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I finally got out to the lake after several months of family stuff, work stuff, honeydo stuff, and all-around-too-lazy-to-get-off-my-ass stuff that precluded any sailing adventures other than of the armchair variety. It was reading about Tony Bigras' adventures with Miss Cindy in the last issue of SCA that finally got me off my butt and making the trip to the lake. In fact, as I begin this post, I'm there right now-- At anchor in Why Cove, tapping away on my Macbook Pro. Here's a self-portrait:

I'm quite a handsome fellow, as I'm sure you will agree.  (I'm taken. ladies, thank you very much.)

I almost didn't launch today. The wind was picking up as I arrived at the boat, and for a moment, the former pilot in me cleared his throat and made rude gestures, trying to get my attention,  before I swatted him into the background.  Failure was not an option: I had already purchased  a substantial pile of fattening, salt-encrusted munchies and cheap red wine to provision for this trip, and if I returned home with too much evidence of my seagoing gluttony, the Admiral would surely have me keelhauled. No, I had the food, and the booze, I had to go out there on the water and consume it.  So I launched.

The sail to Why Cove was mostly uneventful. The wind was behind me, and running before it, I was wondering why I had the jitters earlier. It was quiet, the breeze was just enough to keep me cool, and other than the fact that the wind kept shifting as I rounded Windy Hill, life was good. There were two other sailboats out on the lake-- One was a pretty large boat beating towards me under genoa alone, a sight which I found kind of odd.  As I watched, the other boat got laid over by a gust and rounded up, genoa flapping madly.  He got it sorted out quickly and resumed his course. I kept watching as we passed, wondering if he'd get pushed over again, but he did not.  I shrugged.  One of those AZ gusts. A few minutes later, the other  sailboat, this time some species of open cat boat about 18' long, came around Windy Hill under a deeply reefed sail. We waved as we passed, and I rolled in my genoa bit as the wind became a bit gusty.

The wind was pretty fluky. It kept changing direction and intensity. I rolled in genoa, I rolled out genoa. I jibed about 20 times. All this goofing around with sails was interfering  with some quality munchie eating time, but I persevered,  and ran the entire distance, dripping with pickle juice,  stepping on spilled goldfish crackers, to a waypoint I had made that marked a good approach into the cove. My brilliant plan was  to attempt my first anchoring under sail alone. When I hit the waypoint, I hove to and prepared the anchor and rode for my imminent arrival. Once I was hove too, I realized that the wind was gusting pretty good-- But I did not reduce sail,  anticipating less wind once inside the cove. 

I fetched the anchor off its bracket on the pulpit and brought it back to the cockpit, leading the rode outside of the shrouds. I fed the 10 feet of chain into a 5 gallon bucket, and positioned the anchor for a quick deployment from the cockpit.  Then I set course into Why Cove.  I noticed a large party barge anchored inside the cove, and several jet skis were blasting about inside. Plus I could see a couple of bass boats.  Why Cove was busier than I had ever seen.  I was a bit nervous about all the traffic interfering with my planned anchoring adventure, but pressed on.

Right about then, I got hit by a serious gust of wind that flattened the boat.  She went over much faster than I had ever experienced, and was in seconds  shipping water over the cockpit gunwales.  I watched the sails slap the water as the wind sang in my ears.  Through the open companionway, I saw the Stuff Stowed To Starboard make a graceful flight to to kiss the Stuff Stowed To Port. All of this occurred in slow motion, of course, and I was kind of surprised to find myself analytically estimating how likely I was to start shipping water in the cabin as I hung on for dear life. Eventually I remembered to cast loose the sheets, and the boat popped right back up, none the worse for wear, though El Capitan was having mild Heart Palpitations.

I quickly got the boat hove to and dropped all sail.  To hell with this anchoring under sail crap.  I'm firing up Mr. Tohatsu and getting out of this screwy wind.  We chugged past the houseboat and jet skis and made our way into Why Cove without further drama.

Once I got to my anchoring spot, I dropped the hook and let out a generous scope. Dinner and Cocktail Hour went as planned.  Soon it was bedtime. As I drifted off to sleep, I reflected on what had happened.  In retrospect, my mistakes were obvious:

• I should have paid a bit more attention to my inner voice when contemplating whether or not to launch.

