Eight days in January.
Not cold after 10 a.m.
No fog.
Gentle swells.
Light winds.
A little too light for sailing a couple of days, but damn, this is some fine weather and every where you look: dolphins. Common Pacific and Bottlenose. I’m betting they’re chasing the squid. Or the squid boats. They seemed to have scared a couple up onto the beach.
When the wind is this light and the air this warm – well, that’s kayaking weather.
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Photo: Chris Tucker Sailtime
Chris Tucker in his Sailtime Blog has some great pictures of a near disaster this weekend in Channel Islands harbor. He makes an excellent case for having a PLAN B when things don’t go as planned.
Chris points out that these guys probably could have avoided scaring the hell out of themselves and damaging their boat if they’d had PLAN B.
I submit that if they’d had PLAN ZERO and PLAN A, they might not have found themselves in distress at all.
PLAN ZERO?
That’s basic training – knowing your boat and knowing how to handle it in all sorts of weather. PLAN ZERO also includes basic weather watching and presail preparation and establishing Go/NO-Go criteria.
Look at Chris’ picture. Does that snarly water on the outside of the jetty look like a place for a 22′ boat? Only on a bet, a dare or if the captain is drunk.
Could the crew in question have known that the weather was going to be snarly? Maybe they did check the forecast. Maybe it was wrong. Maybe they got fooled.
Hindsight tells us they should have reefed before they headed back in. Maybe they didn’t know how; maybe the boat wasn’t rigged for it.
While we’re here, talking about downwind survival tactics, I strongly disagree with Chris when he says
A good plan B could have included releasing the main and jib sheets prior to running into the rocks.
When you’re off the wind releasing the mainsheet will just drive the sail against the spreaders. You can’t simply “luff out” the main at that point. You’ve got to head up, too.
We make that point in training when we’re landing the Capri 22 with a 90 degree crosswind. If you parallel the dock with a 90 degree crosswind, the sail will be driven into the spreaders and you’ll be powered up and off to the races once more. Better to learn that in calm seas with 8 knots rather than 20.
What else could they have done to avoid being the butt of jokes and blogs and Monday-morning-skippers?
The textbooks says you can depower off the wind by releasing the vang. That’ll twist off some wind, but I doubt that would have done much good under these conditions. You can also bring the main all the way in – the opposite of what you do to gain speed downwind. Finally, and this would have been my choice if I could not reef the main, I would drop it and sail on jib only. The Capri and Catalina 22 handle quite nicely on jib alone. (Small Hunters, too.) I’d also start the engine on any boat. The surge coming around the breakwater can round you up quite smartly even in moderate winds. You can probably sail out of that, but the engine gives you maneuverability insurance.
PLAN C – drop everything and motor in.
PLAN D – when the seas are too high to proceed downwind i.e. you’re frequently rounded up even after reefing or the surge near the breakwater is too large, you forereach until conditions settle. And that may be a while.
Lifejackets. Chris’ report says this crew put them on but only after they were in trouble. My PLAN ZERO says my crew and I wear lifejackets any time we’re underway. Your PLAN ZERO should include a time to put on lifejackets. My specific lifejacket event is getting underway, yours might be with the occurrence of some other event, say when you decide to reef or when you take the first wave over the bow or when your wife starts wimpering.
It would be interesting to know what sort of training this crew has had and what they discussed before they threw off the docklines.
If you have comments on the incident, please write them below. Your additional points will do the most good if everyone can see them here.
see you on the water
/capt dan
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Dwight Landis is a longtime sailor and currently enjoys his days at sea aboard Imagine from the Sailtime Fleet.
By Dwight Landis
When I’m about to get underway, one of the first things I do, as I am sure that most of you do, is to turn on VHF Channel 16 and monitor it for hailing, distress, and important information. During the past several months, I have learned quite a bit from listening to the talk on this channel. The communication has ranged from the comical, to the serious, to the hysterical. I have heard everything from children (and adults!) playing around and being reprimanded (with the threat of possible legal action) by the Coast Guard, to some guy repeatedly asking if anyone has gas for his dinghy at Smugglers, to someone else calling May Day, May Day…. my boat is sinking.
I really get annoyed at people not using this channel as it is intended. Even though it is really amusing to hear how dumb people can be, I hope that others listening are not getting the signal that this is the way to communicate on an emergency channel.
I would like to give a few examples of what I have recently heard. A while back, I recall something like this being broadcast: “Anyone, Anyone, our motor has quit and we are going to land on the rocks”. Response from Coast Guard (CG): “Ma’am, what is your location and are you in immediate danger?” Response from boat: “I just want to get out of this ocean! “ CG: “Ma’am, what is your location?” Boat: “Just get me out of this ocean!”
