[Wind and sea sounds]
That's the spirit! Wow....
I think we'll be OK if we stay along the shore.
A little fog today but that's all right, it's good to be back now that the world
is at least partially unchained. And time to make an enormous mess in the main
saloon by descending into the engine bay and ripping out all the hoses and the
heat exchanger, which was clogged with two extinct zincs.
and putting all new hoses on...
the old ones do make a satisfying pile...
Install the rebuilt heat exchanger...
and then while we're at it why not work on the cockpit instrument panel
to turn the instruments upside down for better visibility and to cut out the troublesome trailer connectors...
...and to finally rise and gasp for air once again.
Now the helmsman can actually see the instruments.
And, sailing again, we can try to make the wheel pilot work at its best by balancing the sails.
Well, I think the mainsail is over-trimmed, and that's why the wheel pilot was laboring a little bit.
So here we are on a very close reach and let's see what happens when we take our hands off the wheel, because I'm already having to fight weather helm.
So that's way too much tendency to head up.
A little wheel pilot, or any wheel pilot, has to fight that...
and what that means is that the mainsail is overtrimmed. No doubt.
[lowers traveler car]
It should steer itself.
It still feels like it tends to head up
So let's slack off a little more on the mainsail.
[relaxes main sheet]
As the mainsail luffs, it relieves the driving-to-windward force
And the wheel pilot's doing fine.
In fact, the boat's been sailing itself for two minutes now without any wheel pilot at all,
which means we've achieved [coughs] the correct balance of the helm.
Now on a day sail you can sail with a luff in your mainsail if you only have a mile to go,
But if we were going a long distance like this, we will have found the correct balance point for the yacht
and all we would do is put in one reef, probably, and that would reduce the mainsail sail area enough
that the wheel pilot would have no problem sailing us all day, even though
it's a little tiny product not intended for heavy air use.
[lowers mainsail to first reefing point]
[winches reef line tight]
[trims main sheet]
We have 14 knots over the deck with almost no chop.
We're going about five and a half, six knots
and the fog is dissipating, I think. My feeling about casual singlehanding is that it's casual.
We're not trying to win any races, and of course singlehanding
is also defined as being the only one on the boat, when we have guests aboard,
who's really experienced with the yacht systems, or may be the only one who
really knows how to sail an auxiliary sailboat.
So in that sense we're singlehanding all the time.
And I put on my safety harness and stay clipped in
went outside the cockpit when I'm offshore. My general rule is, if I can walk or
swim to shore, as in the channel or in the harbor itself, I don't feel obliged
to put on the safety harness. But here, one mile offshore,
it's necessary if you want to come home,
that we stay attached to the boat if something goes wrong.
So is this pleasant, or what? It's just a Thursday afternoon in the middle of a
disturbing time, and the boat does need to be exercised, just like a horse.
And some of the other dangers of casual single-handed sailing are falling
through the main hatch, which I've almost done a couple of times over the years
forgetting that the boat's a moving platform and that it's one hand for you
and one hand for the ship.
I'm glad to have that dinghy back on board, it feels
naked without it. really. I put a couple of coats of Brightside on it during the
virus hiatus. The Eastport Pram-- it's not really good for much. It's fun to sail
especially if you're 14 and weigh 90 pounds it only takes two people with a
dog -- not too big a dog. And I used it as a lifeboat once on a Hawaii trip.
I put a whole bunch of expanding foam in and then covered it over with plywood and put safety
lines around the gunnels. It gave me a tremendous amount of confidence that if
the boat sinks I'd be able to row a thousand miles home.
I think the greatest danger in casual singlehanding is something from aviation. Airplane pilots
talk about getting 'behind the airplane,' meaning an airplane's moving 200 miles an hour,
you only have a few minutes to decide what to do next.
But things are certainly different on a sailboat. I like to keep about a day ahead of the
boat whenever possible. Right now we're about an hour from harbor, and I'm
already anticipating how to come into the slip, whether the engine will start
or not, and right now, although it's a bucolic afternoon in casual singlehanding,
I'm still 10 or 15 minutes ahead of the boat. I find that I keep looking
forward to see other craft. There's nobody out here, but if you go below
let's say to the head, whilst sailing alone, just this amount of time
a prudent fear of collision enters the singlehander's mind--
and he sticks his head up.
Well, I don't want to overstate the dangers or challenges of casual singlehanding.
It's really not that hard. I think all that's required is to have a
working knowledge of the systems on your boat, and after you leave the dock to ask
a series of questions -- what if? what if? what if? what if?
It's actually much easier to learn something and develop your skills alone, I think, without a crew,
who after all take up some of the atmosphere. Alone, you can ask yourself
why the winch tends to work so much better under these conditions with four turns around the drum than with two turns.
If you stumble, you can ask yourself, why did I stumble there? I must have the wrong handhold in mind.
You can build the muscle memory, through practice, necessary to be comfortable on
your own boat without anybody watching.
Casual singlehanding: it's not a bad idea.
And the only thing that's important in the end is to make sure that we stay
ahead of the boat.