• When running, it never seems as windy as it actually is. I sailed along blissfully, shoveling trail mix into my gaping maw, without a clue how strong the wind actually was.
• Seeing the other boats rounding up, and under seriously reduced sail, should have given me a clue, but it did not-- I was too busy stuffing my face with a large (and vexingly drippy) sandwich.
• I always wear a harness when I am sailing with the kids, and when I'm moving about on the deck.  I wasn't snapped in when I got knocked down, despite the obviously flaky conditions.  I should have been-- If I had fallen overboard, I would have been blown offshore, and it was a long way to the other side of the lake. As soon as it became apparent that the wind was stronger than I expected, I should have snapped in.
• I left the companionway open.  Should have closed it, no matter how much that would have interfered with fetching various food items.
• As is my usual custom, I did not fasten the latches to hold the daggerboard in place.  If we had gone much past 90 degrees in the knockdown, the daggerboard could have slid up into the cabin.  That would adversely impact the righting moment, (ya think?).  I believe I will fasten the holddowns every time from now on.  It only takes a minute, and might preclude having to explain to Sweetie why I made the kids swim across the lake after the boat sank halfway across.

Nonetheless, nautical catastrophe was averted, no thanks to the idiot-in-command.  Next time I'll be more careful.

Here's some pictures of the non-gnarly part of the sailing adventure, starting with the world's finest computer desk:

A peaceful Arizona anchorage, with bonus saguaros:

To the bottom right of the above picture is the nook that Felicidade & I stuffed ourselves into as recounted in a recent SCA article. Bessie the Lake Kraaken was perched on the hill on the right side of the picture.  I braved cow poop and spiky things to climb to the top of the hill  to get cell phone coverage and report in to the Admiral. 

The lake is so high, it's overflowing.  A lot of formerly dry stuff is now drowned, and eager to snatch any passing sailboats and send them to a watery doom. Here's a rather creepy looking tree:

That's all for now, the Honeydo list beckons.  Fair winds!

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Now, I'm not some kind of hairy-giant-supersailor. Compared to anyone likely to read this, I'm a noob.  I am in the early stages of learning how to navigate my tiny vessel while avoiding serious consequences like sinking, lawyers, drowning, setting the marina on fire, etc. I am stumbling along like everyone else, learning as I go. Perhaps in a decade or so I can intone with authority on matters nautical, and pass judgment on those whose performance does not measure up to my lofty ideals.

Which makes this post a bit of a dilemma for me. On one hand, what the heck do I know?  On the other hand, well, I just can't help myself sometimes.  So here we go.

Back in the day, I used to be a pilot. No, I was not Chuck Yeager or anything remotely resembling him, but I used to fly around Northern California in small rented planes, going after the $200 cheeseburger, and taking various hot women for plane rides.  The ladies were generally unimpressed (with one exception, who currently happens to be the lovely Admiral), but I did learn some things about personal responsibility.  My flight instructor, a great fellow named Rodney Janssen, had a mantra that he drilled into my brain at every opportunity: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. Aviate meant fly the damn airplane--  Everything else is secondary to that. Once you've taken care of Aviating, Navigate-- Stay found, and know where you're going. Once you've taken care of those two things, then you can jabber on the radio, or Communicate. Rodney used to pound that mantra into me so much that I began adding stuff to it-- Aviate, Navigate, Communicate, Flaggelate, and Fornicate!  Only once did Rodney threaten to forcibly eject me from the Cessna at 8,000 feet.

Anyway, even I was eventually able to understand the point that Rodney was making.  It boils down to the concept of the "Pilot In Command". This is a term with both documentary and legal implications, as in "The Pilot In Command was eating strawberries off the ample cleavage of the female passenger when the aircraft impacted the bridge", or, more commonly,  per FAR (Federal Aviation Regulations) part 1.1:

Pilot in command means the person who:

(1) Has final authority and responsibility for the operation and safety of the flight;

(2) Has been designated as pilot in command before or during the flight; and

(3) Holds the appropriate category, class, and type rating, if appropriate, for the conduct of the flight.

Any pilot will tell you that being alone in an airplane up in the sky is special. Your skills, and the continued structural integrity of the aircraft are the only thing keeping you alive.  99.99999% of the time you can relax and enjoy the scenery.  The other 0.000001% of the time you're landing in the Hudson, praise Sully. But bottom line, It's all you, Bud.  If you screw up, panic, or suddenly forget how to fly the airplane, you'll be the first person to arrive at the scene of the crash.  If you get confused in your navigation, you run out of gas halfway to Hawaii. If you get attacked by demons and start speaking in tongues, the FAA will want to talk to you after you blunder through their airspace singing to Beelzebub.  Nobody is going to help you-- No matter what deity happens to be your Copilot. It's you, and nobody else. From the moment you untie the airplane to the moment you reattach the tethers, you hold your fate in your hands.

Now, I know you hold your fate in your hands when you are doing lots of other things, like driving a car, riding a bicycle, making explosives, bungee jumping, asking girls on dates, etc.  But there is a whole different thing about decisions made in the air compared to, say, decisions about whether to have another helping of bacon.

