A Trifecta of Skills
Before circumnavigating, I sought out circumnavigators—especially serial circumnavigators—to see if they were of-a-type. They weren’t. Or, at least, not that I could parse. But in so doing, I began to think of them as the Men Who Leave, as varied individuals who self-actuate. And I noticed they shared one characteristic: humility. Mother Ocean had taught them much—her primary lesson being how little they knew. Still, they soldiered on.
Take Lucky Leo, for example. One day his younger, healthier brother dropped dead—and Leo stumbled away from the funeral (in his mid 50s) not to return to work but rather to buy a modest 37-foot Gulfstar sailboat, dub her Lucky, and ‘begin to live’ as he put it.
After completing his second circ, he said to me with a rueful smile, “…this time I hit fewer reefs.”
Good to know.
Part of the problem with cruising undersail is that we must learn it backwards. There’s a lot to learn to be able to leave the dock and return an hour later.
…less to learn in order to sail down the coast for a day or two.
…and almost nothing to learn to cross an ocean. (Keep the water out of the boat and display the proper amount of canvas—all else is bonus points.)
In fact, the first three days of most ocean crossings are the worst. You’re tired. Your sleep patterns are shattered. Your stomach is upset. Your muscles ache. You may have a touch of motion sickness. And worst of all—you’re constipated. That’s the bad news. The good news is that by the fourth day all this begins to diminish and, as your epidermis adjusts to the sun, your lower back to the constant motion, and your lungs adjust to the super-oxygenated air—you begin to feel as invincible as Superman.
Sound isn’t bad—it is man-made (and machine created) noise that’s the problem. And the constant motion ends up like a soothing gym from which there is no escape. I’m never as calm and as balanced as when I’m at sea within the sweet embrace of Mother Ocean.
“What do you say,” asked my wife on our 48th day at sea, “Can we anchor here for a day or two?”
The tropical island off our port bow was well-protected. Its harbor was both calm and commodious. The few boats anchored there weren’t rolling and were all pointed into the wind. It was a fine place to anchor. And, everything being equal, I like to please my wife Carolyn—who has, more than any person alive, made me the man I am today.
But I didn’t want to abandon the sanctity of the sea for the vexation of shore. “…how ‘bout we keep going,” I said, “to Nova Scotia?”
Carolyn was perplexed. “Nova Scotia? That might take another month at sea, Fatty. And why Nova Scotia? I’ve never heard you express the slightest interest in Nova Scotia.”
“I don’t care about Nova Scotia,” I admitted, “I just want to spend another month at sea with you.”
She tilted her head and smiled. “Well, I’d like to stretch my legs ashore. And, maybe, do a little beachcombing?”
And so we did—hand in hand.
Often, on passages longer than 30 days, we stay aboard upon arrival for the first 24 hours or so—steeling ourselves for the onslaught of email, thin bank statements, and the harsh reality of modern shore life.
Yes, a company that I worked for once gave us a Satphone. Yes, eventually they called us on it. On a perfect day at sea—a peaceful day; a day brimming with good vibes. I listened for a moment or two. We were both in the cockpit at the time.
I listened some more—then sighed.
“Get the camera,” I told Carolyn.
She did.
“…are you filming?”
“Yes,” she said.
I stood up. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Then I slowly, carefully, and reverently frisbeed that Satphone into the sea—and later sent the company who’d called the video.
I’m happy to report the company never called again.
What did the poet E.E. Cummings say? That, “…there is some sh*t I will not eat?”
But back to Lucky Leo Wright. One day between his second and his third circ, I suggested we both sail from St. John in the USVI to Jost in the BVI. It’s only a couple of miles. Jost was in plain sight. I wanted to introduce him to Foxy and Tess. Leo checked his chart, noticed all the rocks to avoid getting out of Pillsbury Sound, and said, “No thanks, Fatty. Too complicated. Maybe later… after my third.”
At the time, I thought his response betrayed senility—because I was too young to recognize wisdom. It was a tricky bit of navigation—well, in comparison to circ’ing Leo-style, at least.
Anchoring is the bedrock skill of the daysailor. Navigation and commonsense are the two pillars of coastal navigation. And showing the proper amount of canvas is the bedrock skill of the offshore sailor.
Let’s see if we can make that last bit plainer: you wouldn’t drive to the marina in a car with a sticky gas pedal, would you? Then you shouldn’t go to sea on a vessel you can’t reef easily and well under all conditions.
When are you ready for ocean sailing? When you can routinely go on deck and tuck in a reef during 45-knots in breaking seas in the pitch black.
If you can’t—don’t go offshore until you can. (And remember the ‘all conditions’ part.)
That—and keeping the water out of the boat as previously stated—is all that is needed… plus a bit of seamanship which is merely commonsense mixed with experience upon the water.
