Our skipper, Mike has asked each of the crew to add a
segment to the his blog "A Tale of Two Chemist". This is my entry.
I'm Rod, Mike's brother-in-law. I've been mentioned a few times in earlier
blog postings. I'm not sure that I can
add anything to the narrative of the trip to Tortola that we just completed; as
Mike has mentioned, a lot of it has blurred together in my mind. Some blurring, no doubt, caused by lack of
sleep.
Instead of trying to add to the actual storyline of the
trip, I though I would add some of my
thoughts on lessons learned during the trip.
Having been a sailor (of sorts) for over 30 years, I find that I am
still learning about boating and sailing and being amazed, at times, by what I
don't know. So let me just kind of put
out "bullet points"!
- Anticipation
is worse than the reality. After
listening to the seminars put on by the ARC organizers, I got more and
more anxious about what might happen at sea. We heard lectures on medical care, fire
prevention, how to use signaling flare, and for me, lots of talk about
seasickness. I've never been
seasick yet, but with so much talk about seasickness, I was beginning to
think I should use some preventive medicine! (I didn't and wasn't seasick). By Sunday, Nov 5th, it was a huge relief
to actually get started on the trip.
- Before
the trip started, I repeated something written by a NY Yacht Club Member
about sailing: "Gentlemen
don't sail to windward". Is
that ever true! Try never to sail
long distances to windward. Its
exhausting! Every activity is a
struggle and food preparation becomes a series of mishaps and
accidents. Simple meals, easy to
heat, preferable in a pot, rather than in the oven (think heating up the
cabin in tropics) are best. Save
fancy meals for when one is sailing downwind. Or in port!
- If one
is anticipating a squall, ease the mainsheet, so a gust of wind doesn't
round the boat up into an accidental tack.
Then feather the boat as the wind picks up and consider bearing off
ahead of the stronger wind if it
persists.
- The
autopilot is your best friend, especially at night. It is extremely easy to get disoriented
while hand steering at night when there is no horizon or shore light to
guide you. One evening as I was
trying to keep us sailing as close to the wind as I could, I accidentally
hit the standby button on the autopilot.
The boat immediately rounded up and tacked, backwinding the
jib. I figured "no problem". Toss off the old jib sheet, haul in the
new working sheet and tack back. By
the time we got this done and, with no horizon to guide my steering (I was
hand steering after the accidental tack),
we found ourselves headed downwind and needed to gybe to get back
on course. I should have used to
auto pilot to lock us on a course after the tack, then used it to tack the
boat back to the correct course.
The autopilot never gets disoriented!
- Don't think you're going to get plenty of
sleep. I think Brian was the only
one not to have trouble sleeping. I
should have taken naps in the cockpit more often as I found it hard to
sleep below when it was warm.
- Bread
can be made on a sailboat. Just
don't forget to grease the loaf pan!
Sailing is all about learning new things. One should never get complacent and think
that there is no more to learn. I want
to thank Mike for giving me a chance to try something new and to learn new
lessons.
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