Zoom, Zoom…Here’s Hoping

On Feb 2nd, 2009 Published By B.J.

For years I’ve been a proponent of Four Stroke vs. Two Stroke outboards. The arguments were several, though in truth mainly environmental. Four strokes are cleaner and quieter being the two main issues that tipped the scales.

I’ve had several 4 stroke engines over the years and they’re not bad. However we’ve had one problem as the children have gotten larger and I have failed to get any smaller, which is that the 9.8 Tohatsu we have just doesn’t have what it takes to get out of the hole and plane with all of us on board. We bought this engine when we moved from a roll up inflatable to a RIB, figuring the extra weight needed more push and this hull should be able to plane.

Sure, with just me and one of the children it flies – I’ve clocked 16+ knots by myself in it. But unfortunately if you add another 125-150 lbs or so past my body weight it’s all over for planing, and you now have a 4.5 knot wallow. While this is perfectly fine inside someplace like Block Island’s new harbor where the speed limit is 5 mph. But when you are trying out outrace a thunderstorm across a mile of open water it really is…inadequate. And wet.

The other difficulty we had was with my wife starting the engine. For some reason she just struggled with getting enough spin with the pull cord to get it to start reliably. What this equated too was a lack of confidence in taking the dink by herself – with is totally unacceptable in a cruising situation. We thought about a 4 stroke with an electric starter, or other options – and at that point it also seemed if we were to replace the engine why not get more HP so we can get it faster too.

So I did my usual thing and researched it to death. In taking the Outboard Engine Maintenance and Repair courses at New England Tech last fall I learned a lot more about the differences between a Two Stroke and a Four Stroke. A lot fewer parts on the two stroke, and the compression ratio is usually lower. Hmm…should pull more easily. I also posed the question to my friends over at Sailing Anarchy and got lots of good information there too.

I didn’t love the electric starter option for several reasons. It adds more complexity and weight to the engine – there is more to go wrong. You also have to deal with wires and a battery permanently installed and all that headache. It seems if there is a pull start solution that would work better there is no reason to add a more complex and expensive option.

So this past weekend I pulled the trigger and purchased a brand new 15 HP two stroke Yamaha. Why the two stroke? The newer ones are much cleaner than the older models, it is lighter, has higher low end torque (read: gets my tubby butt up on a plane more easily), should pull-start more easily, and have parts available for it anywhere. Also the weight to power ratio is better, this engine is lighter than a comparable 4-stroke, so I can hoof it up and carry it more readily.

But the small two stroke outboard is going the way of the Dodo in North America. Popular opinion has swayed against them, California emissions standards have taken their toll so this year will be the last year this engine – or any other small two-stroke – will be sold in the U.S. They will be around forever outside the U.S. but the major manufacturers have shut out the market here.

Posted in Dinghy, outboard, tender | 3 Comments

Ice Eaters are Your Friend

On Jan 30th, 2009 Published By B.J.

Remind me again why I live in New England?

At least there’s a lot LESS ice than there was a little while ago when we had a straight week of sub freezing temps with single digits at night.

It’s hard to believe in another month and a half I’ll be thinking about commissioning.

Posted in ice, misery, winter | Comments Off on Ice Eaters are Your Friend

So I Balanced the Check Book…

On Jan 29th, 2009 Published By B.J.

and raised a lot of money at our auction last year…and for my sins they made me the President.

And of course I have to take a moment to promote one of my favorite organizations – the Greenwich Bay Sailing Association, also known as GBSA. This is the youth sailing program associated with our yacht club, which I somehow find myself in charge of this year. So of course I need to take advantage of this venue to not only blow my own horn, but to shamelessly promote this great organization.

I can’t begin to tell you how envious I am that my kids have something like this available to them. What little time I was able to sail as a kid was enough to make me fall in love with it instantly. Growing up in the Midwest, son of parents who did not sail…the opportunities weren’t a lot though.

On the other hand my kids are other water every day. And they love it. I didn’t really start sailing until my 30’s, my kids are born to it.

Running a sailing program like this is tough – in our case we have to rely on tuition and contributions to make it all happen, we aren’t subsidized by our club. It costs a fair amount of money to make a program like this work safely and efficiently. Staff, boats, facilities, fuel – our tuition covers the operations but we have to raise the money to buy boats and equipment.

