A lot of us like to tinker with our boats. Out on the interwebs you can find all kinds of sites where owners have executed modifications that make their boats more useful, correct shortcomings,  or simply personalize their mass-produced plastic tubs a bit.  And then there's the people who build their own boats, a group whose penchant for personalization knows no limits. 

I have a great fear of doing anything permanent to my boat. I know it's irrational, but the thought of drilling holes in the virginal fiberglass just gives me the willies. One time I had to attach a cable tie to hold some wires to the interior of the cabin; I put it off for at least a year, then when I actually resolved to do the deed, I found myself barely able to drill two tiny, 1/8" deep holes for the stainless steel screws. I stared at the job site, breaking into a hot sweat (this is Arizona-- Nobody does the cold-sweat thing out here), and finally managed to force myself to drill the holes, all the while in near panic that I was going to punch through to the topsides. Everything about that experience made me quiver, and I felt extremely guilty as I watched the fiberglass tailings drifting down from the holes while I drilled. It turned out fine, but I still bear the emotional scars.

I have this ragged hole in my companionway hatch, a souvenir of my second voyage on the Potter. Since 2006 I have made ongoing resolutions to fix the hole. I placed a temporary piece of duct tape over it  back in '06 to keep the elements out while I girded my loins for the repair.  I'm still girding. And we won't talk about my pathetic loins, thank you very much.  I even bought a Dremel tool, including the Bonus Testosterone Toolpack, to facilitate my fiberglass repair project.  Larry Pardey, I'm not.  My boat glares at me reproachfully every time I go up to the lake and replace the weathered piece of duct tape. The Dremel tool sits in my garage grousing about it's girly-man owner.

What's really weird about this is I have no problem wrenching the crap out of anything but my boat. I have designed and/or built, with my own hands, 6 houses. Water beater blows up? No problemo. Electronics fried on stove? Piece of cake. Wife doesn't like door into the den?  Move the door to a different wall, child's play.  When I was young and stupid, replacing a clutch,  or broken valve pushrod on a small-block chevy didn't faze me in the least.  My wife's friends all express admiration at her success in landing a "handy" husband.  My wife takes a different view, naturally.  To her I'm kind of an idiot savant who may be able to replace a toilet, but can barely drink a glass of water without drowning myself. But I'm actually pretty good at this kind of stuff-- Just not on my little fiberglass baby.

Anyhow. Thinking of my wussiness as a boat butcher, I am reminded of one fellow who is about as far away from me on the Boat Modification Audacity Scale as one can possibly be. This guy took a West Wight Potter, identical to my poor boat, and did things to it that make me, a wannabe naval architect, drool in admiration.  His name is Charlie, and you can visit his website here. 

Potters are huge inside, and can store a lot of crap. But getting to that crap can be problematic, especially in a seaway when everything migrates, unseen, to the furthest nether regions of a locker. Charlie, not afraid to wield his manly Dremel with authority, solved that problem in clever and appealing ways. Here's a picture of the galley he built:

He ripped away a large chunk of fiberglass and built a multifunction galley unit that completely reworks the functionality of the stock "galley" area.  If you go to his site you can see many more pictures that show how wonderfully useful this mod is.

Potters have a silly little molded sink on the port side, that for me at least, serves more as a catch basin for random gear like GPS, cell phone, beer, etc.  Here's what Charlie did with his:

Just for comparison, here's what the stock version looks like:

The amazing thing about this is the origami-like sink/table combination Charlie designed.  On his website you can view an interactive page that shows you how all the various pieces slide in and out and rearrange themselves for the desired purpose. Here's one configuration:

One thing that annoys the crap out of me, and quite possibly most of you, is the mast compression post on my Potter. I have to twist myself into a pretzel to stuff myself into the V-berth, and reverse the process to escape. Charlie solved that problem with an ingenious aluminum arch that really opens up the interior:

And the arch before installation:

There are more modifications, including a really interesting lifting rudder:

A cockpit table:

There are many more modifications, and Charlie has done an excellent job of documenting his work.  I am ashamed to be such a feeb when I look at what he has accomplished with his Potter.  I highly suggest you visit his website, if for nothing else then to admire his craftsmanship.  And perhaps gain some inspiration.  I know I'm inspired-- I think I'm ready to go put a fresh layer of duct tape on the hole in my companionway hatch!  Maybe I'll document that process for you blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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This is a link to a website called The Microship Project, in which a crazed geek named Steven Roberts expounds on the construction of a very interesting, albeit very nerdy, trimaran:

The author is some kind of crazed engineer, or perhaps mad scientist, who takes what should be a straightforward idea, like a recumbent bike or small multihull, and transmogrifies it Frankenstein-like into a human-machine hybrid bristling with electronics and clever mechanical gadgetry.  If you are a geek like me, you will find the details fascinating, and perhaps even inspiring-- Mr. Roberts' treatise on cardboard-fiberglass composite construction led me to devise a simple treadmill desk, at which I am currently writing this very blog post (currently passing 4.3 miles).

Now, I know I posted previously about the evils of complexity.  When & if I build a boat, it will have no systems more complex than can be repaired with duct tape and bailing wire. And possibly sugarless gum.  But there is something deep inside of me  that really gets off on triumphant engineering-- And this guy has done it in spades. The link I posted at the top discusses the engineering of the boat in great detail, and explains how & why everything was done.  Even if you never try to build anything as wild as this trimaran, I feel that the thought process laid out on the site is worth viewing.  The construction techniques are applicable to any boat construction project.  And the boat itself is actually pretty cool.

For a while now, I have wanted to build a boat-- It's like this continuous background noise in my little brain.  I am not quite ready to take the plunge and try and convince The Admiral to disburse funds, but the itch needs to be scratched.  One thing I'm seriously tempted to try is to build a small experimental boat using the aforementioned cardboard composite construction.  I love the idea of recycling a waste material, and the resulting structure can be made amazingly strong. Of course, I know that I'd be flying along at 12 knots out in the middle of the lake one day, hit a floating log or something, and be forced to try and make the shore before my paper boat dissolved around me. But The whole concept--  A carboard boat!  Is just too cool to resist.

I have all kinds of goofy ideas regarding my dream boat, including a mini sampan, a HarryProa, and something like Tony Bigras' Miss Cindy. I think I could build something fairly cheaply out of cardboard as a proof of concept. Then I could take it  to a local body of water and play with it, close to the shore, until I am satisfied that the concept is workable.  Then I could remake the boat out of real boatbuilding materials (Home Depot plywood). I'll let you know if anything actually comes out of this lunacy.  In the meantime, go check out the Microship project.  It's some very cool stuff.

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People keep telling me I should quit my day job and write a book.  Or maybe they mean write a book, become a gazillionaire,  and then quit the day job. I have trouble keeping that all straight.  

Anyway, sometimes that idea sounds pretty appealing, but then I gaze  into the soulful and hungry eyes of my children, and think of how they're already eating us out of house and home. If I quit my day job I had better have a lucrative contract lined up, or they're going to hit me over the head with my laptop one day and barbecue me out in the backyard to fend off starvation.

Just kidding.  The kids are vegetarians.  More likely the neighborhood will be quickly stripped of all gardens, fruit trees, and decorative shrubbery before the chilluns eat Dad. But I'm not quite ready to quit the day job just yet.  For one thing, I have no idea what I'd write. An important rule of creative writing is that the author ought to actually know a thing or two about his subject-- About all I know for sure about my favorite subject (not THAT favorite subject. Jeesh) is that it's a miracle I haven't managed to crash my boat into an IRS building or something.  The full extent of my nautical klutziness has yet to be revealed, but I'm sure I have at least a couple more years of silly blog posts to write before disgorging a Magnum Opus.  A book might be expecting too much, unless I can discover some captivating twist involving nose hairs and varnish, or something along those lines that Wooden Boat readers might enjoy.

We have a local author, a lady who wrote some book about vampires (named Eddie or something) who fly about doing supernatural vampire things and making out with nubile young women wearing corsets. The book (now a Major Motion Picture or two or five) is causing major hormone malfunctions all over this corner of the galaxy.  Obviously, the teenage-girl-and-bloodsucking-vampire angle is hot; I keep thinking that I need to write a book like that so I can buy 16 Lexuses for my cat. But I know very little about hunky vampires.  (And even less about nubile women in corsets, now that I think about it). What I need to do is work in some kind of sailing angle.  

