bring it on. · 2020. 12. 30. · ev ents & mark ting coordinator lee auchincloss phone...

BRING IT ON.www.icomamerica.com/[email protected].

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contributors

Ellen Massey Leonard (Short Tacks “A circumnavigator’s favor-ite ocean films,” page 16) is a writer, photographer, and Ocean Navigator contributing editor. She has sailed near-ly 60,000 miles on rudimentary classic boats, including a circumnavigation by age 24, a voyage to the Alaskan Arctic, and two more crossings of the Pacific. Since her circumnavigation, she has found joy in sharing the beauty of the natural world through stories and images. She and her husband, Seth, were the 2018 recipients of the Cruising Club of America’s prestigious Young Voy-ager Award. They just completed a three-week trip from French Polynesia, their third long Pacific passage.

Bill Morris (Ocean Voyaging, “Snagged anchors and empty gas bottles,” page 20) completed a full circumnavigation by way of the two canals aboard his 1966 Cal 30 from 2000 to 2005, accompanied by his wife Marilu dur-ing the Pacific crossing from Panama to Australia. Bill has contributed dozens of articles to Ocean Navigator and Ocean Navigator Online. He is the author of The Windvane Self-Steering Handbook (International Marine, 2004); Sun, Wind, & Water: The Essential Guide to the Energy-Efficient Cruising Boat (Seaworthy Press, 2017); and The Captain’s Guide to Alternative Energy Afloat (Seaworthy Press, 2019).

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Editor Tim Queeney 207-749-5922 Copy Editor Annika Erikson Art dirECtor Kim Goulet Norton ContriButing Editors Scott Bannerot Twain Braden Nigel Calder Ellen Massey Leonard Eric Forsyth Jeff & Raine Williams David Berson Ken McKinley Wayne Canning

[email protected]

WEst CoAst us & CAnAdA,

intErnAtionAL Susan W. Hadlock 207-838-0401

EAst CoAst us & CAnAdA, intErnAtionAL Charlie Humphries 207-939-1929 puBLishEr/ AdvErtising dirECtor Alex Agnew 207-450-5363

EvEnts & MArkEting

CoordinAtor Lee Auchincloss

phonE 1-207-822-4350

BusinEss oFFiCE Lee Auchincloss

ISSN0886-0149Ocean Navigator is published in January, March, May, July, September and November, with an annual special issue of Ocean Voyager in April, for $27.95 per year by Navigator Publishing LLC, 30 Danforth St., Portland, ME 04101. Peri-odicals postage paid at Portland, Maine, and additional mailing offices.Postmaster: Please send address changes to Ocean Navigator, P.O. Box 461468, Escondido, CA 92046.

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OceanavigatOrnMARINENAVIGATIONANDOCEANVOyAGING

MAINOFFICEJohn kettlewell (Special section, “Light in a pinch,” page 26) is the executive director of Sail Martha’s Vineyard, a nonprofit that teaches sailing to more than 600 young people every year on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachu-setts. He’s been cruising from Canada to the Carib-bean for more than 40 years, and is the author of the Intracoastal Waterway Chartbook, among others.

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After A stArt delAyed by fog, the 33-boAt fleet of Vendee Globe solo racers began the nonstop race around the world on November 8, 2020, from Les Sables-d’Olonne in France. The fleet was the largest yet for the race, which requires the utmost in ocean racing skill and determination just to finish, let alone the effort required to push one’s self and one’s boat as hard as possible to win.

Normally, the race vil-lage and surrounding area is crowded with as many

Drama in the Vendee Globe solo world race

ChatterChartroom

as 350,000 spectators, but due to COVID-19 restric-tions, the race village was locked down and the sur-rounding area was report-edly largely devoid of fans for the start.

The first boat with gear problems was Fabrice Amedeo on Newrest – Art et Fenetres, who had to return immediately to Les Sables-d’Olonne for repairs, but who rejoined the race. Three days after the start race, favorite Jeremie Beyou, on the foil-ing IMOCA 60 Charal,

Vendee Globe Race/ Vincent Curutchet/Alea

Alex Thomson’s

IMOCA 60 Hugo Boss

at the start of the

2020 Vendee Globe

Race.

<<experienced rudder damage and a broken backstay and had to return 600 miles to port for repairs. Beyou later rejoined the race but has thousands of miles to make up.

On Nov. 16, racer Nico-las Troussel on CORUM L’Epargne was dismasted 260 miles northwest of Cape Verde. Troussel retired from the race and managed to reach Min-delo in the Cape Verde islands. Thomas Ruyant on LinkedOut, meanwhile, had to cut 12 feet off of the

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 OCEAN NAVIGATOR 5www.oceannavigator.com

Co

urt

esy

Saild

ron

e

tip of his damaged port foil while at sea.

British racer Alex Thom-son on Hugo Boss was lead-ing the race and setting a blistering pace when he experienced damage to the boat’s starboard rudder on Nov. 28. “I was averaging 21 knots, flying the small gennaker and one reef in the mainsail,” Thomson wrote in a message released by the race. “I was down below when there was a huge bang and the boat broached vio-lently. The steering system was jammed and all I could do was roll the sails away. Once on deck, I could see the rudder blade was broken and swinging around with a large piece of fishing gear jammed into the cracks. So I think I must have hit some-thing.” Thomson was forced to head to Cape Town under reduced sail for repairs.

Kevin Escoffier aboard PRB abandoned his sinking boat 840 miles southwest of Cape Town after a major structural failure that broke off a section of the bow and flooded the boat. Escoffier was picked up 12 hours later by fellow racer Jean Le Cam on Yes we Cam!.

somedAy soon, the UsCg sUrfACe Vessel thAt responds to your distress call might be an unmanned one. In November of 2020, the USCG completed a 30-day test of unmanned surface vessels off of Hawaii. These small ves-sels from Saildrone and Spatial Integrated Systems included both sail- and engine-powered vessels.

Testing was performed to explore how current and emerging technolo-gies might be used to pro-vide USCG presence in

Coast Guard tests unmanned surface vessels off Hawaii

remote regions. The test also showed ways the unmanned craft with assorted sensor capabilities might support the Coast Guard’s many missions around the globe, ranging from search and rescue to law enforcement.

“It’s clear that autono-mous technology is a growing industry and has great potential to enhance Coast Guard operations,” said Cmdr. Blair Sweigart, the demonstration’s direc-tor from the Coast Guard Research and Develop-

ment Center. “Combined with artificial intelligence algorithms, unmanned systems could be a game-changer.”

During the test, the Coast Guard examined unmanned units from Sail-drone and Spatial Integrat-ed Systems to understand their capabilities and effec-tiveness. The unmanned vessels participated in a variety of operational sim-ulations to detect and alert the Coast Guard to both legitimate and nefarious behavior.

A Saildrone

vessel

underway in

the Pacific,

one of the

two types of

unmanned

vessels test-

ed by the

U.S. Coast

Guard.

<<


ChatterChartroom

Fatal dive boat fire attributed to operator’s oversight failuresbefore dAwn on sept. 2, 2019, A CrewmAn AboArd the dive boat Conception, which was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, Calif., awoke to a strange sound. He investigated and found the vessel’s salon compartment, one deck below, aglow with fire.

He awoke four co-workers sleeping nearby, and together they attempted to reach the 34 people sleeping below deck. Flames and intense heat on the main deck made the rescue, or any escape from below deck, impossible. The 33 passengers and one crewmember in the bunk room died.

The National Trans-

portation Safety Board (NTSB) released a report on the accident on Nov. 10, 2020. The NTSB identified numerous regu-latory gaps pertaining to passenger vessels during its year-long investigation of the Conception fire. The agency has called for mul-tiple new rules aimed at improving safety aboard these boats.

NTSB investigators and board members met virtually on Oct. 20 to confirm key findings and release the probable cause of the fire. The agency said the crew’s failure to follow the existing requirement for an over-night watch was a primary factor in the tragedy.

“The absence of the required roving patrol on Conception delayed detection and allowed for the growth of the fire, precluded firefighting and evacuation efforts and directly led to the high number of fatalities in the accident,” the NTSB determined.

The agency attributed those failures to ineffec-tive oversight by vessel owner Truth Aquatics of Santa Barbara, Calif. Other unsafe practices identified during the investigation included insufficient crew training and lack of emergency drills.

“If the company had been actively involved in

ensuring the safe practices required by regulations were enforced, most nota-bly the requirement for a roving patrol, it is likely this accident would have not happened,” the NTSB said.

Conception was moored in Platts Harbor north of Santa Cruz Island when the fire started sometime around 0300. The 33 pas-sengers were on the third and final day of a diving excursion around the Channel Islands. There were six crew aboard the vessel.

The captain made a distress call from the burning dive boat before he and four other crew-members abandoned ship. They launched a skiff and traveled to a nearby sailboat where the captain again requested help over the radio. Two crewmem-bers returned in search of survivors but found none.

The Coast Guard and other first respond-ers arrived at 0427. By dawn, the 75-foot vessel valued at $1.4 million had burned to the waterline.

The Coast Guard con-vened a Marine Board of Investigation and will issue its own findings. Additionally, there is an ongoing federal criminal

Co

urtesy San

ta Barb

ara Co

un

ty FD

The dive

boat

Conception

on fire off

Santa Cruz

island in

California.

<<


investigation into the incident.

Investigators could not identify the specific ignition source aboard the vessel or time of igni-tion. They believe the fire started aft in the passenger salon on the main deck. Most likely ignition sources include the 38-year-old ship’s electrical system, unat-tended charging batteries or discarded smoking materials, the NTSB said. A photo taken before the fire shows a nest of power strips and electronics charging in the salon.

Investigators believe most of the victims were awake during the fire but were unable to escape. One means of escape was a spiral staircase to the forward salon. The emergency escape hatch, accessible from a bunk bed, also opened to the salon, which was engulfed in flames.

Conception met exist-ing regulations for smoke alarms in bunk spaces. But investigators said the fire would have been well underway by the time smoke triggered the alarms below deck. There was no alarm in the salon, nor any requirement for one.

“Interconnected

smoke detectors in all accommodation spaces on Subchapter T and Subchapter K (passenger) vessels would increase the chance that fires will be detected early enough to allow for successful firefighting and the evacu-ation of passengers and crew,” the NTSB said.

The NTSB called for a series of regulatory changes. These include a requirement for passen-ger vessels to have smoke alarms in all accommo-dation spaces, intercon-nected smoke alarms aboard these vessels and secondary means of egress to a space different from the primary egress. Until then, the agency urged the Passenger Vessel Asso-ciation and other trade groups to encourage their members to voluntarily make those changes.

Investigators learned there is spotty adherence to the rule requiring over-night watches aboard sim-ilar excursion boats. As such, the NTSB urged the Coast Guard to develop protocols to ensure ves-sels are conducting roving patrols as required.

Truth Aquatics could not be reached for com-ment.

