Richard Jernigan -> RE: Boat trouble (May 28 2021 8:17:11)
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Out on the water, things can go south in a hurry. Congratulations on surviving relatively unscathed. Too bad about the boat. While I lived in the Marshall Islands I had a 34-foot cruiser/racer, by Tom Wylie, the Bay Area designer. Years before it had won its class in the Trans Pac. After the finish the owner sold it to the University of Hawai'i sailing team. After they used it for several years I bought it from them. It held the Honolulu-to-Kwajalein record, 2100 nautical miles in 13 1/2 days. I rigged twin headsails winged out to port and starboard, put it before the wind, and surfed down the trade winds all the way--a couple of days faster than some much bigger boats. One of my best pals owned a fast 46-foot sloop. Hull speed is proportional to boat length, sail area can go up as the square of length, but weight, rigging loads, and the price of every single piece of gear go up as the cube of length. He paid 5 times as much for his boat as I did, both in Honolulu. He and I were part of a group of 6 boats that headed out one evening for Namu, the next atoll to the south. The idea was to leave Kwaj at sundown, sail all night, and arrive at the only navigable pass into the Namu lagoon after sunrise. You don't try to go through the Namu pass without being able to see the bottom in 30 feet of crystal clear water. There are a few twists and turns in a vertical sided channel. A depth sounder is no help. By the time it registers shallow water, you already have a hole in your boat. All went according to plan until a serious squall line moved much faster than predicted and caught us between the two atolls. A branch of the North Equatorial Current sometimes threads between the two atolls. The gale force wind opposing the current kicked up a nasty steep sea. It was hard to see how big the waves were with a searchlight, but I can say that they looked big. The wind blew hard for 3 1/2 hours. The wind gauge registered 65 knots more than once. I hove to and rode it out. With the boat's canoe hull, fin keel and spade rudder, the helm demanded constant attention to keep from falling off on one tack or the other as the boat backed down. I was grateful that out of a crew of three, two were experienced ocean voyagers, who took turns at the tiller. Waves broke over us constantly, but not deeply enough to drown us. Our safety harnesses with lanyards attached to D-rings in the cockpit kept us from being swept overboard. The rain was cold and stung like bird shot. Fortunately the surface temperature there runs in the high 70s-low 80s F., but we eventually got cold anyhow. The inflatable lifeboat in its fiberglass case stayed lashed to the cabin top. We checked on it as often as we could, fearing it might have to be be put to use. The hatches held and we pulled through with no serious damage, but we lost the inflatable dinghy and its little outboard. We weren't the first through the pass at Namu. The sun was getting up, which was beginning to make the lagoon dangerous. The U.S. chart dates from a 1928 British Admiralty survey. The pass is drawn beautifully, but there is not a single sounding inside the lagoon. The water is crystal clear. You can see details on the bottom in fifty feet. But most of the lagoon is around a hundred feet, and when the sun is high and the wind is calm, the reflections from clouds may conceal vertical sided coral heads with tops in two or three feet that can take the bottom right out of your boat. We posted a lookout on the bow. He immediately signaled to slow down. We only maneuvered a couple of times to avoid coral heads, but we were all afraid of falling asleep after the night's exertions. We made it to the lee of the village on the windward side of the atoll and anchored in 50 feet. Two of the bigger boats were already there. One had damaged rigging, two broken shrouds. They had spare parts and were making repairs. My pal in the 46-footer had the bottom two panels blown out of his mainsail, and minor rigging damage. A 52-footer showed up. It had ports in the topsides just below the gunwales as well as in the cabin. Three ports were stove in by breaking waves. They were still pumping. We fixed bacon, eggs, toast and pots of black coffee, but went right to sleep as soon as we finished eating, and slept for two or three hours. I and a friend with a beamy, slow, deep-keel ocean-going 32-footer were joking that there should have been a "large craft warning." Then we heard from the Cal 20 who hadn't shown up yet. He had decided to try to get into the lagoon via a pass shown on the chart at the north end of the atoll. On VHF radio he told us he was high and dry on the reef as the tide went out, but seemed not to have serious hull damage. We ragged on him for not checking in sooner, but he said his radio didn't work until he haywired a new antenna connection to his backstay. The next weekend I joined the crew aboard a friend's 50-foot power boat, to go down to Namu and tow the 20-footer off the reef at high tide. That was easier than it might have been. We watched the sailboat for a while, until the owner reported it wasn't taking on water. We moved to the lee of the atoll, anchored on the reef oceanside and did a dive on the wall. The dolphins came to check us out. That never happened at Kwaj. There, when you hit the water the dolphins disappeared instantly. We escorted the Cal 20 home. It sailed all the way--not very fast. We hit Gea pass into the Kwaj lagoon at 9 AM, just right. The pass is wide and deep enough for big ships. At the yacht club--it's just a shack with with a partly roofed deck, air conditioning and a bar-- I had a glass of single malt whisky and a nap before bicycling over to the atoll terminal to board the plane and head 50 miles back home to Roi-Namur at the north end of Kwajalein atoll. All's well that ends well. I loved that little boat, but it was a lot of work. The tropical ocean is always at work to destroy your boat via heat, humidity, corrosion, electrolysis, you name it. And the Army felt like they had to annoy everyone with regulations, inspections and general harassment of people with boathouses and boats moored at the marina. The Army is very efficient at training 18-year olds to kill people, as long as the victims wear uniforms and act right. It's not so good at dealing with a highly skilled and mature civilian technical work force living on an Army post. They adhere to the principle enunciated by Lord Melbourne: "Whenever I hear some one say, 'Something must be done,' I know they are preparing to do something very foolish." RNJ
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