I suggested to my teenage daughter that we should go up to the boat, where she would lounge around on the focs'le acting like Vampire Bait while I jotted  down ideas about how to work the angle into some spine-tingling nautical Nosferatu story worthy of being picked up by Hollywood:

The sailboat was on a broad reach across the still waters of Creepy Key, the full moon shimmering off the quicksilver like surface. Belladonna was chilled, but had nothing to cover her bountiful cleavage but a Type III PFD, which would not do at all when her forbidden vampire  love, Hector, managed to gnaw his way out of the chain locker. Belladonna sighed with irritation; Captain Dad was so unreasonable! "Father," she said petulantly, "can we let Hector out now?  I promise I won't let him play with my tiller tamer anymore"

"Dammit, nubile daughter, mind your heading!  The main is luffing! Sheet it in post haste. And no we will not let that demon spawn out of his prison until we land on Forbidden Isle and buy you some clothes! And did you finish your Language Arts homework like your mother told you to? Forsooth!"

I thought that was a pretty good beginning, but the glare I received from the daughter suggested otherwise.  And having her younger brother ask what "nubile" meant kind of put the kibosh on that train of thought.  

OK,  regroup. There's that lady in the UK who was penniless when she wrote that book about a teenage wizard (and her children might have been eyeing her for supper, for all I know).  Now she has more money than God.  If I could work out some piggyback thing, I'd be golden-- After all, my boat is a West Wight Potter, and Harry Potter is serious juju capable of generating barges full of money for old whats-her-face out in England.   Harry West Wight Potter-- It's perfect.  This time it was the twin boys who received the invitation to go on location for inspiration.  They were not sure about the offer:

#1 Son: Can we bring the Wii?
Future Gazillionaire Author Dad: Uh, I guess so. No, wait a second, there's no power--
#2 Son: Will there be vampires at the boat?
FGAD: No. This is just a way to get inspired for the book.
#2 Son.  What book?
FGAD: A book I'm going to write and make all of us filthy rich.
#1 Son: I want to be a vampire.  That would be cool!
#2 Son: You can't be a vampire. You're a vegetarian.
#1 Son: You can too  be a vegetarian vampire!
#2 Son: Can Not!
#1 Son: Dad, can vampires be vegetarian?
FGAD: Uh... Go ask your mother.

So maybe the concept needs some more work. But at least I have a catchy title: Harry West Wight Potter And the Hunky Vampires Of Teenage Lust. In the Caribbean. Now with Werewolves! 

I think I'm on to something.  What do you think?

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In the days of yore, rats were a big problem on ships. They still are. One of my enduring memories of my navy life  was encountering my first rat guard on a dock line. If you've never encountered an Industrial Rat Guard before, its a conical piece of metal, about 3 feet in diameter, that encircles a hawser. Nefarious rodents bent on invading one's vessel are confounded by the thing and cannot scurry up the rope to the ship proper. It took me a moment to figure out what those odd-looking thingies were when I first saw them. When the realization bloomed I was just amazed that we still had to worry about that in the 20th century. Once I gained that insight, other things began to make sense as well-- The  quarterdeck, for  example: It was manned 24/7, and not simply to give the drunken sailors something to salute on their way back aboard.  Maybe the tradition arose out of the the necessity to make sure no 4-legged vermin snuck aboard via the wide gangplank along with the enlisted men.  What better way to prevent that than to station some of your basic junior braid out there, monitoring the quarterdeck and keeping a weather eye for rats attempting to infiltrate?  And it wouldn't hurt in case some random admiral decided to come aboard and inspect the heads at O dark-thirty, either.

The rat guards seemed to work pretty well, as I never saw any (four-legged) rats on any of the ships I served on.  Too bad they never invented a cockroach guard.  We had lots of cockroaches.  Big ones, little ones, hissing ones, squeaking ones, flying ones, black, brown and yellow ones.  All of them very quick and far too creepy-crawly for my liking. I suppose it shouldn't have been too surprising considering some of the vermin-infested hellholes we visited during our cruises overseas. Most of the time the bugs stayed well hidden, being sensitive creatures who like us even less than we like them. But if you timed it right, you could come full face with the secondary crew that cohabits any ship. My most impressive such encounter was when I was enduring mess duty. 

On the Navy ships your privilege as an enlisted peon is to spend some period of time as a galley slave. No military ship caries enough cooks to perform all the dirty jobs that feeding hundreds, or thousands of men involves, so the solution is to yank random low-value enlisted me out of their normal assignments and consign them, for months, to the depths of the kitchen to perform all the foul deeds that the real cooks were too busy to handle. Have you ever peeled 500 pounds of potatoes?  If not, you have not truly experienced life, I assure you.  Most of the time, though, the cooks did not trust us to actually handle real food.  Instead, we galley slaves were tasked with cleaning up after the horde had finished each of the four meals served at sea. Much of this was the expected stuff, not unlike being a husband-- Take out the garbage, refill the ketchup dispensers, slop the hogs (well, fishes), wipe the vomit off the walls when conditions were stormy, that kind of stuff.  All good fun. I was one of the slaves toiling in the scullery, which was a small steam-filled room right out of Dante's Inferno containing a large machine whose purpose was to wash vast piles of unimaginably nasty dishware.  The sailors would deposit their trays through a small window; we'd toss the food detritus and leftovers and place the trays in racks.  When the rack was full, we'd shove the rack into the maw of the machine, and with any luck, the beast would scrub the trays and silverware shiny clean, to emerge steaming hot out the rear of the machine.

One quirk of the scullery was when the dishes had all been done, we'd have to clean the machine itself. We found that the best way to do that was to drop a packet of Bug Juice into the water reservoir and run the thing for about 15 minutes.-- When finished, the machine was gleaming inside.  Bug Juice, in case you've never encountered it, was what passed for  Department Of Defense kool-aid back in the 70's Navy.  It was green, or red, or kind of yellowish, and tasted like, well, koolaid, I suppose.  I stopped drinking the stuff after I witnessed what it did to the insides of our big stainless steel washing machine.

Anyway, one night after we had finished the job  and closed everything up, one of us peons realized that we hadn't run Bug Juice through the dishwasher.  Being the most superfluous peon, I got "volunteered" to go back and complete the vital mission. I made my way back to the mess decks, and slid open the door to the dark  scullery.  As I did so I thought I heard something, but as the sound didn't repeat, I figured I was imagining things.  I fumbled around for the light switch, and when I finally found it, flipped it on.

The secret life of the scullery was thus revealed to me.  The walls were moving. Thousands of large, small, and medium cockroaches were scurrying around every surface of the scullery-- Walls, ceiling, benches, floor. I stood there, stunned, and watched a teeming mass of bugs fleeing the light.  It was like a horror movie.  In the scullery, No One Can Hear You Scream, to paraphrase the Alien movie. But the last thing they were interested in was some filthy human, and within seconds they had vanished from sight, save for one befuddled bug who circled around on the ceiling in a panic  before finally breaking loose and dropping to the floor three feet in front of me. Cockroach Fail, dude. In seconds even that poor klutz had disappeared into the nether regions of the scullery.

Never mind 500 pounds of potatoes; if you have not walked into a dark room containing 500 pounds of cockroaches, you have not lived.  Try it some time!

Fast forward 34 years. I was thinking about this because of the sailing trip I took last weekend. You see, about two years back, we picked up a mouse on board the Potter. It seems the rodent snuck into a grocery bag full of provisions that  I had foolishly left in the garage overnight.  Now, I normally try to rescue any critter that won't hurt the kids, wife, pets, or myself. I am very proud of a humane mousetrap I constructed one time, for example,  to catch a mouse who was living under our oven; using a baking sheet, casserole dish, bamboo skewers, and peanut butter,  I did MacGuyver proud and we were soon admiring a totally cute, and totally terrified little creature the trap had snared.  I released the animal, unharmed, in the yard of a cranky neighbor who was always complaining about everything in sight. That was one of my prouder moments, and one of the few times I have  provided a positive example for the children. 

We won't talk about my alternative role as Ninja Scorpion Assassin, in which I prowl around the house exterior  in the dark with a UV light and death ray spray can to  dispatch any scorpion I can find. The Wife is adamant that our children shall not be stung by scorpions, so I do my manly duty. Even after Cocktail Hour.  I don't like killing scorpions one bit, but it's them or us.

