Keeping 'em in stitches

Bob, bob, bobbin along

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

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

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

Mukluks? Maybe with built-in flotation.

Pilot error reduction

Would it kill you to get a better boarding ladder?

 
"Pilot" is a word with several nautical meetings. A maritime pilot, and by extension piloting or pilotage, is a professional mariner assigned (usually) by a governmental authority to board and guide merchant vessels and occasionally private yachts through tricky or congested harbours, passes or canals. Customarily, a pilot will advise the captain of the vessel, who remains in overall command (and takes overall responsibility for the safety of the vessel should he or she overrule the pilot's advice). Despite the impressive array of navigational sensors and displays available on modern merchant vessels (and quite a few private boats), many harbours and approaches remain dynamic and potentially dangerous environments, and "local knowledge" and even intuition are brought by the pilot to increase the chances of a successful, non-crunchy landing, mooring, through-passage or docking.

The left side of this graphic is white, and is not in any sense the flag of Poland. It's the "H" signal flag, and indicates to all nearby that a pilot is aboard the ship in question. That is not your cue to sail right in front of their bow.

Pilots are not universal. They are required on the Panama Canal, for instance, where they actually supersede the captain in terms of guiding the ship, making that canal one of the few places in the world where the skipper legally must surrender control of the ship. By contrast, hired-by-the-hour "line handlers" suffice for private boats for Ontario's Welland Canal, which lifts both commercial (up to 750 feet in length) and recreational vessels (anything that won't fit on a boat trailer) between Lakes Erie and Ontario. But the fact is that while they are an essential service in many places too dangerous to approach for the unfamiliar, other places they are a mandatory method of scooping fees from every passing vessel. In still other places, pilots might be a good idea, but the absence of sufficient traffic capable of generating revenue, such in the reef-bound islands of the tropical Pacific, means "you're on your own, son!"

Of course, no human pilot is infalliable, and even the best of them can be crossed...literally in some cases (see above) by a reckless sailor with poor timing or impulse-control issues. So when the human pilot can't be present, sailors can resort to written "pilots", such as Sailing Directions for Area Insert Name Here. Locally, I use Sailing Directions for Lake Ontario, which comprises small photos, "chartlets", particularlities of the various ports, marinas, bridge heights and underwater dumps, along with descriptions of various land features, nav aids and the like.

Think of these types of pilots (in other contexts they are referred to as "pilots") as companion volumes to the paper charts used as the foundation of navigation. 

The U.S. government has free Sailing Directions downloads of impressive volume (better not get the laptop wet) in both planning and "en route" forms, as well as offering regularly updated (and free as PDF downloads) Coast Pilots. Very comprehensive sailing directions, a.k.a. pilots, are also available from the expensive, if usually reliable United Kingdom Hydrological Office.

Another kind of pilot relates not to how you approach the land, but how you approach the weather. Getting the balance right means playing the laws of averages: you may decide to cross the Atlantic from Canada to Britain in early June rather than early July because you may get colder temperatutes, but also lighter winds, whereas July could bring early-season hurricane remnants chugging up the otherwise helpful Gulf Stream. Comprised of observations taken by personnel of the Royal and U.S. Navies from the late 1700s to the present, and averaged out for five by five degrees squares of ocean for each month of the year, "wind pilots", for lack of a better term, allow the sailor to improve her odds of picking a favourable time to make a passage through most of the waters of the world, and to sketch in a game plan in the south Pacific, for instance, that offers the least chance of either typhoons or dead calms, neither of which are desirable weather for most sailboats.

Admiralty Ocean Passages for the World, a venerable publication name-checked regularly in cruising narratives,  is not cheap or lighter than an e-reader, but it offers in a pleasing and useful form a great mass of data of huge utility to the crew in planning mode. While the free U.S. pilot charts of the same type contain much of the same information, manipulating them in either PDF or in chart form is a little tiresome compared to a book. Nonetheless, the point is not the ease of use so much as the ease of understanding how historical weather trends can...or in certain years cannot...tilt the odds of having a steady passage with a minimum of nasty, wind-borne surprises.

This brings me to what might be considered the latest, Web-based version of the pilot chart: The Climatology of Global Ocean Winds (COGOW) project's website has collated ten or so years of data culled from satellites able to detect wind and wave movements across the oceans...from orbit. This is stunningly useful, as is quickly apparent when one trolls through the site in order to obtain "wind roses" for some tiny spot on the ocean, averaged not to the month but to a two-week span, and...here's the relevant bit...averaged over a nine-year span starting 12 years ago.

If you pick up on the nuances of this diagram, it could sway your decision to sail East South East.

Is that a small sample? Yes, compared to the 200-year-plus range of observations of the U.S. and UK pilots. But it is arguably finer grained, in the sense that because the data was collected consistently by one machine functioning 24 hours a day for years on end, the data is not based on perhaps fuzzy methodology employed by subjective observers operating outside of proper instrumentation or indeed, prior to the adoption of Beaufort's scale, agreed-upon terms of reference. The "drill-down" brings us observations from areas a mere 0.5 x 0.5 degrees in size.

