Yachting Monthly 200 Skipper’s Tips
Instant Skills To Improve Your SeamanshipBy Tom Cunliffe
John Wiley & Sons
Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-470-97288-5
Chapter One
SEAMANSHIP
1 A QUESTION OF COURTESY
Not all boats that race are flat-out `Grand Prix’ jobs. Many a cruiser enjoys the odd weekend’s sport with the local club. Such a boat could easily be taken for a cruiser, which on any other day she may well be. Today, however, she isn’t flying an ensign, and this is the international sign that she’s racing. As soon as she finishes or retires, she should hoist her ensign again so that her fellow competitors and anyone else around knows that she’s no longer subject to the racing rules. Right now, those of us who are cruising might like to give her clear wind. It could be us one day.
2 WHOSE RIGHT OF WAY?
A useful aide-mmoire when crossing another vessel in daylight with both boats under power, is to ask yourself which of her sidelights you would be seeing if it were dark. A red (port) light would suggest that you are to take care, so stay out of her way. Green is for `go’, so if you see her starboard bow you can stand on carefully.
3 IDENTIFYING A COLLISION RISK
Out at sea, collision risk is checked by ascertaining whether or not the vessel in question is maintaining a steady bearing relative to you. Initially, this is spotted by keeping your head still and seeing whether a distant ship remains in place over a particular stanchion, shroud, or other likely item. If it looks like a possibility but you are uncertain, you will take the ship’s compass bearing, and keep checking as range closes. You might even use the electronic bearing line on your radar.
In confined waters, it is more convenient to note whether or not the other craft appears steady relative to its background. While difficult to prove mathematically, this old rule of thumb works every time unless the other craft is almost on the beach. If the other vessel stays in front of the same far-off field, chimney or parked car as you approach, you are on a collision heading, so watch out!
4 DIVER DOWN!
Learning all the code flags is no longer a part of any yachting syllabus, but every watchkeeper must be aware of the meaning of the `A’ flag. It says: “I have a diver down. Keep well clear at slow speed.” Sometimes these flags are made of plywood, sometimes of fabric, but it is always dive boats that show them. Watch out for them and comply with their request. If you miss one, you could be responsible for causing a serious accident. Even if you don’t hurt anyone, you’ll get a well-deserved earful from the cox’n of the dive boat.
5 TURNING UP
The only certainty about how to make fast to a cleat is that there are a number of equally good ways of doing it. In deciding which to use, the questions to ask are:
? If I secure it like this, will it be impossible for the rope to come off by mistake?
? Will it also be impossible for the rope to jam up on the cleat?
? Have I put the turns on in such a way that, as I begin to take them off again, the rope can be surged under load if required?
Three `yes’ answers, and you’ve got it right. Notice that in the first picture (Cleat 1), care is being taken that the second half of the initial turn on a poorly but typically aligned cleat cannot lock under load against the first half. Cleat 2 shows a neat, safe job in progress, with figures of eight going on in a non-jammable way. Cleat 3 shows a classic `half a turn, two figures-of-eight and a final round turn’ solution. Usually a winner, but if you’re short of rope or the cleat isn’t big enough, have no fear of using a locking hitch as in Cleat 4. These are not the only ways, though.
6 LOOK ALOFT
If you set your rig up yourself you may be completely confident in it but if it was left to anyone else to do, it’s worth checking your pins and clevises before a passage. If you can’t conveniently go aloft, rack the binoculars down to their shortest range, clean the lenses and take a serious look aloft. You’ll be surprised at what you can see.
7 WHERE’S YOUR BALL?
We all know that we should hoist a black ball when we drop anchor, yet many of us neglect to do so. One reason for this is that the ball is often tucked behind a toolbox at the back of a locker and it’s easy to `forget’ to go and get it. So why not stow it in the anchor locker where it’ll always be to hand?
8 NEVER STOP COMMUNICATING
Any skipper can become so involved with the challenges of command that he or she forgets to keep the crew in the picture. It’s as important for a briefing to include the basics of the coming passage as to explain where the life raft is and how to use the heads. As the miles roll along, morale is boosted if all hands are advised about progress. A man freezing in the cockpit will cope better if he knows the tide will turn in the next hour and that the gruesome sea state should soon begin to ease; an encouraging remark about there only being another 15 miles to go might save a mutiny. It sounds obvious, but it’s often ignored.
9 VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE
It’s been said often enough, but it’s easy to forget what the chaps on the big ships can’t see. Here’s an unusual view of the Solent, showing `what the pilot saw’ as a yacht scuttled under his bows a good quarter mile ahead. This one was quite safe as it happened, but if she’d been a bit closer and things had gone wrong for her, the people on the bridge wouldn’t even have known they’d hit her.
10 ONE FLAG WORTH KNOWING
The days when Yachtmasters had to learn all the signal flags are mercifully long past. However, the ability to recognise one or two of the signals remains a useful safety factor. The `T’ flag looks like a French ensign with the colours back to front. It means that the vessel flying it is engaged in pair trawling. Somewhere away on her beam will be her partner, and the consequences of finding yourself between them don’t bear thinking about. You won’t see pair trawling often – the practice is banned in UK waters – but continental fishing boats really do show this flag even though you might feel their lights sometimes leave much to be desired.
11 ‘ELLO, ‘ELLO, ‘ELLO!
