Bristol 29 Blog

2007-12-17T18:14:00.001-05:00

On Seaworthy

I Googled the term the other day and I swear you can find a blog or a website advocating sailing in bathtubs as the safest means to cross an ocean. One fellow who proclaims to know about seaworthy characteristics says to buy a Hinckley, the Rolls Royce of sailboats, because they have solid steel rigging instead of braided wire. I've never seen braided wire rigging on a boat. I think he means solid rod rigging versus 1x19 stranded wire rigging (19 wires wrapped in a spiral around one wire). He seems to equate rod rigging with strength in an offshore boat, yet you cannot coil up spare rod rigging and bring it aboard with you, but you can coil stranded wire as spares. You cannot splice a broken rod shroud, but you can do an emergency splice on stranded wire rigging that will save your rig and get you to shore. Hummm, maybe, just maybe that's why serious, seaworthy offshore boats have stranded wire rigging. Do ya think?

Another fellow actually argues on his site that lack of a keel and water ballast is the answer to a seaworthy boat--now that's a stretch and tall tale most sailors just can't make; but he does. He says if your boat has a keel and it runs aground, the boat will topple over. Therefore you should buy the kind of boat he has, an unnamed 20-something foot sailboat that can carry a 50 hp outboard on the stern. Yeah, right. Lots of those are making long passages!

An old friend of mine, a farmer from Minnesota, built his own boat, a Bruce Roberts design, from plans. He was used to building cabins in the woods, so he built his boat pretty much the same way--house wiring, PVC piping, and to be safer, the hull and deck three or four times the thickness specified by Mr. Roberts. His boat rode two feet lower than her DWL when launched. Seaworthy?

The interesting and sometimes amazing thing about sailboats is the diversity of their design and variety of opinions of their owners. Sailboat "captains" will come almost to blows over the stupidest things, like solid wire rigging versus stranded wire, or crimped wire connectors versus soldered wire, or CQR anchors versus Bruce anchors. And unlike religion or politics, there is but a narrow vale of patience for differing opinions before the captain declares you a total idiot for not agreeing with his view on the subject of keeled boats toppling over when aground and how wrong that is. I was almost thrown off a neighbor's boat once for disagreeing on the subject of crimped connectors--now there's something to ruin a friendship over!

I made friends with a fellow at a boatyard once who was rebuilding a CSY to sail around the world. He had done a great job cosmetically, but was mucking around with the rudder. His boat had a lot of weather helm--CSY's are very beamy boats with shallow modified keels and they will wear you out with a heavy helm. His solution was to make the rudder larger. It's a common solution and a wrong one, but you couldn't tell him that. I told him he just needed more headsail or more bowsprit or a smaller main--he would have none of it; the rudder would fix everything. Of course it didn't. All it did was act as a larger lever and decrease the force on the helm, but the rudder was cranked over just as much, slowing the boat. For someone bent on sailing around the world, you would think he would seek broad advice. Nope. He read a book or, more likely, talked to someone who also modified their rudder and so his course was set.

Speaking of rudders, my neighbor for a while at a marina in St Pete sailed a very pretty Catalina 30--another boat with a lot of weather helm. His solution was remove the rudder and install a factory fix, two rudders welded in an inverted Vee configuration. I told him all he would do is overstress the rudder post and the rudder post bearing. He would have none of it--he paid a yard a lot of money to install the expensive rudder(s) and in the first blow, bent his rudderpost and jammed his rudder(s). If you sail long enough, and spend enough hours in dock chat and boatyard chat with your neighbors you will hear it all. Like the owner of a beautiful new Sabre who polished (and ruined) the gelcoat of his topsides with Flitz metal polish.

Opinions of sailors seem often 90 percent justification for what they own, what they have built, what they have modified: they read a little and they become advocates for that author's often equally idiotic views. God protect small animals and sailors! In fact there is rarely any single answer, any single unlimited truth to seaworthiness. You can cross oceans in anything--in boats as small and unsafe as bathtubs or in the the best ocean-going sailboat--either may provide a safe arrival, or may provide you with tall tales, or may drown you in the process--the bathtub or the Hinckley. Expense is no guarantee of survival; Hinckleys have broached, suffered bulkhead failures and rig failures. They are lovely boats but they break just just like anything else. Size is no guarantee either. Lin and Larry Pardey have sailed around and around the world in small sailboats, 30 feet and much smaller.

In my view, seaworthiness is more a state of readiness and preparation than anything else. It is not the depth of the keel, but its strength and efficiency. It is not the solid or stranded wire of the rig, but the health of each component of the standing rig: the wire, the toggles, the turnbuckles, the mast tangs and the chainplates. It is not the displacement, but the usability of the boat: it can be sailed, managed and repaired by one person. It is not the number of crew, but their experience, their ability to adapt and improvise, and their desire to succeed. If you have these seaworthy attributes, you can sail that bathtub anywhere you want.