Close to where my friends on Silverheels III are, next week's forecast shows a continuing likelihood of northeasteries

In sailing terms, that's miniscule. It's certainly a tiny fraction...I'll let you do the math...of the five by five degree areas covered by the "book" Pilots. And while the sample size over time is not great, a mere ten years or so, it does cover the period of "weird weather" of the last 15 years or so. Comparing these graphs to what the various "long-view" pilots show might be instructive, confusing and/or helpful, much like this blog. And yet I feel better for having found this intriguing addition to the passagemaker's store of knowledge.

Visual aids for sailing from a very good sailor

Damn right I built this! (translated from the Portuguese)

In 2007, I crewed on a short delivery in Portugal. It was my first saltwater experience beyond being on Irish and English ferries, and I was on the impressive Giulietta, a custom-built Delmar Conde 1200 racer built by my friend Alex, who lives outside of Lisbon. The boat is currently stripped out and is racing ORC around Portugal, and is doing quite well. It certainly has the most comprehensive and well-organized method of handling control lines I've ever seen.

Alex, tired of the repetition and general level of nonsense at certain sailing forums that shall go unmentioned, started a sailing forum of his own, Anything-sailing.com,  whose membership he finds more congenial. Although Alex's biases in favour of fast, modern designs are known, he genuinely wants to be helpful to sailors who want to learn, and pretty well anything that gets him sailing on his marvellous boat is a decent excuse.

Alex made a comprehensive series of "how-to" short instructional videos for YouTube that I would like to see more widely viewed. Not that I think I get the numbers of YouTube...I am under no illusions, particularly as I can see my stats...but these particular videos are well done for a fellow who doesn't have English as a first language, and who frequently makes fun of his own troubles working computers.

While you could browse his YouTube channel,  I thought to list some of my favourites here. Even veterans can, I believe, learn from a sailor who is also a pilot and has an extensive engineering background. His explanations of how various parts of the rig work...and how to get the most out of them...are of interest even to experienced sailors. How long, after all, could you talk about the use of the Cunningham?

Obrigado, meu amigo!

Rabbit at rest, and the dartboard weather report

CLEAN ME.

Because my two sailboats (made possible not by Midas-grade wealth, but by forgoing a car and being thrifty/cheap and not having vacations and cable TV) are quite different in terms of design, materials and intended usage, it's only natural to me that I reach for a metaphor or perhaps a simile to distinguish them in my mind.

Rabbit and tortoise will do.

Without belabouring the old fable, the smaller boat, the "rabbit", is generally the faster, although in a real blow, the "tortoise's" longer waterline would allow a faster top speed, and under generally more comfortable and specifically drier working conditions. Still, the tortoise is built and sailed in as undramatic a fashion as possible, because it's a house and a little world on the seas...or will be. The rabbit, by contrast, is all about the fun, "laying her down" and getting, if it seems like it might help, green water over the winches in quest of that perfect, howling ride.

Feelin' hot, hot, hot

That howling ride might come early this year. Environment Canada, a government agency of which could be said they are "no worse than most" and "occasionally useful", have taken to issuing three-month temperature and precipitation forecasts. The one above indicates their view that we are going to continue to have an unusually balmy winter, straight onto spring.

I have foulies and thermals and sea boots. No biggie.

The second chart indicate normal precipitation. We've had very little snow this winter here in Toronto. I think I've shovelled, in a fairly disinterested way, about three times, and that could've been done with an angry broom. There's been plenty of rain, however, and the lake retains its brimming aspect, which is welcome to fin keelers everywhere.

That said, this "forecast" is barely above random chance in terms of accuracy. The last three months were supposed to see us buried under Eastern Front levels of snow and ice, signalling for the army that never comes, but in fact I've been riding my bicycle nearly every day. It's been windy as hell, on the other hand. If snow had been in it, we would have had several severe blizzards. But that hasn't been the case. I've had to replace a few cheap tarps, and I spent today pumping out the rainwater from Valiente's icy bilges, but that's a small price to pay for keeping the mast in. So far, I like that decision. So far, the inch of ice that formed in the harbour during a brief cold snap would not have even caused me to worry about failing to haul at all. I could have sailed all winter, had there been facilities (and insurance) to do so. I can't recall a winter in which that was predictable or even possible. La Nina, you're a sexy beast.

If this not-cold winter weather persists, it will not only argue for an early April launch for Valiente (assuming the marina will let me in early), but easier work aboard a less-frosty Alchemy, the tortoise will a new heart, awaiting a load of suturing and a decent cardiac massage.

Obviously, today was windy. Less obviously, the boat to the left has slapping halyards and a bad case of the tinks.

Ionosphere, beware!

I now possess the tools to conquer you!

Yes, I will at some point actually open these boxes. Soon, my precioussss...

Not really, but after some delay and misunderstanding, my SSB gear arrived this morning.

Now all I need is a functional boat, with upright mast and working antenna included, in which to put it. Further purchases, labour and tweaking will be involved.

I may attempt "listening only" from home just to get used to the rhythms of amateur radio coverage and fiddling. I can't transmit (legally) from land (I think) or physically (lack of proper antenna, counterpoise or dummy load), but I think I can LISTEN without breaking the warranty, and I have an existing length of copper I can rig as an antenna. Unlike some devices, RTFM is the operating principle here. I don't know what I don't know about putting together a functional amateur radio aboard a boat, but at least I know I don't know. Much study lies ahead.

The role of SSB radio in modern cruising is quite similar to the role of the sextant or even the windvane (see "GPS and autopilot good; old mechanical things bad"). Why, goes the logic, in the days of  satellite phones, widespread wireless and phones of smartness do you need a RADIO? Isn't that a touch retrograde?