It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of work. But it’s worth it to see all those kids in love with sailing and boats out there having a blast. If you do it right these kids all take away something important that will stay with them for life – lessons about sailing, being outdoors and having fun, sportsmanship and a love for the sport.

I’d better not screw this up.

Posted in GBSA, Jr. Sailing, kids | Comments Off on So I Balanced the Check Book…

More About the Hideous Teak

On Jan 28th, 2009 Published By B.J.

I am absolutely certain that both of you are the edge of your seats to find out what exactly is happening with the teak decking. At last report, after much research, kvetching, whining, fer-actual bleeding (yes, that chisel really IS sharp), scraping, sanding, and quite a bit more whining I’d managed to refinish about four square feet of teak in the cockpit.

A good test it was. Certainly enough of a test to know that this is a project with such a tremendous potential for suckage and misery that I had to take it on.

Fortunately I’ve suckered some poor fool in found one of my classmates to help me with it.

Unfortunately the teak is starting to look really lousy in spots. In some places the caulking is just loose and pulling up. In most places you can see the raised parts of the teak, which are a result of the Prior Owners aggressive approaches to teak management. They’re not really “raised parts”, they are the ridges that survived all the acidic teak cleaners and agressive brushing that eats away at teak.

So the plan – such that it is – for my friend and I to try and strip as much caulk as we can out while it is freezing-arse cold. Caulk won’t cure much below 50F, so we can’t re-caulk until it warms up a bit. Hopefully with some weather breaks and a lot of propane through the “Heat Buddy” portable heater we can get most of the caulk removed by very early spring.

I am certain none of you will be able to sleep until that is complete.

Posted in foul black sticky stuff, hell, Teak | Comments Off on More About the Hideous Teak

Go North, Young Man…Not

On Jan 27th, 2009 Published By B.J.

Or…how not to take down your spinnaker in several painful steps…or, Summer Vacation, part deux.

Of course make our best effort to take as much of our vacation in the summer on the boat – with Junior Sailing now crowding the schedule we generally end up with one towards the very end of summer.

This year we decided to go North again. After having such a great time going up to Gloucester and Provincetown and already having “done” the Vineyard and Nantucket this year we figure a new venue or three was in order. So the plan was to head North through the Cape Cod Canal again and visit Salem and the surrounding areas. My parents elected to accompany us on this trip as well, something they’ve done for part of a vacation but never the entire week. But first we planned to meet some friends on Block Island for the initial weekend of the vacation.

My wife is fortunate to have several sailors for partners in her medical practice, it helps to have them understand things which are ordinarily insensible and incomprehensible to non-sailors. the one thing we’d never managed to do though was get all three of us in one place off shore with out boats. So this year we did it, and a lovely time was had by all with dinner being cooked on Evenstar and good company held way into the evening.

We stayed through until Monday morning on Block Island – which was a nice change of pace since it is usually a weekend trip, enjoying a leisurely Sunday on the island was a pleasant novelty.

Monday was a nice brisk day for sailing, though it was to be a downwind Southwesterly from Block Island initially, the wind was slated to start turning North later that evening. So we left Block Island, rounded 1BI and set the Spinnaker.

/* Technical Interlude for the non sailors in the audience*/

As mentioned elsewhere spinnaker (more correctly, it’s a “Gennaker”) on Evenstar is a HUGE sail. A giant parachute of nylon with blue and yellow to match the Swedish flag, think of a parachute than can pull a 26 ton boat. While used for sailing “off” the wind, or down wind, the cruising spinnaker is still not really used for going DEAD down wind. That is a fairly slow way to sail it, you get better speed towards where you are going sailing a little upwind from dead down, even if you are not going directly at your mark. To get to your mark you need to zig and zag across the wind, just like going upwind except the wind goes from side to side across the back of the boat, not the front – this is called a Jibe (or Gybe), rather than a Tack which is when the wind crosses the bow.

Gybing involves moving the spinnaker to the other side of the boat somehow, one must do this to keep it filled.

