Syzygy Sailing

So the first three times we sailed Jon, Jonny, and I went out by ourselves. This turned out to be a smart idea, because three times in a row we went out and broke something.

On July 4th we broke our reefing hook–broke it right in half (the metal was corroded apparently). We were practicing reefing, we lowered the mainsail, Jon hooked the tack to the reefing hook, and when we started tightening the halyard back up half the hook just flew right off. Lesson learned: don’t trust even large, seemingly strong metal parts without good reason. So we replaced the reefing hooks; we even put one on each side so it’s easy to reef from either tack.

The next time out we blew up a rope clutch. I was unwinding the main halyard from the winch and as soon as the force was transferred to the rope clutch it just shattered, the top popped right off and the axle snapped out. Pretty dramatically. So we replaced all of our rope clutches, and our deck fairleads, and serviced the winches.

The third time the stitching on the luff of our jib came apart. This was to be expected I suppose, since the stitching that failed was the stuff that’s been sitting in the sun for a decade while the sail was wrapped around the furler. It cost $175 to have Pineapple Sails restitch it.

Ready to take people out.

What was it like to go sailing for the first time on my boat? It was a feeling not easily expressible in normal sentences; rather, much more elusively affective. And sensory. But read this and maybe you’ll catch a breeze of what I felt that day.

Liberating. Freeing. Bliss. Matt at the wheel, slightly nervous; he hasn’t steered our boat since barely getting into the dock a month ago.

Motoring out of the marina. All of us, grinning like sloppy newlyweds.

Jonny on the foredeck, watching for other boat traffic. I slap Matt across the back. Whoop! Holler! I’m giddy.

The hard work was worth it. 19 hour work days. No climbing. No biking. Just working. Doesn’t seem like work now.

Time to raise the main sail. I don’t know how to do that. I’m about to learn. Wow, using the winch isn’t easy. That’s a lot of friction. Add it to the list of things to fix.

But I don’t want to think about that right now. Cause the main sail just caught some wind; the boat begins to heel. I’ve never felt my boat heel. Look at it, you can see the wind flowing around the sail. Pushing us forward.

Cut the engine: sweet! no more engine noise. water. listen to the water. The chop of the bay, hitting the boat. Wind. Listen to the wind. Whistling in my ears. The main sail flutters. It’s musical, poetical.

Time to roll out the jib? Really? No problem captain. Wow using the winch isn’t easy. That’s a lot of friction. Add it to the list of things to fix.

Rail in the water. Hard to balance. What fun!

Matt has a sweater and heavy jacket on. Apparently it’s cold. I don’t notice. I’m in a T-shirt. Too busy soaking it all in. God, it’s beautiful. Can’t take 30 seconds to go put on a sweatshirt. Don’t want to. I might miss something. Too busy soaking it all in.

Reef? Too much wind; bring in the mainsail a bit. Yep let’s practice. ’cause I don’t know how to do that. I’m about to learn. At the mast, holding on. It’s kinda bumpy up here. Bay chop. and spray. Fun! Pull the main sail down, ring around the reef hook. I can do that. “Hold!” Can’t… quite… get… ring… around…hook… ok! “Made!” Have fun with that winch Jonny.

Keep winching Jonny. Woah! “What was that?” Something broke and flew off!” Bye bye reef hook. Add it to the list of things to fix.

Take the wheel? Really? Feel the boat move. The wind pushes the boat down, the rudder pushing us up. Spray crashing, hitting me in the face. I love it.

Hey Matt, we’re getting close to the pier, what should we do? Tack probably. uh, ok. I don’t know how to do that. I’m about to learn.

Time to head in; do we have to?

Out for 4 hours today. Pretty soon 2 years. If you lose track of time, Is there much difference?

Usually I think of myself as a somewhat intelligent individual. I did really well studying Chemical Engineering. I scored in the top 5% nationally on the GRE. I scored higher on a reading comprehension test than all the English teachers at my school. My parents tell me I’m smart. On the boat, however, I am constantly humbled at how many questions I have, how uninformed I am, and how many ridiculous things I’ve done recently. I love laughing at myself, and the boat has given me (and Matt and Jonny as well) plenty of occasion to do so. Some of those moments:

One of the first pieces of work I tried to do on the boat, back in January: “I know you said cut the through-hull flat, but is this 45 degree angled cut ok?”