Well, no. I did run the numbers on this, and, more trenchantly I think, saw an SSB rig in full functional use on my Atlantic delivery in 2009, and the ability to send and receive voice and e-mails and receive GRIB files offshore is very, very comforting and useful. So are cruisers' nets. A phone call, even via satellite, is point-to-point. If no one answers, or if "the system's down", you are, to use the sailor's term, S.O.L. A radio might be considerably more finicky and subject to vagaries of tuning, sunspots, the state of the ionosphere and so on, but it's essentially broadcast, meaning any number of people can hear you and in the case of the emergency frequencies, will be actively listening. And you've got a very wide spectrum of frequencies from which to choose. And, for the moment, there is still a worldwide community of shortwave radio broadcasts, so the SSB/shortwave set can be a source of information and even entertainment. And education: I will to some extent rely upon the SSB-mediated SailMail service to communicate my son's high school subjects to and from the Toronto school in which he will have a truly virtual presence.

And Herb H. Let's not forget the extremely useful service rendered to the distance cruising community of Herb and his forecasting kin in giving us the "turn left to avoid cyclone" information that keeps us, for the most part, from being the snack bar at the new artificial reef.

Besides, I have expert friends who look out for me and want to save me money (the crew of Silverheels III in Grenada). I have been told that I can install this myself (I built a CB radio system when I was a teenager, so I'm not completely at sea, so to speak, with most of the concepts and avoid licking the contacts, generally). I have also been told that a boat with a nice, cambered steel deck and a nice, tuned antenna suspended between my twin backstays will likely make me an excellent transceiver.

So, ionosphere, you've been warned. Radio Alchemy will at some point in what I hope is the near future be on the air.

From flipping lids to downing hatches

Today, as they say, was a good day. Beset by the need to make money to support my boat addiction, plus the fact that I have customarily shared the parenting duties with a formerly working and currently school-attending spouse, I have not always worked to a schedule when it comes to the boat, and have certainly not advanced as rapidly as I would have wished.

The fact that the URL of this blog starts with "alchemy2009" is mute testament to my molasses-like progress.

Part of this slowness is due to my own ignorance on how best to do boat jobs, or even how to do them at all. I find that it pains me to admit it now, but my high school years might have profited me more with less chasing skirt and more taking shop. I'm handy, or handier than I thought I was, but I simply lack the experience of doing jobs in an efficient manner. I don't have a "manner" to contrast it against.

Still, I learn and absorb and carry a stupid amount of information in my head. Bursts of activity occur (followed or preceded at times by bursting wallet contents). Today I finally got the new engine down the hole.

Said hole

Said hole required temporary clamping of 2 x 4s over the now-bare engine stringer mounting bits (the "motor mounts" will go in later). Easy peasy, this bit. Note freshly galvanized paint areas. More will be done in warmer weather.

 

You can see your face in it, but it's not that great a mirror

The engine, tarped, tarped and tarped again against the elements on the foredeck for too long, is still shiny. Ooh, shiny.

I am a jealous god.

Revealed, it's practically modern art. It exudes raw industrial-grade purposefulness. It squats like a barbaric deity, or a sort of mechanical toad, the sort capable of taking you on a memorable trip. Mmm, toad.

That pallet has a lot of salvageable wood it in, include long carriage bolts as mounts.And thus the noted cheapness of the prospective cruiser manifests in the same picture as a five-figure diesel toad god.

Jeff practising the oblong discus throw. Note the author's crappy bike trailer and feeble "don't kill me, SUV lady!" flag

An example of doing things the hard way is how I used to lift off the pilothouse roof only to stash it on the deck, "in case it rained". A better solution is to put it on the flippin' ground while you futz around with the load to be placed oh-so-gently below.

Whither a sawhorse, or lengths of lumber?

This is my friend and fellow boater Jeff Cooper doing his Superman routine. Actually, thanks to the expert manipulation of Henry Piersig, who is not only surgeon-like in his ability to work a crane, but is also my club's Commodore three years running, we clipped along quite efficiently. Everything was done in about one hour, and the weather, while usually warm for right after a snowfall, was calm in wind and bright in sun. Bit slippery on deck, is all. Thanks very much to Jeff and Henry for their skills, speed and helpful suggestions.

Something quite similar to my club's "Polecat Crane Truck", a Very Useful Piece of Equipment

My one bright idea of the day was to bring handheld radios so we could advise Henry on "one inch, one inch down...one more...STOP!" Very handy, that was. Even given that if Henry can play darts like he can place a crane hook at full boom extension, and out of visible range, I'm going to owe him more pints than I already do.

Welcome to the Melanoma Deck, S/V Box o' Tools

As I said, not raining and 8C on January 31st. The sounds were "up, up", accompanied by the constant sluicing of meltwater, and the grumbling of a truck diesel that probably thought it was going to be recycled into Chinese cookware by now. Oh, blown ring, rust-speckled Polecat, I still think you're great!

Victory!

The actual set-down was a little iffy as it looks as if that honking ZF25 hydraulic transmission wants to crunch a transverse support. So Jeff, who dove down the hole voluntarily, blocked up the engine to keep it from being damaged until I can raise it and get measuring. Which I will do anyway as there is welding to get down back there for the thrust bearing/Aquadrive/PSS/shorted shaft assembly.