Casey Conley

Notable New Titles

Former liveaboard voyager and self-professed “citizen of the world,” Liesbet Collaert’s memoir Plunge is, like many other voyagers’ memoirs, an account of passages made, life aboard, dealing with gear failure, experiencing tropical beauty and a freedom tempered only by wind and weather. Yet, it would be unfair to only place the book in the category of sailing memoir. Plunge is also an affecting account of Collaert’s emotional life, her evolving relationship with her voyaging husband, Mark, and the losses and trade-offs that everyone, no matter afloat or ashore, must navigate. The memoir is bracingly honest about Collaert’s marriage and the sometimes choppy times she and Mark endure as they learn to voyage, start a successful marine electronics business and lose loved ones to illness. Collaert also includes how she and Mark learned to voyage, with

Plungeby Liesbet CollaertRoaming About Press

the events of their first long passage in the Pacific making them wonder if blue water ocean sailing was really for them. Their

efforts to learn to fish while underway were also an amusing element that further demonstrated their open attitude to learning new things, a useful part of a voyager's skill set. There is much in this memoir to recommend it, not the least of which is Collaert’s engaging writing. Her considerable skill in conveying the quotidian, as well as the emotional peaks and valleys, shapes this book into more than just a sailing diary. It’s a life memoir of a born wanderer always seeking out her next passage.

Tim Queeney


ChatterChartroom

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ipp

ing

on noVember 9, the 328-foot finnish-flAgged CArgo ship Midas rescued three French sailors from the capsized 50-foot catamaran Hallucine in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Por-tugal. Included among the rescued sailors was French racer Regis Guillemot. A fourth crewman drowned when he was thrown over-board by the capsize. His body was recovered 36

A rescue from a ship captain’s perspective

hours after the rescue. Por-tuguese search-and-rescue authorities directed Midas to change course and res-cue the three sailors, who reportedly spent one night on the overturned cruising cat before shifting to a life raft.

Midas had left Riga, Latvia, and was en route to Florida when it was given the rescue mission. At 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, UTC time, the Lisbon Maritime Rescue Center called Midas via satellite phone. What follows is the account of the captain of Midas, Timo Väänänen.

“They said that 50 nau-tical miles east of us, a dis-tress signal from the plea-sure boat had been detect-ed. But no contact had been made with the boat since then, so there was no information about the quality of the distress [situ-

ation]. Midas was the clos-est ship at the moment. We changed course and it took us about four hours to get to the location [of the catamaran].

“At the same time, a Portuguese Coast Guard plane arrived. Detection was successful thanks to a location signal. The plane circled low, looking for potential people in the ocean. We saw a large cata-maran lying upside down and a small life raft near it.

“Seas were so high that Midas’ man overboard gear could not be lowered. Also, the freefall lifeboat could not be lowered because we would not have been able to lift it back into position. We then did the trick with the sea and the wind [mak-ing a lee] so that we could drive the ship as close as I dared to the life raft. Then

Co

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od

by Sh

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/Ken

neth

Lind

man

n

Right, the Finnish-

flagged ship Midas

is owned by Godby

Shipping. Below,

the survivors climb

aboard Midas.

<<


filing A floAt plAn is A VAlU-Able sAfety tool And its Use-fulness is regularly borne out by real incidents. Take the case of SV Bonobo. The owner filed a float plan with a friend regarding a voyage from Cozumel to the Rio Dulce. Their ETA to the Rio Dulce was September 2, 2020. When Bonobo failed to arrive on time, their friend filed an online report with Boatwatch.org.

Within hours, a “Be on the Lookout” (BOLO) was being broadcast on the Maritime Mobile Service Network (14.300), the SSCA HF Radio Service Net, the Doo Dah and Cruiseheimers Nets, and the Waterway Radio & Cruising Club Net. Face-book groups all over the Caribbean were covered with the Boat Watch Face-book Group lookout.

Long-time cruiser Sabrina Nichols of the SV Honey Ryder immediately picked up on the lookout and notified Boatwatch that Bonobo was anchored at the entrance of the Rio Dulce with engine trouble. Boatwatch called the friend who filed the missing report and let him know what was happening. This is not an

Float plan: an excellent safety tool

The

capsized

catamaran

Hallucine.

<<we used a rocket device that fired an explosive charge that sends a thin string up to a couple of hundred yards away. It’s hard to get it going in the right direction in the wind, but we managed to get it pretty close to the life raft.“The first shot was suc-

cessful, but for safety we fired a second shot. The survivors then paddled along the rope with their last strength and only one paddle. The landing bridge was lowered, and the sur-vivors ascended to Midas. They were barefoot, had been in a small life raft for eight hours.

“Their mood was very contradictory, relief from salvation, of course, but grief about the loss of their friend. Late Saturday night, the Portuguese maritime rescue authorities found

the body at sea. I had to show the rescued men a picture of the drowned man sent by the authorities, from which they identified their comrade. It was very tragic.

“They were very experienced ocean sailors on their way from France to Gran Canaria, from where the journey was to continue later to the Caribbean. The crashed catamaran has participated in major sailing competitions and has crossed the Atlantic many times.

“I’ve been skippering cargo ships on the world’s seas for 17 years. This is the first time I have been in such a situation. There was a challenge, but with the help of a good crew and good cooperation, we succeeded.”

Via Boatwatch.org

extraordinary event. But it proves the necessity of filing a float plan with a trusted friend who will take action if you are overdue.

Boatwatch is a free service run by cruisers for cruisers. We operate a SSB radio station, FCC call sign KPK, daily at 12:15 p.m. UTC, or 8:15 a.m. Eastern Time on frequency 8.104. We are on 15 minutes before the popular Cruiseh-eimers Net on 8.152. We are in partnership with the Caribbean Safety and Secu-rity Net, reporting crimes against yachts.

Take it from a pair of retired FBI agents, situa-tional awareness is your best defense against becoming a victim of a crime.

There is no better venue for situational awareness among the cruising com-munity than the SSB radio. Although they are good resources, satellite phones and Facebook groups can-not take the place of the SSB radio Boatwatch.org and the SSCA HF Radio Service Net stand by 24/7 to help cruisers. A sample float plan can be found at boatwatch.org/resources/. n

Glenn Tuttle

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by Sh

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/Ken

neth

Lind

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n


Sextants are wonderfully analog optical devices. A

sextant user from the 1850s would have little problem using a modern sextant. Now a company in South Korea has begun offering some-thing it calls the Korea Digi-tal Sextant (KDS) that digi-talizes the venerable sextant to make celestial navigation nearly automatic. The com-pany is billing this device as the ultimate backup for GPS for both commercial and rec-reational mariners.

The appli-cation of digital tech-

nol-ogy to celes-tial navigation started a long time ago, of course. The first pocket calculators that ran programs could be used to

handle the number-crunch-ing of sight reduction and the task of pre-calculating what bodies would be avail-able to shoot based on your DR position and the date. The most widely used of these early programs ran on the HP line of calcula-tors that famously used the reverse polish notation (RPN) data entry system of those devices. In RPN, you add 6 and 3 by entering 6, 3, +. The operand (addition, subtraction, division or mul-tiplication) is entered last.

This approach took some getting used to, but stud-ies showed

it was a faster approach to data entry and provid-

ed some data han-dling advantages

in early calculators.

Other celestial naviga-tion programs were developed using different

types of calculators not based on RPN. Still later, DOS- and Windows-based programs became available for the PC. Now, of course,

The Korea

Digital Sextant

is based on a

modified Astra

metal sextant.

BY TIm quEENEYA digital sextant

MARINE tEch NotEs

there are a variety of pro-grams for PCs, Macs, smart-phones and tablets and even Web-based apps that can calculate celestial navigation values and plot those solu-tions on the screen.

In an effort toward total digitalization, there also are apps available that make use of a smartphone or tablet’s camera to measure the angles of celestial bodies. While these are clever attempts at a smartphone sextant, they can’t match the optical accuracy of a modern metal sextant.

The KDS product is based on Chinese-manufactured Astra IIIB sextants. These are well-made instruments that provide excellent accuracy for the price — many modern celestial navigation practitio-ners own Astras.

How does the KDS con-vert a standard Astra IIIB into a digital sextant? One key is to equip the index arm of the sextant with an accu-rate angle encoder. Accord-ing to the KDS, the unit’s angle encoder can read the position of the index arm with impressive precision. According to Dr. Youngseop Lee, the developer of the KDS, the encoder can read

Korea D

igital S

extant

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 OCEAN NAVIGATOR 11 www.oceannavigator.com

igator, the KDS means that it is only a ques- tion of taking a few sights to get one’s lat/long position immediately. No need for consulting the Nautical Almanac or sight reduction tables. And there’s no need to write down numbers and transfer those to a calculator or smartphone or tablet app. The KDS is an inge-nious backup system to GPS that requires only the sight-taking ele-ment.

While it probably won’t lead to a renaissance of celestial naviga-tion with voyagers, the KDS is an intriguing, updated approach to doing celestial navigation and not relying blindly on satellite naviga-tion while at sea. At press time, a price for the KDS has not been released. n

angles as small as five seconds of arc, which is one-twelfth of an arc minute. Dr. Lee says that in practi-cal terms the angle readout of the sextant is three-tenths of a minute (0.3’) — excellent accuracy for even an accom-plished sight taker.

The Astra sextant is fur-ther modi-fied by adding a box to the top of the handle that contains the computing chip and circuit board, as well as modifying the light switch built into the handle to instead send a signal to the computational circuits.

Given these modifications how does the KDS work? The operator first finds the instrument’s index error and enters that into the KDS computer. The operator also enters the name of the body being shot into the computer. Then he or she finds the desired celestial body in the sky, brings it down to the horizon, swings the arc to make sure the sextant is vertical and then presses the button on the handle. This tells the computer to read the angle of the index arm. From here the operation is automatic. The computer can determine a LOP from a single sighting of the sun or a star, or the operator can

add additional sights to the session and the KDS will calculate a fixed position in a matter of seconds. The KDS can also use sights of the

sun taken during the course of a day to calculate a

running fix of the sun.

For the nav-

Korea Digital S

extant


power voyaging

In my more than 30 years as a boat builder/yacht broker, I

have enjoyed visiting hundreds of pilothouses. From 30 feet to 100 feet, tiny to opulent, at boat shows for a quick walk-through and underway for days on end. My career has allowed me to cruise thousands of miles offshore — standing watch, drinking coffee and observing (mostly with clients doing train-ing deliveries). You can learn something from every boat you visit if you look around with an open mind. That’s how I’ve compiled my list of pilothouse add-ons.

I travel with a camera and all of those clicks have resulted in a huge collection of images

cataloging the items skippers consider convenient necessities. Most of the trawlers I’m on are run by owner-operators, not professional crew. Typically, they are an adventurous couple orga-nizing, managing and maintain-ing their trawler by themselves. One thing all boaters seem to share is the propensity to find creative solutions.

