Journal

Two Simple Rules

October 1, 2022

Every avocation seems to have lists of things that cause you to cringe just a little when you hear them, but at the same time nod in agreement because you know they are absolutely true. One such list from my former life is the three most useless things in aviation: the runway behind you, the altitude above you, and the fuel you left behind. My favorite such quip that applies to our upcoming adventure offshore is “the two simple rules of sailing”, keep the sailor on the boat and water out of the boat. Two thoughts that seem simple and direct enough but actually command quite a bit of forward thinking and preparation to successfully execute on in potentially threatening circumstances. Case in point, if you spring a leak somewhere can you stop or slow the flow quickly enough. And just as importantly, do you have the capacity to get enough of it out to keep you on the water rather than in it? 

I discovered a Navy study on a snowy day last winter that outlined the rate of flooding from a 1 ½ inch hole 3 ½  feet below the waterline. I’ll spare you the math of how they got to the rate, but the result was startling to me. The flooding rate for a hole that size, which is the almost exact size and position of our knot log mentioned in an earlier post, is 82.4 gallons per minute. Seawater weighs 8.6 pounds per gallon, so in just ten minutes at that rate of flooding, you’ll add 7,000 pounds of weight to the boat. Not good Mav! So getting the boat ready – part II is all about pump capacity (getting water out) and damage control (keeping water out) or at least slowing the flow.

Rejoice came equipped with two bilge pumps when she was new and that is what she still had when we bought her. One is an electric Jabsco 10.8 gallon per minute pump that is meant to keep up with the minor drips and small leaks that are part of every boat and a manual Whale Gusher 30 pump with a capacity of 31 gallons per minute (if operated by a motivated crew member) positioned at the helm. All in, we had 42 gallons per minute of dewatering capacity, and only 11 if stuck below. We needed more and a manual pump capability belowdecks if forced there by weather and had no power to run an electric pump. We added a PATAY SD 90 Bosun pump below the forward cabin sole hatch by the head that added an additional 21 gallon per minute manual pumping capacity below and a portable 12 volt submersible sump pump with alligator clips that we could quickly connect to our starting battery to add additional passive pumping capacity of 23 gallons per minute. We now have a total capacity with two crew and two electric pumps pumping of 85.8 gallons per minute – better.

Clearly the message of the Navy study though was that, at those rates of flooding, you need to find the hole pretty quickly and plug it, then pump out what you can when you can. Enter damage control. We spent a great deal of time studying the most probable ways that water might get into the boat and established procedures and fixes for dealing with each. The result was a thru-hole diagram that we post in several places in the boat for immediate reference and very complete damage control kit that has everything in it from underwater epoxy, plugs, hose wraps, to pre-cut and drilled plywood patches. If you’d like to know more about the specifics of the kit or plan, drop me a note and I’ll get them to you, but the Storm Trysail Foundation and a company named SeaKits who sell well prepared damage control kits are two great places to start.

Lastly, we installed a high water alarm that sends out a piercing signal if the Jabsco bilge pump isn’t keeping up and we have a bigger and faster water intrusion problem that we need to deal with. With two crew sleeping and one at the helm, we might not notice there is a problem till the floorboards are awash. We’d like to know sooner.  This alarm’s sensing unit is mounted just a bit above the bilge pump activation switch which will let us know if we have rising waters early in the flooding evolution and in a very dramatic way. There will be no sleeping through this alarm! 

So there we have it. There have been a year’s worth of other things, but you get the picture. The mission has been to prudently prepare the vessel for sea and be able to, as best we can, independently deal with what may come. With preparation comes confidence, but I like the edge a certain level of thoughtful uneasiness brings. My life training reminds me that, “Nobody who gets too damned relaxed builds up much flying time”(Fate is the Hunter, Earnest K. Gann).

 I’m officially underway and posting this from my first stop in Rockland, Maine. Though I already miss family and friends it is really nice to be done with never ending lists and preparations. its nice to be on the move! See you again once a little farther down the coast. Cheers!

September 19 – 25

I’m sitting on our deck with my first cup of coffee this morning looking out at Rejoice sitting calmly on her mooring. With every sip of coffee a steady stream of acorns hits the roof from a neighboring oak tree. The pelting the roof is taking reminds me of all the yard clean-ups in falls past and the bushels of acorns collected and deposited in the nearby woods. Not this year. Nature will slowly take over and plant seedlings where it wants. The signs of fall are everywhere and I’m becoming just a little wistful that I won’t be here for my favorite season in Maine. This upcoming trip and eight month adventure elsewhere have been an  almost a singular focus the past year, but I’m observing that no matter how hard I try to drive a schedule or agenda, nature has a way of saying  “not so fast.” More acorns fall and I’m happy for the reminder to pause, breath, and take it all in.

Another marker of fall is the arrival of the cormorants. I don’t pay much attention to them during the summer but come September 1^st  like clockwork they decide to sign on as crew and roost on the boat wherever they can find a horizontal surface. Two hours of precious preparation time are taken up every morning cleaning-up an unholy mess before I can even get to what I had planned that day. Nature clearly has its own timetable and could care less about mine. Cormorants will not be dissuaded either and I’m pretty certain, despite my many efforts to convince them otherwise, they now think it’s their boat. I’ve absolutely covered the boat with bright orange and green streamers along with shiny things  as countermeasures.  They have kinda worked  but the boat looks more like I’m engaged in an airflow study and preparing for high-speed wind tunnel tests than creating effective bird deterrents. 

