By Paul McGhee Congratulations, you are the proud owner of your first cruising sailboat. The complex spider web of lines and rigging amazes your friends and family. How smart you must be to understand it all!
It’s true that you’re no rube. You’ve taken a course from a reputable sailing school. You’ve been assistant skipper on a BVI bareboat charter. Maybe you’ve crewed for your buddy on Thursday nights for years. You’ve practiced the knots in Chapman’s, including the jury-rig knot. You know how to sail a boat, no question about it.
In many respects, however, you are a complete beginner. Being the captain of your own cruising sailboat involves much more than knowing how to sail. As much as you are a sailing captain, you are even more the manager of a collection of fairly complicated mechanical and electrical systems, every single one of which will fail at some point—usually at the worst possible moment.
Becoming a successful cruising skipper can be a painful process. It may take a couple of years, maybe more. You don’t have much control over the length of this learning period. You will learn by coping with disasters large and small, one (or three) at a time. If you are lucky and have only a few catastrophes it will take longer to acquire enough savvy to deal with the next one. Sorry, that’s just how it goes.
Here is a collection of assignments that you really ought to complete before you ever untie a single dock line. I don’t care how excited you are to go for your first sail, how much you want to feel the sun on your face or the wind in your hair, don’t even think about risking your boat and your hide by leaving the safety of your dock or mooring before accomplishing these tasks.
The Obvious Basics At first your attention will be on collecting the array of articles that state laws or the Coast Guard insist that you carry on board. Having some of these things on board makes obvious sense, like personal flotation devices and flares. Others items may seem to have dubious value. Bells and various lawyer-invented placards fall into this category.
While going about this initial collecting of must-have drek, you should take care of some other obvious chores. Just use your common sense. You don’t need a 100-ton license to figure out that you should check the engine oil.
Get nice PFDs, something that people will want to wear. Those orange, $8 things are pathetic. We have those very nice type III vests. I give them to people to wear when it gets cool at night. I’m not sure they even know they are wearing a life jacket. Store them in a handy, easy-to-find spot.
For heaven’s sake, buy charts for your sailing grounds and beyond. True, they are expensive, but what gave you the idea that sailing was going to be a cheap sport? Even if you have one of those fancy chartplotters, buy paper charts, too. Chances are you don’t really know how to use the chartplotter anyway, and they eat batteries by the bushel. I’m not one of those guys who believe that real sailing died with the invention of the GPS, but only an idiot would rely utterly on a little plastic battery-powered gadget.
Go Sailing at the Dock For some reason, most of us choose to learn how to use important pieces of sail handling and safety equipment for the first time while clutching the cabin top of a bucking sailboat in 22-knot winds and a four to six-foot chop. Bad idea. Your life will be much easier and safer if you make some of your mistakes and disappointing discoveries while tied firmly to the dock.
To prepare for your first assignment, get the nose of your docked boat pointed as close into the wind as you can, given your slip orientation. If reorienting your boat in the slip isn’t practical, wait for a windless morning. We have them all the time here in New England. If you’re on a mooring, you’re likely pointing into the wind already.
Now, raise your mainsail. That’s right, all the way up. Leave the jib rolled up for now, you’ll deal with that later.
Here’s your task: reef your mainsail to the first reef point.
Most recently-built boats have a single-line reefing system, which works like this: find the correct reefing line and load it on a winch. Then, lower the main until the lowest reef cringles (a horizontal row of metal grommets sewn into your mainsail) are roughly even with the boom. Now grind, grind, grind in the reefing line until the foot of the sail is held snugly against the boom at both ends. Catch your breath, then re-tighten the main halyard and admire your work. Don’t worry about the flap of sail hanging down below the boom. That’s “the slab” and it can be left hanging without consequence.
Some boats have a jiffy-reefing system. You’ll know you have jiffy reefing if you see a metal hook (or hooks) about the size of your index finger on the mast or boom near the gooseneck (the place where the boom joins the mast), plus a line leading through a grommet in the leech (trailing edge) of the mainsail down to the boom, probably through a block (pulley) to a cleat attached to the boom. To put in a jiffy reef, ease the halyard until the first set of reef cringles are even with the boom. At the mast, hook the luff cringle to the hook at the gooseneck. To finish the reef, pull on the line through the leech until the leech cringle is snug against the boom and cleat it off. Re-tighten the main halyard.
