Back from the land of not blogging/ Fawcett's talk on Newport Bermuda Prep

Sorry for my hiatus from blogging. I missed you too.
Last night, I went to a seminar at Fawcett's on "Gearing up for Offshore" which had a focus on the Newport Bermuda Race.  For those of you who are not local Fawcett Boat Supplies is a Annapolis based awesome sailing store pyacht is their online world. They have everything you could ever need for your boat and even better the sales staff are all very knowledgeable.
Some bits and pieces of the things I learned last night as they apply to the Newport Bermuda Race are :
1. Lifejackets- officially need leg straps and mod kits are available for mustang and other lifejackets however if you use a mod kit to make it correct for the Newport Bermuda Race then that pfd no longer counts as far as the coast guard is concerned.
2.Tethers. Tethers need a quick release at the point closest to the body. This did not always exist if you have an old tether then you need an upgraded one like this.

3.Primary and backup VHF need DSC. What is DSC you ask? Basically it is a button on your VHF that send out a distress signal and makes your distress signal show up on everyone's VHF with DSC in the area. It allows the boats around you to know you are in distress faster then if they had to wait for the coast guard alert. In the case of a man overboard it makes it easier for someone to come help you or for you to come help others. In an ocean race this makes a lot of sense as most likely those in the best position to help with be the boat just behind you in the race. Example 

4.  Satellite phones are now being required
5.Radar reflectors that you have on your boat now are almost certainly not big enough for the rules for Newport Bermuda. They are looking for huge ones so large that they currently do not exist in the store and only one company makes them.
6. Backup navigation lights ( your red green white tricolor) need to have a 2 miles distance and a separate power source which is different then the old shorter requirement and many boats had them hooked into power source not separate. You know want something like this tri color as your backup that uses batteries.

Well this is what I learned and I hope it is helpful to some of the rest of you. I'm trying to find a ride for Newport Bermuda if anyone is looking for crew.

Sailing with an old friend

Yesterday, I went sailing with an old friend.  He is old enough to be my grandfather but is a friend from when we used to both race in the same fleet in days gone by.  We went out in his boat in order to watch the schooners from the Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race leave Baltimore and get ready to start the race. Somehow what struck me about this great day on the water is how intergenerational bond building sailing can be. I spent a day in light air chatting about schooners and boats and back when stars were new and dacron were the high tech sails. It was a great time and absolutely wonderful. Somewhere along this light air day I got book recommendations and knowledge about cannons. This is the sort of lovely thing that sailing produces, a common bond.

Ring my Bell

I bought a ships bell for outside my back door to function as a combo back doorbell and a dinner bell. Ok, in reality just because I love the idea. Now ships bells need a rope(line) handle attached to them. So I tied my own following the instructions in The Marlinspike Sailor. Then also following the standard instructions I painted it white but in ordder to stand out I mixed a tiny bit of blue into the paint. Doesn't it look great!!

Ever since I put it up everyone who has stepped onto my back deck has wanted to ring the bell.

Running Aground:What happened and what to do

So I was sailing on a friends boat today. She just bought into a boat share which is nice but she does not have much experience running this boat nor in the area that her new marina is. She is good crew but normally does not skipper. She made a mistake which was novice and ran aground. Her novice mistake was failing to keep the green channel marker on her right while leaving the channel and thus going into a shallow area. Remember the saying is
"Green when going
Red right return"
That means you need the green markers on your right when going out and red markers on the right when returning back to the dock. This rule applies in North America but not Europe.

So what to do when you run aground? Well it is a lot better when you ground on muck like we did.
If you ground
1. Assess to make sure no crew hurt themselves and that no water is coming in the hull. If good then:
2. Figure out where the deeper water is.
3. If lightly aground you may be able to slowly go in reverse and unground. Be careful to not overheat your engine and gun it reversing can bring muck into the engine and cause overheating.
4. You can in a sailboat move the boat weight  to heeling on one side to allow the keel to raise up and not drag and thus get off the ground as in sailboats the keel is usually the lowest part.
5. You can kedge ie throw the anchor off in direction of deep water and use it to pull yourself in that direction and then do this again and again until you are in deep water.
6. You can wait for the tide to rise.
7. If you have a dingy you can use the dingy to pull or to get the anchor out further for kedging.
8. Hail a friendly boat to help you tow out or call SeaTow or Towboat US.

We used a combo of 1-4 to get off this time and then continued on for a nice remaining sail.
But the best thing is to avoid running aground all together as you are much safer. I know friends who have been in  serious accidents and done major boat damage when their vessels ran aground.