"Bruce" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 13:37:51 -0400, "Wilbur Hubbard"
wrote:


wrote in message
. ..
On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 07:49:44 +0700, Bruce
wrote:

Your final comment that "One other thing, if one can't abide being
becalmed from time to time then don't take up sailing" simply
indicates that you have never actually "cruised". Oh, maybe a little
day sailing but how many trips have you made where you didn't expect
to see land for three weeks to a month?

When you are sitting 250 miles off shore and the wind hasn't made a
ripple on the water for three days, as happened to a friend of mine,
you too might find the thought of trying to motor that 250 miles to
get to a place you can buy some food and water as somewhat
appealing.

I had another friend that was depending on one of your recommended
outboards, because his sail drive ate it's gears, and the wind
stopped. It took him 10 days to make just a bit over 100 miles to
shore, drifting most of the way. Those little outboard tanks sure
don't carry much fuel.

No Wilbur, you go out and make a couple of real voyages and then
come
back and talk to me. You might even find that we'd agree on a lot
more
things that you think we would.


Very well said Bruce


Very well said if you like listening to ignorance personified. I guess
you identify with that mode of operation?

Bruce comes out and says a voyaging sailor can't be becalmed for two
or
three days because he'll run out of food and water. He needs that
diesel
engine so he can go to shore and get more food and water.

No I didn't say that. I said that a friend was becalmed in the S.
China Sea and after a while he decided to motor to a place where he
could be sure of getting food and water. He motored for about two
days, during which, it is obvious, the wind didn't blow.

And he motored because he was getting low of food and water is what you
indicated. So, he was unprepared to be where he was is a valid
conclusion.


I probably know more then a hundred people who make, or have made,
long distance offshore voyages and I don't know a single one of them
who is not concerned about food and water. If you actually go offshore
and aren't concerned about food and water then you are obviously a
very unique individual.

You ship what you need for the projected length of your voyage plus
about thirty percent more. If you can't store enough water, for example,
you'd better be able to make it (reverse osmosis) or collect it (rain
catchment). Food is no problem. Unless one is some fatty, one only needs
a couple thousand calories a day of food intake. People constantly eat
more than they need to eat. If you don't lose about twenty to thirty
pounds on a two-month ocean voyage they you're eating way too much.

When you lose that 20-30 pounds you're probably still not really thin.
That's how obese the typical sailor is these days. I'm 5'10" myself and
I weigh 165 pounds. That might sound about right but anything under 145
pounds is the area where it might be said I was too thin. So the way I
look at it I'm close to 20 pounds overweight myself. At the end of any
long voyage my weight ends up around 145-150. I eat to live. I don't
live to eat. Anybody who would motor 250 miles just because he was
worried about food probably lives to eat. People like that need to stay
home and have food delivered to their fat arses daily from the local
markets.

I bet you weigh close to 215-220 pounds and I bet you're around 5'10"
yourself. If so you are MORBIDLY OBESE. You could take off for a two
month ocean cruise with nothing but water and vitamins on boare and
maybe at the end of the voyage you'd be at an acceptable weight. Chew on
that nugget for a while, why don't you?


Bwahahahhahahah! Some cruising sailor! If you don't have adequate food
and water for at least TWO MONTHS aboard at all times when cruising
then
stay off the oceans. You obviously don't belong there.

Sure sounds simple doesn't it? Of course storing all this food, and
don't forget the water, in a cruising boat takes a certain amount of
space so the food supply is not infinite, rather it is enough for the
voyage plus a certain amount of extra food in case of emergencies. A
couple of month's of food and water is how many tons, and where do you
store it?

Not tons unless you only eat canned goods. There's too much salt in most
canned goods. That makes you even more thirsty so you need to carry even
more water. Nope, canned goods aren't the answer. You need beans, rice,
flour, tinned butter, sugar, cabbage, potatoes, limes, green apples,
dried meats, dried fish, freeze dried fruits and veggies, jelly beans,
vitamins.


One of the major parts of planning a voyage offshore is the menu and
how much and what kind of food and drink to buy. It is easy to say,
"Oh, yes -- a couple of month's of supplies." But 120 cans of beans,
while it may supply you with two meals a day for two months, is not
really what most cruisers carry for tucker.

There it is.... proof that you live to eat. Keep in mind that real
sailors eat to live and live to sail.


So, if one spends several days with the wind dropping until it stops
altogether one begins to start to wonder, since the wind hasn't blown
for several days, when it is going to start. Sure you got enough food
for the immediate future but if you eat it all now what are you going
to be eating in a couple or three weeks?

The wind rarely stops for more than a couple of days at a time. It's all
part of the game. It's a matter of understanding you are there because
you wanted to be there. You've got to be patient to be a sailor. A
diesel engine tends to cater to the impatient type. But motoring around
is NOT sailing. It's copping out.


