" like that of the Montreal and her sister ships inculcates a willingness to maintain an effective armed force for Canada.

And that's how the "Solar Stik" was made obsolete

A few years back, a company producing a solar panel mounting system called "Solar Stik" came in for some good-natured ribbing about its claims of maximizing solar panel output, which is often sub-optimal on boats due to angles and shadows from masts, etc.

Many solar-panel-equipped sailors, of course, have made for themselves various methods to optimally angle their expensive panels. It's not rocket science, after all: The "smartest" mount would track the sun all day, as the "equatorial mounts" on the better sort of telescopes move to keep a given celestial object in sight for long photographic exposures. Even better would be a way to tilt the panels relative to the sun's height, which varies with the seasons, and would make the tracking at the constant right angles at which most (but not all) solar panels produce the most amps.

Some people, of course, just bolt panels for "morning" and "afternoon" on their cabin sides, or on the lifelines when conditions permit, and accept that 1/2 of total output is better than a kick in the diesel tank.

This kid decided to approach the problem using 800-year-old mathematics and by observing the growth of trees. Perhaps the key to fostering genius in the young is keep from them what is considered impossible. The Fibonacci sequence is, like Fermat's Last Theorem and Pythagoras's Famous One, among the oldest notions in Western math. And yet this young fellow figured out how a tree was better than a solar array when you don't have 300 acres of desert to lay it out in.

So, he may be onto something, but whether it will find application in the way sailors use solar energy remains to be seen. "Sun Tree on the stern? Sure!" One wonders if very light, flexible panels could be hoisted partway up the mast without coming apart in the wind, or maybe another solution would be to make flexible panels part of the mast itself.

Tank battles

Meet Starboard McStainless, the 100 gallon water tank I hauled out yesterday. Nice piece of work, yes? Inspection port, threaded outlets and inlets, an internal baffle, very little in the way of scratches or rust. Why would I want to yank such a nifty tank out of the bilges of Alchemy, one might ask. And, with dimensions of 48 x 24 x 20 inches, and an engine room hatch of 48 x 24 inches, would I perform Moebius-strip contortions to get this beast out? (Not to mention the removal of the pilot house roof and the use of a truck crane?). It came out, in the end, fairly smoothly, although grabbing the thing in yesterday's high winds as I yelled instructions to the invisible crane guy via another guy on the side deck was quite stimulating.

But why? Well, here's the deal. The sibling to this tank, Porty McStainless, is identical, save for a top end hose barb that takes the deck fill hose, which snakes torturously through a tool locker to reach the break in the deck. The fill routine consisted of filling this port tank to overfilled status, at which point a hose would fill the starboard tank. When were they both filled? When the boat stopped listing and water came out the starboard vent.

The shortcomings of this method were many. Worse, however, from my point of view, is that these tanks are (or were) mounted on angle iron a good two feet off the hull. Filled tanks, or worse, ONE filled tank, actually made my steel boat a trifle tender, because the weight was too high. In somewhat heavy seas in 2007 (yes, Lake Ontario can throw up the occasional eight to 10 footers if it's been blowing 30 knots all day from the east or south-east), these tanks BOOMED as they flexed and sloshed as the boat pitched forward and back.

The baffles, they did nothing.

Lastly, those fine inspection ports were on the TOPS of the SS tanks...within one inch of the underside of the pilothouse deck. Unless one was willing to unbolt the tanks, take apart the hoses, remove the engine and yanks the tanks under the hatch, nothing was ever going to get inspected.

Well, that's not going to work, is it?

So I decided that I wanted to improve my boat's "stiffness" by getting the water tankage (which is the better part of one tonne and is "non trivial" in terms of ballasting the hull) lower, resting just off the hull in through-bolted angle iron supports (the bit I liked), and placed between the frames. For ease of handling and management and even for trim purposes, I'm opting for four approximately 50 gallon water tanks, made of HDPE, ideally. They will be small enough not to require baffles, and low enough to keep the weight where it should be, as close to the keel as is possible.

Something like the above, times four. Inspection ports are at knee height, all hose fittings are accessible, there is now air above for hanging awkward light stuff like fenders, pipe and lengths of hose (all secured, of course).

Why four tanks? Aside from the insurance that if one tank goes "bad", there's three others, we intend to get a smallish watermaker. The idea is that one tank will hold collected rainwater for "wash" water, water used to clean the boat, flush the head (a Y-connection allowing a freshwater flush or three of the head will get rid of many of the critters and sediments that would otherwise clog the works...apart from the usual traffic that can clog the works...), and do the onboard laundry.