But I digress. As much as I wanted to, I wasn't likely to catch the mouse using my baking pan-casserole-dish contraption, not on a boat in dry storage 100 miles from my house.  Every time we went sailing, I cleaned up the mouse poop and left the companionway wide open, with stuff piled nearby, so the critter could escape.  But for two years, the mouse remained stowed away despite my best efforts. I don't know what the thing was eating, or how it survived inside its fiberglass prison, but it did.  (I tell you, anything that lives in the desert is seriously tough, from the plants upwards. Even the grass has spikes).  I finally had enough the last time I took the boat out, and set a trap for the mouse.  Last weekend, I opened the boat up and discovered the dessicated corpse of my little stowaway. 

That evening, Felicidade was securely anchored in Why Cove. I was relaxing in the cockpit, watching the airplanes on their trajectories to and from Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix, 80 miles away. The stars were twinkling, the moon was creeping up from behind the ridge to the East, which was backlit with a soft glow. The land around me was dark and mysterious, with a single light visible far across the lake on the shoreline, probably some campers. Ducks floated by in the still water, and every few minutes, a fish would jump for an insect. It was beautiful and peaceful, and kind of lonely.

 I had decided to come alone this time, not wanting to expose the kids to the murdered mouse. Swinging alone on the hook, I was feeling guilty about the mouse, and for some reason, very isolated from the rest of the world. I thought of my family back at the house, executing the nighttime rituals, and considered calling them, but the phone had no service.  So I sat there and thought about life. My eyes were drawn, over and over, to the solitary light miles away in the distance, as if I could extract some small measure of companionship from people who had no clue that I was hidden in the dark land across the water from their campsite. It was an interesting feeling, the solitude.  It was tolerable, knowing the the next day I would be back at home cleaning up cat barf while the kids raised hell all over the house. But for an hour or two I felt a taste of what a long-distance solo voyager must feel when the land falls below the horizon. Most of the time I am untroubled by such solitude; this time, though, it was kind of difficult to deal with.

I toasted my friends across the lake, and my former stowaway,  with my wine glass. Then I fired up the IPod.  Soon I had rousing music heralding the moonrise, and Two Buck Chuck easing the loneliness.  Dinner was soon ready, and Life Was Good.  Again.  But I was happy to get home the next day.

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I think I spent more time agonizing over the name of my boat than I did over the names of my children.  The kids were actually pretty easy-- Though it was tempting to just make stuff up ("La Velveeta"), the Trophy Wife put the kibosh on anything too insane. We ended up stringing various combinations of family names together to come up with kid labels that won't cause the children to sue our pants off when they turn 18. So our kids have distinctive names that reflect family history, and stand out in a sea of Madisons and Jacobs in the school classrooms.  And they don't cause snickers amongst immature people like me.

The process had its ups and downs (Wife: "We are not naming this child Samson Bookum, you idiot."), but we always wrapped it up well before the anticipated delivery date. Having twins did throw a bit of a curve in the deliberations, I'll admit. It's bad enough coming up with a name for one kid-- Try it for two. (Or ye gods, imagine being Octomom!). I for one probably  enjoyed the process more than I should have:

So The Wife moderated my loonier nomenclature urges, and the children probably won't end up in therapy, or starring in a Woody Allen movie.  Sometimes I don't appreciate the woman enough.

Anyway, the birth of my boat was almost as exciting as the arrival of my offspring. It was certainly a cleaner process, and there were not as many frightening noises involved. But once I had this big shiny white blob sitting in my backyard, the task of naming her hit me like a breaking sea. Right off the bat, The Wife categorically vetoed any name that referenced her: "I don't want my name plastered on the sides of this thing when you run it up on the rocks," she explained, fixing me with a steely glare.  She was not thrilled with my counter-offer to use a random ex-girlfriend's name, either, for some reason.

I solicited names from my relatives, which produced many interesting suggestions, the rejection of  which caused sporadic eruptions of hurt feelings across the  nation. Imagine explaining to you mother in law why you rejected her third cousin's fourth daughter's middle name: "Kudzu is a fine middle name, for sure,  but I don't think it will fit my boat's personality, thank you very much."

I figured I could go hit the interwebs for a boat name.  After all, there are pet name generators (now I know that somewhere out there are ferrets named Angel Poof, and Weazle Beans),  and baby name generators (Maximus Jasper, Bucephalus, Mbelisame, Blade); there had to be a boat name generator. Sure enough, I found a bunch of those.  Some of them even showed what your chosen name would look like plastered across an unsuspecting transom, so you could try it on for size:

As cool as that was, when I randomly generated names, most of them were pretty stupid, even by my standards.  Wet Dream? Puh-lease. After a while I bailed on the Boat Name Generator approach.  I was beginning to feel kind of dirty, and felt the boat deserved better than to be saddled with a name like Aquaholic or Fuddle Duck.  My next tactic, searching the internet for lists of boat names, was kind of depressing, because I found that all the imaginative, unique names I came up with were already assigned to thousands of lesser boats. Kismet-- What a great word, and perfect name for my boat.  Unfortunately, it's a perfect name for other people's boats too.  Including powerboats. 

I was not going to sully my boat with a name favored by stinkpots, dammit.  No Kismet, Obsession, or Money Pit. No Second Mortgage, even.  None of that.

As the maiden voyage weekend approached, I was starting to become desperate. Being a loyal (and appropriately superstitious) subject of King Neptune, a shellback no less, there was no way was I going to sea in an unnamed boat. If I had to name the thing Weazle Beans, I would. I figured that worst case, I could rename the boat when I finally came up with a decent name.  To see what was involved in that process, I googled the renaming ceremony. The steps varied, but for the most part it didn't look too bad, except for the part where you either toss a glass of champagne to Old Neptune, or have some virgin pee on the front of your boat.  What?  Who came up with that?  It's bad enough if someone (virgin or not) barfs on my boat;  I'm not going to let somebody take a whiz all over the foredeck just to complete a stupid renaming ceremony! And as for wasting good booze, shame on you.

Inspiration struck in the middle of the night. I have a bunch of sailing books, of course--  Why not pick a name from the famous boats that I admire?  Not original, I'll admit, but oozing history and meaning. I leapt out of bed and started dragging books off the shelf. Boat names flew by: Trekka, Gypsy Moth, Dove, Tillikum, Spray, Seraphyn.  Nice names, all of them, but none hit the sweet spot.  The last book I picked up was Desperate Voyage, by John Caldwell.  There it was! Pagan.  A perfect name for my boat. Short and sweet. Kind of mysterious, exotic even. And I was getting pretty Desperate to take a Voyage, to be sure.

But The Wife vetoed Pagan. No amount of whining would get her to change her mind. And since I was lobbying for the funds to put the boat in a wet slip at the lake, I felt I had little choice but to accommodate her.  Liberdade, the name of Joshua Slocum's junk-rigged boat, was also summarily dismissed. Grumbling, I retreated to the man-cave to lick my wounds. While licking, I fantasized that I was out on the water, sailing my anonymous little plastic boat.  That would make me happy. Happy... Happiness... Felicidade! The name just kind of poured over me like warm honey.  The Portuguese  spelling of happiness-- Slightly exotic, and meaningful. To my relief, The name was approved by The Admiral.

The name Felicidade has worked out pretty well. Being on the  boat certainly promotes happiness for me, and The Wife is rid of me for a few hours, which seems to improve her mood.  It's a fairly unique name, and if I stretch a little I can almost tie it back to Slocum's Liberdade. So I am happy with it, even if it wasn't my first choice.

But if we have another kid, I'm immediately sneaking downstairs to the hospital office and christening the little cherub Pagan.  Then I'll flee the country in Felicidade before The Wife finds out. Ha!

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The Wife has finally reached the snapping point with the cheapo heads toilets in our house. The damn things keep clogging, with the result that our children are now experts with the plumber's helper at far too tender an age. They complain bitterly about having to do the nasty deed, at which point I remind them that such tasks are precisely the reason we had children in the first place. For some reason that doesn't seem to help their attitude, the ingrates, which makes Wife cranky. Which means we went on a toilet shopping spree one recent day. While giving a test-sit to one particularly fine model in the showroom, my thoughts wandered to a place far, far away. The lake, to be exact.