Cruising in foreign waters, you never know when you’ll be boarded by the authorities. They may leave you alone for years, then suddenly, one day, there they are! It doesn’t pay to be complacent about carrying documentation. Ship’s registration papers (SSR document is fine), evidence of VAT payment, skipper’s licence (or at least an ICC certificate), passports, VHF certificate of competence and insurance certificate are minimum requirements in many countries. If you don’t have them handy, you may be in for a rough ride.
12 UPWIND OR DOWNWIND?
A summer’s cruise that’s planned too tightly can lead to wretchedness and mutiny. Neptune, after all, does not send his winds to serve our little purposes, and if we are set on what turns out to be a long beat at the outset, it doesn’t make for happiness. On a day sail when you know the wind will not change, it makes sense to start out upwind and come home on a reach, on the `nasty things first, nice things later’ principle known to every well-brought-up baby. On a longer trip, you might put to sea upwind and arrive tired, only to see the breeze clock the following week and stuff you at home time too. Begin downwind and you’ve secured at least 50% joy. You’ve probably an even chance on your homeward passage too. At worst, you’ll score 50-50, but the odds are in your favour. Ask any gambler …
13 GOING DOWN WITH THE TIDE
If you keep the company of old-fashioned longshoremen and you’re having tea in their shed near High Water when it’s blowing like stink, one of them is bound to say, “Don’t worry, lads. The wind’ll go down with the tide.” I expect readers well versed in science will thumb their noses at this little chunk of lore, but hold fast! There may not be a shred of truth in the idea 15 miles offshore, but in a river or on a beach flanked by shoals, more and more natural shelter appears as the sea level falls. The waves ease back, even the wind seems diminished with the water 20 ft lower down and the overall impression is undeniable. If you don’t believe me, try rowing across your local river in Force 9 at High Water, then at the bottom of the tide. The old boys were right all along.
14 COLREG MNEMONICS
It’s not easy to remember the details of the Colregs when you aren’t at sea every day but in practice sometimes there isn’t time to look up an obscure one. Mnemonics can help you recall them. Here’s an example:
Question: Which side do you pass a dredger – ball daymarks, or diamonds?
Answer: Great balls of fire! Fire is red, so diamonds must be green. I’ll go with green for safety’s sake.
You can probably think up more.
15 LIGHTEN OUR DARKNESS
Sailing into or leaving a strange harbour at night is never fun, but if you’ve no choice a little moonlight can make a big difference. If you can time your movements for a couple of hours or more after moonrise that’s a real bonus, especially if the moon is more than half full. A decent almanac like Reeds will dish up the information, but it’s a whole lot easier on a chart-plotter. This little electric brain will work out the exact time for where you actually are. The illustrated Garmin even tells you whether the moon is waxing, waning, full or not visible at all, and if you’re a proper sailor who’s interested in lowering the colours at sunset, it’ll put you straight about that as well.
16 LEFTOVER SEAS
The chances are that, some time each season, half of us will find ourselves holed up in some faraway port while the usual mid-holiday gale blows itself out. It’s tempting to stick one’s nose past the mole as soon as the wind drops to Force 4, but if the heavy stuff has had an onshore component there will be a nasty sea to contend with. Typically, we could find ourselves in a falling breeze `going up and down in the same hole’ for anything up to 24 hours. The answer, of course, is to select a bolt-hole with a good pub, a nice beach, a multiplex cinema or a casino with distracted croupiers. That is real passage planning …
17 SAIL ON THE MOON TIDE
If you sail in central southern England, you’ll find High Water Springs equate to midnight and midday. Down in the West Country they fall around 0600 and 1800, on the Thames they usually arrive in time for a latish lunch, and so on. Neaps clearly come six hours adrift. We all know that tides follow the moon and that the top of Springs will be a day or two after full moon or at new moon. Once you have established when your local tides generally fall, you’ve only to look at the moon sailing through the clouds to predict what time tomorrow’s ebb will start running away, which is exactly how it was done before people had tide tables.
18 OVER THE WAVES
Making landfall in the dark, it’s more than likely that you’ll be looking out hard to identify lights. There could well be a sea running that’s higher than your eye level as you sit at the helm. Height of eye sitting down may be as little as 4 ft in a small yacht, or 8 ft in a big one with a centre cockpit. In either case, the extra 6 ft gained by standing up at the mast makes a huge difference. What appears to be a buoy occasionally blinking might turn into an occulting lighthouse if you’re high enough up to see the difference.
19 CHECKING FOR DRAG
By far the best method of observing whether or not an anchor is dragging is to find a natural transit of two objects more or less abeam when the boat is head-up to the hook. For crispness, these want to be reasonably close. You can even use another boat that looks good, so long as she doesn’t join you up the beach when all goes pear-shaped. A compass being used to see if a bearing alters is a blunt instrument by comparison, only useful when no transit offers itself. Even at night, two lights, or one light in line with a silhouette on the skyline, can usually be found. The GPS receiver promising to advise optimistic skippers of a dragging hook is only of interest in dense fog.
20 PASSING IN THE NIGHT
In the daytime, giving way to a ship at sea can simply be a matter of a minor course alteration to clear his stern. Generally, 20° or 30° is more than enough. At night, it’s a different story, because all he can see of you is your lights. You may be making a good radar target, but it’s safest to assume you are not. For the bridge watch to know you are giving way, you must turn far enough to show him a light of a different colour. This can be inconvenient, but it’s reassuring to know he’s in no doubt about your intentions.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from Yachting Monthly 200 Skipper’s Tipsby Tom Cunliffe Copyright © 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Excerpted by permission of John Wiley & Sons. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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