Wayne B wrote, in another thread:
On 1 Apr 2007 06:24:13 -0700, "Skip Gundlach"
wrote:
As to never accidentally touching ground again, if you define ground
as stuff which isn't usually wet, I think you're right about that.
However, I fully expect we'll not only touch bottom again, there may
even be times we'll have to get pulled off, or wait a long time to
float off. Any sailor who sez they've never been aground hasn't left
the dock, or started yesterday :{))
That's all true but avoidance is still the best line of defense.
Speaking to that issue, I'm wondering if you've had a chance to fully
come to grips with the circumstances of your recent mishap, and put
together a plan of action for future prevention. I've studiously
avoided any public comment on what should or should not have been
done, but certainly have a few opinions based on my own experience if
you're interested. More important however are your thoughts.
Hi, Wayne, and group,
Well, that's an entirely legitimate question, and one which we've
pondered ourselves for most of the time since it happened.
I'm going to make excuses first :{))
I'm currently enjoying reading lots of Steve and Linda Dashew's
postings on SetSail.com. Those who don't know them can find them at
www.setsail.com. I hold them to be pretty well experienced. They,
too, go aground - with some regularity, though not necessarily as
heavily as we did - despite all sorts of heavy duty electronic gear
and lots of vigilance.
In the Island Packet sailnet list in which I participate, there is
currently a discussion about the QEII captain (reasonably assumed to
be pretty well qualified and vigilant) who ran her up, at full speed,
on a rock now known as Queen's Bottom near Boston, causing, though not
catastrophic, millions of dollars of damage.
I've had the distinct pleasure to hear Nigel Calder speak at a few
Seven Seas Cruising Association meetings. Pertinent to the subject,
in one of his seminars he discusses how often, and how hard,
sometimes, he's gone aground. Like the above, I consider him
adequately experienced and cautious to not do that.
Finally, we have been amazed at how many we found, beginning when we
were still in the Keys Boat Works who, when told of our adventure (for
that's what it was, even if it had turned out worse), describe their
personal experiences of the sickening sounds of fiberglass crunching
as their boats were crashed on rocks. Most of them also described how
long they were there, and the efforts needed to extract them.
Fortunately for all of those particular stories, they didn't have to
get a small navy involved and pay a salvor. Lately, we've even had N
(something greater than 5 but I don't remember exactly) folks who have
told us about *losing* their boats, with two of them having lost *2* -
and each of them, as well, were extremely well qualified, including
one who's an "any ocean, any vessel, all endorsements" captain.
So, we'll not have any remorse over the mortification we experienced :
{))
That out of the way, the grounding was merely the symptom of the
disease.
The disease was inadequate (insert many -ing/-ion items). And, as
discussed in the "I learned..." post, all of them could have worked
out all right, so, as others have said in different forums/lists/
groups where this has been discussed, but for a couple of degrees, it
might well have never happened, and the disease might have gone
unnoticed, as those many have been in similar circumstances before,
and gotten away with it.
So...
First order of business is to become more familiar with the boat and
its gear. I'd wanted, from the start, to take an extended US coastal
trip as a shakedown. Sometimes you have to be hit upside the head
with a 2x4 to get your attention; that's now happened with Lydia,
who's (now )enthusiastically looking forward to all that the East
Coast has to offer. And, as life is what happens as you're making
other plans, who knows? We may find such pleasures addictive and do
that plus the Bahamas for many years. However, we expect to head out
again in November or thereabouts, beginning our Caribbean
adventure(s).
That first order of business will prevent many of the problem elements
of our first rudely interrupted cruise. Had she fully understood how
the chartplotter worked, and manipulated it to look forward and back
and around in varying scales, even in her impaired condition, our
grounding could have been avoided as, while it didn't offer great
detail, it *did* show the reefs, and we, or even just she, could have
done something about it before it happened. I made it a point not to
cast recriminations, but she's now come to (also without dwelling on
it) accept responsibility for the end result; she tells folks, now,
that she wasn't in condition to stand watch, but didn't fetch me to
either take over or assist. We'll not make that mistake again.
The second will be better education and general skills. We're taking
the Captain's classes beginning in a couple of weeks. That won't make
us better sailors, necessarily, but it will add to our skillsets.
The third will be better voyage preparation. I tend to "go on" so I'm
concerned that I'll/I am blather/ing, but VanZandt, in his Gentleman's
Guide, speaks to a 4-hour-per-day weather prep. We didn't do that -
but we very well did the tracking. It didn't help, as the weather
system wasn't mentioned in any of the print, internet, or VHF stuff we
either heard or saw, either before or after. However, our actual
plotting and paper/electronic prep was inadequate. We'll spend more
time on that, and also more time underway in review of our position,
movement and changes of condition.
4th, and covered, really, in the first, will be more heavy weather
practice. We attempted to heave to, unsuccessfully. Had we
succeeded, we would not have been where we ended up; instead, we
continued, as the result with heaving to wasn't an improvement in
stability or comfort, and continuation improved both. I don't know
why we were unable - but our practicing should reveal the solution.
The question was raised, along the way, why we didn't just anchor. We
did consider that, but rejected it for a couple of reasons. The first
was the sea state's contribution to safety on deck. Our anchors (to
prevent a loss by self-launching) are shackled. Even though we have
cockpit controls for the windlass, one of us would have to go forward
to relieve - in the dark, with a wildly pitching deck and green water
attacks - the pressure on the chain to allow unshackling. The second
was that without a huge snubber (something which could be done for
hurricane prep, but wasn't a viable solution in the current
conditions), even though I would have been willing to go forward to
make it happen, I knew that we'd have ripped the roller system - which
included the forestay chain plate - off in the heaving, even with a
4-5/1 (with the depth at the time, it's all I could get with my 300
feet of chain) scope. So, I rejected that solution. Perhaps a
destruction of the roller system and a likely dismasting to follow,
given that we had to pay a salvor, in the end, would have been a
better outcome - but we weren't adequately prescient to see the
eventual end of the story :{))
In the end, to the specific question, which really is just about a
specific incident, the remaining solution will be to avoid or cure
excessive fatigue. Much has been written about fatigue management in
various realms so I'll not try to duplicate them here. Our lives in
general should not have to deal with excessive fatigue, but if we find
ourselves in that condition, we'll place the vessel in such a position
as to allow us some relief, or, simply, not depart before adequate
rest.
So, a rested crew, with an intimately familiar set of instrumentation
(and their manual backups) and gear, combined with a higher level of
experience (and therefore muscle memory, rather than figuratively
scratching our heads, being the response to a set of circumstances),
is our solution. Ironically, we have a sea anchor. It's buried to
where it's inconvenient to get to it. Likely we'll have it more
accessible when we next set out, as it could well have done the job
instead of a bottom anchor. I was tired enough that it didn't even
enter my mind at the time...
Let the potshots begin :{)) I look forward to constructive
suggestions on additional measures which we might take (not, "sell the
boat, you're a danger to yourselves and all the rest of us out there!"
as has been seen in some of the venues where our escapades have been
exposed) to make us better denizens of the coastal and high seas...
L8R
Skip
Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at
www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery !
Follow us at
http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog and/or
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its
hands.
You seek problems because you need their gifts.