I follow with squeamish fascination the tales of the Real Sailors (those with installed heads, as opposed to us wannabes) who not only have to deal with clogging on a regular basis, but in order to resolve the issue have to disassemble a Rube Goldberg-level device with numerous crap-encrusted springs, valves, diaphragms, hoses, flappers, pistons, seacocks, siphon breaks, and probably even ball bearings, motors, and Large Hadron Colliders.  After they finish chasing down random parts which are trying to escape to the bilges, the Real Sailor gets to put the whole mess back together again.  Apparently it is traditional to perform these tasks in a seaway, encouraging the most propulsive bouts of seasickness imaginable.  Great stuff.

I am more of the bucket-and-chuck-it school. I have little patience with recalcitrant and complex widgets, especially when they're emitting clouds of sewer gas in my face or dripping unmentionable goop.  Of course I have a porta potti on my boat (and it is actually a pretty civilized little plastic marvel), because I do entertain hopes of convincing the occasional human female to come sailing with me. But even the porta-potti is kind of scary, mostly because of the odd squishing effects (caused by heat softening the plastic) when one tries to use the thing in the Arizona Summertime. It's kind of unnerving, to the point that my preteen twin boys refuse to have anything to do with it. Out on the lake, I hold a boy by the scruff of his life jacket, angled out over the side of the boat, so he can pee.  We try to remember to pee downwind. One time I actually had both boys angled off simultaneously-- While sailing.  That was cool. Not sure how well this will work when the boys outweigh Dad, though. (That'll be another post).

I will grudgingly use a porta-potti, if for nothing else than to keep the federales off my back. But when the rebellion happens, I'm there, man!  I'll even drive over to West Marine and buy a cedar bucket. Vive la caca!

But I digress. The Wife, being a diligent researcher, decided to google toilets in order to figure out what we were going to buy.  After 4 days of googling she landed on YouTube, where thousands of people have posted videos of their toilets flushing.  I am not joking. Go there yourself and check it out (not at work, though, OK?). Some people actually are trying to provide a service, by reviewing their particular Porcelain God, or  comparing Brand X to Brand Y, but a disturbing number are happily filming the toilet flushing away, even with nothing in it, each flush saluted with a pleased thumbs-up or cheerful comment by the cameraman. Lots of people flush goofy stuff in a disconnected toilet, just to watch the bowl drain successfully into a bucket, after which much self-congratulatory glee happens as the camera zooms in on the floating golf balls, smurf toys, or whatever. These people are the Polanskis of Poop.  The Kubricks of Caca. The Fellinis of Feces. The Spielbergs of... Well you get the picture.

One suggestion for those of you out there who are tempted to post videos of your toilet on YouTube: Please describe the nature of the simulated effluent at the beginning of the video, not the end. One guy began with a bowl that looked like the aftermath of a Mexican vacation gone tragically awry. After grossing out the entire internet, he tells us at the end of his video that the noisome concoction was actually just  innocent salt and pepper. Yeah.  Thanks for that.

Not that the manufacturers are any better.  One video had a perfectly normal looking young lady hand-dropping ANSI Standard Simulated Turds into the bowl, each splashdown accompanied by a loud kerplunk of the sort we all know and love.  There was even some kind of-- I kid you not-- template affixed to the seat-- so she had a hole for proper aiming. For good measure she tossed in some precisely wadded up TP,  then flushed the rather unfortunate-looking bowl contents away. She caught the discharge in a colander and held it up, smiling broadly, for our inspection. The video was rated five stars by thousands of viewers.

I realize now that our civilization is doomed.

Anyway, we bought some toilets. Installing them will hopefully be the closest I ever come to the Real Sailor Ritual of getting up close and personal with a diabolical poop machine. So on to the Real Topic.

This post was originally going to be about Typhoons, Hurricanes, and Thunderstorms, but it got hijacked by the Honey-Let's-Go_Shopping-For-Six-Hours festivities.  Considering how long I have been bloviating so far about bodily functions, in order to forestall any complaints about how tedious this post is, I will condense the Typhoon/Hurricane part down to the following:

If you are a trailer sailor and get caught in a Typhoon/Hurricane, then with all due respect, you're a dope and deserve to have your boat deposited upside-down atop an apartment building 15 miles inland.

Alright, then. The coolness of owning a trailersailer came home for me one summer evening a couple of years back. Up to that point, I was certainly very pleased to own a new 19-ft sailboat, but a smallish part of my envy gland was wishing that I was piloting a Valiant 40 over the horizon to Bora Bora instead. I hadn't quite assimilated the "Small boat, Big adventure" philosophy so well encompassed by Small Craft Advisor.

So it was a typical Arizona Monsoon day, with ginormous thunderheads poofing up over the mountains as the Boys & I launched the boat and set off in search of adventure. Because we got a late start, we didn't get a lot of sailing in before it was time to motor off to an anchorage for the night. After about 20 minutes we dropped anchor in the chosen spot, a fairly well protected nook.

After I set the hook and turned off the outboard, the peace and calm I was expecting failed to materialize. I could hear a nearly continuous rumble of thunder from the West, and in the twilight I saw the poofy thunderheads were closer, and arcing and sparking like a discotheque.  It was pretty, but now I was on a boat. With a big shiny aluminum mast. Held in place by a suddenly very puny hook in the mud.

My snug anchorage was protected from most directions, but an Arizona monsoon storm can attack from anywhere. When it hits, it is not uncommon to experience microbursts that snap a mile of thick power poles like toothpicks.  Two years back we had 100 MPH gusts a mile from our house. Worried, I flipped open the cell phone and called The Wife, who in turn fired up the computer and checked the radar for me.  Sure enough, solid red and mad as hell, and heading right for us.  ETA, 1 hour. "Idiot. Don't kill my babies." counseled The Admiral.

Leaping into action,  I yanked the anchor up. As soon as it was secure, we fired up the outboard and made haste back to the launch ramp. In record time we got the boat out of the water and lowered the lightning rod as the strobe lights closed in on us. It was just starting to rain when we parked the boat in the campground next to the ramp.   Eager to try a vicarious Fastnet Force 10/Perfect Storm simulation, We climbed into the boat and battened down the hatches.

Then it hit.  The wind rose to a shriek, rocking the boat on the trailer. Rain slammed the fiberglass hull, making an amazing racket and spurting in through the edges of the companionway. And the lightning. FlashBLAM!  it was right over us, and nearly continuous.  The boys and I grinned at each other.  This was exciting!  Then the hail started.

Right about that time I had an epiphany.  I thought about experiencing this exact same weather out on the water.  With each blast of wind I could imagine worrying about whether the anchor was going to hold. Each blast of lightning might have had our mast beckoning to it. If this cell had hit 1 hour previously, while we were at the anchorage, it would not have been fun-- It would have scary.

But we weren't scared.  This was actually exciting and fun. Right then I realized how utterly cool it is to be able to yank your boat from the teeth of a fierce storm. With a minivan, no less.

As the virtual typhoon raged around us, I took the opportunity to tell the boys of some of the epic storms various sailors had endured at sea, and watched as they imagined, wide eyed, being in this boat, on the water, struggling to keep off a lee shore while a storm pounded away.  I don't think that any dry retelling of a sea story ever matched our experience huddled in the cramped cabin of the Potter that night as the storm raged around us.  It was all very cool until #2 Son announced that he needed to use the head, right at the height of the tempest.

Said boy resolutely cracked the companionway door and scurried topsides into the deluge.  "Dad," he called, "hold my jacket for me." It took me a couple of seconds to realize what he was planning.  I leapt out of the cabin and fixed #2 son with a steely glare befitting of the Captain.  No way I was going to let him pee off the side of the boat in the campground parking lot.   Especially with the elderly campers in the pop-up next door staring curiously at us through a foggy plastic window.

So #2 Son got the full Cape Horn treatment as he climbed down off the boat in the midst of the deluge, buffeted by hail, rain and wind, with thunder and lightning crashing around us. I watched with fatherly pride as he made his way to the campground head, then ran back to the boat, climbed aboard, and dove into the cabin, soaking wet.

Truly, if you are going to go through a gnarly storm in your trailer sailer, the best place to do it is in the parking lot. That, next to the ability to go to windward at 60 knots, is one reason I love small trailerable boats.  No more Valiant 40 envy.  Well, not much anyhow.

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This is a repost of a trip report from 2006. I thought I'd put it up on this blog to dissuade any crazy minivan pilots from attempting a similar stunt.  You've been warned!