The Spinnaker has a long sock covering it when not in use. To hoist it, one pulls the sock enclosed spinnaker up the rig looking like a giant sausage, then one pulls another line that lifts up the sock, exposing the spinnaker to the wind. The wind fills the spinnaker, and off you go. Taking it down, one must collapse the spinnaker by putting the main sail upwind of it, then hauling down on the sock so it covers up the spinnaker again like a sleeve, then you drop the sock.

All this is to give you a vague sense of what is about to happen.

/* End of technical interlude */

The crew of Evenstar had not, at this point, successfully Gybed the spinnaker. The reasons are several, most notably we hadn’t had the need to yet when it wasn’t emergency enough to just bag up the sail. There are a couple of ways to Gybe a sail like this. The least elegant and most lubberly is to pull the spinnaker into the sock like you are dousing it, then throw the suasage to the other side of the boat and re-set it. Given this plodding lubberly possibility, well we couldn’t do THAT.

Instead we opted for an “Outside Gybe”. This entails letting go of the sheet that is holding the sail tight and letting the sail fly outside the boat’s rig in front of the bow until it flips around, then you use the sheet on the other side to trim the sail in.

Believe it or not, we executed a beautiful outside Gybe on our very first try.

All hell didn’t break loose until a few minutes later, when the jib sheet popped out of the self-tailer on the primary winch.

Ordinarily having a sheet pop out of a winch is a nuisance, not a disaster. Generally the sail flies free, and as soon as it stops peeling rope out and starts fluttering in the wind you can grab the line and haul the sail back in. Sure it slows you down – but what is a tactical disaster in a race boat is a disaster in a cruising boat only in the sense that you must put down your drink to deal with the situation.

My wife has fast reflexes, unfortunately in this case TOO fast. With a runaway sheet on a boat the last thing you want to do is grab it barehanded. I have several sets of leather gloves with the palms ripped right out of them from grabbing runaway sheets, and scars from rope burns where the lines touched me. Unfortunately my wife made the mistake of grabbing for the spinnaker sheet when it broke loose.

The good news is that her injuries were not severe and we did recover the sheet and get the sail reset, however she is a physician and does surgery. Our biggest concern was whether she’d heal in time to work. However, we also realized that it probably didn’t make sense trying to keep flying the spinnaker (literally) short handed so we decided to douse it for good. This is where it got ugly.

In taking the spinnaker down, we made a critical mistake which allowed it to collapse and wrap around the headstay, badly. With my wife injured it was on me to deal with it. Eventually I got it off, but not without using my rigging knife to cut the sock loose of the sail. Nothing was lost over board and no irreparable harm was done, however THAT sail wasn’t going up again this vacation.

As the day progressed the wind veered more and North and picked up – we were now facing a LONG upwind motor-slog up Buzzard’s Bay, followed by more of the same going across Cape Cod Bay the next day. With one member of the crew down to the use of one hand we opted to head to Cuttyhunk for the night rather than slog up Buzzard’s Bay towards the Canal as was our original plan,

Discussing it that evening we decided that discretion was the better part of valor. Facing two more days of strong Northerlies with a crew not at full capacity (my parents, while there, are not sailors…) did not sound especially appealing. Especially taking into consideration we were planning new harbors, new anchorages and new destinations. So the call was made to limp to Oak Bluffs, pick up a mooring and probably stay the week. This was appealing also because my dad isn’t so mobile getting on and off the boat – a readily available harbor launch would spare him the indignity of getting in and out of the dinghy all the time.

Cuttyhunk, anchored outside in a Northerly you ask? Yeah…it sucks. A lot. For the first time anchoring we dragged – my guess is because we set before the full Northerly blew in, and the rotation at anchor to a true North direction pulled out the CQR and it did not get a chance to reset. Of course it was in the middle of the night, but fortunately I was monitoring it and was awake. Also being a week night and crappy weather to boot there were only a few boats around so we were able to reset pretty quickly.

Having already “done” Oak Bluffs here, I think is should suffice to say it was a very pleasant, mellow week. Lot’s of ducks, beaches, and walks in town. We took a trip out to the break through at Katama Bay while we were there – now THAT is an impressive piece of Mother Nature’s handiwork.