The other three tanks would contain either trusted "municipal" water, or water we make ourselves while motoring in clean seawater. One of the reasons for having a double PTO on the new engine is to run twinned alternators to charge maximally the house bank when underway for the weekly holding tank pumpout, for instance. (Note to self. Make fresh water AWAY from pump out zone...ewwww....)

I will install two water fills (there is evidence one used to be on starboard, but is mysteriously under a welded plate), and will rationalize the tank vents so that even a capsize would be unlikely to put salt water in the tanks. I will also plumb these tanks so that I can pump water between them to keep the weight either high side on long reaches in trade winds, or to keep it in the forward two tanks for better balance.

Lastly, I will have foot pumps (I like the Whale type) plus pressure water in the galley. The galley will have the existing "domestic" tap set (pressure hot potable water from the hot water tank and the Flojet pump) and potable foot pumped water, and lastly, a hand-pumped seawater tap for "utility" wash ups.

It sounds complicated and expensive, certainly, but the decision to go with plenty of water tankage (it's the same amount in a different configuration, really), and a watermaker was not taken lightly, and is prompted by the same "shore-independent" set up that is driving the multiple charging sources design and the somewhat oversized battery bank capacity.

Everything's relative, of course. I understand 840-1000 Ah is not, in fact, as big as many folk with more amp-greedy gadgets than I plan to install already have.

Like this times three:

I just want to run my fridge and make the occasional SSB foray and netbook charging for five cloudy, windless days at anchor without thinking "damn, I have to fire up the diesel to make amps".

By the same token, 150 gallons of drinking water is considerable for three humans, even in the tropics. The ability to make it from the sea using amps made from the wind and the sun? Priceless.

Now, to get Porty out...

UPDATE August 22, 2011: The fine fellow who purchased the starboard tank phoned me to ask if I would trade it for the port tank (identical in size but the mirror image in plumbing fixtures).

So up it came. "Identical" in custom-made boat gear is a relative concept, as the tank proved about a quarter-inch wider than the hole in the pilothouse floor. Snug wasn't the half of it.

Anyway, using brute strength, 3D mental visualizations, and the Amazing Folding Wife, we managed to crane out the thing standing on its end, and away it will shortly go.

Now, to find a buyer for a starboard SS water tank!

They're like seatbelts...for your boat!

On both my 33 and 41 footer, even though they are quite safe boats in an absolute sense, I usually wear my auto-inflatable PFD. While I make it optional for adults, all children under 18 must wear the foam type, of which I have a variety of the manual and autoinflate vests, plus a number of the foam type in a range of sizes for the kiddies and visitors.

Plus a bag of the obligatory old foam types used mostly as cushions, but which allow me...legally...to carry about nine adults.



Not that I do. But then I don't race the boat. Others have, and that's why there's a bag of untouched cheapo legal foam types aboard.



In addition, we have tethers and carry knives, Fox 40 whistles and the occasional strobe.



I won't even mention the waterproof VHF, the ACR personal locator beacon or the hand flare in a baggie I bring on deliveries. Let's just say I'm personally drowning-averse, as one is. And yet people drown across Canada, and elsewhere, with alarming regularity.

Let's just say we will be fully equipped...and fully habituated...to boat rules like "mandatory PFD wearing on watch, mandatory tether on watch, mandatory clipping on jacklines when working forward and no leaving the cockpit without waking a crew". These were the rules on my first Atlantic delivery, and, having nearly slipped out of the cockpit at 3 AM when we slid off a wave, only to be stopped by my tether, I see no reason to modify them in concept or practice.

Does this mean a full, awake, daylight crew in an angel's fart breeze on a tropical beam reach requires full time PFDs? Maybe not, if you can outswim the boat. It'll certainly leave interesting tan lines given the clothing-optional nature of passagemaking!

Now, when I sail alone, or when I am in either my Portabote or my sailing dinghy (about 10 feet each), I wear an old purple and yellow kayaker's vest. Why? Because if I'm alone, off or out of the boat, and *unconscious*, the bulky, unfashionable, hot and slightly stained foam vest will keep my head out of the water. I know this, because I've jumped off the boat and even when I relax, I can't easily even put my face in the water.

So even though I realize I might drown or freeze anyway, the vest means that if I am merely stunned, I might "come around" without aspirating water, which is perhaps the difference between a bad situation and a fatal one.

