Boat Plans Bolger | Strange things going on

Boat Plans Bolger

THE PLANETS are in line. Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue has a size-16 woman on the cover for the first time. Playboy magazine has stopped publishing nudes. Something’s going on. Should we duck or run for cover?

Of the three, Playboy seems the most ominous. It’s the Internet, of course. Men no longer have to buy Playboy to find out what women actually look like under all those clothes they wear.  The Internet is full of free photographs of naked women, the great majority of them taken and submitted by themselves.

In the old days when I worked in South Africa, you weren’t allowed to see women’s bodies until you got married. Any book, film, or magazine with a naked woman in it was banned. The apartheid censors were rather cavalier in this respect. They even banned books without first reading them. For example, they took one look at the title of Anna Sewell’s best-seller, Black Beauty, and banned it immediately. It was actually about a horse, not a woman, and the censorship board suffered withering scorn when the news came out, but that didn’t stop them in their attempts to curb free speech.

Playboy was also on the banned list, of course, probably at the top of it. So when I found myself in Rio de Janeiro at the end of a transatlantic yacht race, I bought a copy of Playboy at a corner newsstand. I knew a man at the newspaper where I worked in South Africa who swore to uphold the traditions of free speech by hoarding a secret stash of Playboy magazines, which he rented out to trusted colleagues. He would pay me at least 20 bucks for it if I could smuggle it home. But I had a better idea.

I took it back to the boat, which the skipper was due to sail back home to South Africa with a new crew. I told nobody about it. I unzipped the cover of the starboard berth in the saloon, slipped the magazine into the bottom, and zipped it up again.

Weeks later, when the yacht arrived in Durban, I met the owner/skipper on board. In front of him, I unzipped the berth cover and there was my Playboy, untouched by human hand, pristine after thousands of miles of ocean travel. The skipper nearly fainted. “If Customs had found that they would have confiscated my boat,” he yelled. “Get it out of here.”

He obviously didn’t care much for free speech, so I took my Playboy to work, (after checking out the articles, of course) where I collected my money, and it joined the secret stash. Just another small blow for press freedom.

Today’s Thought

Free speech is not to be regulated  like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience . . . that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.

— William O. Douglas, Associate Justice, US Supreme Court, 24 Jun 57

Tailpiece

“Is this the sound-effects department?”

“Yes.”

“Good, send me a galloping horse immediately.”

“What for?”

“Well, the script calls for the sound of two coconut shells being clapped together.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

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Boat Plans Bartender | Sailing into storms

Boat Plans Bartender

SOME OF MY landlubber friends are wondering why large ships such as El Faro and Anthem of the Seas are allowed to go to sea despite the certain knowledge that they will be sailing into vicious storms. El Faroactually sank, of course, and Anthem of the Seas, a 1,100-foot cruise liner carrying 6,000 passengers, was badly mauled.

Well, to know why they sailed you have to understand the tremendous pressure on ship’s crews to keep running to schedule. In the end, as we all know, it’s the captain alone who bears the responsibility to cast off, even in the face of unfavorable weather forecasts. He’s only human. He makes mistakes like the rest of us. And he wants to keep his job.

But it does make some people wonder how small sailboats survive in storms when they’re manned by amateurs who lack the weather forecasting resources of the big professionals.

Well, the truth is that most amateur sailors don’t die at sea. The majority die of heart attacks when they get their boatyard bills. Seriously, very few sailboaters die in storms at sea; but fear of sinking far away from land is what keeps many prospective ocean cruisers at home.

In fact, sinking, from whatever cause, is our biggest fear. We pack our sailboats with liferafts, dinghies, lifejackets, drysuits, flares, VHF radio,

SSB radios, satellite phones, and Epirbs just in case our boat sinks.

But the plain truth is that our boats are safer than we think. Probably safer than our cars. Very few small yachts sink in deep water even in the worst storms. Some get rolled over and dismasted, but they don’t sink. Almost all make it back to shore under power or a jury rig.

Size, in itself, doesn’t equate with seaworthiness. Small is not necessarily dangerous, and large is not necessarily safer. If a boat is designed so that it will admit little or no water if it’s turned upside down by a big breaking sea, it possesses one of the major components of seaworthiness. And even the smallest boats can be designed that way.  

Small boats are certainly more uncomfortable, but small boats, especially light-displacement ones, have the advantage that they yield to the seas and offer little resistance, whereas bigger boats offer solid surfaces for heavy water to damage. The disadvantage is that deep-sea sailing in a small boat is like living in a busy tumble drier — only it’s a whole lot colder and wetter.   

The last time I looked, the record for crossing the Atlantic in the smallest sailboat belonged to Hugo Vilen, whose boat Father’s Day, was just was 5 feet 4 inches long, the size of coffee table. Soon the record will go to a boat that is deeper than it is longer, because the occupant will have no choice but to stand the whole way. I imagine it will be almost as uncomfortable as flying coach.

John Guzzwell circumnavigated the world in a boat he built and called Trekka. She was just 20 feet 6 inches long. That was regarded as quite an achievement … until Sege Testa went round the world in Acrohc Australis, which was 11 feet 10 inches long. There’s have even been attempts to organize a race around the world in sailboats just 10 feet long. When will they ever stop?

Anyway, the message is that few sailboats are lost at sea, and there’s no evidence to suggest small boats sink more frequently than big ones. So, if you’ve always wanted to cross an ocean in a small boat of your own, don’t let fear stop you.

Today’s Thought

Rivalry is good for mortals.

—Hesiod, Works and Days

Tailpiece

Advice to nubile women:

A man resembles a fine wine: He starts out like the grapes on a vine and it’s your job to crush him underfoot and keep him in the cellar until he matures into something youd like to have with dinner.

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

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Boat Plans Bruce Roberts | Sketchy Napkin Plans

Boat Plans Bruce Roberts

As with all great projects, this one started with a napkin drawing:

 

While  barrel floats have a long glorious history, well probably do either pontoons or a full plywood-fiberglass hull.  

We wont need any kind of keel with pontoons, but with a full hull, the keel is still an open question.  Though apparently some plans call for a, whadyacallit, a skeg, like a short keel that runs the length of the hull.

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