Which brings me to sailing. It seems to me that some people should not be allowed to take a watercraft any further offshore than they are able to swim.

Venturing forth on the sea has traditionally been an awesome way for one to inadvertently remove oneself from the gene pool. Since the first flea-infested caveman sailed a log over the horizon to his doom, sailors have been discovering that the sea can be dangerous. I learned this fairly early on: In the Navy, I once rode a frigate between two typhoons in the South China Sea. I remember green water above the bridge, which itself was 60 feet above the waterline. The seas carried away some external fire hoses, and tore a hydrant off the fore deck.  We had a geyser there for a while before Damage Control could locate the valve to shut it off. When things settled down, we discovered the superstructure had cracked for about 12 feet at the deck line, from the impact of seas. This on a warship, built to take battle damage. That experience told me things about the power of the sea that a childhood spent watching breakers land on Fort Cronkhite Beach only hinted at. Later in my life, exploring San Francisco Bay in various boats and  sea kayaks provided further lessons on the sea. I've never survived the Perfect Storm, but I don't need to.  I get it.

When you venture out onto what is essentially a hostile environment, you need to be Pilot In Command, whether you're 6,000 feet in the air or sailing across Raccoon Straits. If you're on a boat, when things go amiss you may have more time to deal with it than the guy in the airplane, but the consequences of failing to deal with it effectively can be just as serious. Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. On the water, you need to be  a sailor.  Or you need to be back home, safe on the couch, reading Joshua Slocum.

Lots of sailing publications relate  the misadventures of various people on the water. A few years back, some guy was cruising at night in the Sea Of Cortez, and ran up on a sandbar at O-dark thirty. In his story, he relates how the first thing he did upon coming to an unexpected halt was fetch the flares and fire them off into the night.  Huh?  You just ran aground and the first thing you think of is to launch a flare? Personally, I'd be working to get the boat back in deep water, not rooting around in a locker for the flare gun. This guy was not acting like a Pilot In Command--  Instead of taking responsibility and dealing with the situation, his first reaction was to send flares into the sky in a fruitless plea for salvation from the cosmos (he was far offshore, and there was nobody but Neptune to see his pyrotechnic show).  If I remember correctly, the boat was lost, though all crew were eventually rescued.

A more recent tale recounted how a fellow was motoring along halfway to Bermuda, when a passenger noticed water in the galley sink, which was a sign that the bilge pump was working.  Without knowing the cause of the water inflow, the guy decides to issue a mayday call. Upon further investigation it was discovered that a part had broken on the engine and the water pump was transferring sea water into the boat. They shut down the engine, and the water stopped.  The mayday call was canceled, and the worst thing to come out of that was the boater had to actually use his sails to get to his destination.

Mark me as old-fashioned, but to me a mayday call is not something you just toss out in the aether.  At least the flare guy probably only annoyed a couple of seagulls-- Mayday guy probably caused adrenaline squirtage for a 400 mile radius, and possibly the mobilization of who knows how many coast guard people. To me, a mayday call should be reserved for those holy-crap-save-my-doomed-ass moments, not for "yikes, our bilge pump is running and I'm scared!".  A Pilot In Command would have figured out what the problem was before bleating for help on the radio.  Jeesh.

Parenthetically, I understand being scared.  If water was coming into my boat I'd clench up a bit too. But I submit that if you are going to take your boat across open water, to Bermuda no less, you better be prepared to deal with water coming in before you untie from the dock.  And your plan should not be to scream for help. Pilot. In. Command.

Those are just two examples, but many more can be found. I seems to me that there is a growing percentage of boaters, versus sailors, out there on the water. Remember those poor football player guys that went offshore in Florida, and got swamped and drowned?  Boaters.  They took to sea in an entirely unsuitable vessel. I'm sure the conditions were nice when they started, and if they had stayed 10 feet off the shoreline there would have been no problem, but the guy that made the choice to go offshore in that boat was not behaving like a Pilot In Command.  At the very least, he had a lack of imagination. A true sailor would recognize that the boat was unsuitable for most potential conditions; a boater just wants to go fishing. Or water-skiing. or jet-skiing. 

I enjoy walking the docks;  many of the powerboats are very swoopy and cool, but would scare the crap out of me in a seaway.  Someone thinking like a  Pilot In Command would  decide not to go to sea on anything that might capsize if hit by a wave in the wrong place.