Nonetheless, in general dimension, if not exact final Place of Great Functioning, the new diesel fits quite well. I think it's smaller than Ye Olde Westerbroke that it has replaced. It's certainly lighter, while being "eight horses" more lusty. I think I will call it "The Red Lusttoad". No, wait. That's an anagram for "The Led Rusttoad", and that sounds unchancy. Sailors and their superstitions!

I will be leaving these shackles on for the moment, Mr. Bond.

The engine will require a gantry of sorts to be built so that it can be raised and lowered easily in order to position the mounts, move it fore and aft as needed and to get a fellow and his welding gear down there, not to mention the new tanks.

The perhaps-overthought gantry started looking like this:

...and currently looks like this:

I need more stability or a second beam to keep those triangles from wobble or shift. I wanted something collapsable that I could stow and bring with me, but I may just have something welded. I judge that there is insufficient strength to run a beam across the pilothouse roof without possibly flexing the structure, which could break the windows, so I prefer to work entirely inside. More on this to come.

The restoration was straightforward. I updated the tarps (lots of rain is coming), cleaned up, disposed of disposables and admired the (fractionally) new view forward.

The engineless foredeck is a nice change, no?

Yes, a good day, indeed. Thanks for everything, Henry and Jeff, and to Mr. M. Bird for getting me the proper lifting eye, which, aye, lifted.

Invention is only a finger away

Yes, that title struck me as slightly off-putting, as well. But docking, as seen in the video above, is all about on-putting, or at least putting the boat safely on the dock. Step one is stopping, or slowing enough to get a line around a bollard. Luc Cote, who with his wife Tina has the slip at my marina that is kitty-corner to mine, has done exactly that. He's invented a simple device to make docking safer (you stay aboard instead of jumping off with a line) and more certain (you can give yourself plenty of slack to secure the line).

The low blue boat in the top center of the establishing shot is Valiente.  Such is fame.

Luc and Tina live aboard an Irwin 37 (which is for sale if you are interested). Luc runs a water taxi service from the marina and has had a lot of time and muscle memory to dedicate to the issue of better, safer docking. The "Dock Wand" is made to accomplish that. I saw them at the recent Toronto Boat Show and they had made a hundred to sell, but had in fact sold 500. The Dock Wand would appear to be a hit.

Not much more than a length of line, a plastic pole and a brightly coloured ball, the Dock Wand is, like most good ideas, so simple and straightforward, one feels slightly moronic even contemplating the long list of reasons one didn't invent it years back. In my own defence, Valiente has quite a low freeboard and my wife usually jumps off with a hook in one hand and a breast line in the other. Alchemy, by contrast, is both four times or better the mass and even at midships calls for a bit of a hop to reach the level of the dock.

So I might have to wander over to get one myself. The videos are pretty self-explanatory. One spliced end of a longish line goes to a cleat (ideally centered or forward). The other end goes to a ball used to lasso the aft cleat on a dock. That accomplished, you can drop the thing in the water: You are "on" enough to either stop in calm weather, or to give you time enough to jump off with more lines to finish securing.

I can see this as being a big help for big sail boats, power boats and single-handers of all types. I wish them well and I hope my readers find it a clever and useful tool.

Sometimes a picture says three words

Vada a bordo, cazzo, indeed

UPDATE: An interesting couple of recent videos about Costa Concordia from the fine folks at the news programs 60 Minutes:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-57559461-10391709/a-world-askew-on-board-the-costa-concordia/

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50137223n

And current (mid-January 2013) news:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50138881n

FURTHER UPDATE (September 2013): Preparations are nearly complete for the one-shot parbuckling attempt to refloat this casualty of poor life choices: http://www.businessinsider.com/costa-concordia-removal-hits-key-phase-2013-9?op=1

A question even wartime propaganda cannot answer

Heh. I've found that the orange bitters I've taken to using in my somewhat modded Dark 'n' Stormies sparks an urge to design T-shirts that only amuse nostalgic British drunken sailors.

Or pirates.

Or Johnny Depp fans.

Heh.

Runs in the blood, bred in the bone

The old man, with a still-fresh rose-and-anchor tattoo applied between whoring expeditions in wartime Lisbon, and probably about 19 years of age, or 1944.

I've mentioned before that I didn't purchase a sailboat until I was 38, which is rather late to get in the game. This was despite the fact that I had a father who spent over a decade in the British Merchant Navy, including 1941-45 when it was a definitively hazardous occupation. Perhaps because, as a veteran of both the "Murmansk run" and post-war whaling in Antarctica, my father had been almost literally to the ends of the earth. He didn't show a lot of passion or interest in something as "civvy" as recreational sailing, any more than a retired demolitions expert would enjoy pulling apart drywall with a wrecking bar, I conclude.

This odd and egregiously superannuated device is a "Steenbeck" film editing station. Compared to a razor block , my father thought it was a great leap forward, even if "tones on tail" contributed to his deafness.

Being a mate on a circa-1950 merchant freighter and a "here, Dad, hold this" on a circa-2000 sloop actually don't have a lot in common. Throw in the fact that I was born 10 years or so after he "left the sea" for a new country and a completely unrelated career as a film editor, and the related fact that he was 75 when I bought my first boat, and about the only "seamanlike" behaviour I noticed the two of us sharing was a love of Errol Flynn pirate movies and a tendency to notice when there were nautical errors in movies like Dead Calm or Master and Commander. The rest of his side of the family were not involved with the sea, or so I believe. Someone at some point in the mid-1800s got on a ship from Ireland to Wales, but there it seems to end. Until me and Dad, I guess.