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This exercise may not have gone well. You may not have been able to locate the correct control line. Perhaps the previous owner or the brokerage didn’t rig the reef line correctly. Another possible problem is that you couldn’t get the sail pulled down until it was snug on the boom. Did you ease the halyard enough? Maybe the friction was just too high on the reef line. Is the reef line fouled somewhere? Aren’t you glad you found out now?
Whatever the cause of your troubles, figure out what’s wrong and get it right. Read articles on sailnet.com, ask your dock mates to help you. Ask the salesman who sold you the boat. He’s probably a sailor himself and he should do something for his 10 percent.
Once you get the first reef in, put in the second one. If you’ve lived a clean and virtuous life, the second reef should work just like the first, only now you’re working with a different control line and a different row of reefing cringles.
The second reef point is the one that you’ll use least often, but it’s the one you’ll need when conditions are at their worst. Get it figured out and make sure you know how to put it in. When you’re done, your mainsail will be about the size of a bed sheet. Believe me, if you spend much time sailing, sooner or later you’ll be flying along at hull speed under that bed sheet.
While you’ve got the main up, you might as well roll out the jib/genoa. Uncleat the furling line (the one that goes around the furling drum) and pull on one of the jib sheets—loaded on a winch for control, of course. Once it’s out, imagine that something has jammed the furler and you can’t roll it back up. Believe me, this will happen to you. What will you do?
Now is a good time to figure out how to get the jib down the old-fashioned way: by uncleating the halyard and pulling the sail down to the deck. You’ll have to do that when the furling drum is covered with a snarl of tangled rope, so now is the best time to practice. By the way, you can reduce the frequency of furling drum snarls by keeping a little tension on the furling line as you roll out the sail, but know how to get your jib down when your furler jams.
If you had trouble completing these should-be simple tasks, imagine how it would have been to perform any one of them in 22-knot winds, with the lee rail submerged and your spouse/guests alternately screaming in fear and losing their lunch over the side. Are you with me now? Cool.
Sign up for a Tow Service I am ambivalent about Tow Services. I remain a subscriber, but I’ve paid about $450 in membership fees over the past few years without using any of their services. At some point I am certain that I will stop signing up, and just take my chances.
So why am I telling you to sign up for towing service? Because the sad truth is that new boat owners—this means you, bucko—are most likely to need it, and therefore you stand a good chance of getting your money’s worth.
What will a towing service do for you? They’ll bring you fuel when you run out. They might even get you ungrounded (don’t bet on it). They’ll deposit you right into your slip when the old diesel conks out. I met a couple in Westbrook, CT, who lost their engine on a long trip and were arranging a tow 30 miles back to their home port of Mystic! Now that’s service.
Tow services will also try to hit you up for staggering salvage fees if you run aground in certain ways and they succeed in dragging you off. You may want to have your lawyer along whenever you leave the dock. They’ll also leave you waiting adrift for hours on busy weekends. There are only a few towboats, but many boaters in trouble.
It’s not a perfect system, but tow services help many, many boaters. If you don’t believe me, listen to Channel 16 for a while on Saturday afternoon. Keep in mind while listening to the calls for help that many people get assistance using their cell phone. Who wants to broadcast their dumb boating trick to everyone with a marine VHF radio? Even considering sneaky cell phoners, there are many tales of woe to be heard on your VHF. In many of these situations, a tow service comes to the rescue. While your goal is to avoid telling your own sad tale over the public airways, sign up anyway. And take your cell phone.
Lights, Please Here’s a story from my own days as a cruising novice. We were sailing to Newport, my favorite cruising destination on the US mainland. I had only owned my boat for a couple of months, and had never ventured out of the little sound outside of my home harbor near Mystic, CT. However, there was a woman who needed impressing by my vast sailing skills, so we were off to Newport for a long weekend.
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| "Unfortunately, I couldn’t see my depth gauge or my compass because I had no idea how to turn on the backlighting for my instruments." |
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We left early and had plenty of time for the six-to-seven-hour sail on a bluebird August day. However, we had unexpected trouble along the way and had to stop at the fuel dock in Point Judith Pond, which delayed us for several hours. When we got back underway, the weather had turned unexpectedly nasty—unexpected because I didn’t listen to the forecast—and it took us even longer to sail up Narragansett Bay against a wet 18-knot northeast wind. Notice how the “unexpecteds” are piling up?