Posted in Block Island, broken things, Cuttyhunk, injury, Martha's Vineyard, ouch | Comments Off on Go North, Young Man…Not

Vacation Part 2 – The Short Form

On Jan 27th, 2009 Published By B.J.

Following up six months later with part two of a feature article has it’s advantages. Mainly because it’s shorter, given that the events are far hazier in your mind and all the details have since been washed out of your brain by a continuous slurry of chilled Bombay Sapphire or Mt. Gay Rum with Diet Coke over the past six months. Keeps it brief.

Back on point…the second half of the first vacation.

As I alluded to so long ago, we moved on to Nantucket later in the week. Nantucket is a charming place, of course – lots of shops and cobblestone streets. Visits to the Brotherhood of Thieves and the Nantucket Whaling Museum are mandatory, being two of the children’s favorite spots.

One of Dad’s favorite spots though is Great Point. It’s not just because you get to drive an SUV over the sand to get there, but that does of course add a definite fun factor which my wife does not fully appreciate. But I just happen to think it’s on of the coolest places around here to go. It still feels so remote and unspoiled – even though there’s a porta-pottie and a lighthouse out there you get a feeling of wonderful quiet desolation that is hard to find easily.

The last time we were on Nantucket the whole park enclosing the point was closed due to bird nesting activity; this trip just the very end was closed off. Unfortunate if you bring your pole for some surf casting at the current rip at the tip of the point, however this trip turned out to be so special not being able to fish there didn’t matter.

There were seals.

Several seals, as a matter of fact. For the entire afternoon they cavorted and played right off shore. The kids were in heaven and we were all enthralled watching them. These were not little indistinct black blobs off in the distance, these Harbor Seals were playing in the surf not twenty-five feet from where our children were playing at times. They were clearly aware of the activity of the other creatures playing in the surf.


Marine mammals are a hands down favorite in our household. My children’s beds are loaded with stuffed manatees, seals, whales, dolphins otters and a veritable ocean of creatures. They are thrilled by nature and in love with all things aquatic. So THIS day was one they’d keep with them the rest of their lives.

Posted in Nantucket, Seals, vacation | Comments Off on Vacation Part 2 – The Short Form

May Be the Best $100 I’ve Spent

On Jan 27th, 2009 Published By B.J.

The kids, sailing into town to get Ice Cream in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard.

How cool is that?

When I saw this little old boat that had been donated to our Jr. Sailing program’ bi-annual auction last spring I though it would be a blast for the kids. No way I’m fitting in that little thing, but both children know how to handle an Opti so how much harder could this be? No one bid on it (I was off attending to business since I was Chairman of the auction…) so I picked it up at the end of the night for $100. Maybe over paid for a 30 year old 8′ boat, but given the fun the kids have had to date I think on an hourly – and a quality – basis it was a steal. And the money went to charity anyway.

The first time we splashed it my son spent the next four hours or so ghosting around Oak Bluffs harbor, checking out the boats, talking to other kids and just having a great time. While his younger sister liked it enough for him it was love at first sail.

On Block Island he and his friend sailed it from the anchorage over to Champlin’s for ice cream and bumper boat rides. He sailed it all over Salt Pond, checking out the boats, stopping in the boat basin and just having a good time.

A bottle of water, a snack and a VHF handheld – what more do you need?

Posted in Dinghy, GBSA, kids, Martha's Vineyard, Oak Bluffs, Skimmar | Comments Off on May Be the Best $100 I’ve Spent

Twisted Sister

On Jan 26th, 2009 Published By B.J.

Yikes. Just yikes. Look at that thing. On the water, with us.

Yes, it is a for-real and actual water spout, on the water…with us.

This was the last day of the Narragansett Bay Yachting Association’s Junior Olympic Regatta, known as “Junior Race Week”. Three days of small boat sailing, hundreds of little boats – Opti’s, 420’s and lasers and hundreds of kids racing them. This was the first year for our son racing his Optimist Dinghy off the beach in Bristol, RI.

With my parents wanting to see some of the racing, the natural thing to do was bring Evenstar over to Bristol and drop the anchor. What a great platform to watch the racing from of course – you have heads, food, cold drinks and a dinghy you can lower to zoom in for the close up action if you want it. Bristol isn’t even an hour away powering and is nicely protected with good holding.

