Use It Or Lose It

On Saturday I ran in a 5k road race which, in keeping with the season, was named Trot Off Your Turkey. In my case it would have been more accurately titled Trot Off Your Turkey, Apple Pie, Cranberry Upside-Down Cake, Take-Away Chinese, Fish and Chips, and Way Too Much Alcohol. We did have a good time at Thanksgiving.

I used to run 5k and 10k races quite regularly. When I looked back in my diaries (see anal-retentive) I discovered that I hadn't run a 5k since 2001. Wow. That's a long time. In the meantime I took a year off running with a knee injury in 2002 and 2003, conceived the crazy idea that I could run marathons in 2004, actually ran marathons in 2005, 2006 and 2007, did a lot of sailing in 2008, and didn't do much of anything in 2009. How the years fly by when you're having fun.

So I wasn't all that surprised to discover that my 5k time is now slower than it was in 2001. A lot slower. About 2 minutes per mile slower. But it was fun. And I think I will start running 5k and 10k and 5 mile races again.

Use it or lose it.

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On Sunday I sailed my Laser in the frostbite fleet in Newport. It was sunny. It was windy enough to hike and plane and ride some waves downwind.

I used to do frostbite racing quite regularly. When I looked back in my diaries (see anal-retentive) I discovered that I hadn't sailed a frostbite series since the winter of 2005/6. Wow. That's a long time. In the meantime I took off a year in 2006/7 because we were moving house, in 2007/8 I went to Australia for the Laser Masters Worlds, and in the winter of 2008/9 I didn't do much of anything. How the years fly by when you're having fun.

So I wasn't all that surprised to discover that I totally suck at the kind of large fleet, short course racing that is typical of frostbiting. My starts, my mark-roundings, my boat-handling, my tactics, my layline judgment, my decision-making all totally sucked. On the other hand I did stay upright, I did have some good battles with other bottom-half-of-fleeters, and it was fun. I think I will start frostbiting again every weekend I can.

Use it or lose it.

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However... the beautiful Tillerwoman and I are off to the Caribbean later this week. There will be sun. There will be rum. There will be sailing. There will be kayaking. There will be swimming and snorkeling. There may even be windsurfing and stand up paddle boarding. I'll probably do a bit of running. I will definitely do some Laser racing.

Use it or lose it.

Today I am quite tired.

Love and Sailing: Two More Posts Today

The entries for our Love and Sailing group writing project keep rolling in...

It's always good to receive a submission from a relatively new blogger, and this one's a real doozy. Setting the Record Straight or Capt. Puffy Pants Eats Crow is a tale about one of those "learning experiences" which seems to get more embellished every time it is told. For some reason Captain Puffy does gloss over the details of exactly what went wrong after he took the helm, so I would love to hear Honey Bunny's side of the story too.

And The Skipper of the Starboard Racing Vessel tell us that "Sailing Reminds Me Why it's Good to Be an Old Married Couple". She tells us that "sailing brings out the arguing, which will later be followed by the apologizing and the making-up. Oh, the making-up." I think all married couples would agree with her on that one. We also learn that there is something irresistible to her about "the smell of sun-warmed skin, sunscreen, and gel coat, on a handsome sailor." Hmmm. I never knew the the smell of gel coat on a man was an aphrodisiac. I must try it some time.

Keep them coming. The competition remains open until Tuesday. Don't forget we have a fantastic awesome stupendous prize for the best story this month. Full details on how to participate - including the prize - at Love and Sailing.

Love and Sailing: Another Three Posts

Three more stories for our Love and Sailing group writing project...

Norm has contributed Sailing - The Best Thing That Ever Happened, a touching tale about how his romance and sailing relationship with Joan progressed from Thistle racing in Connecticut - "one day she told me that one of the main reasons she was attracted to me was that I was a sailor"; to cruising the San Juan Islands in a C&C 35 with their daughters; to Star racing with Joan on Budd Inlet - "for me it was as much about being on the water sailing with her as it was racing"; to buying a Catalina 36 - "we made a vow that the boat was just for the two of us and we would never sail it without the other." I think this is the first time Norm has participated in one of our group writing project. I hope it's not the last.

The Things We Do For Love is the love story of the Bursledon Blogger and Erica, of how she agreed to sail across the Atlantic and back with him even though she had never sailed more than 50 miles before, and of how their love blossomed on the voyage.

And Pat tells the tale of what he bought his wife for Valentine's Day, and in the comments she says the gift was Much Better than Chocolate or Flowers.

There's still time for you to write a post on this theme. Perhaps one of these three stories or the ones here and here will inspire you. Full details of how to participate - including the amazing prize that the best entry will win - at Love and Sailing.