January, 2006 - Apache Lake

Since the boys and I had successfully navigated Roosevelt Lake (meaning we managed to sail some and not sink, get dismasted, blow up the boat,  or get hopelessly lost, and that we returned home with the same Boy Count we started with), I decided that for #1 Daughter’s first voyage we’d try a different lake. 

There were a number of considerations in choosing the next lake—Driving distance, lake size, possibility of wind, and likelihood of such vermin as jet skis.  Lake Pleasant (I mentally refer to it as Lake Unpleasant due to the great number of jet skis and bass boats during the summer) was out because it’s way the heck out on the other side of Phoenix and the return trip was certain to involve huge traffic jams due to the traditional lets-wreck-out-car-on-the-only-road-heading-into-phoenix scenarios that seems to be the case nearly every Sunday on I-17.

Bartlett Lake looked like it was polluted with big powerboats and Felicidade would not fit in too well with the beer-and -bimbos crowd that seemed to favor that scene.  Plus the lake was way out on the North side of Scottsdale.

Saguaro lake had potential, but looked kind of small.  Canyon Lake sounded interesting, but I had heard the wind was not particularly good there, and it appeared kind of narrow.  We could motor around exploring the canyons, but I wanted to sail, dangit, not exercise the outboard motor.

That left Apache lake.  According to the www.Recreation.gov website:

"Formed by Horse Mesa Dam, Apache Lake is long and narrow and is the second largest Salt River Project lake. It is located off the Apache Trail (Highway 88) about 65 miles from Phoenix, and is a favorite with many sportsmen, particularly those from southern Arizona. The Apache Lake Marina and Resort is one mile from the main highway and features a motel, gas station, coffee shop, picnic supplies and a trailer park for 12 units. A boat ramp and dock are at the resort, and a county sheriff's aid station is nearby. The Three Bar Wildlife Area is just across the lake from the resort and provides a scenic spot for photographers. Seven miles northeast of the resort is the Burnt Corral Recreation Site with 17 spaces for trailers which are less than 17 feet long. The area is open all year and has boat launching facilities. Game fish in Apache Lake include walleye, largemouth and smallmouth bass, red ear sunfish, bluegill, channel catfish and crappie.

There are two ways of getting here. Take the Apache Trail for 18 miles from Apache Junction past Canyon Lake to Tortilla Flat. Another 15 miles, some of which is unpaved brings you to your destination. Or, if you're coming from Globe, take Highway 88 northwest about 35 miles to Roosevelt Dam, then turn south along the Apache Trail (still Highway 88) about five miles to Apache Lake."

That didn’t sound too bad.  18 miles from Apache Junction?  Some of it dirt road?  Well, we live on a dirt road.  This is a highway (Hwy 88—it said so on the map!).  How bad can it be?  A lot of the Alaska highway was dirt, and that doesn’t slow down the RVs any.

 On the map it looked like a pretty good sized lake.  The website, www.apachelake.com, showed what looked like a real marina, a restaurant, and even a resort hotel on the lake.  Very nice. 

An SRP (Salt River Project-- They made the lake)  website talked about the dam itself:

"Horse Mesa Dam, located on Apache Lake, is named for nearby Horse Mesa, where thieves sometimes hid stolen herds. The dam was constructed between 1924-27. It is 300 feet high and 660 feet long. It has three conventional hydroelectric generating units rated at a total of 32,000 kW and one pumped storage hydroelectric unit added in 1972 and rated at 97,000 kW."

Sounded interesting, and relatively easy to get to. In retrospect I should probably have scrutinized the map a little closer.  The little red highway line looks rather squiggly when viewed closely, a clue that it may be a tad  more challenging than the breezy travel descriptions provided by the tourism websites.  But I get ahead of myself.

The trip out

#1 Daughter and I set off for Apache lake on Saturday morning and soon found ourselves in Apache Junction, where we turned right at Hwy 88.  The road was smooth pavement, curvy and swoopy, which was a nice change from the rectilinear monotony of most of the valley’s roads.  This isn’t so bad!  I was enjoying the drive and looking forward to a quick trip out to the lake.

A few miles later, the road narrowed a bit.  Not a problem, it was still a nice paved road.  We began climbing some gentle grades.  A few miles after that, we came to a one-lane bridge.  Huh?  I thought this was a highway!  What kind of stupid highway has one-lane bridges?  “Highway 88” was starting to look more like Podunk County Road #12A with each passing mile.  Still, we pressed on.  Soon we got our first look at Canyon Lake off to the left.  It looked small.  A couple of miles after this we passed through the crusty-looking flyspeck town of Tortilla Flat, which was busily extracting dollars from what appeared to be a large flock of snowbirds.  After creeping through the 200-foot long downtown of Tortilla Flat, we continued on our way.

The road narrowed some more, and began climbing in earnest.  Still not worried.  We had to slow down, but life was good.  Then we came to a sign-- “Dirt Road ahead”.  Okay.  I slowed down a bit and we plowed on over the dirt road.  “hwy 88” which, as dirt roads go, was pretty nice.  The next sign warned that trucks over 40 feet were not allowed on hwy 88.  As we passed this I was wondering how long the minivan and Felicidade were.  Forty feet?  I hoped not.  I kept up a cheerful face for #1 Daughter—“We’ll be there in about 30 minutes,” I said.  Silly Captain Dad.

Fish Creek Hill

Well, the nice dirt road began to narrow and twist, and the first washboards began appearing as the grade steepened.  A few miles later we were in full mountain goat mode, creeping along a periodically single-lane dirt road that was switch-backing up a precipitous canyon wall.   Yikes!  Now I was worried.  Every turn was a blind corner, and there were no guardrails or anything to prevent what would (hopefully) be a mercifully rapid descent to oblivion at the bottom of the canyon.  We moved along cautiously as the road twisted and turned, nervously looking down at the distant bottom of the gorge to our left.  Two or three cars passed us in the opposite direction, their drivers looking stunned, knuckles white on the steering wheel, with a what-the-hell-was-I-thinking expression on their faces.  I imagine I had pretty much the same expression.

The worst part came as we descended into a deep canyon.  About halfway down, a huge pickup truck appeared coming up from the opposite direction.  I got as far to the right as I could, fearing that I was about remodel Felicidade’s starboard rub rail on the cliff beside the road.  The pickup inched past us, thankfully on the  precipice side, getting as close as he could to the trailer.  We managed to squeeze past each other with no damage to anything but our respective nerves.

I found out later that the part of the road which was so gnarly is called “Fish Creek Hill”.  It is apparently infamous, being a 15-17% grade that drops 1000 feet in less than a mile, into the bowels of Fish Creek Canyon.Four-wheelers evidently love it; minivan pilots, towing a fat sail boat, not so much.

A USDA Forest Service website had this to say:

“The scenic byway (with numerous sharp curves and narrow stretches of road) is safe to all but the reckless driver. Traffic is moderately heavy on weekends, less on weekdays. Pulling trailers of any type over this road is strongly discouraged.

A significant part of the byway is unpaved, and is normally suitable for passenger cars. Keep to the right. DRIVE CAREFULLY AT ALL TIMES.

At Fish Creek Hill (Milepost 222.5), the road is primarily one-way (with turnouts), climaxing in a 1,000-foot drop in elevation over a 15-17 percent grade, hugging the bronze bluffs.

For closer viewing and photo-taking, please stop at the vista points where there is safe parking. DON'T look while driving! The road is safe but one must pay close attention to twists, blind-turns, and oncoming vehicles.

Prepare yourself for a most unusual experience: some of the most spectacular scenery to be seen in all of the West.”

Unusual experience, my poop deck.  How about a life-threatening experience? Twists, blind-turns, and oncoming vehicles; Ya think?  How about the grim reaper leering down at you as you fearfully inch down the precipice, trailer sailer in tow?  How about preparing yourself for a few new gray hairs? And that spectacular scenery?  Yeah, right.  Any fish in Fish Creek probably died long ago from terror as the minivans came crashing down the canyon into the creek. Puh-lease.

Arrival at the marina

Following  that harrowing experience, the so-called highway flattened and widened, and we made good progress towards Apache Lake.  After driving what felt like halfway to New Mexico, we finally came to the turn off for the marina.  Woohoo!  We had survived!  The rest was, going to be a piece of cake.