The day’s wind was light and variable, good racing for a while but painfully slow towards the end as the wind just died off. When the racing ended the plan was my son would sail out to Evenstar and we’d haul the Opti on deck and tie it down then run in on the dinghy to get the reast of his gear on the beach. Just after the racing ended while we were doing this the skies changed…they got dark, quickly. So we hurried, gathering gear and running it back out (unfortunately leaving an expensive boat cover on the beach), tieing everything down and securing it – even for the short ride home. Which in hindsight made me happy.

As we motored the conditions deteriorated rapidly from the clear skies and windless heat from earlier in the day. Rain started with wind. Then we looked South, and our jaws dropped when we saw the twister.

It is interesting, I grew up in the Midwest, in the so-called “Tornado Belt”. Shortly after my parents moved to Ohio they experienced one of the worst tornado outbreaks in history. While my sister and father saw two and had to get out of the car and lie in a ditch along the highway on the way home from her ballet class that day I never saw a single one, nor did I ever lay eyes on a single twister the whole time growing up doing “tornado drills” in school.

The irony is that I’ve now seen TWO tornados (or more correctly waterspouts), and both have been on Narrgansett Bay in Rhode Island – and area not exactly notorious for freaky tornado weather.

Posted in scary, tornado, waterspout, weather, yikes | Comments Off on Twisted Sister

Guilty as Charged

On Jan 26th, 2009 Published By B.J.

Charge: Dereliction of Blog Update Duty

But it’s not my fault. Honest… I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn’t have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. IT WASN’T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD*.

Yes…we went sailing after July 28th last summer. Quite a bit actually. We had the second part of the vacation entry I never got around too, many weekend trips, Junior regattas, tornadoes seen from the boat (that was a little spooky), a second week+ vacation replete with broken equipment and injuries, and a whole host of boat projects as usual.

I’ve just been too wrapped up with the actual sailing, boat projects, parenting and class taking to focus on the blog. There always seems to be something else to do, unfortunately journaling this stuff for both of my readers always ends up on the back burner.

Now that the boat is encrusted with snow and the ice eaters are keeping her from getting frozen in and I’m down to taking only one class perhaps I can finally get back to where we were last summer.

* thanks to the John Belushi in the Blues Brothers for that.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

"May you live in interesting times"

On Jul 29th, 2008 Published By B.J.

My father-in-law and his companion were in town for the weekend, so we decided a milk run to Block Island would be in order. An easy trip, plenty to do, and we’ve done it all before.

Right.

Friday was uneventful, in fact things came together so well that it was like we were meant to get out early and take this trip. I managed to get the refrigerator/freezer pump sorted out, stink free and quiet, and managed to get a couple of cabin fans installed to boot. Got my tools and mess cleaned up in time to greet the in-laws at home. We were dreading my wife’s schedule, she had two pregnant patients to induce that couldn’t be scheduled for any other day but Friday. This could have kept her in the hospital until Midnight for all we knew, but one went Thursday and the other delivered by 1500 on Friday afternoon. We were packed, set, loaded and on the boat by 4:30. An uneventful trip as far as the Point Judith Harbor of Refuge followed by a quiet night on the hook.

The next morning there wasn’t a breath of breeze, but the trip to Block from the Harbor of Refuge is very short, under two hours. We left after a relaxed breakfast and set off through th windless swells.

Our first tip that there was something afoot was an 80 foot sailboat stuck in the channel ahead of us. Stopped dead, she backed up and out. I raised the skipper (French accent on a Swiss boat) and had a conversation with them about what was up – they drew 10 feet and were having trouble getting in. I did not follow most of his long description of what they needed to do to get in. “OK,” I replied, “We draw eight feet and we’ve never come close to having a problem coming right up the channel.” Famous last words.

Five minutes later we were racked up hard aground on a sand bar. A really, shallow sandbar, extending some 30+ feet into the channel. The flooding tide kept us pressed against the bar, we couldn’t get off. If it was the middle of the ocean somewhere and I stuck on a bar at low tide I would have simply waited it out. Unfortunately this was the channel in to Block Island’s New Harbor during Idiot Hour: 1100 on a Saturday morning when the Searay wielding Cranston Navy is charging at full bore to belly up to the bar at the end of Champlain’s.