Bruce apparently has that week-ender attitude but claims he's some
sort
of cruising expert. What a sham!

One can put a Honda 4-stroke 9.9HP on a transom bracket and in calm
conditions make four knots even with a forty-foot sailboat provided
the
bottom is clean. At four knots you use about a quart of gasoline per
hour. That's 16 miles per gallon. The engine meets California emission
standards. It burns no oil because it ain't no crummy, 2-stroke
technology. Ten gallons of gasoline will take you 160 miles. If you
don't carry a couple six-gallon jerry cans of gasoline then you can
only
blame yourself.

You may possibly be correct that a 10 hp outboard can push some forty
foot sail boats at 4 knots. Whether it can push a 15 ton 40 ft. boat
with an additional couple of tons of gear at 4 knots is perhaps a bit
debatable.

A few tons of gear and supplies does not necessary make the boat harder
to move. The inertia makes it a wee bit harder to get it going but the
wetted surface is not that much greater to slow it down appreciably.


In addition it may come as news to you but the water out in the ocean
isn't just laying there like the glass of water you just spilled on
the floor. It goes up and down quite a lot and that takes power to
overcome and then we have some things called currents. I can
distinctly remember motoring north in the Malacca Straits and doing 5
knots through the water -- 2 knots over the ground. With your 10 H.P.
Honda I'd have been doing 1 knot which makes your 160 miles a day
pretty long day.

Duh! Isn't it pretty stupid to motor against a current? Why not do the
sensible thing and choose an alternate destination down current? But,
noooo that's why you have that big smelly diesel so you can brute force
your way to a destination. That's not sailing, Bubba!


And, by the way, my last trip up from Singapore I met a guy at Port
Klang had blown his Yanmar diesel and fitted a bracket and outboard on
the transom of his 35 ft. wooden sail boat to get to Langkawi. He
wasn't bragging about the tiny amount of fuel his engine was burning
in fact he was trying to sell off his diesel fuel for $0.10 a liter to
get more empty cans to carry more gasoline. He said, "that "damned
thing burns more gas then I can carry."

Damned fool was probably running it wide open trying to emulate the
speed he usually goes under diesel power. To be economical you must run
it around half throttle. The idiot forget he was dragging his huge fixed
three bladed-prop and probably half a coral reef on his bottom. Why
bother with a clean bottom when you can fire up the iron jenny that will
power your mobile coral reef through the water at an acceptable speed.
The fact is rarely does one see a boat with a large inboard diesel
sailing in winds under fifteen knots. They just go too slow because they
are slowed down by the extra drag of prop, strut and bottom fouling. A
real sailboat like an engineless Folkboat can make very good time in
10-15 knots of wind. Close to hull speed in fifteen where the big diesel
heavyweights are striking sail and motoring along. This is NOT sailing.
Get a trawler if that's your modus operandi.


If Bruce is the type who's unprepared and running out of provisions
after only two or three days off shore then perhaps he might need to
rely on a motor but I say that's a very stupid way to cruise. Myself,
I
could stay for a month becalmed and still have provisions enough to
last
several more weeks. And, my boat's only a 32-footer.

You probably can, sitting there in your arm chair and dreaming but I
very much doubt that you can in real life. For one thing, just loading
a couple of month's supplies and water into a 32 ft. boat takes up so
much space you damned near have to sleep in the cockpit.

I'm typing this from the main salon of my 32-foor Allied Seawind 32. As
for taking up space, so it does. But isn't that what the space is for?
You only need a little space for your navigation table and instruments.
You need space in your quarterberth for sleeping and you need galley
space for food prep. All the other space is storage space as far as I'm
concerned. Even the head becomes a food storage locker. Who really uses
the head at sea. That's what the bucket is for.


I've cruised many times for weeks on end. And offshore. I don't expect
to have to stop someplace and get food and water every couple or three
days. That's not the way I cruise. Even when land is at hand and I
anchor here and there in remote places away from the crush of humanity
for weeks at a time I have little desire to visit a store every couple
days.

I quite frankly find that very hard to believe. I won't dispute that
you may have possible cruised for weeks at a time but I don't believe
that you have made an open ocean trip lasting several weeks or you
wouldn't be talking the way you are.

I guess you've never heard a real traditional sailor talk then. But
staying in marinas with your big diesel buddies you never will. I avoid
marinas at all costs. I haven't tied up to a marine for well over seven
years now. I anchor out or I use a mooring. I can't abide the marina
crowd. A bunch of losers in my opinion - there to get their fix of show
and tell. No satisfaction in a journey. Only in the talking about it and
embellishing it later attempting to be a big fish in a small pond.