We are all familiar with what is standard equipment and expected gear in a wheelhouse. “That’s a good idea” and “Why didn’t I think of that?” blend together when I see a new tip or trick. I light up with excite-ment, take a photo and add it to my list. This list has become long and I’ve come to accept

The pilothouse

is the nerve

center of a

power voyagig

vessel like this

Selene 43 in the

Bahamas.

that it will never be complete. It seems like now is as good a time as any to show others some of my discoveries. I’ve compiled some of my favorites here.

My job as a trawler special-ist lets me help people find the right boat and understand how to enjoy it. I’m continually searching for ways to explain what I have learned and assist with selections. In my Trawl-erFest presentation, “Offshore Essentials,” (given back in the pre-COVID pandemic days) I led an exercise where we took a few minutes to prioritize 15 essential navigation tools. I typed up 15 nav/com features with space to the side for each student to write in their prefer-ence. It’s interesting to tabulate the results and review the favorites from each class. By hearing what others selected, everyone realized that all of this gear has an important function. Over many classes, there have been several different favorites, including: VHF radio, com-pass, depth sounder and radar. The point of the drill is to show that there are many helpful components, and to encourage everyone to understand how they work and how to interpret the information they provide to become a better boat handler.

Prized pilothouse possessions STORY AND PHOTOS BY JEFF MERRILL


Above, a hull

details label for

ready reference.

Left, a channel

red/green remind-

er stick. Below

left, a collection

of useful pilot-

house tools.

I like to think of the pilot-house as the head and brains of your trawler. The recom-mendations highlighted in the list below represent “extras,” mostly loose items with a pur-pose. Some may not appear useful to have on board (until you need them). Once you leave the dock and realize what you are missing, you have to wait until you return to port to get it. I’m skipping over the built-in equipment and standard nav/com installations such as: depth, GPS, VHF, autopilot, radar, chart plotter, AIS and compass to name a few. Mechanical equipment and machinery controls are also purposely ignored — engine shift, windlass, horn, thrusters, stabilizers, watermaker, wipers, generator, air conditioning, etc. Smartphones and tablets with apps are omnipresent, so I’m leaving them out as well. For good practice, I am going to take it as a given that you have paper charts, dividers, parallels, guidebooks and the USCG COLREGS book. See, you already have a lot of stuff!

Here are some of my favor-ites (unranked) in each of the categories:

NavigationRed triangle and green square

channel marker guide (quick-look reminder to stay in the channel)

Stabilized binoculars (easier to look through in rough seas)

Hand-held rangefinder (dis-

tance calculator between ships underway or anchored)

Hand bearing compass (for determining intercepting courses)

Red plastic film for displays (night vision cover if you can’t dim)

Lead line (for sounding the bot-tom in shallow water)

Pencil rack for pencils and chart dividers, plus pen-cil sharpener (for plotting on paper charts)

Mesh lead pellet dive weights from SCUBA belts (to hold down paper charts)

Weems & Plath COLREGS LIGHTRule (night lights navigation decoder)

Magnifying glass (for reading charts)

Lens cleaner and microfiber cloth (for wiping monitors)

Calculator (distances, fuel burn, etc.)

Post-it notes (to keep a log of the course you are steering

so you can return if you have to dodge).

Communica-tionWireless head-

sets (normal

voice talking when docking and anchoring)

Megaphone (for louder voice greetings to other boaters, kayakers, etc.)

Air horn (portable sound warn-ing device)

Hand-held VHF (backup and eavesdrop)

Hand-held Walkie Talkies (por-table for short range talk)

Garmin inReach (for texting to shoreside contacts).


Safety Ditch bag (filled with abandon-ship

gear)Inflatable harness (with whistle and

strobe for walking on deck)PLB (personal locator beacon for each

crewmember)Mustang Rescue Stick (small baton

throw device with flotation)Egg timer (watch/alarm reminder)Gloves (hand protection for dock lines

and anchoring)Sunglasses (outside) & safety glasses

(machinery spaces)Hand-held searchlight (portable

patrol at night)Split tennis ball (to put on engine

RPM shift when towing your din-ghy — obvious reminder)

Smoke alarm below dash near electri-cal equipment (early electrical fire warning).

Comfort and convenienceCookie bucket (plastic tub with

snacks that won’t spill, and will also double as a collection bin if you are feeling queasy and need to “toss” your cookies)

Trash can (with a lid for organizing rubbish — lined with plastic bag)

Small plastic bin with lid (for collect-ing loose fasteners, nuts, screws, washers, etc. in one place)

Fly swatter or a small portable vacuum (for eliminating annoying insects)

GelPro soft foam pad or equivalent (for tired feet when standing on watch)

Window cleaner inside/Rain-X or Aquapel outside (to improve wind-screen visibility)

Bicycle air pump and funnel for replenishing steering hydraulic res-ervoir (if so equipped)

Level gauge (to visualize trim — fore/aft and side/side)

Drink holders (caddies to prevent spilling)

Bug screens (on doors and windows)Sunshade (for forward pilothouse

windows, similar to the visors in your car)

Vessel rubber stamp (for international travel with boat image, name and official number)

Boat cards (business cards with picture of your boat and your names to give

to fellow cruisers so they remember you)

Hull details label (vessel facts/dimen-sions summary — name, call sign, draft, beam, bridge clearance, etc.)

Blue tape and Sharpie pen (for reminders, labels, notes, reducing glare of bright lights at night, etc.).

I’ll continue my quest to search for new and unusual, unique and simple, common-sense ideas that make boat-ing safer and more enjoyable. Keep in mind that some of this is also appro-priate on your flybridge.

Since this is an evergreen list, I’ve posted a comprehensive photo gallery on my website, JMYS.com. Go to the Owners in Charge section, then “Wheelhouse Wonders.” I’ll update this over time. If you have a sugges-tion, please email me [email protected] and put “Wheelhouse Wonders” in the subject line along with a photo and brief description. Please tell me what it is, how it is used and include your permission for me to publish it online. n

Jeff Merrill, CPYB, is the president of Jeff Merrill Yacht Sales, Inc.- www.JMYS.com. He is a veteran yacht bro-ker who provides individual attention and worldwide professional representa-tion to buyers and sellers of recreational tugs and trawlers. Merrill is active in the cruising community as a public speaker and writer and enjoys spend-ing time at sea with clients. He is an online instructor for Boaters University and has a successful YouTube chan-nel that includes a variety of relevant cruising videos. Jeff has written more than two dozen articles for Ocean Navigator’s Power Voyaging column.

power voyaging

Left, dive weights

used to hold down

paper charts. Below,

inflatable PFDs and

a Rescue Stick in the

pilothouse ready

for use.

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.JMYS.com

http://www.JMYS.com

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Deadline for Advertising:January 29, 2021


SHORT TACKS

A still from the

documentary

Maiden, which

tells the story

of the the first

all-female

crew in the

Whitbread

Round the

World Race in

1989-90.

While essentially the entire world was on lockdown and almost all borders closed, sailors suddenly found themselves unable to sail. Some cruisers were stuck aboard their boats, forbidden to move and, in some cases, even forbidden to go for a swim over the side.

Quite a few scrambled to get out of the tropics before hurricane season arrived, and some made unexpectedly long passages as they were turned away from place after place. Still, others were ashore when the virus struck and were unable to return to their boats.

I found myself ashore and so, like so many people, I escaped to my happy place — the ocean — virtually. In other words, I watched a num-

ber of sailing and ocean films. Here’s a list of my favorites:

1. Seven Worlds, One Planet: Topping the list is the first in the recent BBC series, Seven Worlds, One Planet. Released last fall, the seven-part docu-mentary features one continent in each feature-length episode. The first one covers Antarctica, which really means it covers the abundant life of the Southern Ocean surrounding the frozen continent. Narrated by the illustrious David Attenbor-ough, Antarctica opens with an absolutely incredible moment: the birth of a Weddell seal on the Ross Ice Shelf off McMur-do Station. The stunning foot-age just continues from there: leopard seals and orcas hunting gentoo penguins, humpback

A circumnavigator’s favorite ocean films by Ellen Massey Leonard

whales bubble-net feeding, elephant seals defending their harems, baby albatross strug-gling for survival in a gale.

2. Maiden: Tied with Ant-arctica for first place on my list is Maiden. I found this film to be one of the most inspir-ing I’ve ever seen, and I don’t think that is simply because I’m a female ocean sailor. Despite ridicule, dismissal and no money, Tracy Edwards skippered the first all-female crew to compete in a round-the-world yacht race. Not only did they finish the 1989 Whitbread Race (which none of their detractors believed they would), but they finished sec-ond in class. They won two of the six legs, and each of those wins tested a very different

Co

urt

esy

Son

y Pi

ctu

res

Cla

ssic

s


all of them came home despite their many disasters. The first half of this film has the majority of the original photography and film footage from the expedition’s photographer Frank Hurley; this was my favorite part. The second half, covering the voy-age of the lifeboat James Caird from Elephant Island to South Georgia and then the trek across that high, glaciated island is where most of the reenactment occurs. This is very well done and gives you quite a sense of the ordeal those men went through to save themselves and their 22 crew-mates left on Elephant Island. The film is interspersed throughout by fascinating interviews with people knowledgeable about the Shackleton expedition, including Pauline Carr, the late curator of the South Georgia museum who first sailed to South Georgia in 1992 with her husband Tim aboard their 28-foot yacht Cur-lew, a wooden, engineless gaff-rigged cutter built in 1898.

6. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: I don’t think I really need to explain this one. How could any sailor not see a little bit of our most philosophically inebri-ated selves in Jack Sparrow when he proclaims, “It’s not just a keel and hull and a deck and sails. That’s what a ship needs. But what a ship is … what the Black Pearl really is … is freedom!”

Ellen Massey Leonard is a circumnavi-gator who, with her husband Seth, won the Cruising Club of America’s Young Voyager Award in 2018.

skill set: the long, arduous Southern Ocean passage to Australia, and the short, almost-match race from there to New Zealand. The footage of the race is riveting and the interviews with Edwards, her crew, the men they raced against and the journalists who covered the race are fascinating. If you’re looking for an inspirational, uplifting film in a time when not much feels all that uplifting, this is it.

3. David Attenborough’s Great Barrier Reef: This film is a delightful virtual trip to this beautiful, vibrant part of the world. The renowned naturalist revisits one of his favorite places on Earth, which he first visited in 1957. He says in the film that one of his most vivid memories in his long and varied life was formed don-ning scuba gear and seeing the coral reef for the first time. Nearly 60 years later, he returns to the reef in a sub-mersible for the making of this series. From footage of coral spawning to a 10,000-year-old Aboriginal legend that closely mirrors what science has recently discovered about the creation of the reef, the four episodes are a captivating exploration of the world’s biggest coral reef.

