3:30 PM local time (actually, I'm still using UTC), Saturday, December 14
(1530 Dec. 14 UTC) 13 41 N 052 27 W. Temp. 84, Humidity 65%, Cloud Cover
05%. Eighteenth day at sea.
Greetings from the crew of Maverick.
A finer afternoon at sea could not be imagined.
Right now we're moving along at about six knots with about twelve knots right
behind us and a three-foot sea on a pretty day with few concerns. We've got
about 550 miles to go, and although the wind has dropped from the high teens
down to 10-15, we hope to make this in four days. The boats behind and to the
north of us have very little wind, but the crew of Maverick has been both
careful in choosing our course because of our lack of ability to motor, and
lucky. We're about sixty miles south of the great circle route we'd planned,
but we came down here to stay in the wind and the boats up there only have
eight knots or less. Further east, where the Azores high has weakened and
allowed lows to march over the Canaries, people have light or even adverse
winds, that, without motoring, may keep them under fifty miles a day for a
week.
We've seen little wildlife with the exception of the dolphins who
ignored us when we were becalmed, and the occasional Wilson's Storm-petrels
and Tropicbirds. We're more than two-thirds of the way around, and we've yet
to see our first whale.
Since there's nothing dramatic to report I will comment this time on some
safety issues that we have been discussing in part because of the death of
the sailor a couple of weeks ago near where we were. This won't interest
anyone except those readers who are interested in these things, if them, but
I don't have anything else to do.
HARNESSES: We wear them at night and in heavy weather. Since in the case of
Harvey Shiasky in the Doublehanded Farallones Race and this more recent
incident, the sailors were tethered to the boat, this is obviously not
fail-safe. Circumnavigator Alan Tyson-Carter on Karma, a singlehander, uses a
harness at all times, and a tether only 3 feet long. This seems pretty
extreme, but on the other hand, the sailors mentioned above died because
their harnesses didn't keep them out of the water. You drown real quick when
being dragged at speed underwater. Our tethers have shackles that can be
released under strain, but that would only work if you were conscious.
Rethinking exactly how far off the boat you're going to go when tethered in
seems like a good idea.
LIGHTS: A lot of cruisers use an anchor light or worse at sea, figuring to
save electricity. Another group thinks they must show every light on board,
including the strobe, to make sure they're seen. Among these groups are
sailors who in other ways are admirable seamen. It's up to you if you want to
endanger yourself with this doubtful practice, but I don't want to run into
you. If you're sailing on the ocean, what advantage is gained if you're
giving other vessels a misleading idea of what you're up to? Say the
weather's rough and you've got two or three ships and a cruiser in sight. It
is hard enough to figure whether you're on a collision course with any of
them without someone giving you the idea he's moving away when he's really
heading right at you. What if one of the ships has to change course to miss
another one, and they have you in sight but believe they're seeing a stern
light? Even if they see you on radar (see below) the bearing they have for
you will now change. You've already given them the impression you're heading
away, and now they're concentrating on not hitting the container ship on
their bow. Alternatively, you've got so many lights on that they've had to go
to a reference book to see just what those lights are indicating. You may say
you'll switch to normal lights when you're near traffic, and maybe you'll
remember to do that, but it's very possible that by the time you've switched,
the other vessel has already gotten an erroneous impression of what you're
doing, or if he sees the light change, may think you've turned. In all cases,
you've made the job of the watch aboard the other ships more difficult. You
want to give them a PUZZLE to deal with? Lights are a form of communication
between vessels, and in order to understand one another, we have to use the
same words as the other guy. If there were an incident, it's pretty unlikely
that the lawyers for the insurance company of the tanker would fail to
produce several witnesses who would testify that you weren't observing the 72
COLREGS.
RADAR: In the above situation, the heavy ships will produce "side-lobe"
echoes on the radar screen, so that the ships look like semi-circles instead
of single targets. This is because they are huge, steel objects. To achieve
better resolution, a radar operator may turn down the sensitivity or gain.
