The Art of Plotting a Course

I am thinking ahead to the late winter and early spring when I shall be taking some budding Magellans across the Channel and down to the North coast of Brittany and back.   On these passages, the navigators will be planning their courses to steer over legs of 60M+ (good opportunity for those aiming for the Yachtmaster Offshore ticket).  I have found a number of times that the art of planning a course to steer has been forgotten, or skippers have never been taught a simple method.  Reliance on GPS, chart plotters and all the modern electrickery on boats now is all very well; but have you planned what to do if your main electrics fail, the hand held GPS’ batteries are dead and there are no spares?  For any passage across the Channel I plan my course to steer by working out the total set/drift of tides in a westerly direction and then in an easterly direction and subtract the smaller total from the larger.  This then gives me a total push in one direction, which I use to shape my course to steer.  I have a simple form which I use, not my design, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I am sure the originator of this form would not object to my plagiarism!
If any of you are about to embark on a cross channel trip and would like a copy of my guide, email me and I will send it to you (instructor@sail-help.co.uk).   I also have a simple mathematical method of interpolating between springs and neaps which avoids using the graphs included inside the front covers of tidal stream atlases.   Alternatively if you would like to join me on my Easter or Whit Sunday cross Channel cruises, send an email.

Taking a group of budding Yachtmaster Offshore candidates the other week, I was surprised to find one had never conducted a pilotage exercise to take a boat into a river or port at night.  I believe that it is important that both competent crew and day skippers should experience sailing at night.  What happens to a day skipper who charters a boat and has no idea of how to safely navigate himself, boat and crew into a haven, particularly if something has delayed the daytime passage

Have you ever thought of retrieving someone from the water using a headsail sheet?  This is not the easiest recovery method in rough weather, but is feasible particularly if you have no other means.  A lot will depend on how many are on board your boat, their strength, how strong the casualty is and in what stage of hypothermia he could be.   The method can only be used on a sailing boat which is rigged with a furling headsail.    The sail must be furled away, and the sheet should be unrigged from any turning blocks or cars but remain attached to the headsail and led back to a cockpit winch.   A bight of this sheet should be lowered into the water in which the man overboard places a foot.  He can use part of this bight to haul himself up so that he can grab the toerail.  Then, with the sheet taken directly onto one of the primary winches, the casualty holding onto the toerail and with his foot in the bight, a member of the crew can be wind him up onto the deck.  Once close to the toerail, the casualty, with self preservation foremost in his mind, will be able to grab a stanchion or the toerail, or proffered arms and haul himself onto the side deck.  I hope that the photo taken in the quiet confines of a marina shows enough for you to get the idea; note that the lady with the safety line to the casualty is not part of the rescue operation.

The last three month’s tips have shown you some ways of recovering someone from the water, in all cases the method has been dependent on the casualty being conscious.  Have you a preferred method of recovery?  What would you do if the person who fell overboard was unconscious?  How will you secure him alongside, how will you get a line round him, and how will you recover him?   Man overboard is close to the top of the list of the worst things which can happen to a skipper.   Have you thought through how you would deal with such an emergency?

Retrieving a man overboard

What methods do you have set up on your boat to retrieve someone from the water should they fall overboard? Prevention is better than cure, and ideally your crew will not fall into the sea; but there is always the chance it might happen. During the last 40 years or so of sailing, I have lost five people overboard, and all have been within 100m of a pontoon, pier or wharf. So I do have a few ideas of how to retrieve someone. Over the next few months I will show you some of these methods.

A tribuckle is an excellent piece of kit, sadly now, I believe, out of production, but there are some similar contraptions still available. Tied to the toe rail, and with the spinnaker halyard made to the apex the casualty is floated into the bunt of the contraption and then the halyard is taken up and the body rolls up the side of the boat. The major advantage is that the body is pulled out horizontally, which will mean less chance of the casualty having a stroke as the blood does not immediately drain to the toes. There may be difficulty in strong winds to get the material to stay in the water, a boathook may help here. What do you do if the man in the water is unconscious? You may like to discuss this by posting a comment below. If you have some brilliant idea for retrieving a casualty, why not explain it and I will publicise it in All At Sea?