4. Around Cape Horn: Some of the most remarkable sailing footage ever filmed was captured by Irving John-son on his voyage aboard Peking in 1929. Around Cape Horn shows life aboard one of the last square-riggers — an enormous steel vessel with more than an acre of sail area — dis-placing more than 8,000 tons when fully loaded with cargo, and sailed entirely by hand. Johnson shipped

aboard her in Germany in December and so the film opens with a ferocious North Sea storm, which wrecked 68 ships along the coast. As Peking heads south, the footage shifts to show the continuous repair and maintenance needed to keep these entirely self-sufficient vessels in seaworthy condi-tion. Everything to keep the ship run-ning is carried on board, eliminating the need to call in port for anything outside the reason for the trip: the cargo. Johnson, narrating his footage some 50 years after the fact, com-ments that the square-riggers often arrived in port looking better than when they left. He also comments on the equanimity with which the sailors accepted risks, going aloft with only their hands and feet and brains to keep them there, no harness of any kind. Off Cape Horn, Johnson films a storm so terrific that all the square-rigger captains who saw the footage claimed they’d never seen so much water over the deck of vessel that had not sunk. This film is a unique and fascinating glimpse into the bygone era of commercial sailing.

5. Shackleton’s Captain: “Docu-drama” is not generally my favorite genre, as I sometimes find it jarring to shift between actors, original footage and interviews with people knowl-edgeable on the subject. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed Shackleton’s Captain, which focuses on Frank Worsley, whose phenomenal stamina and navigational talents played a major role in saving every member of the expedition. In one of the most amazing feats of polar exploration,


SHORT TACKS

Reports of aggressive killer whales by Edward Lundquist

Orcas have battered sailboats off Spain and Portugal and the behavior of these large marine mammals has baffled experts. Sailors along Spain and Portugal’s Atlantic coastlines have seen a recent series of puzzling incidents involving apparently aggres-sive orcas.

While orcas are not known to attack humans, they can cause damage to boats. In a series of inci-dents along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts between Gibraltar and Galicia, groups of orcas have been recorded swimming near sailboats and other vessels, and in some cases acting together in such a way as the people on those boats thought themselves to be in

grave danger.The Spanish maritime

search-and-rescue agency, Salvamento Maritimo, reported multiple sailing yachts have been damaged by encounters with orcas.

According to The New York Times, the Spanish Ministry of Ecology record-ed 13 orca encounters since mid-August off the coast of Galicia alone.

Several sailing vessels, including Urki 1, Amadeus, and the Spanish Navy’s rac-ing boat Mirfak, had to be towed into port by Salva-mento Maritimo rescue ves-sels because of significant damage to their steering gear. On July 29, a vessel off Cape Trafalgar reported that it was surrounded by nine

orcas that rammed the hull for more than an hour, turn-ing the boat around, damag-ing the propulsion system and disabling the rudder. The boat radioed authori-ties to report it was “under attack” by killer whales. On September 11, a yacht being delivered from Spain to the U.K. was rammed more than a dozen times by orcas. It reportedly lost steering and had to be towed into port to make repairs.

A witness reported that the killer whales communi-cated with one another with loud high-pitched noises as they were battering the ves-sels.

In a report published by the Guardian newspaper, Victoria Morris, a biol-ogy graduate student and crewmember aboard one of the boats, said she thought the attack was coordinated. “The noise was really scary. They were ramming the keel, there was this horrible echo, I thought they could capsize the boat. And this deafening noise as they com-municated, whistling to each other. It was so loud that we had to shout.”

Her four-person crew radioed the Coast Guard with a distress call about an “orca attack.” The authorities

Orcas have

reportedly

attacked sail-

boats recently

off Spain and

Portugal.

Wikip

edia/R

enn

et Stow

e


Reports of aggressive killer whales by Edward Lundquistwere astonished. “You’re saying you’re under attack from orcas?” the Coast Guard replied.

When they were towed into port, they saw their keel was cov-ered in bite marks and two-thirds of the rudder was torn away.

Orcas are the largest members of the dolphin family and can grow to be 32 feet long and weigh six tons. Like dolphins, they are intelligent and social and can fol-low boats.

Over-fishing has affected the orcas’ food stocks, resulting in a decline in the population of orcas.

Increased maritime traffic in the vicinity of the busy international sea lanes near the Strait of Gibral-tar have also negatively impacted their habitat.

Marine biologists think this activity is confined to a single pod of killer whales because it is highly unlikely that such unusual behav-ior would occur simultaneously with different pods. Scientists don’t know if the orcas are angry, confused or just being “playful.” Their presence in these waters during the summer months is nor-mal as they follow their favorite

food, bluefin tuna. Humans can accidentally or intentionally harass marine mammals — it is illegal to purposefully harass them. How-ever, experts say this apparently aggressive behavior by this group of orcas is extremely rare.

There are no known cases of humans being attacked and killed by orcas in the wild. But Span-ish maritime authorities are not taking any chances. They have warned mariners to “keep a dis-tance” from any orcas. n

Edward Lundquist is a freelance writer based in Virginia.

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Essential tips for serious sailors

on_newsletter25v.indd 1 5/5/11 1:20 PM


Bill Morris

Every corner of the world’s oceans has their own peculiarities. The roving

squalls of the equatorial Pacific, the steep winter seas of the stormy northern Atlantic, the dreaded gales of the Gulf of Tehuantepec and the magically flat waters of the Great Barrier Reef are just four points on a star of widely varying conditions within the ocean sailor’s universe. However, when we add an overlay of human interaction onto the warm waters of the southern Tyrrhenian Sea, nature and humanity can collide in some outlandish ways.

Every summer in the central Mediterranean, tens of thousands of tourists and hundreds of cruising vessels flock to the southern islands of the Tyrrhenian. Here, the clear

Snagged anchors and empty gas bottles

blue sea and generally benign climate conditions create the ideal haven for cruising sailors, local boaters, sunbathers and divers who revel in the balmy, relatively calm weather, perfect for romantic dinners at beach resorts and fun-filled deck parties in safe, cozy anchorages.

However, as with all things oceanic, trouble is always knocking at the companionway. Indeed, if Odysseus, the great sea captain from Ithaca, were to rise from his grave and take the modern wayward sailor under his wing to offer counsel, he would leave no doubt that trouble is always lurking just

beneath the water’s surface.It was mid-summer and I

motored the 37 miles from Scylla on the Calabrian coast in southern Italy (the reputed location of the two dangers from Homer’s Odyssey: Scylla and Charybdis) to Isola Vulcano in the Lipari Islands of the Aeolian island group. My Cal 30 Saltaire entered the tiny, overcrowded anchorage at 1700. Vulcano, known for its therapeutic, bubbling pools of

Mishaps on a mid-Med adventure

Above, Bill

Morris’s Cal

30 Saltaire

underway

in the Med-

iterannean.

Below right,

Saltaire at

anchor.

BY BILL MORRIS


warm lava, is the southernmost of the Lipari Islands off the northeast coast of Sicily.

With my eyes quickly shifting between the beach and the depth sounder, I searched for a good spot to anchor when someone out of the blue yelled, “Bill!” On his 30-foot sloop Barbablu were Cosimo and his son Dario, whom I had met at the public marina in Reggio di Calabria. As I passed their boat, Cosimo yelled, “Turn left fast! There are rocks!”

Hitting the hard stuffBang! Crunch! Too late. For

the first time since I had owned Saltaire, I managed to get her stuck on hard ground. To be sure, she had run aground numerous times before, but I had always managed to pull her off the hard within a few seconds.

Saltaire had run aground in Puerto Madero, Mexico, and Garry’s Anchorage on the Queensland Coast of Australia, but the bottom in both places was soft and silty, allowing for a quick extraction by simply throwing the engine into reverse and revving up the RPMs for a few seconds. In Nadi Waters, Fiji, while my wife Marilu and I were motoring to the island of Malolo Lailai, Saltaire ran up onto coral, but the bouncing of the waves enabled a quick extraction.

This time proved to be a much greater challenge. I quickly threw the gearbox into reverse, and with the light swell from the crisscrossing of nearby motorboats intermittently

lifting the keel from the rocks, Saltaire slowly inched her way back towards the edge. At one point, she refused to budge. What would I do if she got stuck with the dropping tide? The bottom of her fiberglass keel could be ground off like cheese on a grater, turning her hull into a giant funnel!

I waited until a large swell crossed under her and then quickly gunned the engine, finally pulling the keel out of the shallow hole and continued to use the small swells to make

passed me a cold beer, and while we were talking, the wind suddenly shifted from the northwest to the east. Naturally, all 50-some-odd vessels in the cramped little anchorage, most of them anchored no more than a boat length apart, banged into each other as they swung into the wind. “So, this is the Med way,” I mused. Anchoring in tight quarters

At first glance, Mediterranean sailors may seem like the scariest yachtsmen

in the world with the hair-raising risks they take. But there are thousands of sailing and motor vessels spread out across the Med, so these skippers are accustomed to anchoring in tight quarters and are simply inure to the consequent collisions. Some skippers hang fenders from the rails to prevent damage while others throw caution to the wind, shrugging

Scylla

S I C I L YCefalu

14°00’ 15°00’ 15°20’ 15°40’ E14°20’ 14°40’

38°40’ N

38°20’

38°00’

Route ofSaltaire

Isola Volcano

L i p a r iI s l a n d s

M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A

IonianSea

TyrrhenianSea

I T AL Y

Saltaire’s

sojourn

through the

Lipari Islands in

Italy’s Tyrrhe-

nian Sea.

Bill

Mo

rris

progress. Ever so gradually, I pulled her — bang, bang, bang — into deeper water. Having had enough excitement for the afternoon, or so I thought, I decided to anchor 150 yards to the south in a depth of only 40 feet. The evening merriment was just getting started.

After a quick swim, I rowed my dinghy, Saltine, over to Barbablu for a little visit. Dario

22 OCEAN NAVIGATOR JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 www.oceannavigator.com www.oceannavigator.com

off the occasional damage to their hulls, which is usually only cosmetic, a few scuffs and scratches.

Cosimo quickly fired up his diesel engine while Dario and I sprang to the foredeck to raise the anchor. How fancy — a 30-footer with an electric windlass. Even more surprising was the thin gauge of anchor chain, which looked more suited to a backyard swing set. Apparently, that is the standard size (about three sixteenths inch) for boats based in the Med.

Dario and I took turns at trying to dislodge the anchor, but our efforts were in vain. The anchor was irretrievably stuck, leaving only one alternative. With the mid-summer sun dangling in the eastern sky, there was still enough time and underwater visibility for a dive on the anchor. Dario donned mask, snorkel and fins and dove into the water to attach a trip line to the anchor head.

Stuck under a rockAfter half a minute, Dario’s

head popped up from the water, and panting for air he sputtered, “It’s stuck under a rock really deep, but I think I can get it out if I pull hard.” Cosimo and I glanced at each other, then shrugged our shoulders.

“Okay, try again, son,” Cosimo said calmly.

Dario dove again into the dark blue water, disappearing for another half minute to wrestle with the anchor embedded in the rocks. Again, he ascended and reported, “I was able to move the anchor side by side a little, but it still won’t budge. I’ll try again.”

