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Flying Pig Prevention Measures
Skip, you and Lydia have worked long and hard getting the boat ready but
tiller time was lacking because of that. Only thing to do is get back on the horse after she's fixed and spend some time learning the boat. Maybe you want to be based out of one location and sail often in varied conditions to learn the boat. You're going have to learn the sail combination for heaving too. Lydia is going have to learn piloting. I'm like you, I tend to work on the boat too much. My wife demands we go sailing as much as possible when the season starts. She's right. Good luck. Bryan "Skip Gundlach" wrote in message ups.com... 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. |
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