We could see the facilities below as we made the turn—Way down below, it seemed to me.  The 1-mile road to the marina was very step and sandy in parts, which gave me reason to worry that we might have trouble pulling the boat back up.  Minivan = front wheel drive, boat = 1900 lbs, steep, sandy dirt road, you get the picture.  Nonetheless we arrived at the launch ramp without too much fuss.   #1 Daughter & I went inside the resort, which was pretty much empty, though nice in appearance.  Hmm.  Could the Highway Of Doom have anything to do with the sparse occupancy?  We made our way to the launch ramp, where I called The Wife  and announced our safe arrival, omitting the details of our journey along  Death Highway 88.

The launch ramp was interesting, being composed of deep concrete troughs. While #1 Daughter explored the area, I rigged the boat up.  The only other boats there were a couple of huge Pontoon things which had apparently just pulled out of the lake.  While rigging the main sail I discovered I had forgotten the battens.  I worried about this for a few  moments and then decided that it probably wasn’t going to make a difference, considering my skill level and the relatively light winds (4 – 8 knots).

Launch

In about 30 minutes we were ready to launch.  I put #1 Daughter on the boat and backed down the launch ramp… and down, and down, and down.   The stupid ramp seemed to take forever, as it descended between two concrete walls.  At the water’s edge the walls soared 10 feet above the water level. What kind !of screwy launch ramp was this? I felt like I was locking through  the Panama Canal!  Once I got Felicidade into the water, I had #1 Daughter alert me when the boat was floating.  I had to back in pretty far before the boat would float off the bunks;  the minivan was pretty close to floating as well. #1 Daughter was thrilled by all this excitement;  I was rehearsing the apology I was going to give Sweetie for launching her car into Apache Lake. None too soon, the boat reluctantly lifted off the bunks.

I climbed onboard, fired up the engine, and backed us off the trailer.  About this time I realized that there were no docks visible nearby.  How was I supposed to tie up and get the minivan out of the lake?  We motored slowly around the huge concrete wall and finally I spotted some docks across  from the fueling area, right around the corner.

As we approached the docks, I realized that I had not yet rigged the dock lines and fenders.  Bad sailor!  Feeling slightly embarrassed, I quickly darted below and fetched the fenders and dock lines, and while #1 Daughter steered us in while I  got them rigged. .  As we approached the dock I saw signs telling us these were private docks and there was a $10.00 fee to use them.  Well screw that, I thought. and we tied up at the first outside dock.  I figured I was only going to be there long enough pull the trailer up and park it.  We made the dock without any mishap and tied up

I admonished #1 Daughter to stay put and not fall into the lake, and went back to the minivan.  As I pulled the trailer out, the front tires spun pretty good before slowly grabbing on, and for a panicked moment I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to pull the trailer out. The ramp was pretty steep, and covered with wet sand.   But we finally got moving, much to my relief.  After I parked the car, I quickly walked back to the boat, freaking out now at the thought of pulling the boat up the ramp.  If I had trouble pulling the empty trailer, it was going to a problem getting the boat up the ramp!.  Now I had another thing to worry about in addition to (a) the road from the marina to hwy 88, and (b) hwy 88. This was turning out to be more nerve-wracking than a flipping typhoon, fer cryin out loud.

Sailing at last

Back at the boat, we put the daggerboard down and shipped the rudder.  We started the outboard and cast off for #1 Daughter’s first sail at 1530 in a nice breeze of between 4 -8 knots.  While #1 Daughter steered us into the wind I put up the main, unrolled the genoa, and killed the outboard.  We were sailing!

I was impressed by how well #1 Daughter handled the boat.  She has a great touch—Steers just enough to stay on course without overcorrecting.  She had no problem with the concept of using a tiller and always managed to turn in the right direction.  Cool!  We sailed West on a starboard tack while  I explained to #1 Daughter  how to pick a spot on ahead to steer for, how to feel the wind, and what tacking was all about.

 As we beat to the Northwest,  I used the  wind gauge and measured the breeze.  4 knots steady, with occasional puffs to 6 -8.  When the puffs hit, Felicidade put her shoulder down  and accelerated nicely.  It was great, even though it only happened a couple of times.  I was very pleased with how the boat was performing—the helm was close to neutral (I guess remembering to tighten the backstay paid off on this sail!) and the boat happily performed all required maneuvers with little fuss.  It was fun to heel over a little bit in the gusts, though the first time it happened #1 Daughter & I did pucker up just a bit.  But Felicidade sailed like a dream.  What a great little boat.

We seemed to average between 3.0 and 3.6 knots.  I had forgotten to zero out the GPS so I don’t know what out actual max and average speeds were under sail, but the boat seemed to move along very well in the light airs.  I think we even topped 4 knots a couple of times.  In any case, Felicidade felt like she was sailing great and we were having a blast.

By 1615 we were SW of Bass Point.  The sailing was fun, but we weren’t really getting anywhere very quickly.  I wanted to make better progress towards an anchorage, likely spots being 1 – 2 miles ahead.  #1 Daughter agreed, so I reluctantly started the outboard, rolled up the genoa and dropped the main.

  In search of an anchorage

The first anchorage we approached was where Indian Wash joined the lake.  It was a narrow little cove with a deep V at the head where the wash (supposedly) ran.  I liked it because it was sheltered from the westerly wind, but as we motored in slowly the lead line told me it was staying pretty deep despite the narrowing cove.   #1 Daughter steered and managed the motor while I threw the lead line and fretted.  About 100 feet from the head of the cove, we sounded 24 feet.  I dropped the anchor and let out about 60 feet of rode, then had #1 Daughter put the outboard in neutral while I waited to see how we’d swing. 

We slowly spun around the anchor, coming uncomfortably close to a couple of large boulders.  I knew if I let out any more rode we’d get too close to the rocks.  All the way up the cove, it looked like we could squeeze in to the narrow part of the wash, which I briefly thought about trying.  I decided against it because the sides of the wash looked pretty rocky and I wasn’t sure I could keep the boat centered in it.  Plus I’d have to blow up the raft to tie up, and I didn’t really feel like screwing around with the raft just yet.  Reluctantly, I decided to seek a better anchorage. I pulled the anchor up, piling the rode on the deck, and #1 Daughter steered us West out of the cove. 

Almost due West across the lake was a bight with something called Hermit’s Cave.  According to the chart it looked like the bottom was flat and only 10 feet deep.  That sounded like a good spot for me except from where we were, motoring out of Indian Wash,  it looked like the cliffs ran right to the water’s edge, and it was exposed to the wind which was blowing  from the NW.  It was about 2/3 mile across the lake to investigate.  On the other hand, half a mile to the NW was Ash Creek, which while somewhat small appeared like it might make a good anchorage.  I opted to head us up to Ash Creek.  If that didn’t work out then we’d be at a better position to look at the Hermit’s cave area through the binoculars, and if all else failed there were all kinds of coves and bights further to the NW.

In a few minutes #1 Daughter had us slowly Pottering into Ash creek.  It was a wide bowl of a cove with a nice little beach at the head, surrounded by saguaro cactuses.  To our port was a sandbar (well, maybe more like a gravel bar)  that the chart didn’t show—We gave it a wide berth.  #1 Daughter expertly steered us into the center of the cove and I dropped the anchor in about 20 feet of water.  We put the motor in neutral and waited to see what the anchor did as the breeze swung us around.  After a few minutes I let out 110’ of rode, as much as I dared to with the rocks all around us, and killed the motor.

This looked like a pretty good spot. I stood there admiring the scenery for a while, letting the stress of the last few hours roll off.

Life at anchor

“Don’t tell me you forgot a pan to cook the ramen in, Dad,” came #1 Daughter’s accusing voice from below, interrupting my reverie.  Doh!  I had a checklist, but somehow forgot to follow the stupid thing.  #1 Daughter gave me one of those looks familiar to any male who has ever been married, but I was the Intrepid El Capitan, and would figure something out.

Salvation arrived in the form of the fruit cocktail I had brought for dessert.  We opened it up, and ate the fruit cocktail.   Next I removed the paper label from the can and rinsed it in the lake.  I  used some of my stainless steel rigging safety wire to make a grate to set the can on over the stove burner, and in a few minutes we had boiling water for ramen.  Crude, but effective.

After dinner we amused ourselves by playing Poker, Millbourne, and Mancala.  #1 Daughter creamed Captain Dad, showing insufficient regard for my lofty stature.  I pledged to make her walk the plank come daylight.  She reminded me that Mom would make me walk the plank if I did that.  We thus arrived at an amiable truce and turned in for the night after a  story.

