Not 20 degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius. Not at twenty degrees of Latitude or Longitude though there is a potential post there.
I am talking about Twenty Degrees of heeling. Specifically life on board when you are sailing upwind for several days in a row and your life is tipped a little out of kilter.
Now to be fair for the last few days we’ve not been at twenty degrees all the time. Our typical heel is around fifteen degrees, but with wind increases and changes in boat trim the heel will vary from ten to twenty, sometimes a little more or less.
So to help envision this try to picture your house. Now we will make some allowances and assume for example that all your cabinets have latches and all your plates and glasses are plastic and all your furniture is nailed to the floor, just to be kind. Because if we didn’t everything you owned would be on the floor and broken in minutes and you wouldn’t be able to think about the rest.
Picture your home (apartment, house, whatever) and imagine someone has taken a jack to one side of the building and lifted it so your floor tilts at 15-20 degrees. Then place it on a truck and have the truck drive over a rough, slowly ululating road. For days on end occasionally switching which side of the house is jacked up.
Imagine the fun you will have when you set the table and your silverware slides off into your lap. Or trying to make coffee or butter your toast when everything is moving and things slide out of our grasp if you don’t take care with how you place them down. Fortunately we have lips on our counters and tables and our plastic dining wear has non-skid rubber feet. Though we can’t fill our glasses or bowls to the top in general we can manage.
You do need to take some care in how your cabinets are packed as well, because even if they are latched closed you will need to open one that is uphill of you. And sometimes that thing you need is on the Up side and you need more than two hands to get it out.
Just moving around the house is a challenge, flat floors are slippery hazards and corners you knew in the dark no longer are perpendicular to the floorand they move at you. On board we have many, many convenient grab handles on the ceiling, on the edges of counters, on the steps and in the hallways. But imaging crossing your living room if it was uphill and bouncing about.
Chairs no longer orient properly and feel strange when you sit in them, they are either too deep bucket seats or they are constantly trying to launch you out of them. Sleeping two to a bed is somewhat problematic as the person on the high side will continually be rolling down on the person on the low side. This is more or less of a problem if you are the large person (me) or the small crushed and smothered person (Kathy). Sometimes sleeping across the bed works better with your head on the high side. I’ve found off watch sleeping to be easier in the settee where I am basically in the V of a couch on port tack. On starboard the chairs on the port side of the boat are pretty comfy.
For cooking we have an advantage, unlike your home in our galley the stove is Gimbaled, meaning we can unlatch it and it will swing and rock so the top stays level. Relatively anyway, you ARE now cooking on a hinged rocking surface but at least most of the stuff stays in the pan. So long as you remember to put another pan for a counter weight on the back of the stove.
Using the facilities is another challenge of its own. Remember water likes to stay level no matter what the container it is in. Then there is the whole seating issue. Our aft head is on the starboard side of the boat and faces nearly perpendicular to the center line of the boat. So when sailing upwind you have one of two experiences. On starboard tack (port or left side of the boat low, starboard side high) sitting on the loo is sort of like sitting in an Apollo capsule on the launch pad on your back facing upwards. On port tack its more like being a crash test dummy without a seatbelt, or maybe riding a mechanical bull without your pants.
After a couple of days of struggles with routine calls of nature we have even contemplated the technical issues and merits of a gimbaled head, but I think the risks and technical complications outweigh the benefits. You do NOT want to do anything that increases the odds of a leak there.
Certainly this is doable, a few days of upwind sailing isn’t going to kill us. We do crack off a bit and trim to ease the heeling motion to make life more bearable as well. But there are a lot of reasons why people sail downwind in the trades, not up them. Three or four weeks of upwind sailing to the Marquesas would be too much!
Please don’t mistake my observations for complaint, however. The sailing conditions on this trip have been very mild and we are having a very pleasant and comfortable if somewhat slow trip to someplace really, really cool.
But when your view is askew for too long you can’t help but notice the habits you start to pick up.