2007-02-16T10:09:00.001-05:00

There is something that truly stirs my soul when I see a sailboat outward bound into the evening, her bow squared away to the inlet rollers of Port Canaveral, her masthead tricolor glowing white, green and red, a solitary figure at the helm, feet braced against the cockpit, white foam thrown to either side of the hull as she slides into the longer waves of the blue Atlantic and picks up a southeast heading toward the sparkling jewels of the Bahamas. She is starting an adventure for her skipper and maybe her crew below stowing away food and supplies, starting dinner on the small stove and holding on with one hand until sea legs and balance return.

The picture is an oasis that beacons me, warms my heart and soul to see. I long to start my own passage—the sweet homesickness of missed family blended with the feeling of being home once again—my own way of being home—aboard my little boat, this cozy corner of protection on an endless bending plain of bluegreen white-capped sea. This exit from land and safety, this intentional separation from all the trappings of technology, transportation, and taxes, this departure is for me one of renewal in body and spirit: it gets my blood moving again, clears my head of land-bound mind numbing worries that pale in comparison to any sunset, and whispers to me the bubbling hiss of hull and keel knifing through the swells, the snap and crackle of new stiff sails pulling hard, the tension of rigging—the center of effort overcoming the center of resistance—that brings the tiller alive in my hand, and the swishy smooth straight wake aft as Florida drops below the horizon and stars dot the black night ahead.

2007-02-14T11:53:00.000-05:00

There’s a reason why they call it being “on the hard”. There is a cushioned softness to the Bristol when she is in the water. In completely still water tied at the marina, when you step from pier to her deck you feel it. It is not as if she leans or moves from the added weight to her decks; she doesn’t. It is more an acknowledgement that says…yes I am floating, yes I am ready to go.

Over the past 20 years of ownership, I had lost the uniqueness of that feeling, that cushioned floating softness of my boat in the water—after all, other than brief visits to boatyards a few times, she waited patiently for me to step aboard for two decades. But for the past 2 years she has been on the hard, and feels no different from a room in my house when I climb the ladder and step onto her decks. No softness, no flirting with me that she is ready to take me somewhere. Just blocked on my driveway, a solid rock hard keel sitting on two ancient railroad ties, sitting on 50 year old concrete tied to the earth. It is difficult to be patient sometimes and momentarily I want to rush all this work to completion just to be able to feel her floating again. Another year maybe and I will.

2006-05-12T12:43:00.000-04:00

Zapped by lightning! The area of Central Florida I live in has the highest number of lightning strikes per year of any place in the country (just one more reason I don't play golf) and my computer was thoroughly zapped last night during an amazing storm. So my website will not be updated until a new computer arrives in about a week.

For those interested, I am currently epoxying Styrofoam panels to the inside of the cabin sides, and starting to add the finished layer of cherry plywood over the Styrofoam. I received 100 board feet of North Carolina 4/4 cherry last week so I can begin trimming out the cabinsides and building the drip gutters. The next step will be to cut the new holes for the new portlights. Stay tuned.....

