"If a man must be obsessed with something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most. A small sailing craft is not only beautiful, it is seductive and full of strange promise and the hint of trouble." E.B. White

Roller furling: #1

I shy away from these group efforts, but this month Tillerman's writing project over at Proper Course got me thinking: what is the greatest sailing invention ever?

A couple of things quickly come to mind: aluminum cans, the shackle key, fiberglass, and the Magic Eraser (mmm...a clean waterline). But I'm going to have to go with roller furling.

Now, I understand that for a lot of sailors, who perhaps only have one sail, or sail on a wee little boat with handkerchief sails, roller furling doesn't mean that much. Before I even owned a boat I swore that I would never have this roll up sail, thinking it was for, I don't know, guys who didn't like to get their hands dirty. C'mon, man, get up on that foredeck and handle some sails. Where's the Viking spirit?

And then I got a free boat from Uncle Larry's family - a 23' gem with roller furling. And mine eyes were opened. I really don't know what I was thinking. Silly lubber.

On the off chance that there is someone reading from the 19th Century, roller furling is the gear that rolls the jib in or out on the headstay. Think of it like rolling in and out paper towels. Or t.p.

Roller furling comes in handy when you just want to go for a quick sail after work, when putting up all the sails would simply kill too much daylight; when you want to go sailing and aren't sure of how much wind is out there, or when the wind builds or settles down; or when you're sailing alone and you want to go down and hit the head right quick; or when you're racing and you go around the windward mark and want to shake out a little bit more for the reaching or downwind leg (though using the old, bagged out roller furling sail probably means you have to roll out some jib to catch up to the peloton (forget about the breakaway)).

And another secret bonus of having roller furling is that, at least with the gear we have on the Redwing, a head sail change without being bareheaded (without dropping one sail to put up another) is a real option. Of course, you have to not be using the roller furler as a roller furler to do this - for example, when you're racing. The tube that is over the headstay that the sail goes up on, and rolls up on, has two grooves in it. Simply put the new sail's luff in the unused groove, hoist and peel off the old one. Unfortunately, we don't have two jib halyards, but otherwise we could do sail changes on the fly.

Roller furling also comes in handy during those long day sails when, perhaps, you have been "too much in the sun," or when you're worried that if the "thunder don't get you the lightning will," and you really don't feel like getting up on the foredeck to take down the jib. With roller furling you can sit back during the motor sail toward the slip and with a few quick pulls on the right line have the jib put away. And no docking while stepping all over the jib, either.

We like to bob around in the cove for a bit, put the mainsail away nice and tidy, coil the lines, and then sail back in with just the jib, starting the motor at the last second as we line up for the slip. Mmm...roller furling.

what's in a name?

I
You, my dear singular reader, may recall that when I first got the Redwing I was strongly considering a name change. What ruffled my feathers was that the model of the boat is, in fact, the Redwing. I wanted something different and a little more fresh. I kept the name of the boat, in part because everyone on this end of the bay knows the boat - and knows it as the Redwing. Changing it, I think, would have stuck in everyone's craw.

II
When Alli and I go bike riding in the preserve right by our apt, we always see these black birds with colorful shoulders. If I had ever acted on my obsession to Know the Names of Things in Nature...

III
I tend to be a slow thinker and so finally, after the Redwing has been in and out of my life for the past, say, 13 years, I finally got to wondering, "how did C&C come to name the boat Redwing?" And after a little bit more thought, I concluded that it's unlikely they named it after the hockey team or the shoe company, and that most likely they named it after the bird. But, just what does a redwing look like?

IV
And so I did a search on the flickr and found a lot of pictures of redwings and what do you know, the very same bird we see in the preserve is a redwing! The male redwing is the red shouldered blackbird, while the female is a brown bird with fewer decorations. I found some excellent shots of our little blackbird on Gentleman Rook's photostream, including this one of our namesake hanging out on a cat-tail. Pretty sweet. Many thanks to Gentleman Rook Photography for the picture!

Check out Gentleman Rook's other pictures, especially the hobo signs on railroad cars - very Jack London, very Jack Kerouac, and very cool.

got us some insurance

In a fever inspired by the destruction of one of the boats on our dock, and accompanying damage to the poles, a finger dock, the jet ski on the finger dock (not a great loss, if you ask me), and some damage to another boat, we bought some insurance from Geico. I have my car insurance with them and I'm filed under "Satisfied Customer," so I called on them to protect the Redwing.

It wasn't without its twists and turns though.

I called them the day after the fire, and got a quote for a policy and liability. Before they could issue the policy I had to send them pictures of the boat. No problem, I thought, prepare to be blown away!

After they got the pictures they called me and said they could only offer me liability! No policy. So if the boat burns down, it's on me. I asked what the rationale was, and all the woman could say was, "I'm not sure, they looked at the pictures and considering the age and condition of the boat we can only offer you liability."

I was stung.

Say what you want about the age of the boat, but the condition? The condition!?

In my indignation I cut the conversation short. Very short.