“Go ahead, son,” Cosimo answered, “but if we cannot pull it out, we will just spend the night here and deal with this later.” After several tries, it was obvious the anchor extraction required equipment neither they nor I possessed on our boats.

Cosimo’s anchor was embedded firmly beneath a

large boulder belonging to the same rock pile that had leaped out and clutched Saltaire’s keel. Cosimo glanced at me with a look of utter disgust and resignation. “This whole bay is sand, except this one pile of rocks, and you and I have both gotten stuck on it today.”

I downed the last of my beer, crushed the can and ventured a solution. “Why don’t you just buoy the anchor, cut the chain and then anchor somewhere else with your other hook?”

“No,” Cosimo replied pensively. “If you can take me ashore in your dinghy, I will find a scuba tank and a big steel shaft and free the anchor.”

So off we went, rowing to the beach, where he disappeared into the small settlement. I found a ramshackle beach bar where I could wait out the “ten minutes” that surely would take at least an hour. After polishing off a can of Peroni beer, I sauntered along a dirt road fringed by bubbling, stinking,

Porto di

Levante, the

eastern harbor

on Isola

Vulcano.

Wikipedia/Denis Barthel

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 OCEAN NAVIGATOR 23www.oceannavigator.com www.oceannavigator.com

yellow sulfur mud. These small fissures in the ground are all connected to the main volcano at the center of the island. A smaller volcano, Vulcanello, lies only a mile away at the island’s north end. Famous volcanic mud

Isola Vulcano is famous for its sulfuric volcanic mud, which is prized for its supposed youth-restoring properties. Movie stars, corporate moguls and commonfolk alike flock to the island during the summer to soak in sulfur mud baths, which allegedly improve the health of their skin and help them trim off pounds of excess weight.

Some of the tourists walking along the road had their faces completely covered in volcanic mud, having paid large sums of money at a mud bath spa, Italy’s answer to the Fountain of Youth. I have heard that some people immerse their entire bodies in this gunk, believing this is the one true way to weight loss and enduring beauty. From the look of these portly tourists, I could readily understand the popularity of this little island and its active albeit lazy volcano, which would rather fart than fight.

After an hour had passed, I looked out across the anchorage and unmistakably noticed two people aboard Barbablu. Upon finding the dinghy unmanned and me nowhere in sight, Cosimo must have decided to swim back out to his boat.

I rowed to Barbablu to

discover a somber skipper. His search had been as fruitless as the spindly trees in the pale, malodorous island mud. No scuba tank, no crowbar. Plan C was to call a friend in Reggio who could put the equipment on the next ferry to Isola Vulcano. At this point, there was little more to do but relax.

A dinner invitationCosimo invited me to a

spaghetti dinner, so I rowed back to Saltaire to take another quick swim and to grab whatever wine was left. Upon my return to Barbablu, Cosimo lit the stove and proudly announced, “I make very good spaghetti.” A heavenly, intoxicating aroma of tomatoes, olive oil, herbs and spices floated in the warm atmosphere of Barbablu’s cabin, and my stomach growled with hunger pains. Cosimo put a pot of water on the stove, preparing to boil spaghetti, the last step before the anticipated feast.

As the water heated, my mind wandered back to the many spaghetti dinners Marilu and I had enjoyed during our

Pacific crossing. Wherever we stopped, she searched the street bazaars for fresh, locally grown rosemary, sage, basil, tomatoes, onions and garlic to produce memorable pasta sauces. In Australia, she created a unique mix of flavors, using locally raised grass-fed beef to add structure and a fuller flavor to the sauce. Of course, we washed down these repasts with well-crafted red wine from Southern Australia’s Barossa Valley, savoring the wondrous blend of locally grown herbs and garden vegetables, similar to those I was about to enjoy. Now longing for the evening’s feast, my eyes turned to Barbablu’s stove.

At that very moment, the stove gas ran out. What were the odds of such a calamity? Where was the justice? I offered to let them cook on my stove, but Cosimo was so flustered by this point, he didn’t even bother to respond. He just stared out at the setting sun, keeping his cool, no doubt reflecting on the cruel juxtaposition of the afternoon’s events. After all, what angry god could have cast

A view to

the south of

Isola Vulcano

toward the

island’s main

volcano.

Wik

iped

ia/G

ho

stIn

TheS

hel

l

24 OCEAN NAVIGATOR JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 www.oceannavigator.com www.oceannavigator.com

such a devastating spell leading to these seemingly disconnected occurrences — a hard grounding, the loss of his main anchor, the non-availability of tools necessary to retrieve it, and then a stove with no fuel — all on the same afternoon?

“Do you like pizza?” Cosimo calmly inquired.

“Do I like pizza? Does a bee like honey? Hell yes, I like pizza!” I eagerly responded with a broad smile.

Cosimo adamantly refused my offer of a few euros for the

evening repast. “You are a guest on my boat, and I will provide everything.” And that was that. The pizza Dario brought from shore was superb, and we accompanied it with the liter of Fontana di Papa red wine I had bought in Reggio.

The following morning, Barbablu motored by Saltaire’s stern while I was typing away on my laptop. “Arrivederci, Bill!” yelled Cosimo and Dario. I sprang out to the cockpit, waved back and wished them well. Whatever became of their

anchor, I will never know. They were in good spirits, so I guessed all was well. These southern Italians have to be among the warmest, friendliest, most hospitable people in the known universe. I had been spoiled rotten since my arrival in Reggio, although the folks I met in Chania, Crete a couple of weeks before had shown me the Greeks, too, share that same warm, caring attitude towards visitors.

Reducing Med expensesMuch is said about the high

cost of cruising the Med. At first glance, that may appear to be true. Diesel is pricey, and the higher-end marinas can be expensive, too. Food and alcoholic beverages, on the other hand, can be had cheaply if one shops around. If you like red wine, olives, cheese, lamb, chicken, pork and freshly caught fish, life is far less expensive in the Med than in the U.S. On the other hand, if you must stay in fancy marinas where water and electricity are available, and eat only in high-end restaurants, then you need to be fairly well heeled.

There were moments when I hated sailing the Med, and moments when I loved it. Those first hours after leaving Porto di Levante, Isola Vulcano were pure joy. Saltaire ran southeast in a 20-knot mistral, which devolved into a series of calms as she rounded the volcano toward the southwest. Late that night, the wind shifted to a scirocco, forcing me to reduce sail and put Saltaire

on a hard beat to weather. With the sails double-reefed, I spent the night on a wide tack in steep, oncoming seas, chalking up only 20 miles over the first 12 hours.

With sunrise came a light mistral, and Saltaire ghosted along, casually sailing to weather under full canvas, headed for her next destination of Cefalu on the northern coast of Sicily. Every so often, a huge swell rolled down from the northwest, quickly lifting Saltaire skyward, higher and higher, then gently letting her down as she pranced forward. A few puffs of cumulus clouds remained in the otherwise bright blue sky, a sharp contrast to the ominous black clouds and lightning flashes of the previous night. But there had been no storm — all bark, no bite.

The soft sail to Cefalu was one of those rare passages that remind me just how much I love sailing. From island hopping in the Pacific and cruising the Queensland coast with Marilu, to surviving a boarding by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden, I had learned that the highs far outweigh the lows while sailing the Seven Seas. But after the craziness of the previous couple of days, who knew what adventures Poseidon still had in store for good ol’ Saltaire? n

Bill Morris circumnavigated aboard his Cal 30 Saltaire, much of it single-handed. He is the author of The Captain’s Guide to Alternative Energy Afloat.

Bill Morris

enjoying a

glass of Ital-

ian win in the

salon of Sal-

taire.

Bill

Mo

rris

www.oceannavigator.com

safety

Routes from Florida to the Bahamas are as short as 50 miles, but they

all involve crossing the Gulf Stream and hopefully arriving during daylight hours and early enough to clear Customs. For most sailors, this means an eve-ning or night departure with an overnight sail, which is what we were doing when voyaging from Palm Beach to West End, Grand Bahama. Unfortunately, one of our steering cable ends broke off in the middle of the Stream, with a stiff wind blow-ing and a lumpy sea — in the pitch dark.

I had a sick feeling while hanging upside down below the steering box, peering at the loose cable end by the dim light of a flashlight. Then I noticed that the steering chain the cable was attached to had come

BY JOHN KETTLEWELL

In emergency

lighting

situations,

more light is

always better

Dave McCampbell

and a voyaging

friend work by the

light of headlamps

to fix one of his cat’s

auxiliary drives.

26

Light in a pinch

In the end, the best technique was for my wife to hold a more powerful flashlight pointed at where I was working on the many difficult-to-remove screws.

After much struggle, every-thing was put back together only to discover that I had somehow crossed the cables when reattaching them to the steering sprocket chain! Turn-ing the wheel right made the boat go to port. I tried steer-ing the boat like that for a while but decided that it just wouldn’t work, so I had to take everything apart all over again. Once fixed, we almost made it to West End before one of my jury-rigged repairs broke again, necessitating an inter-esting entrance to the harbor, steering from the stern with lines leading to each rudder

off the sprocket of the wheel! Major surgery on our steering system would be required in order to be able to get going again. Luckily, our catamaran was able to sort of heave-to by going to a triple-reefed main and a rolled-up jib, holding us at a slight angle to the seas.

Our custom cat had an unusual steering box attached to the cabin bulkhead that required removal of the wheel, then backing out lots of screws, just to see what was going on. Needless to say, this would be a time-consuming job requir-ing plenty of light to see what I was doing. At first, I started out with a small flashlight held in my mouth, which is often useful for small jobs but not for long-term work. I tried various headlamps that slipped off my head as I hung upside down.

Sherry McCampbell


while my wife ran the throttle and shouted directions since I couldn’t see anything. But, at least the sun was up!

Let there be lightUnfortunately, tales like

this one are a staple of many cruisers’ get-togethers, and a lot of these “adventures” seem to happen at o’dark-thirty. This is why emergency lights and onboard lighting are so critical on any boat. Having owned, lived aboard and cruised a wide variety of cruising sailboats for more than 40 years, I have a lot of unfortunate experience with both emergency repairs and emergency lighting. These episodes have taught me some basic truths.

First, quantity is more important than quality with flashlights. It is easy to spend a fortune on macho-looking, so-called “tactical” lights that have eye-piercing outputs, water resistance equivalent to a sub-marine and the ability to fight off pirates when needed. But if you drop one over the side or it dies in the midst of a repair, it does no good. Flashlights have so many uses that I reach for one multiple times each day. I prefer having three or more of the exact same light all stored together near my chart table where I can put my hand on them even in the pitch dark. If one is lost or dies for some reason, I reach for the next. If the batteries go

on one, I reach for another.Second, I like to scatter

similar flashlights all around the boat. There should certainly be one near each sleeping posi-tion and several near the main navigation/boat operation areas — you almost can’t have too many. To keep things much simpler and more redundant, I buy lights in batches when I find the right ones. It is important to limit the number of bat-tery sizes required. At the moment, I am in the process of trying to eliminate the need for AAA-sized battery lights on board, though in recent years many of the small-er LED flashlights utilize them. I have found that putting three, small AAA batteries the cor-rect way into some tiny battery carrier, then inserting that into the light, can be tricky in the dark on a moving boat. Plus, the smaller batteries seem more prone to early failure for some

reason. I just had a large batch of them start leak-

Left and below,

examples of

inexpensive

flashlights that

can be spread

around the

boat. Below,

left, recharge-

able batteries

and charger.

ing well before their expiration date. Always store batteries in plastic containers and segre-gated as much as possible so

one leaking battery doesn’t make a mess of a whole batch. Each spring when

the boat is com-missioned, I try to rotate the oldest batch of batter-ies off the boat for use at home, replacing them with a fresh batch. Write the year on every batch.