I've seen this new, "not USCG-approved" system by Spinlock called the Deck Vest, and I like the fact it's a PFD with crotch straps, with an integral harness and plenty of reserve buoyancy, and yet it fits closely. A crew, a Canadian army major, wore one on an Atlantic delivery and he was a pretty large guy as am I and he remarked on its comfort and utility. And of course if you are tethered, the crotch straps keep you in the PFD if overboard, and allow you to rotate yourself from an inverted position, as can happen.

If injured, but conscious, it would also aid crew in clipping the tether end to a line reeved onto a block on the boom, so it can be considered an option in a retrieval system.

You can't always save yourself or be saved on a boat...or off it...but thinking about why it's clever to wear a PFD when underway increases one's chances. Also, if you like to boogie on deck, PFDs protect you from inconvenient obstacles, like the mast.

On the rode again

I have, as I believe I've mentioned, obtained a nifty 15 pound aluminum FX-23 from the fine folk at Fortress Anchors. It's designed for 39-45 feet LOA boats, like what my currently beached Alchemy is, and is therefore oversized for Valiente, my 9,000 lb., 33 footer that is the "operational" part of our Swiss navy.

C'est la vie: Nobody ever resented an oversized anchor that weighed 15 lbs. My nine-year-old can hoist it into the cockpit if I don't mind buffing out scratches. My compact spouse can haul away without resorting to the seaman's vocabulary.

The existing 13 foot chain and 200 foot rope rode on Valiente is three-strand 7/16" mated to slightly larger chain and shackled to a 22 lb. steel Danforth High Tensile anchor of indeterminate age, if relatively good condition. Certainly, it's the classic "lunch hook" and we've been using it as such. It has held in every unchallenging case we've thrown at it, which is to say it might as well have been a cinder block on 12 gauge wire for all the holding power demanded of it.

In testing the larger, if lighter, Fortress on this modest rode, however, we found it impossible to veer out in reverse under power, "under power" in this case being understood to mean a direct-drive Atomic 4 (about 17 HP) in reverse spinning an 11.5 x 8 inch Gori folding two-blade prop at 1:1 gearing in six knots of wind...not exactly a tractor pull. Nonetheless, we were concerned that the new, grippier anchor and the old rode were not a good match, so off to the marine store I went (And Princess Auto, like a marine store, only cheaper).

Not only did I want the security of a right-sized rope and chain (and shackles) rode for the Fortress's size, I wanted the opportunity to splice. 12 years of boat ownership, and it's never come up, even though I have sewed patches, reeved all sorts of line and have sealed, whipped and knotted many, many things. I have yet to SCUBA, too, but that's another post.


Obviously, more practice is required. I did test the thing, however, and 'backspliced' a full 18 inches, with three tucks before trimming instead of two. My biggest challenge was keeping the taped strands similarly twisted as they preferred to undo into a sort of yarn-like limpness, hence the somewhat irregular braiding. I suspect that this will actually look a bit better after use, and next time, I'm going to heat-shrink the ends instead of taping. The brown bit of leather is covering a spot of whipping I did to cover over the last pokey strands, and I did the recommended touch up with the recommended hot knife. It took about 90 minutes. I know, because that's how long my son whined "is it done yet?" from the shady, beveraged-filled cabin while Daddy paid court to Madame Melanoma in the sun-drenched cockpit, the scent of burning nylon vying with the smell of dead carp. Sailing: Come for the glamour, stay for the slaving.

The new rode is 200 feet of 5/8" three-strand with an 18-inch back splice (as this is my first, it's a little lacking in art and is untidy) to 15 feet of 3/8" chain. Shackles hold the anchor to the chain. This gives us 7:1 scope in 30 feet of water with a little left over, which is going to suffice 90% of the time in the Great Lakes and pretty close to 100% of the time in Lake Ontario.

I will leave the Fortress unshackled from the rode as they are awkward to move together. I also have made provision for the lashing of a light line leading to a float to go on the crown of the Fortress as an anchor buoy and, if ever needed, a trip line if we snag a log or something. I have not yet had a problem, however, merely driving over the anchor as I haul in rode and just yanking the anchor directly up. It comes up cleanly and the chain/rope/anchor combo is, I would say, less than 40 pounds...not a big deal for us and there's no budget for a windlass!



Note the expression of the crew when hearing the familiar refrain of "no budget for that".

We will likely use the existing "nothing wrong with it and it fits the anchor hangers" Danforth for a lunch hook, and bring out the Fortress and this new rode for overnight and heavy weather. As I intend it to be the lunch hook for Alchemy, it's certainly sturdy enough, and we anticipate sleeping soundly at anchor when we go down the lake in a couple of weeks.