Summer Cruise Night 14

Tonight was very calm, nothing like last night. We slept very soundly as we slowly drifted along with the staysail and the double reefed main hove to. Since we were still relatively close to shore, I was getting up every hour to make sure we were fine, do a watch, and then go back to sleep for another hour.

The AIS proximity alarm only went off once to alert us that a ship was going to pass within 2 miles of us. The captain was very courteous over the radio. I alerted him to our position relative to his, he spotted us on his radar, I explained that we were a sailboat adrift, and he adjusted course to keep us a safe distance.

I much prefer to sleep hove to over anchor. You never have to worry about the anchor dragging, or tides and winds. The boat will stay steady and upright, gently riding through the seas as it lulls you to sleep. The boat will never ride over it's anchor rode while taking waves on the stern as in a wind over tide scenario, or lay beam to the seas tossing you about during the night. It always stays the upright with a gentle motion. The best sleep ever!

Sculling Oars Part 4

The weather has been very cooperative, so I've been able to get a lot of work done on the oars. 

Today I finished removing the excess wood from the blades and shaped the handle. I then sanded the whole thing to get rid of any bumps or rough spots. There are some knots on the blade that made it difficult to reduce it correctly, so that edge is still a little bit lumpy. These oars are my prototype oars to see how I like sculling the boats and figure out what works and what doesn't. 

My plan is to use these oars to learn how to scull the boats. If any changes are needed to the shape, I will discover it with these oars and make the necessary improvements on the next set. If I like them the way they are, I will use them until they die!  

Since these oars might not be permanent fixtures on the boat, I used wood from Home Depot. Not the best grade of lumber for boat building, but the price was right. The 2"x12"x16' douglas fir only cost around $18. I looked through all the lumber they had to find a board with vertical grain and relatively few knots. The sections of the oar that are clear of knots are a dream to plane and work, the knots take extra attention.

Sculling Oars Part 3

Today, the sculling oar for the Alberg came out of the clamps! I had it in clamps for 2 days to allow the glue to have plenty of cure time under pressure. I then began the process of shaping the oar handle and blade.

The oar handle is laminated for strength, tapering down to the oar blade. The bottom half is larger than the top laminate, so some shaping was needed to make it all smooth. To bring them in line with each other, I used a block plane and a jack plane to reduce the wood on the sides and taper them in together. A rabbet plane would have been really handy, but I do not have one. To get the very edge, I took a hand driven chisel and carefully worked the wood away.

The blade at the moment looks like a 2x6 needing some major removal on the sides to give the oar its proper shape. Based on drawings I've seen, the blades should be tapered on the top to promote the oar turning onto its side as you scull. Basically, flat bottom with a pitched top.

To remove the wood on the sides of the blade, I took a mallet driven chisel to split the wood along its grain. I removed around 3-4mm of wood with each pass. While it is not a fast method compared to working with power tools, it is a cautious one that keeps you in control of how much is removed.

After I finished my work for the day on the oar for Windpuff (The Alberg 30), I glued up the oar for Wisdom (The Morgan 45). I put it in the clamps for the next few days and let the glue begin to cure.

Sculling Oars Part 2

The oars have been cut and one of the cut outs was selected to act as the oars top laminate to give the oar more strength. The selected piece was planed by hand until it was perfectly flat. The mating surfaces between the main oar piece and the top laminate had to be perfectly flat and smooth. This would ensure a tight seam with no voids so the glue would have the strongest bond possible. 

A block plane was used to coarsely reduce the side of the laminate and make it smooth. Then a jack plane was used to finish the smoothing process. The fir from home depot is not clear, as there are many knots apparent throughout the board, but the price was right for a prototype sculling oar. Why waste good wood on an oar that might not be the right fit for the job? What if I need a bend in the handle? What if the oar needs to be longer? This first oar will be a test, once I know what I want, I'll use good wood to make the real one.

Once the laminates are perfectly flush, Titebond III wood glue was applied to the top laminate and then firm clamping pressure was applied to fully mate the two surfaces.

Now the oar will remain in clamps for at least 24 hours before further work will continue on it.

Summer Cruise Day 14

Today was my birthday! July 22, 2015 was spent riding out a storm on the Atlantic coast.

At my 5 AM watch, I saw that we were heading directly towards shore. We slept hove to the whole night, but now it was time to set the sails and take the helm.With the trisail, I was only able to sail at a broad reach to run, so pointing into the wind was out of the question. We did try, but ended up stalling while beam to the seas. This was unacceptable as the seas were rather large, so we quickly turned back to a run. 