I recently found some inexpensive Rayovac plastic LED

lights that each take two AA batter-ies —they also have some other character-istics I like. I have found that AA-sized batteries are the most easily found anywhere in the world. In a pinch, it is useful to be able to switch batteries between lights.

RechargeablesI have tried

rechargeable batter-ies on board, but they have been a failure for several reasons. First, despite whatever capacity they claim, I have found that after a few uses they never perform as well as fresh

Joh

n K

ettlewell

Eric Sanfo

rd


alkaline cells. Second, recharg-ing can be slow and inefficient on board without a ready source of shore power, and I find rechargeables inevitably

lose their charge faster than you would like, making it hard to have enough charged ones on hand. Keep in mind that if your repair has to do with the electrical system, recharging bat-teries might not be an

option. Third,

recharge-ables are highly

variable, with some dying an early death and others never working well from the start. With alkalines, I can easily carry a large stash, providing instant backup well beyond any possible need. They are very consistent in quality. Today’s LED flashlights run a very long time on a couple of AA alkaline batteries.

Third, for general use on board, I prefer plastic lights. They are lighter, provide some water resistance and won’t cause possible short circuits if dropped on the ship’s 12-volt batteries. I won’t go into the gory details, but I know from experience that the big tactical aluminum-bodied flashlights can cause a dead short circuit if dropped onto a battery by accident. For general purpose flashlights, I like small ones that

safety

I can easily hold in my mouth. Yes, headlamps are great, and I do use them, but the first light you grab is often the one you have to use when fixing some-thing, and the ability to hold the light in your mouth can be invaluable.

With regard to headlamps, quality is important, but quan-tity is key. Have several head-lamps available because one will undoubtedly die at the critical moment in a repair. Again, if the lights are identical and use the same batteries, it will make life easier. Frankly, I have found most ordinary hardware store headlamps are OK for many purposes, but the best ones add durability, water resistance and superior run times.

One of the most important things to look for in a headlamp is how well it stays on your head. I find that many elastic straps give up the ghost after a while on board, and many others never have enough grip in the first place to stay on properly, possibly while hanging upside down to look at some-thing. Sometimes it is possible to get the headlamp to stay in place by wearing a tight-fitting baseball cap, putting the head-lamp over the cap. The bill of the cap helps to keep the lamp from sliding down and also shields your eyes from some of the glare.

The fourth main issue is that many headlamps and flashlights feature brightness instead of longevity. You often don’t want the brightest light around, and

instead are much better off with a lower level of illumina-tion. For example, I keep an old cheapo non-LED, 2-AA flashlight next to the steering station for use in reading charts or instrument panels when on night watch. I only want the bare minimum of light to do that, so I don’t ruin my night vision, and many modern LED lamps just put out way too much light. Another time I want a little light, but not much, is when working on deck at night. I might need a teeny bit of light to make sure something is tied down prop-erly, but I don’t want a blazing light reflecting off the white decks and blinding me.

Many headlamps have multiple brightness settings. You will find that the lowest setting is often plenty, if not too much. Obviously, the lower the light output, the longer the batteries will last, too. One small problem with LED lights is that they just cut off com-pletely once the batteries reach some low-voltage threshold. For this reason, it is important to change batteries more often than you might with older incandescent flashlights. It is wasteful, but rather than run-ning batteries to the bitter end, it is important with LED flash-lights to change them out at the first sign of diminished output.

All or nothingIt is a rare occurrence, but

I have had to completely shut down the boat’s main electrical

Headlamps give

you hands-free

light and LEDs

make for long

battery life.

John Kettlewell


system in order to trouble-shoot a problem. Of course, it happened at night, well off the coast of Honduras while motoring through a long calm. The first sign of trouble was the smell of something electrical burning —never a good smell on a boat! My first thought was a short somewhere, so I quickly shut down the engine and turned off the main battery switch. We soon realized that the smell wasn’t going away, and I could see smoke, which led me to the problem — one of the main batteries was red hot and smoking. I had to disconnect the battery cables in the pitch black, and the bat-tery still remained super hot. I concluded the battery (a new-ish one too) had an internal short. I was eventually able to wrangle the battery up to the cockpit where it could cool off, but then had to reconfigure the battery cables in order to make the bank 12 volts, and therefore able to accept a charge from

the engine. A lot of work in the dark.

This is a scenario where plac-ing a standalone LED bulkhead light could prove to be very useful. I have purchased some inexpensive ones from discount stores, and they work well. Just push a button and you have area illumination not tied to the boat’s main electrical sys-tem. Magic! I have one of these mounted just inside the com-panionway and near the main battery switch. When I have to shut everything off, I know I have light if I need it.

Another thing this scenario has pointed out to me is that there was a certain wisdom in the old battery setup many boats used to have: two equal battery banks with a 1, 2, Both switch. With that type of arrangement, it was easy to shut down half the system and then proceed using the other half of the system. Today, a lot of cruis-ing boats have setups with a dedicated starting battery and a

Below, a failed

battery can be

bypassed with

temporary

battery cables

so the ship’s

lights can be

used in an

emergency.

Below left, a

headlamp is

useful when

intricate

manual work is

required.

main battery bank. That’s what I use today, along with an On/Off battery switch. The starting and main batteries are isolated, but the starting battery is trickle charged from the main battery bank when the engine is running.

This battery system works perfectly most of the time, but in an emergency I shut down almost the entire electrical sys-tem when the main switch is turned to Off (I have separate fused circuits for the automatic

bilge pumps, the solar panels and the electronics so they don’t get turned off).

In any case, turning that main switch off would mean no lights on the boat. However, I also carry a variety of made-up battery cables in different lengths in order to be able to cobble together a working bat-tery system if one battery or one part of the system fails. I might want to use these cables to re-route the charging current from the alternator directly to the starter battery, or I might use a cable to supply power to the lights from the starter bat-tery. You may already have this

House BankThree 12-volt batteries

Longeremergency cablesneeded if middlebattery dies

Loads

Ground

Jayme O

kma Lee


safety

capability via various switches, but I have used the emergency cables so many times I consider them invalu-able. One scenario I have encoun-tered is one of the main battery switches failing, requiring a bypass. I purchase inexpensive cables with the ends I need from auto parts or dis-count stores — they are not for long-term use, but instead for emergency operations. Having a couple as long as six feet is good, and having them color-coded red and black is handy.

Nowhere to runAnother very common lighting

problem is to have one or more run-ning lights go out at night. It is not a huge problem offshore as long as you keep a reasonable watch, but it can be dangerous in areas with traf-fic. If you lose your red and/or green lights down low, you can probably get by with a masthead tricolor or even just an all-around white anchor light at the top of the mast. In fact, the anchor light is visible at greater ranges than most red/green lights and will make it appear to other vessels like they are overtaking you, which is likely to encourage them to avoid you. A good workable substitute for the red/green lights is a set of battery-powered, portable dinghy running lights. Unfortunately, I have found that most of these quickly fail from corrosion, but they are a worthwhile backup. One of the most effective ways to alert other traffic to your location is to shine a light on your sails, and/or shine a flashlight or medium-powered spotlight in the direction of a large ship. Try to avoid shining spotlights at the bridge of other vessels.

Earlier, I noted that quantity

still use a plug-in, powerful spotlight on occasion. There are times when you just need lots of light and lots of power. However, with today’s quality LED flashlights with focusing beams, I find the spotlight is less useful.

Fire!Plain old candles make fantastic

alternative emergency lighting. The short, fat ones work the best because they are easy to set up in an old jelly jar or something to prevent hot wax from dripping all over. Candles seem to last forever on board, making a good lighting backup. To light them, and our stove, I keep many long-nosed butane fire starters on board, as well as boxes of plain old kitchen matches.

It sounds dangerous having an open flame like you do with lamps or candles, but boats were using these lighting methods for hundreds of years before electricity, and a good dose of water solves most potential flare-ups. I personally have had sev-eral electrical short circuits that were starting fires on board but have never had a candle or lantern fire.

The advent of inexpensive and reliable LED lamps has made a huge difference in reliability and variety. This is one piece of equipment where “marine grade” is not always needed and not always the best. There are some great brands of tactical and camping lights that provide excellent performance too, but my mantra is “more is better”! n

John Kettlewell is the executive director of Sail Martha’s Vineyard, a nonprofit that teaches sailing to more than 600 young people every year on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

was more important than quality with flashlights, but it is important to have at least one light that will work underwater. This is where one of the tactical-type lights can work well, especially if it has a lanyard for looping around your wrist. I also like to have a way to run a light line from the light to my body, in case I should drop the light. Some water-proof headlamps can work but I have found it hard to swim with the light on my head while also using a snorkel and directing the light where I need it. More than once I have had to dive down at night to check out something under the boat. While it is not a pleasant experience, a good light can make all the difference. The waterproof, sturdy light with the lanyard might also be the one to grab when going forward at night in a storm to fix something, or when hanging over the side of the boat to make a repair. I keep one that uses multiple D-cell batteries clipped to a bulkhead below the chart table and next to the companionway where it can serve all of these functions. This big light has a focusing beam that is also effective as a spotlight when looking for buoys, etc.

One gizmo I have found invalu-able for buoy searching is a laser pointer. Obviously, never point one at other boats or aircraft! The focused, narrow beam can often pick up a reflectorized buoy long before any light.

In the past, I used to always have a rechargeable main spotlight, but they suffered from the same prob-lems rechargeable batteries do (as noted above). Premature death of the rechargeable light is common, and they often use proprietary batteries. I

www.oceannavigator.com

How can it be that some-thing you love to do makes you sick?

The ocean is a fickle host, at times benevolent and mild, then obstreperous and cruel — often within moments of each other. One minute you’re in the galley, chewing the fat with the cook and then in a flash you’re bent over the taffrail feeding the fish — wishing you were dead.

During a race up the coast of Florida last year on a J-29, the boat owner was a seat-of-the pants type of “purist” sailor and didn’t carry charts. It was a robust day and we were ship-ping a lot of seawater, so I kept

my cellphone with its chart-plotting app in the saloon. I went below for a look at our position and before I knew it, I was … depositing the con-tents of my stomach before my stunned shipmates. Sorry guys.