Out of fuel at sea

For the first time in my life, I ran out of fuel at sea.  We were coming into Newtown Creek to have supper and prepare for a night pilotage exercise.  The fuel tank had shown half full at the start of the week’s charter, and the owner just said fill up the tank to the same mark as you find it at the end of the trip.  So with a tank of 130 l, I assumed we had enough fuel for about 2 day’s solid motoring.  When we ran out of fuel we had only motored for five hours or so.  The engine faltered and died on us right by the bifurcation navigation mark in the creek, so we dropped anchor and lay back on that for all of 2 minutes.  I got the engine going and we made it to one of the mooring buoys up the western arm of the harbour.   I called the owner and she asked me to call out Seastart, which we did.  They were very efficient and quick to answer our call, did all the necessary in checking the fuel system and it was concluded that we had run out of fuel.  We refilled the fuel tank and had no further problems.  The silly thing was that the engine was brand new, with a brand new fuel gauge, but showing half full when empty.  I was reading a link on one of the internet forums for yachtsmen where an owner had the sender for the fuel tank gauge replaced under warranty.     The installers had apparently failed to adjust it to the yacht’s tank, and the owner, like us, ran out of fuel whilst the gauge was still showing 1/2 full.  Lesson: if you have any changes made to your fuel gauge or senders, ensure the necessary adjustments are made correctly.

Slab reefing

I am a great believer in slab reefing, simple and effective.  A number of boats I have sailed on over the years have been fitted with the correct number of cringles on their mainsails, for reeving pennants and for securing a reef’s tack to the rams horn; but not all have had sufficient sheaves in the boom to take lines for the clew outhaul, a hardener and 3 reefs.  I was following a thread the other day on an internet forum, and someone came up with the idea of reeving the pennants through blocks which could be moved up the leach for the third reef to be taken in.  The author of this idea concluded with the point “just a shackle to move”.  I wonder if a snap shackle would make this idea a lot easier to set up?  I suspect that there is a danger with such a system, that if the reef is not taken in early enough, there will be a risk of flogging sail with a block attached to it to try to tame.  Worst still, the reefing pennant adrift with a flogging block to retrieve.  I wonder if anyone has used this system and would like to comment on the idea?

Gas heaters, beware

Have you, by any chance, fitted a gas heater to your boat recently? If you have, be aware that you may possibly have invalidated your insurance policy. Underwriters will need to be told of such installations and may well demand a survey by a CORGI registered surveyor.
Catalytic heaters can be unsafe in boats because there is no permanent ventilation into the accommodation area which cannot be permanently closed off. The closeness of inflammable materials can also be a danger, especially if the heater is fitted in a passageway past which crew need to move and thus brush up against heater screens. How many skippers know that there is a firm recommendation that catalytic heaters should not be used on board pleasure craft? A talk to insurance brokers may be worthwhile.

Black dust in the engine well

Do you ever notice black dust in the engine well or scattered round the engine compartment? If you do, it is more likely than not, due to extra wear on the drive belt connecting alternator to crank shaft. It may be that there may be misalignment, the belt may be rubbing against something or if belt tension is too loose, it may be slipping. Check the alignment with a straight edge; check the tension - the engine manual should give guidance as to how much slack there should be, and if needs be take up this slack. Has, at some stage, the wrong size belt been fitted? There is just the possibility that the belt may be too narrow for the grooves on the pulley wheels, it may be abrading on the grooves and the next item on the repair list is to fit a replacement belt. Well worth a check if you see signs of wear.

Rigging failure

How many skippers have run through in their mind what to do if they have a rigging failure and a shroud parts? I am a great believer in the “what if?” syndrome and always talk through the possible emergencies when teaching. One needs to be careful about being a doom and gloom merchant, but if crew have been talked through the major dangers of fire, explosion, man overboard, collision, grounding, mast down and abandon ship in a sensible and balanced fashion, they will be encouraged to follow the same guidelines when chartering or owning themselves. How many owners have a set of bulldog clips on board? A range of sizes to cover repair of stays and shrouds, cable controlled wheel steering systems and suchlike should be included in the inventory of the prudent boat owner. This way, if a check of standard rigging is made, a potential fracture may be spotted in sufficient time to rig the bulldog clips and prevent a serious accident happening. On a recent delivery trip, I was inspecting the standing rigging, prior to leaving, through binoculars and noticed from the deck that the wire halyard to the headsail was more than 50% chafed through. A quick hand swage repair prevented what could have been a serious incident.