From my first day of work here in Emeryville, “I couldn’t find any wooden chisels.”

When I said to Matt: “Is it bad that there is smoke coming from the Dremel?”

When I forgot to turn over a piece of wood I was epoxying, thus painting 7 coats of epoxy on one side of a piece of wood, instead of 2 coats on one side and 5 on the other side.

“It’s not my fault I dropped the Pelican hook in the water.”

To Jonny, “I don’t understand why the screws won’t go in.” He politely and amusedly noted there were already screws in there.

Overfilling our water tanks to the extent that a veritable waterfall poured out of the vent hose directly on our new stereo. (see more about this from Matt’s perspective in previous posts)

When I bought Matt a bright pink electric panel cover instead of the blue he asked for and said, “I don’t understand, you don’t like the color?” (ok that was a practical joke; I bought him blue also)

Accidentally shorting our engine’s starter motor with a wrench, resulting in A) the engine turning over (while I was laying on top of it), and B) a good-sized burn on my arm as a temporary momento. Jonny and Matt both mentioned it might be a good idea to disconnect the batteries next time. Who knew?

Why is there water coming out of our cabinets???
We overfilled the water tanks and water came out of the vent hose which is nicely positioned in the cabinets right above the brand new stereo we just installed. When I looked over and saw our new radio hidden behind a waterfall I was extremely confused.

How many grommets does it take to secure a windlass cover?
The boat originally had 5, but Jonny determined that the best answer was 12. We can be assured that our new windlass cover will not be lost overboard. Ever. (n.b. the cover for our entire mainsail only has 8 grommets.)

How many hundreds of dollars of epoxy and hundreds of hours of time does it take to build and fiberglass wooden water tanks??
Roughly $1200 and 300 hours. We are now thoroughly convinced without one shred of doubt that we should have never torn apart our steel water tanks and we should have hired a welder instead.

Is it possible to start your engine with your arm and an errant wrench?
Yes. Jon freaked out when he was laying on top of the engine, working on the fuel filter, when he unexpectedly received a painful burn and the engine started cranking underneath him. Thereby accidentally discovering how to short the starter solenoid.

Why is water squeezing up from between our floorboards when we walk around?
Jury hasn’t yet returned a verdict on this one. Most likely explanation is a defective foot pump. No matter what, I can tell you this: it will require at least three more trips to the chandlery, approximately $1000 in unforeseen expenses, two gallons of epoxy, 300 rubber gloves, two days of sanding, and a whole lot of work we didn’t anticipate.

I feel that this event merits a second, more detailed telling.

Here’s how it went down from my viewpoint: I’m standing in the galley at about 10pm, all is quiet and still in the marina, and I’m lost deep in thought about why our engine refuses to start (which was a long, unproductive, confusing thought).  Somewhere deep in my subconscious I noted a strange sucking, airy sort of sound, but my reverie was deep and this sound failed to warrant my attention . . . So I’m still deep in thought for another minute, when I notice something extraordinarily strange at the edge of my vision. A sheet of water about 2 ft wide has emerged from underneath one of our cabinets, at head height, and is pouring over the drawers onto the settee.  On its way from cabinet to settee, it also happens to be passing over our newly installed stereo.  And this is no drip.  It’s a veritable waterfall.  I mean volume. Like the rate at which one could empty a pitcher–quickly.  This sight is so astoundingly implausible that my mind refuses to react to it with anything more than a grunting, guttural, medium-volumed  “wha??”  The situation is clearly dire–I mentioned that it was pouring over the front of our new stereo–but I was just . . . confused.  All I could think of, over and over again (like 15 times in 2 seconds), was “where could it be coming from where could it be coming from where could it be coming from where is the water coming from water there what coming from where where what why why?”  Or something roughly like that.  Fortunately, Jon new exactly where the water was coming from and sprung immediately into action–Jonny said that his exit out the companionway and into the cockpit demonstrated record-making speed and efficiency of motion, as he sprung from the middle step to the dodger handhold and swung himself smoothly into a upright run for the dock.  Jon knew where the water was coming from because Jon was the one that turned on the hose full-blast to fill our freshly finished watertanks.  The amount of water that comes out of the faucet on our dock could quench a house fire, and Jon had it at 100%.  So Jon knew exactly what enormous volume of water was being pumped into our cabinet–via, it turns out, the tank’s vent hose.  Which is why Jon won first place boat move while I stood dumbly staring at the waterfall coming out of our cabinet.