This is the M/V Daleby, a modern (for circa 1950) example of a post-war general cargo freighter such as would have been familiar to my father.

Nonetheless, I was quite aware from his unforced, salty expressions (imagine being a child in a Toronto suburb in the '60s told to "pipe down!" or to make one's toys "Bristol fashion"), and from the rapidity with which he could read a map and tie a knot, and from the occasional emergence of some picaresque and not often age-appropriate anecdote, that he had been the real deal: a working sailor.

Unsurprisingly, it's pretty hard to source pictures of old-timey flensing action. Picture this with no protective gear except the wellies and you'll capture the blubber-splitting, gigantic-gut-spewing spirit of the thing.

I recall pretty vividly childhood incidents in which tales were spun about under what unsavoury circumstances he got his tattoo, what aroma arose from whale guts after the three-foot long flensing pole had opened up the animal, and his avoidance of death several times at the hands of the Luftwaffe, the Kriegsmarine and assorted Japanese and Italian armed forces. At certain points, out would come a sperm whale tooth, along with the knife used to cut it away. Ripping yarns, indeed.

For some reason, people carve these.

It's no wonder he considered himself lucky, or that his life merited such a plethora of run-on sentences. He's pictured at the top of this post circa 1944, being at the time only about 19 and already having been bombed, strafed, tattooed and, if torpedoed, living to declare them misses or duds. His wartime friends were not so lucky, and after he moved here, he had little contact with the few that had survived. He died in 2006 when my son was just past five, and it's a sadness to me that neither of my parents are around to be grandparents to him, nor to wave at us cheerfully from the dock when we leave.

An essential tool for the wartime Merchant Navy mate: the pointy problem-solver. The one the old fella gave me looks a lot like this: Solingen steel.

On the other hand, it's a rather sad fact that some people of my acquaintance have deferred their own cruising plans because of aged parents in need of assistance and management of their affairs. I would be at peace having that problem, actually, but it's a fact that moving to the front of the generational line chronologically and in a familial sense has its logistical upsides if you are wanting to cruise.

My wife's family is extremely Canadian, meaning they've been here since before Confederation (1867 for my non-Canadian readers) Probably there's Hudson's Bay Company employment and a little bit of native blood in the otherwise Scots-English mix. But my wife's father grew up close to waters of Lake Ontario and with plenty of access to little boats. Although he couldn't make a career out of it, he did draw(and saw built) a few of his designs. Unfortunately, all of his photos and drawings were lost in a fire many years ago, but he has seen that at least one of his designs, a 38 footer of sprightly lightness (he told me "10,000 pounds", which is indeed light for that LOA...Airex core may have been mentioned) is still sailing at around 30 years old.

 

A Culross 38 built in the 1980s

So, I guess one could say without fear of exaggeration, and despite, in my case, a rather delayed start, that the son my wife and I have produced is the son of sailors on both sides, and the grandson of sailors in a half-measure. As pedigrees go, that'll do. He's certainly fine with falling in the water.

Lucas at seven in 2009 and about two pounds too light to easily right a turtled Optimist.

Got 'er done, however. I wish the old man could've seen this.

Nothing if not practical

This is Ken of the good ship Silverheels III, three or four years now out of Toronto. Astute readers may recognize the boat name appended to many comments posted to this blog, most of them helpful and constructive when they aren't hectoring me to hurry up and get sailing.

Ken and his lovely and talented wife Lynn are currently anchored somewhere in the "insurance applies" part of the Southern Caribbean, and have, as this photo illustrates, fully embraced the tropical lifestyle. In fact, their biggest challenge recently is digging out of the dim recesses of their sturdy Niagara 35 enough musty trousers and long-sleeved shirts to make the trip back to Canada for the holidays without freezing to death on the trip from the plane to the parking lot.

Ken and Lynn are, like most cruisers, nothing if not practical. You fix your own gear (Ken was for many years responsible for resusitating busted electronics gear abused by students of Ryerson University's Radio and Television Arts course, and was in fact there doing it when I was there as a student 30 years ago...only I didn't know him then.) You source and prepare your own food. You hump your own laundry into the tender, and, if necessary, beat it on your own rock, although it rarely comes to that, I suspect.

But the not-so-dirty and not-so-secret of life aboard? You don't wear many clothes at all. When the air below is the temperature of blood, it's practical to save on sweating through clothing by not wearing it at all. You'll only have to wash it later. If you postpone donning a T-shirt and shorts until the cooler evening hours, you might get two evenings' wear out of it. This economy of  treating clothing as a special event means far less expense on sometimes extortionate shoreside laundries, along with a reduction in the chances that an errant wave will douse your carefully packed laundry just as you are coming alongside. If you don't wear it, you don't need to wash it.

Offshore, many folk doff trou upon leaving sight of land or in international waters. Sure, you might have boat sandals, a big, floppy hat and strategic applications of sun block, but there lay undiscovered countries of once-hidden flesh that, in time, take on the all-over golden hue of the once-pallid (if in fact Caucasian) cruiser.