2006-04-24T11:09:00.001-04:00

A Trickle of Dollars—How I found the Bristol
Never read Woodenboat magazine when you are craving a boat. Never. With my family in Ireland and me batching it for a month, that magazine almost hooked me. Before I bought the Bristol, the reason I found myself in Essex, CT was to look at a 1937 wooden sloop—money in hand, common sense having already taken wing and remained in Orlando. I found this boat in the classified section, called the owner who mailed me lots of pictures; called the owner several more times with detailed questions. Everything he said pointed to a finely kept vessel, seaworthy, ready for extended sailing. So , I asked for and received a recent survey of the boat. The survey didn’t speak so highly as the owner, and warned in legalistic terms that the boat should not exceed its intended purpose—whatever that means. But I was in a fever for her—she was cheap, only 7 thousand dollars and I wanted a boat. I flew up to Essex to meet the owner who was bringing the boat down from Mystic to be hauled for the winter.
So I found myself standing on the public pier in Essex, scanning the harbor, looking for the boat whose picture I was holding. Lots of boats moored there, Hinckleys and Aldens, Little Harbors, and Morris Yachts, Bristols and J boats; their Awlgrip gleaming in the afternoon sun. The picture in my hand shows a freshly painted white gleaming hull as well, but the only older wooden 30 footer is this rust streaked relic that can’t be the boat I’m about to buy. Yet, as I stand there, her owner comes on deck, waves to me and hops down into a half deflated dingy and rows toward the pier. Sure enough he is the fellow I’ve been talking to for the past month, but I’m convinced he’s on someone else’s boat. But we row closer and closer to it until we are along side and I am tying the dingy’s painter onto a lose, corroded stern cleat. He makes no apologies for his outright lies to me, not the fictional photos he sent; instead starts giving me the grand tour. I am speechless. There are mushrooms growing in cracks in the cockpit floor. The main shrouds flop around in the gentle breeze—puzzling why they are so loose and takes me a few minutes to figure it out. He has lost the main halyard up the mast, so we can’t sail her properly, and he can’t get the engine, an old rusting Atomic Four, started, so we sit at anchor and he proudly shows off his ship to me. He invites me below. Three days of dishes are in the sink. The cabin stinks of gasoline and exhaust fumes. I ask to be left alone and he goes topside. Then, in the silence I hear it. The trickle of dollars down the inside of the hull. Little trickles of seawater trickling through the planking. The electric bilge pump cuts on and off like clockwork. I take my pocket knife and push the tip of the blade gently into the hull planks. It is like poking a knife into a birthday cake; no resistance at all. Rotten planks, seams opening probably from his sail down from Mystic. Then I take a closer look around the junked up cabin. Not only is she leaking, she has sunk at least once—there is a scum line about half way up the cabin sides. Before leaving I take a gander at the mast step. Just as I suspected: the butt of the mast is sitting in a pool of black water, more mushrooms here too. The butt is so rotten the mast is being eaten away from the bottom up, and that’s the reason the boat’s rigging is flopping around in the breeze.
I ask the owner to take me back to shore—he hasn’t said anything. As I climb up on the pier, he asks in an upbeat voice, “Well, what do you think?” I give him a droll look and walk away quickly before I’m tempted to throw him off his dingy.
Later on the taxi ride back to the Hartford and the airport, I drive by Brewer's Yard, and catch a glimpse of the Bristol’s stern—she’s on jackstands in a long line of other boats. I tell the cabbie to stop and pay him for the ride; I’ll catch a later flight. Woodenboat went in the trash when I got home; I’ve never bought another issue.

2006-01-04T11:19:00.001-05:00

When I turned 50 a few years ago my internist announced I needed a stress test to measure the condition of my heart. Great news when you are standing in your underwear and expecting an all clear from your doctor. I asked a worried “Why?” And he said he had not detected a problem but wanted to be sure I was OK. So I got wired to a special treadmill and ran up hill until my pulse reached 190 (the doctor said it would either reach that number of I’d have a heart attack somewhere below it—more great news). The outcome was I reached the number and kept on running, while he admired the short peaked blips on the printout from the plotter my wires connected to. Everything fine, we’ll do another in 10 years.
Last night I did open heart surgery on the Bristol. I removed her starboard main chainplate, installed at the yard 36 years ago, just to make sure she was OK. I have put Sally B through some deliberately harsh stress tests over the years, and like running stairs when you are 50-plus, the condition of her chainplates and main shrouds are a constant, murmuring worry at the back of your mind. The chainplates attach the shrouds to the hull and keep the mast from falling over. They are the main aorta, the central element that keeps the boat alive. And, like the heart, they are buried inside the boat, just their tips exposed through the decks. If not bedded correctly, rainwater will seep down them causing crevice corrosion to the stainless steel and quickly rotting the wood knees they bolt to--the equivalent of clogged arteries that can happen at any time.
So I removed the starboard chainplate, the nuts painted over long ago, cracking open for the first time as the socket bit and turned the nut. the ratched working in the cramped space under the side deck. The bolts had to be driven out with a hammer--a good sign. Finally the three bolts were out. Expecting the worst, I found, like my internist found with me, that things were fine. There were some rust stains, but no rot and no fractures of the metal. She could have sailed with those old chainplates for many years to come. But I will give her new ones, stronger than the old metal; chainplates that will take her safely across the seas. Standing there in the cabin, looking at the strip of metal in my hand I can’t help thinking how long it has kept me safe and secure as the Bristol beat through heavy seas, heeled too far over from me not reefing early enough, strained at her sheets and still brought me safely home.

2005-12-22T13:03:00.000-05:00

I have such a craving I started rereading Moitessier and relishing every word. Now, there was a guy that loved sailing and was nuts about sailboats. The facial features of Clint Eastwood and the original boat hippy:

“I have no desire to return to Europe with all its false gods. They eat your liver out and suck your marrow and brutalize you. I am going where you can tie up a boat where you want and the sun is free…”

In the final leg of the London Sunday Times Global single-handed around the world race, Bernard decided winning (he was far out in the lead) such a race was a hypocrisy to his true nature, came about and sailed back to the southern ocean, there to sail around the world again, a total of some 34-thousand miles before he finally stepped onto a firm sand beach.