So we enjoyed the wakes from passing powerboats as they zoomed by a few feet from our bow while we were trying our hardest to get off. I guess it never occurred to any of them that IF I broke loose while they were crossing five feet from my bow at best they would likely come away with a lasting impression from a 105 pound CQR anchor all along their topsides. We broke down and had the SafeSEA/BoatUS tow boat pull us off; it was too hazardous to be blocking traffic with all the fools that couldn’t see the danger in the situation around us. (NOTE: My FIL had a BoatUS Card which helped over the exorbidant cost…my new membership card arrived on Monday, the very next day; I didn’t even know I was a member).

During this we noted the sand bar was shallow, and we were stirring up sand with our propeller wash. Some of this got sucked into the engine intake and stopped the water pumping for a while, but it was cleared out with a blast of sandy water when we broke free.

The rest of the day was uneventful and enjoyable.

The following day’s forecast was for “possible thunder showers with high winds” but mostly reasonable conditions. We figured it best to get going as soon as the tide was heading back in. We watched an unfortunate Beneteau 40.7 get caught on the same bar, and felt our urgency about leaving grow.

At this point it was time to check the raw water filter and impeller on our system to make sure we were not sanded up. We weren’t, but I failed to notice the raw water filter box hadn’t sealed up tightly. We saw the SafeSEA boat move over the sand bar in the channel and start waving boats off the sand bar, which we took as a good omen for leaving. In my excitement to get out safely I failed to verify the water coming from the engine until the anchor was almost up – a big mistake. We ended up having to re-set the anchor while the raw water pump housing cooled enough for me to swap out the impeller and re-seal the system. Then all was working well.

Passage out the channel was tense but uneventful, even though the SafeSEA boat was no longer on station.

We’d determined that sailing as much as possible, though it would take us longer, would be best given we weren’t 100% confident the engine was free and clear of sand clogging. This sentiment changed by the time we were a couple of miles past 1BI and the storm clouds and thunder were rolling in.

At this point we had the discussion “keep on, go back, or seek other shelter.” We opted to keep going on, as there was no guarantee the Northeast moving storms would affect us to badly nor was there any guarantee of safe shelter elsewhere. I don’t think anyone relished entering the Block Island harbor again in a blow. I don’t think that was a bad decision either, even in hindsight. We brought the boat home with no injuries or damage and we always had control of it – but it turned into quite a lively ride.

The first squall hit us South of Point Judith, sheeting rain and lightning and wind gusts into the high 30’s. We’d been hearing broadcasts of severe thunderstorm warnings, but by then we were far enough from either going back or forward to be anything but committed. We motor sailed with a reefed main and got quite a nice lift in speed from the breeze. No problem, though my shorts were pretty damp…

The Long Island Coast Guard sector kept broadcasting warnings of “damaging winds with gusts up to 65 knots with hail and killing lightning”, our own sector was talking about winds in the 30’s with rain and lightning. Not as scary, but closer unlike the other storms which were down near Fire Island.

About a mile South of Whale Rock the second squall caught up with us. We’d seen the NYYC racing fleet on the horizon and were shaking our heads over what they were doing out on a day like this. Never mind us – but we of course were in a much heavier boat and not stripped for racing.

The Long Island guys were a lot closer to being right; for the first time in my life I saw 60 knots of wind on the wind speed indicator (also known as the “Fun Meter” in the parlance of slightly insane racers like I used to be). It picked up into the 30’s then crept past 40. We furled the last of the main sail in as the world whited out and the wind howled it’s way to 60 knots. It hooted and howled at that level for 5-10 minutes then gradually dropped back to the 20’s again.

Do you know what though? It was exhiliarating (DISCLAIMER: My wife may not share this sentiment) and encouraging. The boat didn’t break a sweat. Our passengers in the cockpit didn’t even get damp and it never crossed their minds to seek out foul weather gear. What a boat, she could have handled it for days. The crew – another story, but I felt calm and in control the whole time.

The rest of the trip was…uneventful…but the day sure brought out some excitement. The startling thing is my father-in-law and his companion actually want to go sailing with us again.

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Posted in aground, Block Island, excitement, high wind, lightning | 5 Comments