Love and Sailing: Three More Entries

When I challenged you to write about Love and Sailing for this month's group writing project, I suppose I should have realized that this would be a tough one for some of you. There could be all sorts of reasons why you might not rush to tell the world about "how your love life and your sailing life interact."

Captain JP teased us for a while with a post about "skinny dipping and comfy bunks" and something else that was "rather steamy" but ultimately The "Love and Sailing" non post is about his choice not to reveal anything about this side of his life. That's OK. I respect his decision.

But then the following day he posted a tale of a couple sailing together in the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers... with a surprise twist in the end. It's fiction... I think.

Adam Turinas seems to have had no qualms about taking on the challenge that I originally set with an excellent account of how he and his wife Alice share a passion for sailing, and the roles that sailing has played in their relationship: "It helped form the bond in the beginning, fixed the cracks later and now is creating a new foundation." Check it out at Danger Will Robinson!

(I did warn you that I would rename your posts if you all chose "Love and Sailing" as the titles.)

There's still plenty of time for you to write a post on this theme. What can you do with it? Will you tell us something about your real life like Adam did? Or make up a fictional tale? Or tell us about someone you know? Maybe you will invent some whole new way to treat the topic? Full details of how to participate - including the amazing prize that the best entry will win - at Love and Sailing.

Tillerman's Top Five Tips On How Not To Die On Your Laser

Here are the links to all five posts in my series on how to stay alive when Laser sailing...

1. Wear a Life Jacket
   
   
2. Sail With A Friend
   
   
3. Hang on to the Sheet
   
   
4. Make Sure You Can Get Back in the Boat
   
   
5. Wear a Wetsuit or Drysuit if the Weather is Cold
   
   

World's Smallest Schooner?

None of my many hundreds of highly knowledgeable and attentive readers seem to have picked up on what I thought was a glaring error of nautical terminology in Sunday's post which included the lyrics to Mr. Kenny Chesney's song "The Life".

Mr. Chesney claims that he met a gentleman called José who had a "12 foot Schooner".

Hmmm. I'm no expert on boats but according to Wikipedia (which is never wrong) a schooner is "a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts with the forward mast being shorter or the same height as the rear masts."

A 12 foot boat with at least two masts and fore-and-aft sails? Seems unlikely to me.

Was Mr. Chesney just groping for a word that sorta kinda rhymes with "cooler"?

Or do Mexican fisherman really use 12 foot boats with two masts? Or is the word "schooner" used to describe some other kind of boat in Playa del Carmen?

So how small could a schooner be? What is the world's smallest schooner?

According to the The Google (which contains all the knowledge in the universe) this photo on Flickr may be of the world's smallest schooner.



How long is that? 30 foot including the bowsprit? Certainly more than 12 foot. I haven't been able to discover any more information about this boat. Can anyone help? Or does anyone know of an even smaller schooner?

What about this boat?


I stumbled upon this picture on 70.8% yesterday, in a post in which Thomas Armstrong reviews A VOYAGE OF PLEASURE: the Log of Bernard Gilboy’s Transpacific Cruise in the Boat, “Pacific” 1882-1883. Armstrong describes the Pacific as an 18 foot schooner.

Hmmm. At first I was going to argue whether this strange looking craft (with only one mast apparently) was really a schooner, but then I read the text of the post and learned that Gilby was capsized by a wave 90 days out of San Francisco and that in this accident he lost "a mast". He subsequently contrived a jury rig which is shown in the "lead photograph" in the book. So now I'm confused. Is the drawing on the cover of the boat as built, or of the jury rig? Did the boat have one or two masts originally? And if only one, was it really a schooner? I have no compunction about challenging Mr. Chesney's nautical credentials but am very reluctant to second guess Mr. Armstrong on such a subject.

Can someone please help me to find a way out of this fog?

Sail With a Friend

It's not that I'm paranoid, but there really are people out there trying to read my mind...

First of all it was the Wizard of Berkeley twice trying to guess the subjects of my group writing projects before I announced them...

Now the Old Man of Lake Eustis has attempted to guess the subject of the final instalment of my series on How Not to Die on Your Laser.

And the spooky thing is that both of them did accurately read my mind! Am I that predictable? Or do these two old geezers have supernatural powers?

So, yes, the fifth of Tillerman's Tips on How Not to Die on Your Laser is Sail With a Friend.

What? What's that he said? Tillerman said you should always sail in company, sail with other Lasers, sail with a friend? Is this the same Tillerman who actually boasted in Anti-Social Bastard that he sailed 50 times on his own last year? The same Tillerman who wrote posts about sailing alone early in the season on the Sakonnet River such as So Where the Bloody Hell Are You? and who also wrote about sailing alone in the dark days of December in posts such as Paint it Black? What a hypocrite.