I understand some of what I think Moitessier was thinking. Sailing, especially alone is a very personal experience. To be in solitude as long as he was in that race amplifies the intimacy of your thoughts and your fears. For me, sailing alone is in part a religious experience: no place can you see the majesty of God more clearly than a sunrise out far away from land. No place can you more clearly want and need God’s help than in a storm at sea at night. The fame and fortune awaiting Moitessier in London was sacrilege to the solace and succor of the sea and his time with her. Better to be loyal to what had protected him for so many thousands of miles.

Where the rest of us need at least some amount of food and water while sailing, Moitessier found Zen in a solitude oneness with the sea. Just breathing sea air was sustenance enough for survival. Ashore, usually shipwrecked, he would build his own boats out of whatever he could find, and in faith with his French blood, always seemed to have a pretty young girl offering help and assistance. He sailed with what he had, navigated as best he could and used his sea sense to warn him of danger (sometimes it didn’t work very well, but he learned to listen closer). Moitessier sailed what he had, his habit was the sea not the boat on the sea. His lesson is one of not losing sight of the horizon because of gear or lack of gear; money or lack of financial support to sail. His lesson is sail for the trip not the destination. It is a lesson in life as well.

2005-11-02T12:03:00.000-05:00

I have listened to the rain pattering down on it for years; it has kept me warm and dry but sometimes new jewelry is needed for the old girl. I started grinding fiberglass to install a shiny new custom-made forward hatch for the Bristol. I built the existing hatch out of newly milled mahogany 18 years ago. My father was alive then and helped me build it. His weathered hands held the boards as I ran home the screws. I had just bought the Bristol and had her shipped down to Port Canaveral from Essex, Ct. The trucker had not latched the fiberglass hatch and it had blown off during the trip; just the hinges remained. I taped some plastic over the opening and took a series of complex measurements on the crowned, trapezoidal hatch combings. Now, it’s old, weathered, seen many years of salt air and some seas over it. I have made two Sunbrella covers for it over the years—the second one is frayed. The new hatch is custom forged 316 stainless; solid, waterproof, vandal proof, as shiney and perfect as perfect chrome. It will take the tons of water from a big sea and not let a drop below. I will make a cover for it too so 18 years from now it will still glitter around the old gal’s neck.

2005-10-25T11:54:00.000-04:00

God, please tell my I don’t have to inspect the propeller shaft. The nasty jobs I have left to do on the Bristol seep into my mind occasionally and make me groan. The shaft is 15 years old, and inspected 10 years ago—it looked like new then. I could easily convince myself it still is fine and not galled or corroded. But I don’t plan to do a refit again for at least another 10 years so I need to inspect. It’s a nasty job entailing buttering up my chest with oil so I can squeeze into the engine compartment beside the Yanmar in order to reach the back of the engine and the flange that attaches the propeller to the transmission. Once there, waves of claustrophobia sneak up my spine as I work on my side, head down, arms out, trying to get the flange to separate.

The nastiest jobs on boat are not fiberglass related in my view. I will take the itching of fiberglass dust any day over engine work. In addition to needing to inspect the propeller shaft, I have at least one sort of questionable motor mount—I shutter even writing the words here. That means detaching all of them, putting the engine out of alignment to the shaft, raising it to get it off the mount—that takes a block and tackle to the boom above. Another nasty thankless job that doesn’t relate to sailing.

Least I give you the wrong impression of the auxiliary power in the Bristol, to its credit I should point out that I would never trade the Yanmar 3GM30F in the boat for any other kind of engine. The Yanmar is as reliable as a GM V-8. It starts instantly, never smokes, never soots up the stern, never leaks or smells of diesel, and is quiet and smooth. I just hate working on or around it.

The only non-engine job that was almost as bad as the two I’ve just listed was removing the rudder. Now there is a gut straining, cursing, groaning bit of a job I have done once and sits at the top of my list of “Jobs I Will Never Do Again”. The Bristol’s rudder is build like the Queen Mary’s. It’s solid fiberglass with a bronze webbing welded to the solid bronze rudderpost inside. It weighs about 80 or 90 pounds and sits on a 1-inch diameter bronze pintel at the rudder shoe. Its only weakness is that pintel should be stainless instead of bronze. The pintel will typically wear on the forward edge—from the weight of the rudder (it hangs “down” since the aft edge of the keel slants forward). The wear on the pintel creates play that is expressed in the tiller vibrating at speed. It’s probably nothing to ever worry about, but I like to have everything perfect on the boat and “new” if at all possible.