During the night, I slept better than I had on the Roosevelt Lake trip with the boys.  I woke up at 2300, and took the opportunity to pop my head out of the hatch an survey the surroundings.  Everything seemed to be in order.  There was no moon, but the bathtub ring around the lake glowed eerily in the darkness.  The wind had died down, and the water no longer had any chop.  Felicidade was sitting peacefully at anchor.  I checked on #1 Daughter who was burrowed deep into the quarterberth. I went back below and climbed into my sleeping bag.

The next morning I woke up about 0630.  I climbed stiffly out of the sleeping bag and fired up the propane heater.  Shortly thereafter #1 Daughter woke up.  We had breakfast and played Millbourne again as the sun illuminated the cliffs around us.

Around 0815 we got underway.   I had to haul on the anchor pretty good to pull it up, and when it came to the surface there was a large glob of grey-white mud on it.  When I took sailing lessons on Lake Pleasant a few years ago, the instructor had complained that anchoring was not very good in AZ lakes.  Twice now I’d anchored and things were fine.  Maybe it depends on how neurotic one is about picking the perfect spot.  I was trying really hard to pick what looked like flat bottom anchorages on the theory that there would be fewer boulders to mess things up.  So far so good!

We fired up the Iron Jenny and headed East out of Ash Creek. As we motored into the lake,  my cell phone had no reception (it was so bad that the phone didn’t even attempt to connect, and instead entered “power saving mode.”), and I knew The Wife would want to hear that we survived the night.  So the first thing we needed to do was go back to the marina and use the phone.   The wind was very light, and it would have taken us forever to get to the marina, so we powered on instead of sailing.

  It took us about 20 minutes to make the marina.  As we approached, I noticed there was another launch ramp to the East of where we had put in.  We cruised past it and checked it out—It looked like a much flatter, and less sandy, ramp than the other one.  With relief I resolved  to pull Felicidade out from that ramp, and leave the other ramp to the pontoon boats.  While checking out the new ramp I spotted a small dock next to the fuel docks.

We tied Felicidade up to the  small dock, and hiked up the hill to the resort.  While #1 Daughter wandered the gift shop I interrogated the lady manning the front desk about the condition of the road from here to Roosevelt Lake.  No way I was going to drive back up Fish Creek Hill!  The woman was very helpful and told me that the road to Roosevelt Lake was wider and better that the way we had come.  That made me feel much better! I mused aloud that nobody was likely  to be pulling those big old honking pontoon boats over that nasty road.  The woman said that what most people with the big pontoon boats did was put in just below Roosevelt Dam, and float down to the marina.

We checked in with The Wife, and headed back to the boat.   The wind had come up while we putzed in the resort, so we got underway and set sail.  We ran dead downwind to the West at about 1.6 – 2.2 knots.  I performed a couple of jibes, which the boat accomplished without any fuss.  It was nice to be able to push the boom across—A bonus for having a small, light boat!  After a while I set the whisker pole, and we ran wing-to-wing down the lake.  It was great sailing.  Felicidade handled great on a run, and it was very quiet and peaceful. 

#1 Daughter amused herself by tying Barbie to the roller furling line and trailing her behind the boat. Barbie gets Keelhauled!

While we sailed I took some bearings off of the various bluffs and headlands and plotted our position, getting my navigator jollies.   I used the Iris 50 hockey puck and the KVH  to shoot the bearings.  Both instruments worked well, except the contrast on the KVH was not very dark.  Since I had calibrated the KHV to work with my glasses, I preferred to shoot the bearings with that.  When using the hockey puck I had to take my glasses off before shooting the bearing, which was a pain. 

About 40 minutes later we were abeam of  our anchorage at Ash creek, in the center of the lake.   As we sailed by we spotted a bass boat anchored there. I was hoping to make it further down the lake under sail to see what lay around the next bend, but right about then the wind died.  We flopped about  for a while before I gave up and started the motor.  Before we got moving I shot a fix, then plotted a course to Hermit’s cave, which turned out to be 210 degrees, more or less.  I did this because I couldn’t see anything resembling a cave from where we were, and wanted to go direct to the cave as opposed to running up and down the shoreline under power searching for it.

I steered a course of 210 degrees towards the cliffs on the  SW side of the lake.  In about 8 minutes we came up to a small cut in the cliff.  Just above the bathtub ring was a small cave with what appeared to be wood covering the bottom half.  Felicidade slowly pottered into the cut for a closer look.  #1 Daughter wanted to get real close, but I started getting nervous because of the confined space.  Plus if there was an actual hermit in there, being Arizona he was probably pretty well armed. Before we got too deep in the cut I reversed the motor and backed us out.

Back to the trailer

It was getting late, so we steamed back to the marina.  We tied up again at the small dock, where  I raised the centerboard, unshipped the rudder, and got Felicidade ready to pull out.   I walked to the minivan and backed it down the new ramp.  When I stepped out of the car, with the trailer in the water up to the correct depth, my bare feet were slipping and sliding on the brown algae.   I could barely stand, and ended up hanging on to the driver’s door, which closed (gently)  on my fingers.  I felt pretty stupid hanging there by my fingers, feet sliding around, barely upright.  Somehow I managed to make it to dry concrete without going swimming.

Back at the boat, all of a sudden the wind picked up, this time blowing a solid 7 knots, of course directly across the boat ramp.  Oh great.  NOW there’s wind.  My second ever retrieval, and a veritable hurricane of a crosswind! When I was a pilot I relished crosswind landings, but I had a feeling this was going to be a challenge. 

Nonetheless, we fired up the outboard and got going into the windy lake.  When we cast off from the dock I forgot to let go of the stern line until the boat had warped herself backwards around the end of the dock.  No harm done, but I felt pretty stupid.  I was holding the stern line firmly and wondering why the boat was doing what it was doing.  Duhhh.  I hope I quit doing these kinds of things as I gain experience!

Anyway, we approached the trailer.  I knew I had to head into the wind, and I did so, until I turned into the trailer.  At this point I discovered how a Potter P19 handles without daggerboard or rudder!  In a word, she floats like a piece of Styrofoam, skittering sideways all over the place.  Needless to say My first approach had to be aborted.  We backed out and circled around for another shot.  This time I got Felicidade in between the guideposts, albeit at a good angle.  But we were close enough for me to go monkey off the pulpit to attach the trailer winch, which I did, standing on the 6 inches or so of water covering the trailer frame.

#1 Daughter got the boat centered by pulling on the guides as I winched away, and in a few moments we were all set.  I gingerly stepped off the trailer into the brown algae, but this time I was wearing shoes and had no problem, to my relief.   I felt I had already made enough of a spectacle of myself without falling into the lake.

Dismasted

We pulled the boat out without difficulty and parked above the ramp.  I rigged the mast-raising tackle and disconnected the forestay.  Heading aft, I heard a ping! And the mast began to slowly topple aft.  The tackle had disconnected from the gin pole, and the mast fell free as I watched in horror.  It bounced off the hatch several times before I got hold of it and put it in the cradle. Fortunately the massive bludgeon missed the daughter, though her tender ears did learn a few new words from Captain Dad.

The boom vang u-shackle attached to the lower part of the mast had punched a neat square hole in the forward edge of the hatch.  Other than that, there didn’t appear to be any damage, other than to my nerves.

I retrieved the twist shackle that had been holding the tackle to the gin pole, and it was open but appeared undamaged.  I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that it had twisted somehow which caused it to open under load.  Alas.  I guess now I get to learn fiberglass repair!  Could have been worse.

Once I regained my composure, I got the boat secured for trailering, and we got moving.  The road from the resort back up to so-called-highway 88 was, as I had feared, pretty bad.  I put the minivan in low gear and kept my speed up.  A couple of times we lost steerage way and the car began skittering sideways, but by using the entire road I managed to get us up to the top.

Once on hwy 88 we made good time traveling 12 miles to Roosevelt dam.  #1 Daughter was impressed by the dam, and I pointed out where the boys and I had anchored on the last trip.

The trip home was uneventful.  Another successful voyage for Felicidade! And this time it only took about 6 bottles of 2-buck Chuck to get myself calmed down enough for the next road trip.