I do not know how big the waves were, but based on the Beaufort scale, we were in Force 8 winds which produce seas from 18 to 25 feet high. What I can say is in the trough, we looked up at walls of water; as the boat rose over the crest, it looked like a long way down to the seas surface!

Pictures always make the seas look calmer, but you can see the wave in the background is level with the top of the stern rail. That wave was off in the distance.

With the long overhangs, the boats motion was very soothing. We gently rose up the face of the wave and then slumped down the back of the wave. Only one wave boarded us, and that was while trying to point into the wind. It hit us directly on the beam, and the crest of the wave came in between the top and bottom lifelines. We instantly had 1 foot of water in the cockpit, which then drained almost instantly through the 4 large scuppers. This should be a reminder of why you want to keep the scuppers clean; if they had been clogged with dog hair, we would have had a pool in the cockpit for quite some time. 

This is also why we only open the top dropboard in the companionway. If it were open, then all of this water would have also gone into the cabin.

The winds were blowing 30 knots apparent and we were running along doing 6 knots with just the storm sails up, so approximately 36 knots true. We checked the wind charts on Passage Weather (passageweather.com) and saw that we were listed having 20 knots, so it was blowing much harder than they were calling for. Meanwhile, Cape Hatteras was showing winds of 35 knots. 

There was a storm off of Cape Hatteras that would continue to blow for the next three days. Being how I was trying to make Maddie like ocean sailing, I figured jumping into that would be unwise for the safety of our boat and our cruising future. 

What I would have done, was work my way off the shore, and then heave to for the next few days, waiting for the storm on the cape to pass. Then I would have made my way around the Diamond Shoal after the present insanity had passed. 

I got the feeling that Maddie has had enough around 7 AM when she said she wanted to turn around and start heading North. 

This was fine, but the winds and seas did not agree with our plan. We trimmed the sails to keep the boat steady but to be less efficient so that our speed would slow from 6 knots to 2 to 3 knots. We also let the painter on Tooth out much farther, the idea being the extra line in the water would cause more drag and help slow us down a bit. With 200 feet of painter out, we didn't see Tooth for a long time. 

When we would look back, we would see the painter going straight into the wall of water behind us. We thought that Tooth had sunk, turning into a sea anchor. After a few hours, we finally saw tooth pop over a wave crest, almost like if he was trying to wave hello to us. Tooth was still floating!

At 1PM, the winds had died down to 12 knots. I was still flying the storm sails as I was convinced the winds would return. The seas died down to only a few feet and the winds dropped to only 10 knots. With this change, I went forward to hoist the main, with 2 reefs in it.

I must have looked like an abused animal in a horrible experiment. When the beatings stopped, I stood waiting for them to resume at any moment. 

After around 10 minutes with this set up, I saw that the winds did not return. I shook out 1 of the reefs and waited another 10 minutes. Then raised the jib and waited another 10 minutes, then shook out the last reef finally sailing under full sail.

By this time, the winds were very light, blowing 8 to 12 knots as we made our way North into the swells from the storm that had passed over us. As the afternoon drew on, we made our way offshore for the night. The skies were clear and the forecast was for a calm night, so we hove to with the staysail and the main with 2 reefs.

I wanted to spend my birthday this year out in the ocean, and I did get to, but what a wild christening it was to the world of ocean sailing. It turns out that Maddie enjoyed the day since she never felt in danger. We were prepared with the right sails up for the coming winds and the boat ran before the storm comfortably. While it wasn't the day of ocean sailing I envisioned, it was awesome to test out all of the theory I had learned over the years.

The most important thing about ocean sailing is preparedness! If we had more sail up, we would have had a horrible time trying to get the storm sails rigged in a blow. By setting everything up when it was still calm, crew safety was guaranteed. If I had not been doing watches, we would have awaken closer to shore or even on shore! Then we would have had a horrible ride taking the waves on the stern quarter while trying to broad reach the storm to work off the leeward shore. 

We couldn't sheet the trisail in enough to point upwind, so we would have been forced to use 2 reefs in the main. For the future, we are planning on adding a 3rd and 4th reef to our mainsail, along with reefs in our jib and staysail.

That evening, we ended up hove to about 8 miles off shore, still relatively close, but with much lighter winds. We were looking forward to a very peaceful night off shore.