So I removed the rudder and replaced the pintel. That’s a fun little job: dig about a 4-ft hole under the stern—if you are lucky enough not to have your boat on pavement in the boat yard. Then cock the rudder full over to port and there is just enough room to lift it off the pintel—it’s quite a lift and slide the rudder down, maintaining the angle of the rudderpost until it is out. It lays on the ground like a dead tuna and the yard foreman looked at it and said I needed their fiberglass shop to design and build me a new one. As usual, he had no idea what he was talking about. I told him the rudder was stronger than anything he could build for me. He countered with, “It’s full of water”. I drilled some ¼” holes—all dry, all solid glass. He tried some more excuses before finally leaving. Then I rebuilt the stuffing box where the rudder post enters the hull. That’s a fun little project. Little being the operative word. You have to scoot headfirst down into the lazerette on the sloping hull to try to undo the 30-plus year old hose clamps and worry off the ancient hose. Eventually, with enough prayer, it all came loose. The stuffing box is identical to the one for the propeller shaft. I rebuilt it as I did the engine one using Teflon impregnated Drip-Free packing, a new hose and proper 316 stainless hose clamps. It should now outlive me. Then I rebuilt the cockpit sole bearing where the rudder post passes through the floor of the cockpit. I expected there to be play and the shaft to be worn at the bearing. Wrong on both counts. The bronze Bristol used is tough stuff and the rudder post showed no signs of any wear. The bearing was fine and I re-plated the housing in gunmetal gray nickel plating.

Installing the rudder was at least five times harder than dropping it. Somebody please kick me if I ever get a notion to drop it again.

2005-10-24T13:31:00.000-04:00

I suffer through bad weather ashore in little bits and pieces. It’s 1:30 Monday afternoon and Wilma is out in the Atlantic off Palm Beach. The eastern edge must be playing havoc with the Gulf Stream. A little bit of me wants to be out there in the stink of it. Instead, I have been up all night on hurricane watch. We had gusts in Orlando in the 50’s I guess. Mostly I sipped hot coffee while everyone slept and watched the wind and rain fly down the lake outside. A little bit of me wants to be out there on a Laser flying. Instead, I turn to the weather channel between power outages and watch sailboats at the Naples city marina jumping in their slips, straining dock lines, heeling to the wind. The boats are alive and I have tended plenty of dock lines on the Bristol as she jumped and heeled in her slip. A bit of me wishes I was there, tending my boat. This hurricane she’s at home in the side yard: safe, steady on jack stands, waiting patiently for me to get her floating so she too can come alive again. Instead, I fuss with the tarps covering her, and wander into the garage to fiddle with one of the dozen or so projects I have underway.

The barrel of wind brings cold weather behind the rain. Winter is coming to Florida and epoxy will take forever to cure. This refit is taking forever to finish.

2005-10-10T13:59:00.000-04:00

Sometimes radar just doesn’t see the big stuff. I was sailing with my brother John and my nephew Kevin several years ago, on John’s lovely boat Southern Cross, a 45-ft Ocean Cruising Yacht. We had this idea to sail up the Strait of Juan de Fuca just for the hell of it. Most people in sailboats just cross it and try to stay out of its way. The strait is one of the busiest shipping areas in the world. The fairways in bound and out bound are under U.S. Coast Guard vessel traffic control, and often stack up with super tankers, container ships, tugs with tows as well as pleasure boats like Southern Cross. So we have worked our way up the strait, tacking continuously. It is blowing 15 – 25 knots and we are rushing through a wet dripping blanket of pea soup fog. I am on the helm and Kevin is working the sheets for me. John is below navigating and watching the radar screen as he tracks the positions of ships around us.

The logistics of big ship radar is such that they can’t see us at all. The radar reflector on Southern Cross is maybe 40 feet above the water; most of these ships have their decks higher than that and their radomes are on masts much higher still. It order for them to see us we would have to be 20 or more miles away. In the close confines of the strait we are invisible in this fog. On the other hand, our radome is about 12 feet off the water and we should be able to see everything, and do, as John sings out sightings up the companionway, and Kev and I alter course in response. When a big ship gets close you hear it and feel it; no fog horn is necessary. The ship’s props send out whomp whomp whomps you hear across the water. As the ship gets closer you begin to feel that same whomp of the screws tingle your feet in the cockpit. And, when the ship gets very close you hear the bow pushing tons of water aside.

We have sailed this way for a night and most of a day, tacking back and forth across the strait, enveloped in a silent cocoon of fog, surrounded by distant moans of fog horns, dodging ships the size of buildings that we never see except as blips on the screen. The wind funnels down the strait from the Pacific and the tides have not been in our favor. John occasionally calls out the shore or a known marker on the shore, and an occasional fog horn from a light house, sharply decreasing depth on the depth meter, or in some cases the sound of surf against the shore confirms his analysis of the radar screen. Yet he is absent in telling me about a ship I can begin to hear…that whomp, whomp, whomp of her screws. I call down the companionway, asking him to double check. No nothing, he says after a moment.

