Sailing the Barnacle Farm

The Sand Dunes on Moreton Island

For reasons I can’t quite fathom, setting off sailing on a fun sailing trip can seem a lot like work. Part of the problem is to actually get out on Moreton Bay means timing the currents, setting off at high slack, then making a nearly two hour journey to the sea. The return trip needs to be timed almost as precisely.

And then there’s all that packing, planning and organizing. Moving your house is hard.

Charlie helps navigate

What this means is it’s been a year since we’ve been anywhere. A year. We’ve planned to get out a few other times but always some thing has foiled the plan; a cyclone, or a broken engine, or waiting for some vital part. But this past weekend all the fates came together—the weather looked fine, the tides were cooperative and most importantly all the boat’s systems are functioning.

Despite the fact we live aboard, have crossed an ocean, and got very good at provisioning in stores that had very little by way of provisions, getting ready to head out felt like we were flexing a forgotten muscle. It was like when we went camping two weeks ago and I thought I bought everything we needed but still managed to forget the eggs for breakfast and the butter to fry in. Except luckily this time I was able to just go back to the grocery store and hardware store every time I realized I missed something from the list (got sandwich stuff, but forgot the bread). And I still forgot to visit the liquor store…

raftup sundowners

Easter Bilby helps celebrate

Casting off was drama free. Except for the huge amounts of black smoke coming from the engine and the fact that no amount of throttle seemed to give us any forward momentum. Fortunately we have a second engine—a new outboard we use to manoeuvre and dock. With the current in our favour it can push us at 4 knots. Unfortunately we only carry enough gas for manoeuvring and docking.

So we dropped the anchor (after it was clear that running the engine wasn’t going to magically make the smoking stop) and Evan dove into the murky water and discovered that rather than having a loving three bladed feathering prop, we had a ball of barnacles. It’s been a year, remember?

Merlin underway

hitchhiker

Eventually we made it out on the bay. Maia dove in for a swim and we came up with a definitive answer on whether or not our bottom paint is still working (no—the boat’s bottom was supporting a barnacle farm). But the sailing was great. The weather was lovely (other than one squall). We saw sea turtles and pelicans, climbed dunes and swam in warm water. Ate dinners with friends and watched the moon rise and wondered why we didn’t get out more often.

Convivia at sunrise

 It was so lovely we think we should do it more often—or maybe even for longer.

home again

It Seems I Have a Book

I had a very good time writing this last summer-delving back into the basics of sailing and rediscovering why I love the sport so much. My editor and all the staff at Penguin were fantastic to work with and I was fortunate to have Jamie and Behan from Totem act as technical editors--catching the details that slipped past after too many hours staring at the screen...

How You Know What You Know

 

  So I’m writing this book for new sailors. And as part of the research process I’m reading through every sailing manual I can get my hands on.  Wanna know something? Some of them are really boring. They are filled with all kinds of diagrams and figures explaining the science behind sailing but very few of them come close to articulating the feeling of sailing. If I only read the books, and never sailed, I would assume sailing is this complex, technical activity you need math degree for.

I first learned to sail a really long time ago—despite this I recall some of it like yesterday: Like when I was told to pull in the jib sheet, “hard!”, which I did with all my might, until I was raw handed, and had made it fantastically taut, and was suffused with pride over my skill at sail tightening, and then rather than getting the praise I was sure I deserved, I was told to let it back out again. I recall thinking sailing was a stupid, pointless activity that hurt my hands.

Frustrated I mentioned this to my instructor. He patiently went over points of sail and sail trim, again, then in response to my blank look he guided my hands until I ‘felt’ where the sail needed to be for the boat to get into the groove. “Boats,” he told me, “know when the sails are set right. Sailing theory is just a way of articulating that.”

Even today when I crank in sheets or adjust a fairlead—I recall that moment and rather than actually thinking about boomvang tension, or cunningham adjustments I sort of just tweak things until I feel the boat tell me its happy. On this boat that moment feels like an effortless surge, on our last boat it was more like a happy thrum, but every boat is a bit different

What I don’t recall learning, but know I internalized, is the actual technical stuff, like in moderate winds how far back from the luff the main’s draft should be—as a percentage.* But at some point I did learn all the numbers and I went on to teach them. And I remember classes where the students wanted me to give them formulas for things like exactly how many inches back they needed to move the jib fairlead to move the twist higher up the sail. One student even argued in favour of marks on the sheets that would let him know when the sails were correctly set for close-hauled, close reaching etc…

 

After a few lessons though first one, then the next student would get it: they’d realize that all those diagrams they were trying to memorize were just guidelines that give words to something that’s fundamentally a little magical. It didn’t mean they could become good sailors without the theory—it just meant eventually all that theory would be replaced with a deeper knowing.

So right now, as I’m writing those words of theory and illustrating those technical diagrams, what I’m really thinking about is what comes next for those someday readers of my book. Instead of imagining them trying to make sense of  words describing weather helm or the difference between true and apparent wind—I’m picturing that moment when they’ve put my book away on a back shelf because their hands have learned how to make the boat come alive and they just know how to sail.

 

 *About 45% …