This is what happened: Jon was watching the level of water rise through the (closed) access hatches on top of the tank.  The fact that they were closed was relevant.  The vent outlet does not come out of the very highest point of the tank, but is about 1″ down the side.  We thought that we were safe because the vent hose was routed to a point about 5 feet above the tank.  This would be true if even one of the access hatches had been open–in that case the water would have found its own height in the vent hose while air was pushed out of the open access hatch.  But since the hatches were closed, as soon as the level of water rose above the vent outlet, the extra 2 inches of air space above the water was irrelevant, as the air no longer had anywhere to escape to.  So we forced that water out of the top of the vent house, from where it proceeding to pour under the doors of the cabinet, into the drawer beneath the cabinet, around our stereo, and onto the settee.  We put an inch of water in the drawer before Jon turned the water off.  Preliminary investigations suggest that the stereo may be just fine, saved from certain death by the water collection properties of the drawer.

Lesson learned: waterproof everything.  On a sailboat, even the safest, driest corners of the boat will see water.

“Fuck this hose!”

It was 1 AM, and I’d been working for 17 straight hours on our damn water tanks. The hose we’d bought was inflexible yet annoyingly curvy, and slightly larger than our old hose, making it extremely difficult to shove it onto the fittings. One fitting that was supposed to attach to the water inlet hose was so tight that I spent 20 minutes, splayed out on the floor, with my arms scrunched into a tight crevice between the water tank and a bulkhead, struggling, pushing, pulling, leverlng, to no avail. Swearing seemed to be called for.

All I wanted was to get one step closer to finishing our new water tanks, a battle that by then was stretching into its third week. By now the project was so consuming that I was forgetting to eat meals. Even though we were now so close to the end, I still felt defeated and resigned to failure. “I can’t do it,” I said to Matt, and I’m not sure if I meant this particular hose fitting or the entire god-forsaken sailboat fixer-upper nightmare I’d gotten myself into.

Matt had showed up at 8:00 that morning, chomping at the bit to do some work after too long away from the boat. July 4th was only a few days away, and we figured that if we wanted to take friends sailing around the Bay to watch the fireworks, we’d have to wrap up the watertank project at long last. While some might call this overly optimistic, I prefer to think of it as inspirationally motivating. Matt called it stressful. He was going to make a go at it though.

I stared at the water inlet hose with disdain, then turned to Matt. He’d gotten the hose on the other tank attached somehow. How? He shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, mine was a bitch also.” I had put this type of hose on many other fittings, but every other time I’d always had more room to twist the hose around the fitting, following the grooves of the hose, and greatly helping it along. How could I twist it now in such a small space? Ah! An epipheny! Detach the fitting from the tank, connect the hose on the fitting, then reconnect the fitting with the hose on it. It almost worked… except for the enormous kinks that ended up in the hose. So I tried again, kinking the hose in the opposite direction before starting. Success! By 3 AM I was screwing on the last hose-clamp, meaning the water tanks were completely fitted.

Before calling it a night, Matt and I had a beer. We didn’t say much; we mostly just looked at the water tanks, which were shiny and waterproof and strong and at long last permanently bolted in place. We knew that after 19 hours, just as much or more work was still needed to be done to sail by the 4th. But beneath the exhaustion and frustration there was still a moment of satisfaction. The god-forsaken sailboat fixer-upper nightmare seemed, at least, an inspired god-forsaken sailboat fixer-upper nightmare.