Fog defuses sound vibrations and the ship could be anywhere. I call down to John again: “I’ve got a ship close by….anything?” Kevin’s eyes get big. Another pause from John and then the all clear again. The sound becomes stronger and more defined. She is probably steaming at 10 or more knots—they are so big then look from a distance like they’re hardly moving and their speed can be deceiving. Kevin looks more nervous so I ask him to go below and ask his dad again. He flies down the companionway. He’s back up in two seconds saying there’s still no sign of a ship close to us on radar. Since we are sailing at about 7 knots I assume we aren’t heading bow to bow (a closing speed of easily 17 to 25 knots) since the sound isn’t increasing that rapidly; yet I can now feel the vibration of her props through the sole of the cockpit. I know she’s gaining on us, probably from behind, doing easily twice our speed.
Another check with the navigator is the same: all clear, nothing near. Kevin is going to hurt his neck trying to look everywhere at once.

Now I just barely detect the sound of her bow wave, sort of a waterfall sound easing through the fog. She’s close and definitely behind us. The trouble is I don’t know if she has seen us and is turning—takes a while in something that big—and if I change course I could run into her. On the other hand I don’t think the skipper knows I’m ahead or he would have turned sooner.

I ask Kevin to dig out the Freon-charged air horn. He dives into a cockpit locker and shoves an old rusty thing at me. I fire off 5 anemic blasts close together; the universal distress alert. The fifth blast sounds more like a duck quaking as the canister runs out of Freon.

The sound of the bow through the water is very distinct and constant now, close enough to know the exact location of her behind us. I calmly ask Kevin to find me a spare can for the horn. He jumps down the companionway and reappears almost instantly with another can. I screw it in place and fire off another 5-blast warning. The waterfall sound is louder and growing at a quick steady pace. I have a fleeting thought of accounts of sailors in small boats who have been hit by passing ships and reported that usually the force of the bow wave had pushed their sailboat up and to one or the other side before actual impact. I wonder if John’s boat, at 20-thousand pounds, is still small and light enough to be affected by the bow wave, or if we will get sliced from stern to bow like a buzz saw.

Kevin is nervous as a cat and John STILL sees nothing, but the horn blasts take affect. I can detect a change in direction to the bow wave, now beginning to move across our stern to port and the deeper middle of the channel. I see nothing, but hear the waterfall of her bow wave, the throbbing of her engines, the whompping of her props. A minute later her wake gives us a little surfing push as we sail on in this thick white swirling cloud.

2005-10-07T13:55:00.000-04:00

My wife opened the door into the garage last night and asked, “what is all that stuff under our bed?” I had to think for a minute. Oh she means the finished bowsprit, the main shrouds all shined up, coiled and tie-wrapped; the lowers, each prepared the same way; and the inner forestay. “Just some stuff for the boat,” I reply. She looks around the garage with a critical eye. It’s full of work benches, saws, power tools, wood, paint etc, with a fine layer of saw dust and epoxy dust everywhere. Her look says why in the world can’t they be stored out here. I tell her I’d be glad to move them to my closet that already holds the rolled up 135% genny, the new bagged main and canvas covers I want to keep and reuse. She relents and says it can stay under the bed, but the conversation gives me pause to consider where I am going to store everything I need to store as it is cleaned, refurbished and made ready to re-install on the Bristol. God what I’d give for a real boat shed, a nice steel building maybe 40x60 on a lot near a boat yard, near water, with a nice travellift I could use, say near St Pete or down near Ft Myers….keep on dreaming David…

2005-10-06T13:43:00.000-04:00

If you sail out there you know. Night is a sky blanket of light and civilization is over the bend of the earth, somewhere in the next century. I love sailing at night. Everything amplifies. Night lasts twice as long as day and the predawn gray fringe in the east brings a prayer to my lips.

Sailing at night is a balancing ballet in the dark. I go instinctively for exactly what I want, clipped on, safe in this little craft in the middle of green phosphorescence and white licks of waves and blackness. I am more glued to the boat’s motion, more aware of the swishy hiss of her through the water, the gentle roll and sway of her to the swells, the chatter of her stern wave and the bubble and shimmer of her wake. A pop and snap in the main’s luff, a flutter of the genny’s leech warn me of wind shifts and her tiller tugs lightly in my hand. The red and green of the masthead light cast gentle glows that mix with the Milky Way above me, and the soft red lights in the cabin call me down to a warm bunk and a hot mug of tea.