But then I reconsidered. What I was most concerned with was not the Redwing being destroyed. I can play some defense against that. I was really worried about the Redwing hurting another boat. I mean, once we get our racing program together (next year, I swear!) we are going to hurt some boats' feelings, but what if the Redwing burned down the two boats who live next to us? Or the dozen boats who sleep next to us in the boatyard? Or what if, once the racing program is organized (next year, I swear), I t-bone a port tacker who appears from under the jib? Bad news, man.

So I took some very healthy liability and if someone else t-bones me, or burns me down, or hurts my feelings I'll take it out on their liability.

I'm telling you, as soon as I hung up I felt so, so much better.

Olin J. Stephens II, Renowned Yacht Designer, Is Dead at 100

By BARBARA LLOYD

Olin J. Stephens II, one of the most prominent naval architects of the last century, a designer who created more than 2,200 cruising and racing yachts over decades of innovation in sailing, died Saturday in Hanover, N.H. Mr. Stephens, who lived in Hanover, was 100.

His son Olin J. Stephens III confirmed the death.

From Mr. Stephens’s drawing table came the lines of yachts as diverse as Dorade, a 52-foot yawl that prompted a ticker-tape parade in New York after winning the 1931 Trans-Atlantic Race, and Ranger, a 135-foot J-Class sloop that Mr. Stephens designed with Starling Burgess for the 1937 America’s Cup races.

He was also instrumental in designing five other successful America’s Cup defenders: the 12-Meters Columbia in 1958; Constellation, 1964; Intrepid, 1967; Courageous, 1974; and Freedom, 1980.

Read the rest of the obit here: A Sad Day for Sailing

Fire at the dock!

Last night there was a fire at the dock. Uncle Jack lives across the creek, and can see the boats through the trees from his living room window, was awakened around 1.00 am, by the sound of voices and sirens. He could see one of the boats on fire and quickly grabbed his binoculars to figure out what was going on.

Sadly, the small fishing boat two slips to the south from us, Atlantic Star, caught fire and burned. Jack saw a fireball puff out and then the firemen got it under control, covering the creek with smoke.

Jack went by this morning on his way to work and said the whole top of the boat was burned and that fire investigators were working their voodoo.

Redwing and Ceol na Mara are fine, but I feel sick to my stomach thinking about what happened and what could have been. I feel like a member of our little boating community has died, but I guess that's what's happened after all. It was a great little boat, and was well cared for by its owner.

23. Hemlock 2: Mission Abort!

This trip barely gets into the book as a 2008 sail, but we did actually do some sailing before disaster struck, so I'm'na count it.

We were happily on our way to Hemlock on Monday to meet up with all the gang who slept over. The wind had died down since Sunday, but was still out of the north, so we sailed out of the Babylon Cove and headed for the State boat channel.

As we got closer to the channel the winds got really light and flukey, so I decided to run the engine until we got around into the channel and clear of the low, grassy islands that serve as borders of the channel (on the north side). So, we putted along for a bit and until Alli went below and yelled up:

"Jar, you need to pump the bilge!"

A quick look into the cabin revealed that the floorboards were floating. (Insert really bad feeling here.)

So I handed the tiller to Dan, jumped into the cabin, turned the bilge pump on and went through the checklist to see if we were sinking: sea cocks and sea access points; is the engine pumping water into the boat; is the hull open somewhere; other?

After I saw that the bilge pump was able to keep ahead of the water coming into the boat (as in, we're not going to sink in the State boat channel, it looks like) I gave everything a more thorough going over and discovered that water was all over the starboard side of the engine! Salt was caked onto the spark plug tops and the top of the (engine) head. So I yanked the stairs/engine box away from the engine and discovered that there was a leak in the engine somewhere (at the time I assumed the head had come loose, or one of the bolts had come loose) and a stream of water was shooting right onto the alternator.

We quickly turned around and headed for home. I was stressing hard as we motored upwind, toward the creek. I expected any one of the following outcomes all of which would result in us (me) short tacking the boat up the creek and sailing into the slip. I expected the engine to quit. I expected the alternator to catch fire. I expected the leak to get worse and turn into a real gusher. I expected to get hit by lightning, even though it was a clear, blue sky keeping an eye on us.

I really don't know if motoring was the wisest thing to do - I mean, who knows how long the engine was squirting water onto the alternator. It worked out, but safety probably dictated that I shut down the engine and either call for a tow or call on the Viking Spirits and short tack the boat upwind and get our asses home. Being that I was the only experienced sailor on the boat, with guests, safety would probably have dictated a tow. But, short of a nautical holocaust, I'm not calling for a tow.

And I really have to hand it to Dan and Alli - they took it like a champ. All of us had our hearts set on Hemlock and the jelly fish, and I really hated having to disappoint them (especially for yet! another! engine problem).

Once we got back to the slip and I was able to calmly look at the engine, my preliminary diagnosis is that, however improbable, there is a leak in the water jacket side plate. This would be the exception to Occam's Razor, if it turns out I'm right, because the water jacket side plate is basically just an access plate made of 1/8" thick steel. Of course, since it's pretty much the only part on the engine that I haven't replaced...

So we said fuggit, let's just BBQ the burgers here in the slip, have a cold drink, and then go to the beach.

And that's what we did.