When I'm anchored for a while in a harbor somewhere near a grocery
store
I might allow my provisions to become somewhat depleted because I like
to take that chance to use up the older items before they have a
chance
to go off. But when I choose to continue my cruise I stock up fresh
with
at least two months of food, water and other necessary supplies (rum).
I
also have a nice blue tarp which I can use to collect rain water in an
emergency. I know how to fish and I can live for weeks and months on
fish, rice and limes. One never knows when the urge will strike to
go'round.

Sure you can carry a water collection tarp. A lot of people read the
same sailing magazines that you do and make up a water catcher. Hell,
I did myself. Then you discover that once you leave the marina the
damned thing won't fit anywhere unless you lower the sails and when it
rains the wind usually is blowing and the damned rain catcher dumps
all the water to windward. Now, if you had said that you catch the
water that pours down the mainsail when it rains I'd have a little
more faith in your sailing experience.

Duh, the tarp is for those tropical downpours where the wind just sort
of dies. I have a shelf-footed main that does a good job collecting
water from the end of the boom when under way but only after the salt is
washed off real good and only if there is no spray from the sea.


Your story about existing on fish that you catch is just that, a
story. There are damned few fish out in the ocean. I know a chap that
dragged a fishing rig from the Red Sea to Phuket, Thailand and never
caught a thing. That was nearly a month at sea and not a single fish.
You'd have been pretty hungry after a month of sucking on your lime;
and pretty foolish to think you can survive on what fish you catch.

Yah right, no fish at sea. Tell that to the many people who've survived
off fish for months from the confines of their life rafts. You just have
to know how to attract them and catch them. Fish oil works real good but
who even knows about fish oil these days.
For your information most sharks are damned good eating and sharks are
just about every where.


Having the urgent desire to run to land just because the wind doesn't
blow for a couple days tells me Bruce and his friends have no business
calling themselves sailor's. Wimps and a lubbers would be more like
it,
in my opinion. And your siding with them doesn't say much for your
level
of sailing knowledge or experience, either.

Well Wilbur, I'm about half the way around the world from where you
are and I got here on a boat so whether you can, or cannot say much
for my knowledge or experience it was certainly adequate to get me
here safe and sound.

Yah real tough coasting from marina to marina. I've done my fair share
of cruising and I've lived aboard for 20 years now. I'd say I've got you
beat for experience any day.


Would you like to recount your experiences in long distance sailing?

No, my voyages are my own. I get no satisfaction bragging about them. I
need no credit for having done them. I've done them for their own sake.
And when I do another it will be for me and me alone and the fewer
people who know a thing about it the better. For me the doing is the
all. The telling and rehashing is to cheapen the entire thing.


What you demonstrate with your sucking up to pretenders is you're a
pretender yourself. You, Bruce and his impatient, unprepared friend
with
a forty-foot boat that only holds three days of food and water haven't
a
clue. Real sailors don't rely on a motor as much as you advocate they
do. You advocate it because you just don't know any better. But,
that's
typical behavior for most run-of-the-mill lubbers. Get a sailboat and
use it like a trawler. Then go around trying to convince other people
your misconceptions and impatience is the rule. Well you don't
convince
any real sailors, that's for sure.

Well, I'll tell you Wilbur, right now I'm in Yacht Haven Marina,
Phuket, Thailand, along with 150 other boats and not a single one of
them doesn't have an engine. Not One!

That tells me people who sail without engines don't want to be in a
marina that probably requires an engine to get to. Don't want to smell
the stench of it and the noise of people working on their diesels and
talking about the troubles they're having getting parts for their
diesels and bemoaning how many fuel filters they go through and how
expensive they are. And dumping their used crankcase oil in the woods
someplace. Might as well go live in a truck stop.


Now, the majority of these people have actually sailed their boats
here from somewhere else, The U.S., Australia, Europe, etc. By the law
of average at least one or two of them must be real sailors, even
according to your definition. But every one of them have an engine and
not a single one of them have an outboard motor on a bracket. Every
friggin one of them have an inboard diesel engine.

And every one ending up stuck in a marina because of engine maintenance
and repair while the engineless boats are out there crossing oceans not
congregating in marinas and bragging about their "sailing" when most of
what they do is motor.


So, either you don't know what you are rambling on about or these 150
people who sailed their boats for thousands of miles don't.....

They're toast. As soon as they end up in a marina, they're toast. The
end of the road. Sad!

So to conclude . . .

Bruce, there's one glaring fault in your thinking. There you sit in a
MARINA probably for the past several months if not a year. Now, more the
wannabe than the world cruiser. A marina is no indication of what boats
real sailors are plying the oceans with. A marina is a good indication
of what kind of boats wannabes or has-beens store in a marina. To know
what's out there cruising the ocean you'd have to be out there yourself
but you'd probably not see another boat for months at a time because the
ocean is that big. And that scares you. You need civilization. You need
your pacifier. A marina fits the bill. There are NO sailors in a marina.


Wilbur Hubbard