Not that photos of this reality ever make the sailing mags. Everyone there seems to be in shirts they rolled Jimmy Buffett to get, and usually a salt and oil-stained Tilley hat. Little do the lubbers know that the brown, it goes all the way down. I have heard of night watches conducted with T-shirt, harness and tether and not much else, and the T-shirt's only on to reduce the chafing of the harness. Barely sailing? Indeed.

Concerns about moles going funny aside, not only is nudity aboard practical from a clean-clothes conservation viewpoint, but it's arguably healthier than bothering to get dressed in many conditions that the active cruiser is likely to encounter. The damp of sea air, even assuming you don't actually catch salt spray on some part of your clothing, can affect skin to the point of peeling. Salt blisters can form in unlikely places. Nothing ever feels quite dry. So allowing sweat to evaporate directly from one's skin...all of one's skin...means ablutions can be performed with a freshwater swipe of the sponge (conserving water and effort). The breeze, if present, cools and comforts the sailor, although if you notice that a body part is doing a reasonable impression of the arrow of the Windex, it may be time to consider donning foulies.

So let's hoist a glass of the finest rum to Ken, Lynn and all other clothing-optional cruisers. It's a rarely discussed aspect of the liveaboard life, and it takes a brave fellow with steady hands to solder in the buff, but it's a healthy and practical response to feeling hot, hot, hot. Boaters with air conditioning don't know what they're missing.

Seeks cruising kitty (Obscure TPB reference).

Saying yes to sailing off into the sunset is saying no to a broken system

Over the years (and it has been years) since this blog and our multi-year plans to sail with a young son began, I have received the occasional opinion that it would be better if we waited until we were closer to retirement age. The logic goes that our finances would be "on a firmer footing", our son would be on his own or in college, and we could "downsize" our downtown home, recoup our investments and get a nicer boat with electric hoo-hahs and all mod cons.

Putting aside some fairly large assumptions inherent in such an opinion, such as a) there's no prospect that our house will actually show a profit in 15 years' time as the general economy may be in the dumps; and b) our son, if at a university, might be ruiniously expensive if scholarships are unobtainable; and c) our health and strength would endure to that stage at such a pitch that we could, as a sailing couple, operate a 40-45 footer safely in all weathers. This isn't even taking into account that we might have living relatives both ill and old and underfunded in our care, or that diesel could be three times its current costs. Lastly, there's d) a large reason to go is to expose our son to the rest of the world while such a fleeting opportunity, historically speaking, for non-rich people, by Western standards, to do so is still open a crack, and so on.

Basically, the "go while you still can" mantra holds for us. Working like dogs until 60 or 65 in order to have a nicer Beneteau holds little appeal if other things we can't control come into play in a deleterious manner. We know more than one cruiser couple who have either commenced cruising or are planning to cruise with largely the same outlook, although many have started from differing assumptions or adequately funded pension plans.

If you wait, the opportunity may never come. The stars may fail to align. 

Consider our boat, Alchemy: It was custom-built in the late '80s by a fellow who took a long time to finish it. I'm not convinced, having spoken only briefly to him on the phone, that he wanted to travel the world, but for whatever reason (age, interests changed), he owned it for 17 years and never took it into salt water, despite the fact it's ludicriously overbuilt for the Great Lakes. See "Why do I have eleven 5/16th inch stays?"

The second owners further fitted out the boat for a couple of years with some top-end amenities, and then received a lucrative job offer unto retirement that convinced them to give up, or at least postpone, their dream of world travel. We're therefore the third owners in 23 years of an ocean-going boat that's not been to the ocean. We might actually push off in said direction, unless the "curse" strikes our enterprise as well. Let's keep fingers crossed, and, if necessary, sacrifice a goat against that possibility.

One of the more compelling reasons, however, to sail off that I present to well-meaning interlocutors seems to have an almost universal affect on those suggesting a more protracted run-up to passagemaking.

That reason is that I believe I will never receive a pension, and I will never actually be able to retire. 

Not in the conventional, that is to say, post-1965 and pre-2008 sense. Like most humans throughout history, I will likely die in harness, which could mean a fate as ugly as the world's oldest telemarketer. My only consolation in doing so will be that I am likely to do so at an older age than the historical norm, if we can keep purifying the water and don't bugger up the air or food supply too badly.

I am also hoping that if I have to work until I snuff it, I will have no regrets and plenty of feedstock for pleasant dreams, having sailed around the world for five or so years.

Still, my outlook is not very comforting, is it? A lot of people currently cruising have pension income of some sort, and that may be well-funded, or well-funded enough that such fortunate folk may pass naturally (or simply swallow the anchor) before the piggybank runs out. Congratulations to them; I bear no grudge. But I believe, sincerely, that I will not be among their number. My 12 years' younger wife or 40 years' younger son?

Not a chance. The larder will be bare, and is already understocked.

Everything they have paid or will pay into my country's national pension scheme will be utterly gone (or will be devalued to the point of "gone") by the time they reach retirement age, which, if the entire house o' cards is to kept in a wobbly state of mostly upright, will be between 75 to 80 years old, and for the Greeks, 110 years old.

So I hear this: "Wait, you are sailing off in middle age because you think pension schemes are the devil's songbook?"

Well, yes, I intend to and I do, although there are other reasons. But having invested my own money, such as it is, for many years, and having been self-employed for only a somewhat shorter period, my belief that pensions as currently administered in my country and most, but not all, others, are a mug's game is based on two simple, and contrasting concepts. 1) Governments have treated pension funds as piggybanks at the same time as they have kept contributions artificially low to avoid alarming the peasants. Thus, the commitments far outstrip the ability to pay.