You are right. I am a hypocrite. But it is true that if you want to play it really safe you should never go off Lasering on the sea on your own. Shit happens. Bad shit sometimes happens. Here are just a few of the things that could happen when you go Lasering. If any one of these things happened while you are on your own a mile from shore you might never get home...

• injure yourself
• break the mast
• break the boom
• break the rudder
• break the mast-step
• break the gooseneck
• rip a fitting off the boom
• have a heart-attack or a stroke
• get run over by a ferry or powerboat
• fall off the boat and lose contact with it
• hit a rock and knock a huge hole in the hull...

OK. There's probably many more things I could list but that's scared me enough for now.

My son and I had a conversation about sailing a Laser alone on the day that the two of us went for a blast in the waves at the mouth of the Sakonnet River. I wrote about it in Fat Boy and Little Man.

"So is it really any safer with two of us? If one of us breaks a mast or a boom, say, in waves and wind like this, there's no way that the other one is going to be able to tow the damaged boat back to shore."

"True. We may have to abandon the broken boat. But with one good Laser we can make sure that the two of us make it alive back to the beach."

"Right."

And that's the point. If you are sailing with at least one other friend in a Laser, he can help you in all sorts of ways. If you get separated from your boat, he can pick you up and sail you back to it. (Been there, done that.) If your boat breaks he can perhaps help you do some kind of jury-rig repair. Worst case, he can pick you up and take you back to safety even if you have to abandon your boat.

So, yes, it's a good rule never to sail alone.

Is that going to stop me from sailing alone? No. Absolutely not. I discovered last year that some of the most rewarding experiences on the water come from solitary sails. And there are things you can do to make sailing on your own somewhat less risky...

Oh no! I feel another series coming on. Tillerman's Top X Tips on How to Stay Safe When Sailing Alone on Your Laser.

Watch this space.

Wouldn't That Be The Life?

It was early one morning
Playa del Carmen
That’s when I first met José.
He had a 12 foot Schooner
A 3 foot cooler
Full of the catch of the day
And he was wrinkled from grinning
From all of the sun he had been in.
He was barefoot, cerveza in hand.
He said, “Gracias Señor," when I paid him too much for
All of the snapper he had.
Now I told him, "My friend it ain’t nothing,"
In the best broken Spanish I knew.
I said, "I make a good living
Back home where I’m from."
He smiled and said, "Amigo, me too."

He said, "I fish and I play my guitar
I laugh at the bar with my friends
I go home to my wife
I pray every night
I can do it all over again."

Somewhere over Texas
I thought of my Lexus
And all the stuff I work so hard for
And all the things that I’ve gathered
From climbing that ladder
Didn’t make much sense anymore.
They say my nest egg ain’t ready to hatch yet.
They keep holding my feet to the fire.
They call it paying the price
So that one day in life
I’ll have what I need to retire

And just fish
And play my guitar
And laugh at the bar with my friends
And go home to my wife
And pray every night
I can do it all over again.

And to think that I thought for a while there
That I had it made
When the truth is I’m really just dying
To live like José

And just fish
Play my guitar
Laugh at the bar with my friends
Go home to my wife
Pray every night
I can do it all over again.

Wouldn’t that be the life?
Wouldn’t that be the life?

Love and Sailing: First Three Entries

I am frequently amazed by the inventiveness and creativity of the readers of this blog...

When I suggested Love and Sailing as a topic for another group writing project, I expected that I would see stories along the lines of the book that inspired the subject, The Motion of the Ocean, real life confessions of how sailing has impacted your relationships with your significant others and/or vice versa.

To be sure, O Docker in his premature contribution Who Do You Trust? did follow this model.

But Joe Rouse went off in a completely direction with Con La Vela He Encontrado El Amor Verdadero! which includes a very helpful link for lonely single sailors in our community.

And Carol Anne gave us A spat which she says is, "Purely fiction. Purely. Well, almost purely." Hmmm. Is it a dream? A fantasy? Or can you read between the lines of other posts in Carol Anne's blog to find the seeds of inspiration for this delightfully titillating bodice ripper?

So now it's your turn. What can you do with this topic? Full details of how to participate at Love and Sailing.

Make Sure You Can Get Back in the Boat

It's time for #4 in Tillerman's Top Five Tips For Making Sure You Don't Die on Your Laser. In case you've forgotten, the first three tips were...