My knot log has stopped working for the second time since we launched the boat at the end of July. The knot log is a little paddle-wheel in a cylinder that goes through an inch and a half hole in the bottom of the boat (more on that later in the upcoming blog “Preparing the Boat for Big Blue – Part II”). It drives the instrument that indicates your speed through the water. The general cause of it not working is marine growth that accumulates on the paddle-wheel that keeps it from spinning freely and transmitting speed information. It is an easy fix, but it is an early indication that there is more to look at underwater, namely the condition of the bottom and propeller.

It is amazing how quickly every underwater part of the boat becomes fouled with marine growth that, if left unchecked, would turn a slippery 7 knot boat to one that would barely move. The propeller appears fouled too and we might not go anywhere under power with it in that condition. Its efficiency could be altered to such a degree by barnacles and other growth that it simply wouldn’t be able  transfer our 51 horses to the water to propel us forward. In just a month and a half nature has been quietly working on its timetable doing what it does. Fortunately for me a CrossFit friend  is a diver and he agreed to dive on the boat and scrub-down the hull and propeller on Tuesday in Blue Hill. He ended up spending an hour and a half in some very cold water in what had to be some pretty awkward and uncomfortable positions to get the job done….did I mention, underwater! “You are a better man than I am, Gunga Din”  (Rudyard Kipling). All I can say is thank you Justin! I now  have high confidence that we’ll actually be able to move by sail or ships propulsion once the local effects of hurricane Fiona are a distant memory and we part the mooring for points south.

I’m sure there will be other cycle of nature reminders and surprises  along the way. Some will be frustrating and some amazing. Either way, it is clear  that as our plans and activities come and go, nature is an ongoing constant that provides a steady reminder that it’s in charge and has everything under control in its own way. All is just as it should be (cormorant crap notwithstanding).

Part I – Beware of Flying Objects

September 16, 2022

A boat at sea is very much like an airplane in flight, it moves in all three axes: pitch, roll, and yaw and sometimes aggressively so. Part of our pre-launch preparations were to make sure that the crew would be safe inside of our little cocoon at sea if we ever encountered extremes of any of those rotations, particularly roll! It is amazing if you look around the inside of your boat and ask yourself, “what in here could be weaponized if we ever turned turtle and were pitching and rolling in a big sea?” There are tons of things that, if loose and thrashing about, could cause serious damage to those in their way. This post highlights a few of the modifications we made to Rejoice in the past several months securing those things in an effort to prepare the boat for a serious ocean.  

Cabin Sole Hatches

We have two primary access points to the bilge for inspection and storage, both have heavy hatches that lift out with a ring pull. Gravity was the only thing securing them in place so they were the first items of business in “upside-down proofing” the boat. We brought the hatch panels into the shop and after some trepidation and a hard swallow routed, bored, and drilled them  to accept a cam latch pull that will lock one end to the floor frame below. A block with an aluminum tab was screwed underneath to the other end. The system works great, just rotate the cam pull handle to disengage the locking arm below, lift and slid the panel forward to clear the aft aluminum tab from the floor frame and then lift the whole thing out – presto, hatch secured.

Head Grating

Like most vessels the size of Rejoice, our head doubles as a shower with a teak grate over a floor pan and a drain sump that collects and evacuates grey water. The grate fits the floor pan well and stays pretty well put in a normal seaway but would be lethal if it was allowed to be tossed from its seat in an extreme roll. We screwed and bedded two stainless steel washers to the floor to restrain one side of the grate and added a door button to secure the opposing end. This arrangement secures the grate while still allowing removal for cleaning or retrieving all those little odds and ends that invariably get dropped and fall through.

Companionway Ladders

We have two companionway ladders to exit the cabin to the cockpit. The primary ladder is large and heavy and leads from the cabin sole to the engine compartment lid. A smaller ladder goes from there to the companionway. Each have barrel-bolts on their port legs affixing them to the structures they rest on. The barrel-bolts secure the ladders in pitch and yaw but wouldn’t do a thing to secure them in a big roll. We certainly didn’t want those things flying around unrestrained. The fix was to add “speed pins” to each of their upper mounting brackets. The brackets are made of chromed bronze and took a very sharp drill to get through, but after a little alignment finagling, the pins fit and were easily inserted and removed. Those pinned ladders aren’t going anywhere unless we want them to!

Icebox Lid

A sailboat’s ice box, or more commonly called “reefer” (the reefer deck is an old Navy reference to where refrigerated food was stored, not what you might be thinking) usually has a heavy, insulated lid that is hinged in the middle. You can lift the entire lid out with a ring pull in each side, or just open one side or the other to find what you want. Again, nothing at all to restrain it if gravity was working to remove it rather than keep it in place. The solution was to fashion channel aluminum into brackets that would accept a beautiful (and strong) length of ash across the lid to be pinned in place as part of our heavy weather preparation. It just takes seconds to install and completely secures a potentially big chunk of flying hardware.

Navigation Tabletop

Last but not least was to secure the hinged navigation table lid. It is attached to the desk, but free to open if inverted spilling out all the odds-and-ends that just seem to accumulate there. Such a circumstance would not necessarily be a disaster but would make a mess just when you don’t need another one! A simple door button added to the table frame did the trick. It is low profile, easy to install and effective. 

We certainly hope that every sailing day will be a 15 knot reach in calm seas and that these preparations are excessive but, as I used to say when working, “hope is not a good business plan.” I believe that to be particularly true when planning a voyage offshore!