Oh, dreaded mal de mer, my Achilles’ heel, why won’t you leave me be? It’s such an unfair and capricious affliction, crippling seasoned mariners while leaving random neo-phytes mostly unaffected. They say that seasickness has three fearful stages:1. You are afraid you’re going

to get sick.2. You are afraid you’re going

to die.

3. You are afraid you aren’t going to die.

A sizeable percentage suffers

Roughly one-third of a population is highly susceptible to motion sickness; there is no rhyme or reason as to who will suffer. My kids don’t even like sailing but are usually immune to the effects of seasickness. All they talk about is “when’s lunch?” Meanwhile, I’m try-ing to hold down breakfast. According to WebMD, people likely to suffer include:• Women who are menstruat-

ing, pregnant or on hormone therapy.

31

It’s not easy being greenBY ROBERT BERINGER

Above, when the

malady of sea-

sickness strikes

staying above

deck is often the

best approach.

Robert Beringer

Dealing with

the scourge

of seasickness

safety

31


• People who suffer migraines.• Children younger than 12.• People who take antibiotics, nar-

cotics, asthma medications or anti-depressants.But if none of those apply to you,

you’re not off the hook — you can still get sick out there.

Of course, this malady is nothing but a mind game, an incongruence in the body’s sensory systems: your eyeballs see a saloon that an hour ago was perfectly comfortable and steady, but now is being furiously rolled, pitched, heaved and yawed. It looks the same, but your inner ear feels the erratic motion and sends panic sig-nals to the brain. One theory holds that the brain believes the queasy feeling is from a poison that has been ingested, and it gives the order to expel the contents of the stomach.

Especially upsetting is the knowl-edge that there is no way to stop the crazy motion and that it could go on for a long time, as it did for Charles Darwin who endured its effects for almost the entire five-year voy-age aboard HMS Beagle, where he conducted preliminary research on his theory of evolution. “If a person suffer much from seasickness,” he wrote, “let him weigh it heavily in the balance. I speak from experience: it is no trifling evil which may be cured in a week.”

Symptoms include yawning, nau-sea, dizziness, vomiting, cold sweats, headaches, apathy, salivation and drowsiness; which, for most, usually dissipate within 72 hours of travel.

Prevention is always the best action. Refrain from caffeine, alco-hol or a heavy meal before climbing aboard; drink plenty of water instead. Activities to avoid are smoking, going

safety

The scopolamine trans-

dermal patch is a prescrip-

tion medicine and very

effective in the prevention

of nausea associated with

seasickness and postop-

erative nausea. By 2017,

worldwide sales of the

drug surpassed $370 mil-

lion and have grown since.

As with most medica-

tions, however, there are

possible side effects, and

caution is needed if there

are other medications

being taken by a patient;

read the medication guide

provided by your phar-

macist.

Side effects can include

acute psychosis with hal-

lucinations and paranoia;

and this, with the unique

living conditions and

physical demands of a

sea-going vessel, can be

troubling. Charles Doane,

who publishes the sailing

blog “WaveTrain,” is not

a fan of scopolamine. “Of

all the seasick remedies I

have experience with,” he

reflected, “it has the stron-

gest side effects I have

witnessed.”

Derived from the flow-

er of the borrachero shrub,

it was originally used in

spiritual ceremonies by

South American natives.

In the early 20th cen-

tury, it was employed as

a so-called “truth serum”

for interrogations and

obtained the nickname

“devil’s breath.” In Colum-

bia, there are reports of

the drug used in crimes to

render victims disoriented.

They are robbed and later

can’t remember the inci-

dent.

Consider the tragic

2015 drowning death of

David Pontious who had

applied a patch at the

urging of the captain, Rick

Smith, as they sailed down

the East Coast toward the

Virgin Islands. According

to a USCG report, unbe-

knownst to Smith, Pon-

tious was taking several

prescription medications.

Within hours he was

hearing voices and after

dark the next day became

paranoid and delusional,

worried that the crew had

drugged him and that he

was being kidnapped.

After physically assaulting

Smith and another crew-

member for not steering

toward a vision he saw

in the clouds, Pontious

announced that, “If you

won’t go left, I’ll go there

myself.” He crawled over

the lifeline and jumped

overboard, hitting his

head, and did not resur-

face.

Of course, without

a toxicology report, it’s

impossible to tell what

caused the hallucinations.

Pontious’s father, Frank,

believes that the scopol-

amine patch may have

been a contributing factor

in his son’s death. “I have

a friend who had a crew

member have exactly the

same thing happen,” he

said. “This crew member,

his personality changed

dramatically (after he put

on the patch). He had hal-

lucinations; he was deliri-

ous. He jumped overboard.

Thankfully, there was a

boat following them that

picked him up.”

Robert Beringer

Drug reservoir

Rate-controllingpolymeric membrane

Drug impermeablemetallic plastic laminate

Adhesive layer

Scopolamine patches: strong medicine


who take ginger candy or ginger ale.”Non-medicinal palliatives include

getting a good night’s rest before going offshore, cold ginger ale and crackers, sucking on a lemon wedge, acupressure wrist bands or lying down with eyes closed and, of course, getting off the boat. And there is evidence that older mariners are less susceptible to seasickness — I guess aging really does have its benefits. For me, I’ve always felt better with a spell at the helm or as rail meat, staring at the horizon in the fresh air.

And don’t discount the power of your mind. A study by the American Psychological Association found that positive self-talk can be effective in fending off seasickness; you can liter-ally talk yourself out of getting sick. Verbal placebos like, “I’m going to enjoy this voyage, and I will not get sick today,” really work.

So, I guess until they find the per-fect palliative, I’ll have to continue accepting the common risks associ-ated with the ocean: getting cold, getting wet and getting seasick. n

Robert Beringer is a marine journal-ist/photographer and author of Water Power! To order a copy, go to www.barnesandnoble.com/w/water-power-robert-beringer/1121938666?ean=2940151920025.

below or reading. Strong smells can quickly disable the heartiest sailor: While crossing Albemarle Sound in North Carolina a few years back, I ran out of fuel and dropped anchor as large, short-period waves battered our boat. While pouring diesel into the tank from a jerry jug, some of it splashed into the cockpit and within two minutes both my wife and I were dizzy and ready to hurl.

RemediesOver-the-counter medications like

Dramamine, Benadryl or Meclizine are effective when taken an hour before leaving the dock, or scopol-amine patches (four hours prior to departure) can be obtained through a physician. Side effects of the sco-polamine patches, however, include dizziness, drowsiness, headache and cold sweats — some of the same symptoms of seasickness, so it should be used with caution and never given to children (See sidebar).

Melanie Neale is owner of Sun-shine Cruising Yachts in St. Augus-tine and has been living aboard most of her life. “I was the lucky one,” she said recently, “I never got seasick. On passages, I’ve found that Bonine is a better alternative to Dramamine because it doesn’t make you sleepy. And ginger — I know a lot of people

Keeping your

eyes on the hori-

zon gives your

brain a steady

reference point

and can help

alleviate the

scourge of sea-

sickness.

Communications expert Gordon West reports

GAM Electronics, Inc.PO Box 305Harrison, ME 04040Phone: (207) 583-4670

[email protected]

“I have done numerous SSB ham and marine radio checks with this system and have found no discernible signal losses, even when used with a well-grounded backstay aboard a steel-hulled vessel. The antenna...can bang out a signal just as though it were suspended in mid-air.”

– Sail Magazine

M No need for backstay insulators

M Easy installationM No swaging, no

cuttingM Tough, water-

proof, reusableM Highly conduc-

tive RF elements M Watertight lead-

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M Stiff 34’ LDPE housing secures firmly to backstay wire

Split Lead SSB Antenna

N

M

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ber

t B

erin

ger

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Alt

itud

e of

the

Moo

n

Lunar distance

Measuredangle

Alt

itud

e of

Reg

ulus

H O R I Z O N

Editor’s note: In this installment of our celestial navigation series, we take a look at the arcane but still intriguing subject of lunar distance sights for finding time and longitude.

In this series, we’ve started from the most basic con-

cepts and worked our way through every type of sight in celestial navigation: sun sights, star sights, planet sights, moon sights, latitude from noon, latitude from Polaris, multiple body sights and a day at sea for the celestial navigator. If you’ve followed the install-ments in this series, you are well set up to navigate with celestial navigation. The only thing left is to get your sex-tant, watch, almanac and sight reduction tables and practice the different types of sights, the reductions and the plot-ting. Then go on a voyage or two and use your newfound knowledge.

We’ve come so far in this series that we’ve reached the final installment. We’ve cov-ered the basics, the solid mid-dle ground and even advanced ideas like the immersive celestial day at sea. We’ll end the series with a discussion

Celestial navigation series, part 15 Lunar distance, longitude and time

of a more esoteric technique that most celestial navigators will likely never use but which is a great capstone to your knowledge, if only for its his-torical significance to the art of navigation. The technique involves using sextant sights to determine GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). This is done by measuring something called a lunar distance.

This technique isn’t the most practical piece of knowl-edge for the celestial navigator in the age of GPS. It does,

NAVIGATION

A lunar dis-

tance measure-

ment involves

measuring the

angle between

the moon and

another celes-

tial body, in

this case a star,

and also sight-

ing the moon

and the star for

their altitudes. however, offer great insight into the lore and tradition of celestial navigation, especially for a faithful reader of this series who has already learned all the practical elements of this type of navigation and is eager to try something out of the ordinary.

The lunarThe lunar distance sight,

sometimes simply called a lunar, harkens back to the beginnings of celestial naviga-tion. Early navigators navi-


gated using non-quantitative “eyeball” observations. They employed simple tools like the latitude hook or the Arabic kamal that gave them their latitude without having to resort to any numbers. As the science of navigation pro-gressed, navigators began using devices with number scales, like cross-staffs and backstaffs, that required mathematical concepts to make use of those observed numbers. And while latitude could be determined accurately, the holy grail of celestial navigation continued to be the search for a way to find longitude at sea.

This search for a way to “find the longitude” became a great international race in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was the space race of its day. The British, being the premier naval power of the era, put considerable money and effort into the search. by order of Parliament a Board of Lon-gitude was established, and it offered a substantial monetary prize to the scientist or inven-tor who could crack this nut.

Some of the methods proposed during this search were ingenious, while oth-ers were crackpot fantasies driven mainly by the desire to secure the £20,000 prize (the equivalent of more than $3 million today). One of the best examples of the latter was the

scheme put forward by two Britons, William Whiston and Humphry Ditton. This pair devised a scheme that required ships to be anchored at set intervals across the ocean. On a regular schedule, these ships would fire incendiary shells into the air that would explode with a bright flash. Nearby navigators would note the difference between flash and bang and calculate their distance from the nearest anchored ship. Or something like that. Needless to say, this solution to the longitude prob-lem was not put into practice and Whiston and Ditton got no prize money from the Board of Longitude.

