Peeing off a boat

Nature calls, especially when you are out at sea! Some ground rules come into play:

1. Never pee into the wind (don’t pee off the high side of the boat)

2. Hold on while you pee so you don’t fall over!

The first rule means that you need to pee off the low side of the boat and aim towards the downwind area. If you are going downwind, the shrouds are a good place to pee. If you are going upwind, the stern is a good place to pee. 

The locations play into the second rule: holding on. 

While you are peeing, you need to keep a secure hold on the boat. The best way to do this on a pitching deck is to lean into something secure, like the rigging. 

I personally lean into the stay with my shoulder and chest and take a leak off the side. The shrouds are nice because there are a lot of them and I feel very safe nestled in there with them, the stern is a different story. 

On our boat, we have split backstays so each stern corner has a stay to lean against. This means that either corner is a safe place to water the ocean’s surface. I just peed off a boat on my way to Ibiza with a single (central) backstay. The stern was completely barren of handholds or chest supports! I ended up grabbing onto a topping lift attached to the davits to hold safe. 

If you are looking at a boat to go cruising on, consider one with split or twin backstays that way you can safely take a leak off the stern. 

Protecting Wood on Your Yacht

Wood is a beautiful material that gives character, class, and beauty to your yacht; but the marine environment is anything but forgiving! Wood on a yacht is prone to rotting as it is exposed to fierce sun, moisture, salt, and grime.

Linseed Oil will help protect your wood from rot and keep it looking beautiful!

Repairing a Rolex 5513 Original Watchband

Rivets are a wonderful fastener. Threadless and incredibly resilient. They act as both a fastener and a hinge pin, granting incredible strength and flexibility to the structures they hold together.

Rolex has used rivets in their watchbands for decades, and they hold up well to the test of time! My 5513 ran into a slight issue as time seems to have caught up with the watch.

The heads of the rivets have worn off over the decades and no longer function to fasten the watchband securely. The links simply slip off the headless rivet and risk slipping off!

In an effort to prevent the use of authentic Rolex watchbands on counterfeit watches, a watchband is a rather hard item to procure these days. I inquired about such a purchase and was told that I would have to surrender my original watchband before Rolex would sell me a replacement, that way Rolex would be assured that their new watchband made its way onto an original Rolex and not some cheap knockoff!

Listening to the advice of my watch collecting friends, I refused this offer as the original watchband is a great part of the value of the watch itself. It would be the equivalent of a classic car without the original motor block, the serial numbers of the body and motor would be different and the car is worth significantly less; this is where the term “matching numbers” comes from.

I was faced with a dilemma! If I exchanged the watchbands, I would have a sturdy replacement for my watch that I wear daily, but it would kill its value. If I keep the watch “original”, it will also be unusable, and therefore worthless for my purposes of being my watch that tells me what time it is.

The watch smith was not able to repair the watch either, as Rolex would not authorize them to do such a repair. It seemed I was left with one clear option: repair the watchband myself.

Rivets are not a novel concept to me. I worked with them extensively when I was building a wooden dinghy. I was very familiar and well practiced at the art of making a rivet, and I had all the tools at hand! In the video, I show how a rivet works and some techniques that are useful to successfully create a new rivet head on this original 5513 Rolex Submariner.

Going up the Mast!

Climbing the mast is a necessary part of operating a sailboat. Whether you are going up to inspect, or going up to repair something, at some point you will need to go up the mast.

The normal method to climb a mast is to have someone winch you up the mast. The problem with this method is that you rely on someone else to hoist you up and even worse you rely on their skill to safely bring you back down to the deck.

Having a gantline setup allows you to pull yourself up and more importantly it allows you to bring yourself back down to the deck. The gantline is simple to setup by attaching a block to a halyard and hoisting it up the mast (with the gantline run through the block, otherwise you just sent your halyard up the mast with no way to retrieve it). The other block is attached to your bosun chain and up you go!

Depending how strong you are and how much you weigh, you can alter the amount of mechanical advantage in the system. Remember, pulleys are a simple machine!

Pulling all of your weight up a mast is very hard work! If you setup a 2:1 purchase system, you only need to pull up 1/2 your weight. If you setup a 3:1 purchase system, you only need to pull up 1/3 of your weight. If you setup a 4:1 purchase system, you only need to pull up 1/4 of your weight.

This sounds great, but there is always a catch! The more you reduce the amount of weight you need to raise, the more you increase the amount of line you need to pull. For a 2:1, you pull 1/2 your weight but you also pull 2x the amount of line! For a 4:1, you pull 1/4 of your weight and 4x the amount of line!

If you are climbing a 50 foot mast, this is the difference between pulling half your weight 100 feet or a quarter of your weight 200 feet! At some point, you will just get tired from the repetition and not from the resistance.

I find that it is best with a 3:1 or 4:1 purchase system. If I’m feeling strong, I will do a 3:1 and get up the mast quickly. If my arms are really tired, I will use a 4:1 even though I will have to pull a lot more line!

It also helps to have an extra person (if they are available) around to pull on the tail and do the work for you so that you can rest on your way up that way you are calm and relaxed up there instead of winded and tired. Best of all, when it is time to come down, you can control your rate of decent.

The Magical World Aloft

Being up a mast might not bother some and might terrify others. The truth is being up there is a great way to clear your mind.

When you are aloft, you have no distractions, no pressing deadlines, no nagging co-workers. It’s just you in your own little world high above the rest. You get a great view of the entire area where you are and you can see far off into the distance.

I personally do not look forward to going up the mast, but while I’m up there, I always feel so relaxed. Everything stops and the whole world takes on a new appearance. It really is a magical place to be.