By the time we passed Fort Adams it was dark. We found ourselves noodling around a shallow cove searching for the marina. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see my depth gauge or my compass because I had no idea how to turn on the backlighting for my instruments, and now I could hardly leave the wheel to go read manuals.
The moral of the story is, figure out how to turn on the backlights on your depth gauge, compass, speedometer, and your GPS. Practice it on the spur of the moment. You never know when you’ll be sailing in the dark.
Check the Weather You should never, ever go out without knowing the weather forecast. Even if you are already at the dock, looking up at the sky, and only plan to go out for a couple of hours, turn on the radio and listen anyway.
Twice now I have sailed out of a protected bay or river to be stunned by the escalated ferocity of wind and seas in more open water. Both times, it was a blue-sky puffy-cloud day. Just last weekend we pulled out of the Connecticut river under full sail in a 10-knot breeze on flat water to be met by choppy four footers and 20-plus knot wind. We went from full sail to double-reefed, hats overboard and seasick passengers in the time it takes to go down for a soda. If the stupid captain had listened to the weather forecast all day, instead of just the 9:00 a.m. version, he would have been better prepared.
The weather forecast is on your VHF radio, 24/7. It’s on the internet, on one of several sites sponsored by the NOAA which is part of the National Weather Service. If you sail near one of the dozens of data bouys that ring our coastline, you can even call up the bouy on your cell phone and get real time wind and sea state reports. Visit the National Data Bouy Center web site for instructions. You don’t need the link, just Google it.
There’s no excuse for leaving the dock without fresh knowledge of the weather and sea state. Don’t ever do it.
Rig your Anchor Your anchor and its associated tackle is first and foremost a piece of safety equipment. The first time I ever needed my anchor in an emergency, I—a new boat owner like you—had never even looked in the anchor locker until the very moment that I desperately needed to get the hook down. That’s like needing your fire extinguisher only to discover that it was packed in a bag underneath one of the berths, below an unused sail.
I opened the anchor locker to find a snarl of tangled rode. It took me 20 minutes to unravel it even though the rode was a high-quality, supple braided line. While I was untangling it, my boat bobbed around abeam to a three-foot chop and my girlfriend christened the side of the hull with her breakfast. Lucky for me that I didn’t need my anchor because the engine had conked out in a rock-lined channel, or because the steering had failed near a lee shore.
While your boat is at the dock, before you ever go out, pull your entire anchor rode out of the locker. Check that the anchor is properly attached to the rode, and that the rope-chain joints are secure. Make sure the bitter end of the rode is attached to the boat, using a proper knot (the anchor bend is popular). Flake the rode back into the locker, starting with the end attached to the boat, so that the entire rode would run out smoothly if you released the anchor. Check it every time you go out to make sure it stays that way.
The Emergency Tiller If you are the new owner of a boat with wheel steering, this section is for you.
Your car was designed with wheel steering in mind, and so this is a very reliable part of any automobile, made with solid, quality parts. It hardly ever needs inspection or maintenance. On your boat, wheel steering is an afterthought of Rube Goldberg-ian components—pulleys and cables mostly—that you really need to inspect at least once per year, that will probably require some sort of annual service, and will eventually fail anyway.
Don’t despair. Since your boat was really made for a tiller, you can still steer it when the wheel system fails. That is, if you know where your emergency tiller is located. The emergency tiller is a piece of bent pipe that fits into the top of your rudder, with which you can almost steer the boat. It’s good enough to get you home, anyway.
Your assignment is to find this bent pipe and find the top of your rudder, putting the two together. There will probably be a little access panel above the rudder that you can remove, without tools if you’re lucky. Removing the access panel will reveal the top of the rudder post, into which your emergency tiller should fit. Stick it in there and make sure you can move the rudder from stop to stop. Then stow the tiller where you can find it fast.
While you’re at it, find the handle for your manual bilge pump.
Well, there you have it. My list of things to do before you ever dare untie your new beauty from its slip or cast off its mooring. Good luck, fair winds and don’t forget that cell phone.
About the author: Paul has been sailing since his college days, when he was fascinated by his professor's use of sailboats to explain principles of physics. An engineer by profession, he relocated to the East Coast to realize his dream of owning and cruising a sailboat. Paul, wife Dotty, and dog Zoë sail out of Westbrook, CT.
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