At night I can’t stand the engine, as if I would wake neighbors nearby. So I ghost into an anchorage main dropped around the boom, genoa rolled, gliding along as I stand on the bow ready to loose the anchor, way on the boat laying the chain on the bottom in a straight line, the snubbed rode jerking her bow around and setting the anchor deep. Even then the warmth of the cabin lights can’t compete with the sky above, that blanket of dusty stars, and I sit on the fore hatch and enjoy the show.

2005-10-06T11:49:00.000-04:00

I wasn’t actually trying to turn her over, but I was standing on the vertical side of the cockpit coaming and the loaded sheet winch was under water…

One of the duties we should be able to ask of our boat is to crawl off a lee shore in stinky conditions. Modern boats, beamy things with narrow keels and canoe shaped bottoms, ineffective rudders and badly balanced rigs can be great charter boats, great downwind cruising boats, great party boats and can carry lots of gear and people. But they can fail miserably sailing to windward, especially in lots of wind. Does the Bristol 29 sail to windward? Like a scalded cat.

About two years after buying her, I wanted to test out a new suit of sails and see how she sailed and balanced in real reefed conditions. She was in Cocoa, Florida at the time on the ICW and Jay Walthers and I took her out at the beginning of an approaching storm. We sailed up to the Canaveral barge canal that connects the Indian River (what the ICW is called in that part of the state) and east to the Banana River. The Banana is a tributary of the Indian caused by the presence of Merritt Island. The Banana is narrow and shallow, the fairway being only about 100 feet wide and just deep enough for the Bristol’s draft.

By the time we got to the Banana we were triple reefed with the genoa rolled up 50 percent. The wind was well over 30 knots. I estimated 35 with stronger gusts into the 40’s. The wind was from the north, funneling straight down the river and we began tacking up the fairway. A Coast Guard RIB fell in behind us—I’m sure waiting for us to go over or be blown aground out of the fairway.

Neither happened. The boat sailed at a heel of about 60 degrees, with water over the lee coaming and seat, the loaded winch under water. But at that attitude she was steady as a rock and the high gusts would not push her over anymore. We tacked back and forth up the fairway, and made so much ground to windward that we were making two tacks between day markers. This boat really loves sailing to windward. The exercise showed me that I needed an inner forestay and a small staysail, which would keep her more upright. But it also proved that I can sail off any lee shore I’m likely to encounter.

2005-10-04T13:27:00.000-04:00

I have never understood the mentality of some boaters. The 12,000-dollar world cruiser: any old sailboat with a 406 EPIRB, handheld GPS, and a new life raft.

The first few years I had the Bristol I didn’t sleep well aboard. I worried about the standing rigging mostly; about the chainplates, about the ground tackle; the important stuff that can break and get you in trouble. I had accepted ownership of a boat already 20 years old and had no real idea if anything was on the verge of breaking.

The scary fact is lots of people put to sea or at least sail offshore in such boats—ones that have earned no respect yet because someone else owned them, sailed them, and maybe repaired and improved them properly—or maybe didn’t. To them, safety at sea is a shiny new life raft canister strapped to the cabin top, an emergency locator beacon so someone can come save you, and a GPS so any fool can sort of navigate. Yet, until you know your boat’s real condition and the real level of sea worthiness, sailing should be confined to an afternoon in the bay activity.

For me, rebuilding an old boat is the act of verifying her condition and correcting what is wrong, while bringing the boat up to like new condition, engineered at a strength level that can successfully handle sailing long distances. I’m not sure if you would call it refurbishing, or rebuilding, or restoring; I think of it as re-engineering. For me, going thru the whole boat, every inch gives me the assurance that I know how to fix anything that breaks and that I’ve already beefed up all of her systems so she is not inclined to break. The results let me sleep soundly.

2005-10-03T15:24:00.000-04:00

Sailing brings people together the way Christmas does. I have met and sailed with some extremely interesting people. Some have sailed around the world, others have cruised to many distant places. A common trait in all is a lack of boasting about it. Two I will mention here are Jay Walthers and Bert Coalson.

I met Jay as I was pulling into a newly rented slip on the ICW near Cocoa, Florida. His was the next boat over and he appeared on my finger pier to help me tie up--and then commenced to teach me all I didn’t know about tying up a boat. Jay was 89 at the time, a retired sea captain, living alone on his boat. He was slight in build, bald on top with long stringy grey hair on the sides and back almost to his shoulders. What he had forgotten about sailing over the years was more than most people ever learn and he didn’t forget much. He ran away to sea from his home port in Estonia at age 11 as a cabin boy on a square-rigged freighter. By 18 he was captain. Back then, to be promoted to mate you had to be able to sew 200 square feet of sail per day, every day. Over the course of his life he owned a fleet of square-rigged clippers—all of them confiscated by the Nazi government in the 1930’s; a fleet of oil-fired freighters after the war, and a summer home next to Albert Einstein. He was skipper of the famous 71-ft Herreshoff designed Ticonderoga when she was owned by John Hertz (of Yellow Cab and Hertz rental cars) and sailed her to winning the St Petersburg to Havana SORC regatta in 1947, shaving 3.5 hours off the previous best time. When you sailed a Herreshoff-designed boat, even the Bristol 29, with Jay Walthers you really sailed. I learned more in a year of sailing with him than I had in the previous 20.