While waiting for a launch at the lake one blustery day, I watched a bass boat get  pooped as it was being put in the water.  The boat did not ship too much water, but conditions were such that it could have, and possibly sunk at the ramp.  That would have been embarrassing, but what it the same thing happened out in the middle of the lake?  When it was my turn to go I was a little nervous, but had my daggerboard cranked down immediately after being cast off, and when I put the main up I had already put two reefs in while in the parking lot.  My sailboat, I submit, was much better suited for  the conditions than a bass boat.  Personally, I would never have launched in any kind of powerboat in those conditions. But that fisherman, plus several others, went out on the lake that day. I think I was being a good Pilot In Command by (a) having a seaworthy boat, and (b) taking protective precautions before launching.  The other guys, not so much, in my opinion.

So I guess what I'm grousing about is that too many people seem to be unprepared to go to sea-- They don't understand the potential hazard, or don't care.  They chose unsuitable craft, or don't understand how to manage an appropriate boat.  And when something goes wrong, they bleat for help on the radio.  They Communicate, but fail on the rest of Rodney's mantra.   I fear that we are going to see an increasing number of mishaps befalling such people.  It's kind of like all the fat yuppies riding motorcycles you see nowadays-- Lots more people are doing it, with a corresponding rise in the number of people plowing into the sides of minivans.  How many of the people buying sailboats are actually sailors, and how many will activate their EPIRB when the head gets clogged?

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But sometimes, ping is not so good a sound. Especially when it comes from the nether regions of a sailboat. I have gained a new appreciation of ping as an opening act for potential disaster through a couple of experiences.

The second time I had ever sailed my Potter P19, I was lowering the mast for trailering: The mast got down to around 45 degrees, and the shackle holding the block and tackle to the gin pole decides it is a good time to practice auto-releasing. Ping! in slow motion, I watch the mast drop the remaining 45 degrees and bounce off the companionway hatch, accompanied by a painful crunch! as the vang shackle punched a neat rectangular hole in the hatch. Fortunately, the aluminum bludgeon missed my daughter in the cockpit, though her tender ears did receive some rather salty commentary from the stupefied Captain Dad. Besides the perforated hatch, no other damage, except to my daughter's innocence and my opinion of certain kinds of shackles. But the thing I remember most vividly from that was the ping! just before the mast toppled.

My next ping-related calamity was shortly after I had discovered the marvel that is a quick-release pin. What a boon for the trailer sailor! No more of this fooling around with fussy little wire circle cotter pin thingies that were diabolically difficult to thread into the correct hole unless blood was sacrificed in the process. No more chasing the damn things down the launch ramp to the amusement of the (pin-free) powerboat guys. No more 45 minute rig-the-sailboat flails while bored children attempt to drown themselves off the end of the finger pier. No, just stick it in there and go! When de-rigging, push the little button and presto! A brilliant idea. I wanted to buy a case of the things and install 'em all over my boat.

I connected my forestay using one of those quick release pins one fine day. The boat was rigged in record time, and my sons and I were soon out on the lake, tacking about and having a good old time in about 5 knots of breeze. Then: ping! The quick-release dives for Davy Jones' Locker, releasing the forestay from the deck. One minute I'm sailing along, the next I am watching my rig perform a maneuver that I had never before experienced, or imagined.

Fortunately, the roller reefing line, skinny little thing that it is, held the reefing drum close enough to the front of the boat that nothing unduly embarrassing happened after the quick-release jumped ship. I retained enough presence of mind to immediately turn the boat downwind, which took the pressure off the skinny line, and cast off the jib sheet. This time it was the boys' turn to learn some new sailor terminology as Captain Dad scrambled forward to interrupt a slow-motion dismasting at sea. While they observed, wide eyed, from the cockpit I managed to secure the forestay (using the anchor rode no less, though I had to drag out 20 feet of chain first!), all the while trying to explain to the boys how to keep the boat going downwind with shouts, curses, and wild one-handed gestures, as the flailing genoa wrapped itself around my head.

Disaster thus averted, albeit comically, we limped back to the ramp under power where I replaced the delinquent quick-release pin with, you guessed it, a regular pin and circle wire thingy. Lesson Learned-- Quick release Good when done intentionally. Not so good otherwise.

So now I have a more visceral appreciation of ping! than I did when the sound was simply two champagne flutes. As a sailor, I am determined to never hear that particular sound again while on a boat, if for no other reason than to avoid the looks from The Wife when the kids demonstrate their new grasp of nautical terminology learned from Dad on the high seas. I now scrutinize anything on the boat and try to anticipate any potential ping-crunch-dagnabbit scenarios before they happen. Anything that even looks like it might go ping! at an inopportune moment is treated with deep suspicion, or replaced outright.

So far so good. Now if I can just do something about the gurgles, thumps, squeaks, groans and pops when trying to sleep in a bumpy anchorage, I'll be a happy camper.

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Interesting clip. The boat didn't right itself in another clip with the board up.—Eds

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