That doesn't make pensions stupid. It means that you have to have them run at total arm's length from idiot governments who can only think in four-year cycles. A pension demands the ability to count to 100 and to stick with what one learns from being able to count to 100 whether people whine and bitch or not. 2) For the same whining and bitching reasons, governments have not directly linked life expectancy to retirement age. The age of 65 was arrived at when meb (and it was mostly men who had pensions for many years) died, on average, at 67. You don't need a lot of planning or even cash to pay out two years of benefits for 40-plus years of planning, particularly as the average age of 67 implied that a lot of men kicked off years before that and got NOTHING, or just a fractional payout to a surviving spouse. My grandfather died two days before his 65th birthday in 1968, for instance. Not a penny did his widow, who lived a further 25 years, get from the pension scheme of the day. My mother died at 68; she got three years, having contributed since the age of 18: 50 years.

Now, some might say "Ah, but that's just a roll of the dice. It doesn't invalidate the pension logic." And I might agree with such a person...in principle. But pensions have long since abandoned any notion, in my view, of "principle". These days, men in Canada live until 81 and women to nearly 84, on average, and therefore collect pensions for 16 to 25 years, as they can "retire" at 60 on a partial or at 65 on a full pension. Trouble is, having built all those universities and discouraged the trades, we aren't STARTING work until 22 or 23 (or 25 if you go for a master's or a PhD) and therefore expect to pay generous pensions (in the context of maximum years of earnings) for 20 years from a working life of 35-40 years.

So the second concept is that in order for this pie-in-the-sky pension scheme to work, we would have had to kick the retirement age to 75 about 20 years ago by upping the age of retirement by one year every two years or so. The biggest bulge in the python, demographically speaking, would have been therefore "encouraged" to put away more, and earlier, themselves, because the bareness of the cupboard marked "pension benefits" would have been more apparent earlier in the process, when we had a hope of applying some fiscal probity...instead of clapping Tinker-fucking-bell back to life.

Anyone else see a problem with this? In all of the Western democracies, save perhaps Germany  (which could be sabotaged by the "Euro project" in this respect even yet) and Scandinavia, the pension-planners' "house" cannot collect enough to pay out all those winners. Those of us who work as self-employed persons actually make a double contribution to a fucking pyramid scheme that will be sucked dry from the enormous generation of "boomers" directly ahead of us in age...and who will NEVER support pension reform...because it is not remotely in their interests to do so.

Looked upon in that light, buggering off with no income (visible to my nation's government at least) in a boat for five years is actually a break from the daily wallet-sized prison rape of living in a society that wishes to print money without doing the requisite math to make said slips representative of actual wealth. While cruising, we may not make any money, but we get a brief absolution from pissing into a bottomless well from which we, as the currently middle-aged income earners and contributors, can never plausibly draw. World cruising is therefore a withdrawal of our services, and a refusenik tactic, as much as it is a nice way to see the world, while there's still a world to see.

I have mentioned before that some of our ambition to make a rather unconventional trip like this was rooted in a pessimistic view of humanity's future (we should go before piracy, adrift containers and Texas-sized patches of plastic are normal in every ocean) and of the continuing degradation of the environment (see the lovely atoll nation before it's a sandbank; sail while there's still fish to catch off the stern). Add to that the compelling rationale that long-term cruising withdraws the family finances to a significant degree from the never-ending shell game of national pension schemes, and it gets harder some days to be cheerful about the prospect of casting off at all. I only thank Neptune or whatever watery deity applies that I figured this out at 40 instead of 60. I have been planning our escape accordingly, and postings such as this are "goon-baits" in the fine old Colditz tradition.

The system will only collapse more quickly if everyone figures it out for themselves. See "Europe: now".

UPDATE Dec. 14, 2011:  

According to this story, my country cannot even fund its pension scheme to its own bureaucrats and other federal government workers.

"One of the figures Ottawa uses to determine its pension liability is a moving average of past “nominal” yields on 20-year federal bonds, while the other is an assumed return on investments of 4.2 per cent based on averages earned since 2000.

The C.D. Howe report says the “made-up” numbers are not realistic in today’s world of low interest rates and low investment returns.

“Both these interest rates are well above anything currently available on any asset that matches the plans’ obligations,” Mr. Robson said in a news release Tuesday."

Pension plans must be formulated on the payout side on the basis of everyone slightly outliving the forecasted draw-down. That is, if the average age of death is, say, 80, and the vast majority work until 65, you provision for 16 or 17 years of payouts, averaged out. This is because the average age of death will tend to move forward in time as people who would have died within that period benefit from medical advances and other life-extension methods, like a more active lifestyle and a better diet.

Pensions were so much easier when people retired and dropped dead three years later from too much smoke and gravy, frankly. Now, all that time at the gym followed by salad means a lot of wiry oldsters are working stacking shelves and greeting at Walmart. It's a glimpse into the future.

Pension plans must be contributed into on the basis of the most conservative outcomes; in a low-interest, low-inflationary period, one cannot "bank" on even a pension fund's considerable buying power to outdo the market, which, as we've learned, is substantially rigged in favour of the already-rich.  So if one's assumptions are too rosy (and "too rosy" is a real problem in this area of management), the pension will inevitably have less money to address an ever-expanding set of entitlements and obligations.