When they do this, your little blip on the screen disappears, even if you
were a reasonable target in the first place. I don't know it for a fact since
I've never used the radar on say, a US warship, but I assume this problem
arises to a degree even on bigger radars than we have on board. With a lot of
traffic, there's more clutter. It's not wise to assume you show up clearly on
the radar of a big ship in the middle of a lot of traffic. Which brings us to
SHIPS: When we left home I had read lots of cruisers' accounts of how some
big ship didn't respond to hails on sixteen and just ignored them, so I was
prepared for the worst. This hasn't, however, corresponded to our experience.
As a rule, when there is a question of a collision course, I have hailed the
bridge of supertankers and freighters and been received with courtesy and
professionalism. The rule at sea is, the sailing vessel is the stand-on
vessel. Every captain out here has passed some test to get the job, and you
can bet the rules of the road were on the test. Generally, if there is a
question of collision, the captain will, believe it or not, ask you what you
want him to do. Twenty minutes ago I hailed a supertanker and in a very
cordial conversation informed the captain that I had headsails poled out,
could not easily change course, and was a little uncomfortable with our
projected closest point of approach. He without hesitation said he would take
our stern, and then asked us where we were headed and wished us a pleasant
voyage. It's an impressive sight to see a 900-foot ship turn on a dime and
head out of your way, when you're a 39-footer. I realize there are
counter-examples, but this has been the norm. When ships do not respond to a
hail, it is possible that the person on watch has limited English skills
(English is the international language for ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore
communication, like it is in the airline industry). Remember, sailors are not
calling the vessel name, but something like "big ship on my port bow, do you
see me?" This is a confusing way to hail a ship, even if the helmsman speaks
English. Personally, I'm more concerned about cruisers, who often do not have
any person aboard who speaks English. In the rough weather earlier in this
passage, a big sloop crossed our bow (we were leeward) about 1/8 of a mile
away, which is too close when in heavy weather and not racing. They wouldn't
respond to a hail on VHF.
MAN OVERBOARD: When I teach man-overboard procedures back at Tradewinds
Sailing School, I always tell the story of how Mr. Shrode went overboard.
It's not something I'm proud of but it was a good lesson. The accident was a
result not of heavy weather, but complaisance about easy conditions and doing
the same thing you had done scores of times before without incident. We had
sailed the Bay on a perfect afternoon and had returned to our harbor at
Marina Bay. We rolled up the Genoa and Mr. Shrode went forward to douse the
main. I ducked below to switch to the starter battery, and in the five
seconds that took, a wind shift caused an uncontrolled jibe. The boom came
across and grazed Terry on the top of the head hard enough to knock him out
and send him overboard. Had he not been crouching, the blow would have been
fatal. As it was, he woke up in the water with the sail ties still in his
hand, stalwart crew that he is. Meanwhile, I had come out of the companionway
to see Mr. Shrode's heels clear the lifelines, like in a cartoon. The thing I
try to impress on my students is that my mind, at this point, went blank. I
had a profound, almost irresistible urge to turn the boat in Mr. Shrode's
direction. Yet some other part of my brain set me on "automatic" and the rote
process of the maneuver to get the boat back to him under control, which
requires the counter-intuitive move of turning away from him to begin with,
took over. I did what I had practiced seemingly thousands of times, perfectly
executed a figure-eight, and parked the boat just to windward of him. Since,
fortunately, he was conscious, if bloody and bruised, all that was required
was to deploy the swim ladder and he was aboard. The point being that simply
knowing what you're supposed to do is not enough, because practice is the
only thing that will give you the clarity of purpose you need when the time
comes.
But out here, when you strap your boat into downwind mode and have strings
and poles all over the place, it's not so easy to stop the boat or turn it
around. Mr. Shrode and I reviewed the whole procedure recently, we think we
can do it fairly quickly. We don't have the confidence practice brings,
however, because I don't want to risk shredding a light wind sail, which may
happen, to rehearse the routine. But the fact is that at sea, your chances of
survival if you go over the side are not very encouraging.
ADDENDUM:
Not since our piece on penis sheathes in Vanuatu has a subject so
inspired our readers as the recent missive entitled "The Bung." Neither
geology, nor world history, nor local culture, nor derring-do, has the power
to move the readership to passion and poetry the way that references to
genitalia and bowels do. Science has no explanation of this phenomenon
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