I met Bert Coalson at the Harborage Marina in St Pete by drooling on the dock beside his beautiful Rhodes one-off ketch Natoma, until he finally climbed down and said Hi. Bert is a retired US Air senior pilot and lives aboard with his wife Lissie. He has a smooth North Carolina accent and salt and pepper gray hair under an inevitable ball cap. At the time he also owned a lovely wood Mason 36 in the slip next to the Bristol. Bert had crewed with Ted Turner on Tenacious, maintained Natoma to absolutely perfect condition and did everything himself, even the stainless. I hear Natoma is back at the Harborage after a year of sailing around Europe. I believe her next voyage might be heading out to the Galapagos islands.

2005-10-03T12:26:00.000-04:00

I mentioned being a sailboat nut in the previous post. We are all partly nuts to go sailing and own a boat, but you could be a certifiable sailboat nut:

If every time you step outdoors you automatically check for wind speed and direction.

If you wear deck shoes to work, church, school, and out to a nice dinner.

If buying a new mainsail is as exciting to you as dropping a small block V8 into a 68 Camero is to most guys.

If you actually think about crevice corrosion.

If your quest for an iced drink while sailing leads you to spending an unlimited amount of money (and you don’t care).

If you go straight to the Sports section in Borders to check on the latest sailing books they may have.

If you know what Peukert's law is.

If you know the name of Ferenc Mate’s Westsail 32.

If you can pick out any Phil Rhodes design at a glance.

If you find a pleasing comparison between a yacht’s stern and a woman’s bottom.

If you have ever searched the Internet for the breaking strength of 7x19 wire rope.

If you have ever dunked new deck shoes in sea water as soon as possible.

If you think the movie “The perfect Storm” is a comedy.

If you have a natural distrust of anyone working on your boat.

If you long for the past days of tin-based bottom paint and find it puzzling that a 1000-ft long container ship can have tin-based bottom paint and your boat’s 20-something-ft bottom can’t.

If you find life at 20 degrees of heel satisfying instead of disturbing.

If encountering any other sailboat while sailing means the race is on.

If you sail thru your marina just to piss off power boaters.

If someone asks you “how’s the water here?” and you answer “kind of thin on the east bank” and all they wanted to know was how cold it was.

If you can’t help living by amp hours.

On returning from a sail if you spend more time tying her in her slip than washing her down.

If a romantic stroll is walking the docks at a marina.

If the first universal rule for installing anything on deck or down below is “What can I bang my forehead/elbow/knee/shin/toe on?”.

If the second universal rule is “If I turn her upside down and shake, what happens?”.

If you find the green brown patina of weathered bronze beautiful.

2005-10-02T16:29:00.000-04:00

When it rains in Orlando, it pours big drops that spatter and whack you on the head. It always makes me wish I was on my boat listening to the rain. For some weird reason I have never been a fan of bad weather ashore, but love it if I'm on my boat tucked into some little cove. It's a great place to read or nap away the weather, and with the boat on the hard since the beginning of the year, and expected to be in my side yard for another year, I do miss those little coves.

It rained today; three times, which ruined my chances for spraying the mast. Instead, I epoxied the old roller reefing gooseneck on the Bristol so the boom will no longer rotate. I had disabled the roller reefing mechanism years ago when I converted the boat to slab reefing, but never got around to locking the position of the boom versus the gooseneck. Today I filled it full of epoxy and it sure won't rotate anymore.

The idea of locking the boom so it won't rotate at the gooseneck came to me at a traffic light Friday morning. It was on a list in the back of my head, but hadn't surfaced to cogitate about in years. When I drive to work, it's an hour I use to think about boat projects--I'd rather meditate about engineering solutions to the boat then listen to music--the sign of a true boat nut, I guess. Friday I was driving along thinking about the midboom sheeting attachment, and the stresses involved, and suddenly realized I can't have the boom rotating anymore. It would fuck up the leads for the outhaul that goes forward on the port side to a turning block and down to another turning block at the base of the mast. However, with the boom able to rotate, it means the lead would only be fair when the boom is centerd over the boat. So I have to dredge up all my old thinking about the subject, and start mulling over possible solutions.

Then it rained. So I spent the time with epoxy and some drilling and now the lead will be fair for the outhaul. End of one of about a million little problems.