In sum, when the bureaucrats, who are generally assumed to have gold-plated retirement funding, start to question the imperial habit of coin clipping and currency debasement (to cite what in part did in the Roman Empire), it's time to review what we, the better washed but nonetheless vast plebian population can expect, if anything, to keep us out of the garbage bins, food banks and future auditions for "Bum Fights, 2030".

Remember, it's November: a late haulout and a near miss

Don't let the calm water fool you

I like to sail and pay a pretty penny...although not as much as a small econobox car driver on an annual basis...for the privilege of doing so. By sharing costs and balancing off "steel boat restoration" with "plastic boat fun" in my increasingly fume-addled mind, I've been able to justify sailing one boat while I try not to screw up the fitting out of another, beached one.

This is prologue to relating this year's other haulout (I participated in hauling my club three weeks ago), that of Valiente, my 33 foot sloop. Leaving distractedly late from my summer marina berth, I cadged free shelter at my club, although in a rather exposed spot (see above) from the prevailing and gusty mid-fall westerlies, which can swing into NW or even north with rapidity. The previous entry related my last sail of the season, but there was more "fun" in store in the following week.

I haul Valiente in as cheap and "unfacilitied" a location as I can find within reach of bicycle from my home. A glorified series of parking lots in Toronto's "Portlands" called Pier 35 fills the bill nicely...there's not even a washroom on site, no electricity or water can be easily accessed, and the place is overrun with feral cats fed by well-meaning if idiotic white people in nice cars. To top it off, it's downwind from a vast recycling plant. Do not power wash the boat...it's pointless unless you seal it in plastic afterwards.

Hauling here means having a tolerance for a little eccentricity on the part of the denizens and the staff. This is a boat boneyard, with several decaying examples of production and/or homebuilt boats that will likely never get as much sea under their hulls as they've had rain on their decks...sooty, sooty rain. One also must do for oneself: I bicycled out at the beginning of the week to erect and rebolt Valiente's somewhat rusty cradle.

Note: My name's not "Smith"

 
I brought the pads in the boat. I was supposed to be hauled on Wednesday, November 9th, late enough in my view to be courting frosty nights that would trouble my sleep with visions of ice-shattered engine blocks, but the boat yard's boss said that he was behind in hauling due to a crane breakdown, and I would be welcome to haul Thursday afternoon, and to tie up in the channel from which he hauled at any point.

Well, I didn't, because my sailing pal Jeff suggested it was an exposed channel, I thought it looked dodgy and unsafe (and didn't want cat poo on deck) to leave a boat unattended in that channel, and the wind looked strong and potentially very gusty. So I stayed put at my club and doubled my lines. I told Mr. Crane Operator I would be there 10 AM Friday and received permission to stay on our club wall until Friday.

The first thing I noticed, as one does, on a not quite windy but looking like it might get windier Friday morning was frost on the patch of grass the kids fold sails on. The second thing was that two of four fenders were missing. One had gone taking part of a shackle with it. There was slight damage to the rubrail. I was evidently at least partially in the line of fire, if fire was gusting November wind. Fun fact: Colder air is denser than warmer air. 40 knots of near zero will feel worse than 25C precisely because it is.

"Whew," I thought as I chugged off to the grubby, cat-infested place of stowage, "I'm glad I didn't stay tied to that wall. Might have scratched her up, but good".

Truer words...

This is or perhaps was (pending insurance adjuster verdicts) a 1989 Irwin 38 sloop. The colour is because it was in Caribbean charter, where the sun turns gelcoat into chalk. The damage is courtesy of being exactly where I planned to be, plus shredded fenders, plus parted lines and plus torn-out cleats. This boat came loose in only a little gale, bounced off a few concrete walls, hit a booze cruiser and generally got severely slapped about.

 

It's worse in person, actually. So is standing beside the owner, who was trying to remain stoic.

Anyway, because the poor thing might be so damaged as to collapse on its cradle, an insurance adjuster had to examine it not only for the usual "repair or scrap" verdict, but to determine if it was even safe to move with half its decks torn up and daylight coming out the transom. The yard boss decided in light of approaching high wind to haul me (mostly) out of the water and away from the wall. Suited me fine, even if I was inexplicably listing to port in the slings.

Prior to the 25-30 knot gusts

I may have spilled my drink at this point.

Note that if one's mast is either side of the yellow stripe on the crane frame, one's beverage may develop a leak. 

Also note that attention to detail in the anti-fouling painting area seems to have paid off...that's a pretty clean bottom for a boat in direct sunshine in a murky, weed-choked marina.

You can just make out the chunks missing from the stem of that steel ship off my stern. Done by the wrecked Irwin, alas

After much fuffing about and a somewhat unnervingly slow hoist and lowering occasioned by the newness of the Big Yellow Crane, we settled in for winter. I am leaving the mast in somewhat experimentally as it will greatly increase the speed of commissioning next spring.

 

Off we go. I always find the sight of either of our boats being moved on wheels a touch nerve-wracking and vaguely amusing. A sort of fish on bicycle image, I suppose.

 

 

Winterized the engine rapidly, and will apply selected tarps and charge, then disconnect, the batteries next week. Then, back to the world of steel.

What the world of steel will always feature: 93% zinc coatings