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I like water.  Big surprise there, I'm sure most people like water, especially sailors. Water floats our boats, after all.  It does other less important stuff, too-- Makes forests grow, produces food, and carves gigantic tourist attractions out in the boonies for our amusement. Water makes the ice in highballs, it is the primary constituent of beer and wine, and if you lose the corkscrew over the side, you can actually survive by drinking straight water until you reach civilization again. Great stuff.

Sailors have an interesting relationship with water.  We prefer to skim over the top, and get cranky when our boats submerge. We throw large quantities of money into building a nice hull to keep the water out, then turn around and drill holes in it to let the water back in. We love the refreshing calm of a nice quiet anchorage, and the adrenaline charge of a boisterous bay or mountain lake. Water outside the boat, good.  Water inside the boat, bad, unless it's in a tank.  If the tank is full, good.  If the full tank is connected to the head, bad.

Most people never give water a second though beyond turning a faucet or flushing the john, but anyone commanding  a vessel interacts with water in a rather fundamental way. It's part of the magic of sailing.

The interface between water and not water is an interesting place. I am spending a lot of time trying to master that interface, because I'm always poking and prodding the nooks and crannies of my local lake. I don't know why, but for me the fascination is not necessarily sailing from Point A to Point B, (notwithstanding all the coolness that entails), but the slow unveiling of a small cove's nether regions. Or even approaching a dock, or trying not to run over some dingleberry swimming by the launch ramp. To me the thinner the water, the the more jagged the interface, the more challenging the approach, the more fun.

Indulge me in a Melon Farmer digression for a minute. I get to play with the interface even when I'm not sailing, because I live in an orchard. Every two weeks during the summer I have to irrigate.  The Water District tells me when the water is coming, and at the appointed time I wander through the trees to open six valves. When the water arrives, it's a force to be reckoned with. A typical irrigation brings enough water to cover most of my land with a foot of water; if I don't manage it, it manages me and I end up watering the driveway, the road, the neighborhood, half a mile of dirt road. Over the years I've gotten pretty good at managing water on my land-- I built berms and spillways, and can snap the whip and make the beast go where I want it.  Unless a gopher has decided to drill through one of my berms, in which case a few panicked minutes with a shovel usually finds me standing triumphant, albeit mud-spattered and sweaty.  I employ five cats to deal with the gophers, but sometimes they slack off.

When I first moved to Arizona, I decided to build an underground greenhouse.  It's not as silly as it might sound-- My plan was to use the earth to moderate some of the fierce heat of the summer. So I dug a huge hole by hand in the side yard, a hexagon 15 feet across and six feet deep. (I like digging holes, okay?) The neighbors would come by to check on the progress and scratch their heads over the nut digging an underground greenhouse. My project was going well until I had a berm break one day.  A big berm break. I watched probably two thousand gallons of water, leaves, grapefruit, cat poop, bugs, and god knows what else pour into my greenhouse until I had a nice little inland sea going. Oops.

I gave up on the underground greenhouse idea after a couple of repeat gopher-induced floods. Three dump trucks of dirt later, the hole was filled in. The neighbors were confused. They asked my why I filled the huge hole up.  "because it's done," I replied,  as if I were stating the obvious.  The neighbors backed away slowly.

A word of advice: Don't  build an underground anything on the same land you flood irrigate. Trust me on that.

Anyway, sailing is kind of the same thing (except there are fewer dead bugs and grapefruit). You have to manage water.  Lots of water. Fail to manage water, and it doesn't matter how well you've set the sails. Managing water means not letting too much of it into your boat, of course, but also making sure that you actually have water where you need it, and gently interacting with those places lacking water.  Any schlub can throw a bunch of fenders over the rub rail, and blast away with the engine when coming in for a landing.  To me, a big part of being a sailor is being able to do the same without needing fenders.  or even an engine (when I'm feeling frisky). 

I'm still working on it.  I hardly ever have to pull thorns out of the hull any more. And I still buy epoxy in little tubes, from Home Depot. So I must be doing something right.

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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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For those of you who are unfamiliar with the TV showAmerica's Funniest Home Videos, it's a long-running (20 years) American program in which people send in their home movies for comedic effect. Each show varies, but the general theme includes a fair amount of time devoted to videos of people screwing up in assorted amusing ways. Think "hold my beer and watch this!" and you won't be too far off, though there are plenty of barfing-at-the-wedding or felling-tree-onto-the-house kinds of videos as well. Sprinkle in the obligatory cute little kid and pet videos, and you have a pretty entertaining show.

I have found AFV to be an invaluable parenting resource. My children have watched this show basically their entire lives. When one of my kids (usually a boy kid for some reason) is on the verge of doing something that will almost certainly result in serious nard damage, say riding a bike off the roof into the swimming pool, I don't pre-emptively freak out, I just calmly remind said Boy of the outcome of a similar effort by some painfully racked performer on the TV show. Invariably, said Boy reflects for a moment, then agrees to climb down off the roof and return the colander helmet to the kitchen. No nard damage whatever. It's great. No arguments, no testosterone-poisoned bravado, just a calm recognition that what seems to be a great idea may not in fact be so brilliant.

(A friend suggests that the TV show Cops might be an equally valuable resource. I think I'll save that one for when puberty happens-- in case the boys are tempted to buy wife-beater T-shirts.)

For Christmas a couple of years back,  we bought a trampoline for the kids. Now around here, parents seem to be of three distinct minds with regard to trampolines: The first group also purchases this protective net thing that wraps around the trampoline, ostensibly to prevent Junior from launching himself sideways into a fence, car, or running wood chipper. That's understandable, their kids probably have not had the training that America's Funniest Home Videos so generously provides, and are highly likely to attempt suicide if not securely contained in a circus net.

The second group is slightly less paranoid, and digs a huge hole to place the net-less trampoline at ground level. This certainly eliminates the hazard that an elevated platform presents, but does little to prevent junior from executing a flawless, low-altitude half-gainer into the patio firepit. Plus, the semi-concealed nature of the trampoline can cause issues when one is drunkenly stumbling about the backyard in the dark, buck naked in a thunderstorm. We've all been there, right?

The last group, including yours truly, simply tries to position the trampoline out in the open, where when the child turns into a misguided missile they can be reasonably sure of not landing on anything too sharp, hard, or expensive (We also try to avoid nearby power lines just in case). This category of parent is split into two sub-groups: Those with video cameras, and those who watch AFV. The people with video cameras at the ready capture hours of video showing gooberheads having painful fun with physics. They then send these videos to the producers of America's Funniest Videos, who in turn show them on the TV show. Parents like me force our kids to watch said unfortunate impromptu acrobats, thus imbibing our precious offspring with what amounts to tribal knowledge, of the non-gooberhead variety. It's like survival of the fittest by TV Training -- Darwin would be so proud.

Anyway, when I am sailing, I find myself constantly running a "what would AFV do?" subroutine in the back of my mind. Now I'm sure that everyone reading this (being a salty bunch, yarrr) has some equivalent subconscious safety program running in their minds too, but I submit that safety knowledge gleaned from a book, no matter how good that book is, is no comparison to watching some fool bust his nuts on a bow pulpit. And then laughing about it.

I know, for example , that it is never a good idea to take a flying leap for the dock as you approach. AFV has hilariously demonstrated how that can go wrong, many times. As soon as I am tempted to take such a leap, the little video shows in my reptilian fore brain and I suddenly have an attack of common sense. I veer off and try a different strategy, one that (usually) does not result in nard damage. I never learned that from K. Adlard Coles.

I know that screwing around on a wet foredeck in bare feet can result in a spectacular triple gainer, bouncing off of various boat parts, until you finish with a nice belly flop. Then you get to watch your boat sail itself over the horizon without you (the one time it sails by itself without you tending the tiller, of course). The Bluejacket's Manual has nothing to say about that, I assure you.

AFC has taught me the wisdom of approaching the dock slowly, instead of at full speed. This is one sailor who is not going to launch Grandma over the bow pulpit as we pulverize an innocent bystander's dingy under a full-sail docking maneuver.

So, I think that any serious safety-minded sailor should put away the sailing books, crack open a beer, and watch America's Funniest Home Videos. This especially applies to those of you who also own jet skis. You know who you are. Let the other guy do dumb, klutzy, or insane stuff so you don't have to, and we'll all be happier in the long run. And we won't have to use the boathook to gaff grandma out of the bay.

For the rest of you, please remember to bring the video camera, OK?  The safety of my children depends on you.

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