Re: [Cal_Boats] The Sea

The Channel Islands aré some of the most challenging waters of the US. One second you aré sailing in less than 5knots of breeze then its blowing 25 with gusts that aré 30 plus and 6-8 ft seas. If the race commitee can get on station, I ask my crew to at least sail through the start line. If it gets worse, we can turn back. The only thing we have to prove is we can go home when we have to. It took me a while to get sails and the boat prepared to handle that kind of weather. Our Wet Wednesday see a lot of wind and large seas. The only boats that hang in there aré the large cruising boats who love wind. We aré getting more confident every time. Randy david dobbs <tm… [at] yahoo.com> wrote: Chris, Shackleton was the ultimate expedition leader, but weather trumps all. He knew when to give it up and go for home. I raced with a skipper whose mantra was, crew safety first, boat second, winning third. They win their section in the Chicago-Mac race regularly. Boat is Providence, an Erickson 35. David Dobbs, CAL 29 411 On Wednesday, January 22, 2014 4:27 PM, Chris Campbell <cc… [at] lsnm.org> wrote: On 1/22/2014 2:01 PM, Donald C Dutton wrote: I simply do not understand leaving a floating vessel and risking the lives of the Coast Guard when no one's life was in peril. This is similar to the man who was rescued off the west coast because the seas got rough and he was seasick! Come on people! You really should not go to sea if a bit of rough sailing is going to make you call for help. That catamaran looked perfectly fine and the cause of the leak could be found and blocked by plugs. Hopefully there was something not covered in the story because otherwise this was a waste of Coast Guard resources and a loss of a boat that should not have been lost. I thought there was something in the video about the electric pumps not working and the water intake exceeding the capacity of the manual pumps. That's why I was not nastier in my comment. On the other hand, there was also a comment about the boat sinking in a couple of days. If it would take that long, the leak could not have been too large. My own notion is that when we set out in a boat, we ought to be prepared for foreseeable disasters and able to deal with most unexpected events. It's part of the great tradition of seafaring, mostly from the days when there were no other options. If you didn't look out for your boat, your crew, and yourself, you were dead. Nobody could find you. I like the idea of self-sufficiency and self-reliance. It's one of the reasons why my boats are small enough to have manual winches and manual pumps, and for my navigation skills to be mostly good enough to manage with paper charts if I need to. Yes, I am seduced by the GPS on our local schooner when it is available and on. Yes, I am grateful for the radar on that boat in a pea-soup fog, too. But we could do without them. And on the schooner, all of the work is done manually (except normal bilge pumping). We could operate the vessel even if power failed. The ideas of proper preparation, observing good safety practices, and handling emergencies with competence are things we should cultivate. Remember what Shackleton did when things fell apart in the Antarctic. He brought very person back. Chris Campbell