Several months ago, I heard something like this while we were returning from Ventura on a calm weekend afternoon: “ I am taking on water, does anyone have a pump?” A few minutes later…I am taking on a lot of water and really need a pump. The Harbor Master (HM) responds: “What is your location?” Boat responds: “I am outside Oxnard.” HM:”Can you give me an exact location?” Boat: “I am about a mile from Oxnard and starting to sink, I really need a pump.” Several minutes later, Boat: “MAYDAY, MAYDAY, I am sinking fast and need a pump, I really need a pump! ……” Finally help arrives but the boat almost sank. If they were farther out, they would have been in real trouble!
Then several weeks ago during a Catalina trip, I heard a call from a boat taking on water near Two Harbors. I followed the event on both 16 and when the conversation was switched to other frequencies. Apparently the galley had about 2 feet of water and the pump was barely keeping up with the bailing. The captain hailed the CG and quickly and accurately relayed all of the necessary information. Help soon came because the CG and other boats in the area knew the location and came to assist.
Captain Dan in a previous blog (VHF Radio Procedures in SoCal Waters—May 28,2007) talked about the accepted way to hail another boat, so I don’t want to rehash this. But, calling for help in a serious situation is another matter. I sail quite a bit; but, fortunately I have never had to make a distress call or even call vessel assist I guess I never really thought about it much and assumed that I would handle it, if and when it ever came up. But after hearing several distress calls and listening to the dialogue between the CG and captains, I started thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to plan out what I would do if disaster should strike. After all, it’s prudent to plan for a wild fire or earthquake, why not a sailing emergency as well.
I don’t want to get into a lot of specific details of the marine emergencies I monitored, because we want to cover emergency procedures in future articles. But there is one important thing I learned from all of this. The most important thing can be condensed into a phrase that landlubbers also know much too well. That is: “location, location, location, it’s all about location”. It’s true in real estate and it’s also true in a marine emergency. For a sailor in distress, you can’t get help if help does not know where you are!
So based on the distress calls I have heard, if I were in trouble I would immediately send out a message on Channel 16 giving basic information like my location, boat description, nature of the emergency, and the number of people on board. The call would go something like this: “Coast Guard Sector Channel Islands (or Los Angeles, San Diego, …) this is sailing vessel _________, my current position is 119 37decimal123, 34 36decimal456. I am a white 36 foot sailboat taking on water. I have 4 people on board. Over.” The CG is going to ask for this information and a lot more, so to save time, give them enough details so that they can quickly evaluate your situation and formulate their response tactic. First and foremost, always be aware of your location. Going out into the open ocean without at least a GPS and marine band two-way radio is being STUPID! Think ahead and plan for a real emergency. Remember, when you really need help, time is of the essence.
Dwight
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photo LA Times
Zac Sunderland sailed into Marina del Rey yesterday and was deluged with record-book entries.
Zac Sunderland: the youngest person to sail solo around the world and one of only a couple of hundred people of any age to accomplish the mission. According to the ASA, far more people have reached Everest’s summit than have performed this feat.
Though Zac was gone a long time – 13 months, his 16th year – he wasn’t far from our minds. Google Earth, annoyingly, put his track on the globe and he was in every issue of every sailing magazine and outdoor adventure publication for the entire time. He was featured in major newspapers and on TV as he schlepped around the world. Now that Zac is back, he’ll probably be less obvious.
So what did I learn from Zac? I was thinking about that on my way home from a day-sail to Anacapa on Monday. At that very moment, Zac and I had a lot in common. We were both tired, me because I’m an old man and hadn’t slept well the night before and Zac because he’d only had a few decent night’s sleep in more than a year. We were both heading to our homeport. And we’d both had our problems. I’d had trouble weighing anchor having snagged a half acre of kelp in Frenchy’s and Zac’s problems, well in his 13 months at sea damned near everything breakable on a boat had broken at least once. And then there was Zac’s pirate encounter. I couldn’t think think of any parallel there. Drunken jet skiers and flipping fingers just don’t parallel ransom-thirsty pirates even if my mental image was pure Johnny Depp.
So what does it all mean for Zac?
He’ll always be the Youngest – at least through July 2009 – to have Circled the World Solo. Zac Sunderland YCWS! But in a few weeks or a few years (if something slows or stops the other even younger kid who is reaching around the world) he’ll just be a CWS. And every time he does something in public, it’ll come up.
Zac Sunderland, 18, and Youngest to Circle the World Solo, graduated from high school last week, first in his class in geography.
Zac Sunderland, 23, formerly YCWS, valedictorian at CSUCI today
Zac Sunderland, age ___, CWS, apprehended for ____.
Zac Sunderland, 40, who sailed around the world by himself before he was 18, cured cancer today.
Pretty obvious: the trip has changed and will continue to change Zac. My only question is, will he ever be able to get on a boat, sail to Anacapa on a sunny day, come home and say, “Damn, that was good.”
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I wish that this picture told the whole story, or that the story published in Coast Guard news told the whole story. But they don’t.
The boat is grounded near Coho anchorage. That’s near Pt. Conception but generally out of the worst of the weather. I’ll try to find out more, but am not particularly hopeful that the Coast Guard can or will direct me to anyone who can shed light on the accident.
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