Jupiter’s moonsAnother proposal was to

make use of the four largest moons of Jupiter as a kind of celestial clock. The moons’ position vis-à-vis Jupiter can be used to determine GMT and thus longitude. The tech-nique was used successfully for surveying and other land-based applications. Observing the geometry of these tiny dots of light from the pitch-ing deck of a ship, however, proved all but impossible. One inventor named Christopher Irwin tried to help by invent-ing a gimbaled “marine chair.” British Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne tried the

chair aboard ship in 1761 and wrote somewhat unenthusi-astically, “Mr. Irwin’s marine chair affords no convenience or advantage to an observer in using a telescope for observing the celestial phenomena at sea, but rather the contrary.”

The most promising solu-tion to the longitude problem proved to be the eventual winner: a precise marine chro-nometer that enabled mariners to bring GMT along with them. Though clockmaker John Harrison developed several effective chronometer models and ultimately secured the monetary prize (paid in installments between roughly 1765 and 1773), chronom-eters remained expensive instruments and only become standard equipment aboard ships in the mid to late 19th century.

So that leaves us with the other observational method for finding GMT, and thus longitude: the lunar. The aforementioned Astrono-mer Royal Maskelyne was an ardent supporter of the lunar distance technique and worked out lunar distance tables that first appeared in the British nautical almanac in 1765. This technique is still usable today and could be employed should a naviga-tor find him or herself in the (admittedly unlikely) situation


of having no working time-pieces aboard.

The moon as a clock handThe distance in a lunar

distance is actually an angle. We use our sextant to measure the angle between the moon and another celestial body, most often the sun but also a star close to the plane of the ecliptic. What we’re measuring is one part of a Great Circle between the moon and the celestial body. This measure-ment tells us the angular distance from the moon to that body along that Great

Circle. Then we can convert the distance into the time in GMT. Let’s look at how this works by using the stars as an example. The stars are fixed in relation to each other. From our point of view on earth, the stars don’t appear to change this fixed relation-ship. We covered this concept previously when we explored star sights and talked about stars and their fixed sidereal hour angles (SHA). These fixed SHAs allow the Nauti-cal Almanac to be far more condensed than if we had to list the GHA (Greenwich

NAVIGATION

Hour Angle) and declination for every navigational star for every hour of every day.

The moon orbits around the earth, and as it does so it moves across this field of fixed stars at a steady rate. It goes 360 degrees around the earth in 27.3 days, or 13.2 degrees a day. This means the moon covers roughly 30 minutes of arc, or half a degree, every hour. It’s like the hand of a clock in the sky. And that’s the way we can use it with lunar distance sights to find time.

The method has several steps. The first is to measure

Error in Lunar: 0.3'Equivalent Error in Longitude: 9.1'Equivalent Position Error: 6.8 miles

Moon SunGHA 127° 41.4' 38° 21.5'Dec 22° 43.4' 4° 36.8'HP 55.47 0.15

Moon SunTrue Altitude 39° 44.1' 42° 46.8'Azimuth 266.3 132.2Alt Correction -0° 42.0' 0° 00.9'Apparent Alt 39° 04.3' 42° 46.5'Raw Alt 38° 50.0' 42° 35.0'Alt Error -0° 02.2' 0° 01.2'

Using observed Moon Altitude.Using observed Sun Altitude.Moon SD refraction negligible.Sun SD refraction negligible.Corrected for Earth oblateness.

True LD 87° 36.3'cos δAzm -0.69529cos α 0.8495cos β 0.8295Cleared LD 87° 36.6'

Lunars Calculator Created by Frank Reed, Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com. First version live: May 2004.

OBSERVER:Latitude: 41°29'25" N

Longitude: 71°26'07" W

GMT/UT:Date: 10 Sep 2020

Time: 14:30:12

DISTANCE:Body: Sun

Distance: 87° 40.3' Near

ALTITUDES +(leave blank to calculate)

Moon: 38 50 LL

Body: 42 35 LL

DETAILS +

Far right, an

almanac of

lunar distances

for the sun and

seven stars

based on a

given date and

time and DR

position.

Below right, a

calculator for

“clearing the

lunar distance.”

The lunar dis-

tance calculator

and lunar dis-

tance almanac

provided cour-

tesy ReedNavi-

gation.com.


the past, navigators had to do work through equations using spherical trigonometry to come up with the desired time. Then, nautical alma-nacs included lunar distance tables that gave values for every three hours throughout the day for selected objects to use with the moon. When chronometers became widely avail-able and the technique of lunar dis-tance fell by the wayside, these tables ceased to be included.

What if you are a modern-day celestial navigator? Once you get your lunar distance, how do you convert that into GMT? There are books available that lay out the exact steps. A good one is John Karl’s Celestial Navigation in the GPS Age, which has a chapter on lunars that includes a flow chart and a form that lays out the spherical trig required.

the altitude of the moon and the other body, let’s say a star, above the horizon, the same way we do when we’re taking a sight to find a LOP (line of position). We have to correct those sights for index error (if we have any), dip and altitude correc-tion.

Clearing the lunar distanceNext, we use our sextant to bring

the limb of the moon so that it just touches the star. This is the lunar distance angle. We need to correct this sight for IE and for parallax, refraction and semidiameter, a dip correction is not necessary since we aren’t using the horizon. Correcting this sight is quaintly called “clearing the lunar distance.”

How do we convert this cleared lunar distance into a GMT time? In

Another option is to make use of Frank Reed’s comprehensive celestial navigation website, Reed-Navigation.com. Reed has a sec-tion of the site devoted to lunars (reednavigation.com/lunars/) that includes web-based apps that predict lunar distances based on your DR and date and time, and an app that will calculate lon-gitude and time from the lunar distance data you enter. Reed also has a page that goes step by step through the process of work-ing out a lunar using spherical trig (reednavigation.com/lunars/easylun.html).

Lunars may be a specialized tool, but like all of celestial navigation, they are a satisfying skill to pick up for the complete celestial navigator who wants to know it all. n

3 Hours dd mm.m Only if usable Visible at: 41° 29.41' N 71° 26.12' W

Lunar Distances Almanac Created by Frank Reed, Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com. First version live: May 2004.

Body: Sun and Lunars Stars Date: 8 Sep 2020 GMT / UT

DETAILS +

Data for September 8, 2020Date and Times are GMT/UT.

0:00 3:00 6:00 9:00 12:00 15:00 18:00 21:00 24:00Moon's HP 54.27' 54.30' 54.34' 54.38' 54.42' 54.46' 54.51' 54.55' 54.60'

Geocentric Lunar DistancesSun 116° 24.3' 115° 02.9' 113° 41.4' 112° 19.8' 110° 58.1' 109° 36.3' 108° 14.3' 106° 52.1' 105° 29.9'α Arietis 17° 12.3' 18° 08.4' 19° 08.5' 20° 12.1' 21° 18.8' 22° 28.1' 23° 39.6' 24° 53.2' 26° 08.4'Aldebaran 20° 48.5' 19° 21.4' 17° 54.5' 16° 28.0' 15° 01.8' 13° 36.2' 12° 11.4' 10° 47.7' . . .Pollux 64° 44.4' 63° 15.6' 61° 46.7' 60° 17.8' 58° 48.7' 57° 19.6' 55° 50.3' 54° 20.9' 52° 51.3'Regulus 100° 45.4' 99° 16.5' 97° 47.6' 96° 18.6' 94° 49.4' 93° 20.1' 91° 50.7' 90° 21.2' 88° 51.5'α Aquilae 106° 30.2' 107° 44.1' 108° 57.9' 110° 11.5' 111° 24.9' 112° 38.1' 113° 51.1' 115° 03.8' 116° 16.3'Fomalhaut 75° 08.5' 76° 33.7' 77° 59.1' 79° 24.6' 80° 50.2' 82° 16.0' 83° 41.9' 85° 08.0' 86° 34.2'α Pegasi 58° 59.2' 60° 17.3' 61° 35.9' 62° 54.8' 64° 14.1' 65° 33.7' 66° 53.6' 68° 13.9' 69° 34.5'

Sun SD: 15.89'

Showing lunars in sextant range only.

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Nav Problem

Best remembered as the ship that carried Robert Scott

on his ill-fated voyage to the Antarctic in 1910, Terra Nova (new land) survived the harsh-est sea conditions for almost

six decades before meeting her end. The three-masted barque, built in Dundee, Scotland, in 1884 by Alexander Stephens and Sons, was 664 tons and 187 feet long. Beginning life as a steam-auxiliary sailing ship, Terra Nova worked first as a whaler in the Arctic and then in the more profitable business of hunting seal pups for their furs. It is estimated that in her career as a sealer, Terra Nova carried more than 800,000 seal pelts — a bloody business.

The ship first went to the Antarctic in 1903 to rescue Scott’s ship Discovery from the pack ice in McMurdo Sound. In preparation for his return to the Antarctic, Scott purchased Terra Nova for £12,500. The

The barque

Terra Nova

was

specially

reinforced

for working

in polar

sea ice.

ship was reinforced with seven feet of oak to protect the bows and steel plating to reinforce the stem. Scott described the ship as “a wonderfully fine ice ship … as she bumped the floes with mighty shocks, crushing a way through some, twisting and turning to avoid others, she seemed like a living thing fighting a great fight.”

Scott used Terra Nova at Ross Island as part of his base camp. The ship itself had a crew of 65 and Scott’s team consisted of 24 officers and sci-entific staff.

The purpose of Scott’s effort, called the British Antarctic Expedition, was for the British to arrive at the south pole first.

Unfortunately, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen arrived at the pole a month before Scott and his five-member team. On the way back to base camp, Scott and his men perished, Scott and two of his companions dying only 11 miles from the nearest food depot.

Terra Nova went back to the Arctic carrying cargo in World War I for the Canadian government and then haul-ing cargo for the Americans in Greenland during World War II. In 1942, off of Greenland,

Terra Nova and Scott of the AntarcticBY DAVID BERSON

the ship struck ice and sank. The USCG mounted a rescue operation and all 24 crewmem-bers were saved. The wreck was accidentally rediscovered in 2012. Before sinking, the ship’s bell was saved and is kept at the Scott Polar Research Institute. The bell is struck at 16:00 hours daily, announcing a coffee break and afternoon tea — five bells in the AM and eight bells in the afternoon.

Let’s join Captain Henry Pennell on the way from Cardiff, Wales, in 1910 to South Africa to pick up Captain Scott. We’ll use the 2020 Nautical Almanac.

It is July 3 and we are at a DR of 5° 18’ south by 15° 12’ west. Height of eye is 20 feet. At 04:30:12 GMT, the naviga-tor has clear sky to take a shot of Saturn. The Hs is 55° 10.8’.

A. What is the HO of Saturn?

B. What is the LHA? C. What is the intercept?D. What is the estimated

position?

A. 55° 6.3’B. 032°C. 5.3 nm towardD. 5° 15’ south, 15° 10’ west

Answers

Wikip

edia

“I am not afraid of storms forI am learning to sail my ship.”

—Louisa May Alcott

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