• Wear a Life Jacket
• Wear a Wetsuit or Drysuit if the Weather is Cold
• Hang on to the Mainsheet

Tip #4 is Make Sure You Can Get Back in the Boat.

Actually for any boat that can capsize, like a Laser, the tip should really read Make Sure You Can Do a Capsize Recovery AND Get Back in the Boat but today I'm going to provide a public service for sailors of all kinds of boats, big and small, by having a bit of a rant on the general issue of getting back in the boat.

Start of rant...

As I am sure you recall, the incident that triggered me to start writing this series of posts was when Thorsten Cook fell off his boat during the Star North Americans. One of the factors that contributed to the seriousness of the situation was that, although Mr. Cook's crew did manage to sail the boat back to him, the two of them were unable to get him back into the boat.

How often do we hear of stories like this? Sometimes it's the classic "man and wife go for a day cruise in their yacht... man falls overboard... wife either cannot sail the boat back to man on her own or even if she does they cannot get him back on board." (Sorry to sound sexist but it's usually that way round.) It happened on the waters right in front of my house a year or two ago in weather conditions that weren't at all extreme. The husband fell overboard. The wife was unable to recover him. She called out the Coastguard but he drowned and his body was washed up in front of our favorite local restaurant a few days later.

I'm sorry but I can't understand the mentality of people who go sailing without any kind of clue as to how they are going to get back on board if they fall off. I know it's not as easy on many kinds of boat as it would be on a Laser but I think you should have a plan for getting back on board... and practice it.

There's a great Yachting Magazine article on this issue, Man Overboard, which discusses what equipment to use to retrieve a crew member in the water, and why a swim platform is worse than useless in anything except calm conditions.

And, while I'm ranting, let me have a go at those sailing schools that purport to teach "man overboard" drills. A few years ago, my son and I did one of those fully certificated Bareboat Chartering Level courses with intensive three-hour emphasis on man-overboard recovery. We had a lot of fun learning how to turn a 40-foot yacht around in wind and waves and find our way back to the "man" in the water. Except it wasn't a man. It was a life jacket which we picked up with a boat hook. The instructor didn't even explain to us how one of us could magically pluck a 200 lb real person out of the water in heavy seas.

So do yourself a favor. Think it through. Worst case. If the most experienced member of your crew goes overboard, how will the rest of the crew (your wife, your kids, whatever) recover him or her? Then practice it. Make Sure You Can Get Back in the Boat.

End of rant...

So is this an issue on a little boat like a Laser or a Sunfish? It can be.

In my experience there are three reasons why a sailor of a small single-handed dinghy may be unable to do a capsize recovery and/or get back in the boat.

1. The sailor is too light to do a capsize recovery. It takes a certain minimum weight of person on the daggerboard to right any given capsized boat. If the sailor (usually a child) is too light to achieve this they will not be able to do a capsize recovery. Simple physics. I've lost count of the times I've had to jump in the water and help some kid who has got themselves into this situation. That's one of the reasons why, when I was teaching sailing, I usually had the kids do capsize recoveries relatively early in the syllabus. I'm sorry but if you're too light for the boat, then find a more suitable boat.
   
   
2. The sailor does not have the arm strength to pull themselves up on to the daggerboard to do a capsize recovery. Sorry to sound sexist again, but it's usually women who have this problem.
   
   
3. The sailor is too heavy to be able to pull themselves on to the daggerboard and/or into the boat. I guess this is really the inverse of #2 but I have seen overweight people of all ages and both sexes who have had this problem. I remember one friend, a Sunfish sailor, who capsized during racing one day. He was unable to climb back into his own boat. When the safety boat, a small whaler, came over to help him he was unable to climb into that and the crew of the rescue boat couldn't pull him in either. There was much discussion afterwards as to what kind of rope tricks might have been employed to get this dude back into his own boat or the safety boat.

So you don't think this is an issue when you are racing and there are some rescue boats around? Well, I hope you are right. But, as happened with that incident at the Star North Americans, there may be all kinds of reasons why a safety boat may not be immediately aware of your predicament or may be too busy attending to other sailors to reach you quickly. Please take some responsibility and make sure that you can look after yourself if the boat capsizes or you fall off the boat.

Speaking for myself, I am not yet so old, so weak, or so fat that I can't usually do a capsize recovery and scramble back into my Laser. But I do confess that each such event does drain some of my strength and energy away. There have been some windy race days when, after doing way too many capsizes, my arms became so tired that I felt that I wouldn't have had the strength left to do even one more recovery. That's when it's time to head for the beach, the showers and the bar. You can always win the race to the bar!

Comments please. Want to pass on any tips or techniques for getting back in the boat? Are you sure you can do it on your boat?