How long should this process—from lubber to ocean rover—take? I dunno. I’ve seen couples do it in less than a year—couples who are together, in love, and share the same goal of global freedom.
But actual hands-on experience is key. Every person, no matter how smart, who has stolen a sailboat and went to sea—has almost immediately come to grief.
Mother Ocean doesn’t suffer fools gladly—she kills them without fear or favor. And if you don’t believe that—perhaps some farm property in Indiana might be a better investment than, say, a 50-foot-long, 50-foot-wide cattlemaran that sports a lovely LED chandelier under the Bimini in the cockpit?
I knew a guy named Bert who has a sweet tooth for LSD. He went to the library and studied a dozen books on flying. He then went to an airport, purchased a plane, and successfully flew/wobbled away. However, as goofy as Bert was, when he purchased his 42-foot SOS (Southern Ocean Shipyard) ketch, he wisely sailed her greater distances in diverse conditions before crossing an ocean. (Yes, the crossing was far, far too eventful—but it took Bert years to realize that.)
Anchoring is fairly simple: have good, properly-sized gear. Use generous scope—5 to 1 minimum using chain; 7 to 1 with Nylon. Never throw an anchor nor dump it in a pile. Pay out the rode as the boat drifts aft—then snub it off and wait; only then reverse on it. (Reversing too early with too little scope can make the anchor dig in at too steep an angle. For more—see my book Creative Anchoring.)
The objective isn’t merely not to drag on any particular night—it’s to anchor in such a manner that you don’t drag more than once every two or three years (if you live fulltime on the hook).
Yes, this staying in place is difficult and takes lots of work. On our first circ, we almost never went into a marina and we never left the boat to go ashore without two anchors down (because our boat was too light/narrow to carry a windlass or chain forward).
This was a lot of work—but well-worth it to us.
On ocean passages, all anchors and chain would be stowed low and in the middle of the boat belowdecks—otherwise our Hughes 38 would hobby-horse excessively.
More work—but if you don’t like work, why buy a boat?
Coastal navigation is easier today than during my youth of ‘throwing the lead’ but such useful tools as radar and GPS can often encourage newbies to do silly things—like go into strange harbors at night, for example.
Our rule is simple—we don’t enter strange harbors at night. We stand off and wait until dawn. If you’re so impatient to be in a safe harbor—if you’re so scared of being at sea—what are you doing out there? (Hundreds of times during my 65 years of living aboard and ocean sailing I’ve seen wrecks that didn’t seem possible—that no one could have been that stupid—but it was night and they just didn’t see the breakwater ahead of them. Or the bridge. Or the cable between the tug and the unlit barge.
My job as a captain isn’t to ask myself if I think I could make it in tonight—but rather if I attempted the entrance a couple of hundred times, might it come up Snake Eyes? And the answer is almost always—probably. So, we don’t.
And thus, I’ve never lost a vessel in 200,000 nautical miles and over six decades. (Yes, I’ve had vessels sink out from under me in harbors during hurricanes—but that’s a different matter.)
True, numerous times I’ve taken a ribbing from a fellow boater for being too conservative and too safety conscious—a few times by newbies who soon came to grief doing something that no sane seaman would even think of doing.
Can newbies—with the proper hi-tech modern nav equipment—go into strange harbors at night. Of course! And they do. Regularly until they lose their boat and then utter the phrase—“…well, it could have happened to anyone.”
…that’s true—it could have happened to any fool attempting it.
I can’t afford to lose a boat. If so, I’ll have to live on land with dirt-dwellers—YUCK!
The bedrock offshore skill of reefing is easy under calm conditions—and not-so-easy during a mature gale while careening down the face of 28-foot waves on a night darker than a politician’s heart.
Yes, I believe in roller furling gear and have two units—one for my jib and the other on my storm staysail—but operating these units under battle conditions… in the dark… takes hands-on experience that can’t be learned ashore.
It has to be learned at sea and practiced at sea—otherwise you might think you know it, but you don’t actually know it.
The proof is in the pudding, not merely upon the pages of my heavy-weather book Storm-proofing your Boat, Gear, and Crew.
Why was my buddy Webb Childs able to circumnavigate six times, sail open boats such as an 18-foot Dascombe Lugger (Chidiock Tichborne) across oceans, and zoom Gannet, a lightweight Moore 24 around the world (while in his late ‘70s)—without major incident?
Because he kept the water out of the boat, reefed early and well, avoided rocks, and knew how to anchor. He’s the only sailor I know that has the right to say, “The sea doesn’t want me, Fatty. I’ve tried repeatedly to donate myself—but she always refuses.”
Those are brave words but backed up by consummate seamanship in Webb’s case—they ring true.
(Editor’s note: last week, with the grandkids aboard, Fatty and Carolyn circumnavigated the island of Ubin—in daylight!)
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