Short Tacks - Ocean Navigator

01 Jan

Searching for Slocum's clock

Ocean NavigatorShort Tacks

To the editor: “At Yarmouth, too, I got my famous tin clock, the only timepiece I carried on the whole voyage. The price of it was a dollar and a half, but on account of the face being smashed the merchant let me have it for a dollar,” so says Joshua Slocum in Sailing Alone Around the World. Slocum’s well-known volume whimsically chronicles his three-year voyage, the first solo circumnavigation, between 1895 and 1899. He met famous people and fought off cannibals. He weathered storms, sickness, calms and hallucinations. But of all the interesting and telling parts of his fascinating…

01 Jan

Classic schooner's sad end in a Spanish river

Ocean NavigatorShort Tacks

Running the boat aground in the river was, in fact, only the last in a long series of misfortunes. Indeed, since I had signed on as crew four months earlier in Key West, it seemed we had lurched blindly from crisis to crisis. For though there was no denying Constellation was a beautiful boat, there was also no denying that she was an old one as well. A friend had warned me about this prior to our departure. andquot;A wooden boat,andquot; he said, andquot;especially an old one, is nothing but a collection of leaks loosely organized as a hull.andquot; But…

01 Jan

Bowditch's British cousin takes a livelier approach

Ocean NavigatorShort Tacks

In a recent issue, there were two articles referring to Nathaniel Bowditch and the American Practical Navigator, the navigation tome that bears his name. There is no question as to the great value of this book, and any student of navigation should certainly own a copy. At the same time there would hardly be any dispute among those familiar with this book that the presentation of information, though complete, is, to say the least, dry to the point of inducing sleep. There are those who would argue that the technical information in American Practical Navigator must be communicated in a…

01 Jan

Ocean Star's encounter with a Cuban reef

Ocean NavigatorShort Tacks

The crossing to Cuba from Key West was rough (13- to 15-foot seas and 30- to 40-knot westerly winds). But the 88-foot, steel-hulled schooner Ocean Star motorsailed at 1,500 rpms under the storm trysail and fore staysail, easily handling the gale conditions, although many of the crew were seasick. Within 24 hours of departing Key West we were approaching Cuba's 12-mile limit. I contacted Marina Hemingway on channel 16 only to be informed that the marina had closed due to the dangerous conditions in the marina's entrance channel, which I remembered from a visit two years before as a dubious,…

01 Jan

Fisherman's approach to roll stabilization

Ocean NavigatorShort Tacks

To the editorCongratulations on publishing your recent Power Voyaging section, and especially Earl Hinz's piece on preventing power voyagers from rolling ("Roll stabilization," Issue No. 93, Nov./Dec. 1998). Unfortunately, the author perpetuates some misconceptions about paravane-type stabilizers introduced by the Beebe/Leishman book Voyaging under Power. First, as any commercial salmon troller can tell you, "stabies" ("flopper-stopper" isn't used by commercial fishermen) are not hard to deploy and retrieve. I used them on three boats, up to 40 feet, and could singlehand them, either stopped or slowly underway. Some fishermen operate these devices on boats larger than 50 feet alone. If…

01 Jan

Correction changes Chichester's course

Ocean NavigatorShort Tacks

There was a small error in a recent nav problem ("Biplane sextant sights," Issue No. 62). On his 1931 flight, Chichester actually took his departure from a harbor in the north of New Zealand, not from Auckland as shown. Chichester accomplished this remarkable feat of navigation by precalculating his observed altitude (ho) and setting his sextant to those readings for set times. By steering a course that would carry him west of Norfolk Island, he was able to turn right 90° when his LOP became his course line. Interestingly, investigators trying to solve the disappearance of Amelia Earhart have found…

01 Jan

A racer's perspective on climbing the mast

Ocean NavigatorShort Tacks

As a racing sailor, the recent article on how voyaging sailors should climb a mast ("Climbing the mast," July/August 2000, Issue No. 107) grabbed my attention, and I thought readers might like to hear how racers handled this task. Racers discarded bosun's chairs long ago. I have been using a mountain-climbing harness for 30 years. The recent article does not mention the most important features of a climbing harness as contrasted with a bosun's chair. First, with a climbing harness, you can actually climb the mast, with the halyard(s) being merely an assist. The point is that, with a climbing…

01 Jan

More on mariners' anti-malaria measures

Ocean NavigatorShort Tacks

Your recent article on malaria ("Malaria prevention," Issue No. 90) has a few errors and omissions that this retired preventive medicine type noted. First, permethrin is more toxic than DEET, not less. It is actually an insecticide (of the pyrethroid class), not just a repellent, with some uses for killing lice. Uncle Sam's Army says never put it on the skin, just on the outer clothing. It does have the advantage that it is still effective after several washings. Also, way back when, we named WR-142,490 "mefloquine," with a terminal "e." On a more serious note, if you are going…

01 Jan

Nada's re-rigging: finally getting it right

Ocean NavigatorNavigation, Short Tacks

Recently we converted our wooden-sparred ketch Nada to an aluminum-sparred cutter. The idea was to remove weight aloft from what had always been an overly tender boat. However, I didn't get things quite right when I calculated the new location of the mast. It turned out that I moved it too far aft, giving Nada excessive weather helm. We have a relatively small main (303 square feet), and a relatively large genoa (550 square feet), but, even so, any time we set the full main it completely overpowered the headsails and Nada simply rounded up. The boat did so with…

01 Jan

House sail' shades southeast glass wall

Ocean NavigatorShort Tacks

To the editor: I would like to offer a more seaman-like solution than pasting up paper to screen your handsome new offices from the sun (Chartroom Chatter, Issue 119, Jan.⁄Feb. 2002). I had a similar problem several years ago with the morning sun flooding a two-story living room that presented a glass wall to the southeast. Furniture, floor and paintings were fried, and I was determined to find a better solution than turning the entire room beige or blocking the view with a cat's cradle of curtains and drawstrings. So I sunk four stainless steel eyes in the four corners…