Archive for 'Seamanship'
Boats Dying By Moonlight
It’s an eery thing to watch a boat die by moonlight. Any time, if you are not accustomed to such things, it is jarring to see any vessel in extremis… the carefully designed lines canted at odd angles, water invading places where no water should be. But by the light of a full moon, further [...]
Full StoryBringing them in
It’s a generally accepted piece of cruising etiquette that one should help newly arriving boats with their dock lines when one is at the marina, and I am happy to say that this is one nicety that is observed almost universally wherever we have been along the Salish Sea. A component of that protocol which [...]
Full StorySwinging Room
I believe I have mentioned previously that my idea of a good night on board involves a lot of scope on the anchor rode and plenty of swinging room. It turns out that “lots” and “plenty” are variables with a wide range of possible values depending on the person assigning them. Most of the cruising [...]
Full StoryAll stern tied-up
So I mentioned previously that one of the koans my cruising Zen master, Sturt Bay, gave me was about stern-ties. Also called shore-ties, this common Pacific Northwest practice involves dropping one’s anchor in the desired water depth off-shore, then backing down on it toward the shoreline and running a second line to a convenient anchoring [...]
Full StorySturt Bay Zen
I am starting to look on Sturt Bay, a smallish indentation toward the top end of Texada Island near the little mining town of Van Anda, as a sort of Zen master of boating. Every time I visit there, I think I am learning something, but the next time, it turns out the lesson wasn’t [...]
Full StoryOpening night jitters
As I was standing around on the torn-apart back deck of his antique wooden tugboat chatting with the man who put my cat to sleep, as one does, he mentioned casually that his daughter was flying back soon from Paris. With vacations on the mind, as we were just beginning our own, I expressed admiration [...]
Full StoryInexperience and Ineptitude
I’ve been reading The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande recently and it has really resonated with my personal experiences in sailing. For instance, I’ve discovered that I’m not stupid, I’m just inept. How is that for reassurance? Gawande makes the distinction between a lack of knowledge that results in failures (“inexperienced”) and a lack of [...]
Full StoryThe low-down on the Locks
It’s spring, and boaters new and old are again facing the prospect of passing through the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks to get from freshwater moorages on Lake Union and Lake Washington to the saltwater cruising grounds of Puget Sound. A recent trip through with some friends reminded me how glad I am not to have [...]
Full StoryWhat’s on your life vest?
I always find it interesting to compare gear and outfitting among different crews I come in contact with. Even more interesting is the thought process and the experiences that inform those choices. The Internet presents some fascinating and detailed perspectives from sailors all over the world on how and why to equip yourself and your [...]
Full StoryShould you have to pay for rescue?
So I was watching CNN the other day and they were running a story about some folks in Spartanburg, South Carolina who experienced a small kitchen fire, and decided to fight it themselves because of a previous CNN story reporting on a neighboring jurisdiction in Cherokee County which had passed a law that would allow [...]
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Marty McOmber
Scott Wilson