Blocking up holes

Those of us who sail long distances always gather bits and pieces over time and many skippers have numerous plastic boxes full of those items which just cannot be thrown away because they may be useful in an emergency or for a simple repair. Reading through some magazine articles the other day, I was surprised to see an author in his list of “lessons learnt” say that he would, in future, carry some wooden bungs in case of another incident of holing from grounding on rock. This is basic safety equipment, and though maybe not rated as important as a lifejacket or harnesses, no yacht should go to sea without something to block up a hole quickly.

Care for jackstays

Do you have tape jackstays which may have been lying on deck for some time? Have they ever been removed and washed? These jackstays are, to my mind, far better than those made of wire, because unlike webbing stays they will not roll underfoot. However the tape variety will degrade in sunlight. Ideally the tape versions should be taken off and stowed below when the boat is not in use. A simple method of attachment is to cow- hitch one end to a strong point forward, say a mooring cleat; and with a lanyard, tension the other end aft. It will then not take too long to remove or fit the jackstays.

Lessons from a long passage

Our plan during the middle of November was to make a long passage out into the western approaches to the Channel, and perhaps pop into a port or two on the north Brittany coast. We had on board, three boat owners, one with a 22 footer kept in Boston, another with a Sadler 32 kept also on the east coast, and a third who owned a Dehler 34 moored in the Solent. All were looking for the chance to get some experience and add some miles to their log books for eventual Yachtmaster Offshore, though one said he was more interested in having some fun. The forecast was bloody, f8’s and 9’s from the south west were to prevail for the first two days, so we spent some time playing in the Solent and fighting wind and tides. There seemed a bit of a break in the weather coming up on the Wednesday, so we planned on sailing round the Isle of Wight, leaving Yarmouth with the last of the ebb, so that on turning round the Needles we would have wind and tide both going with us.

There were two major lessons which came out of this trip. The first was lookout with buoy identification. It is so easy, if you are not following a properly prepared pilotage plan, to assume that a buoy in the distance is the one you are looking for. As we came down to the Shingles Elbow red buoy just northeast of the entrance to the Needles channel, there were occasional squalls of rain which reduced visibility a bit, but not so much that buoys could not be picked out with binoculars. However the skipper for the day did not check the buoy colour or shape properly, and assumed it to be the Bridge westerly cardinal. As a result, a course steered to put this red buoy on our port side would have placed us close to the breakers on the Shingle Bank, but luckily we correctly identified the mark, and then picked up the cardinal. The lesson brought home in such a situation as this, is to have your plan properly prepared with courses and distances between navigation marks. If needs be, zero the trip log at each mark and always try to be one jump ahead of yourself when piloting. What I mean by this, is to identify the next mark but one when eyeballing the yacht in and out of harbour. If any of you would like a beginner’s guide to preparing a pilotage plan, email me and I will send you a copy of my notes. My contact details are available on my website: Arrow Yacht Enterprises.

When I have experienced skippers on board, I let them prepare and execute their plans without my input, unless something is going to go pear shaped. We had rounded St Catherine’s Point and had a strong spring flood pushing us along; we were sailing with just one third headsail and two reefs in the mizzen, making 6 – 7 knots through the water, and sometimes up to 9 knots over the ground. David was doing the navigation for the day and was quite relaxed about it all. It was he who had come along for the fun! The wind was up in the 20 – 25 knots range so we were making good progress, but it was quite clear that if we did not harden up in the SW wind fairly soon, we would end up being taken a lot further east than would have been good for us, and would have ended up with quite a beat back into Portsmouth. Rex, who had a lot less experience than the others on board, had clearly taken in what he had learnt during his theory courses, and pointed out what the tide was doing to us, and what the end result would be. David saw the wisdom of Rex’s point, and we hardened up and sailed on that point of sail all the way to the entrance to Portsmouth. The lesson here is to make use of your instruments, monitor your course over the ground (COG) and speed over the ground (SOG) and deduce what is happening to you. A quick estimated position (EP) on the chart will tell you what is going to happen to you in two hours time and often will save a lot of unnecessary sailing, particularly if you are trying to make that pub for supper or a pint before closing time!