WATER WATER EVERYWHERE

The FONTUS water collector. This is a product currently under development that bears watching:




 Of course it would have to be tested at sea. But, could become standard equipment in every ditch bag or life raft if it works as good as this video shows. Especially if it can be scaled up.

Gabriel García Márquez and the Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor.

The death of Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel García Márquez at the age of 87 has reminded me of one of my favorite books of the sea. The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor written in 1955 as a series of newspaper articles by  Márquez about a twenty year old Colombian Navy Sailor named Luis Alejandro Velasco. He and seven other sailors were washed overboard along with some cargo on their severely overloaded ship. The search for the sailors was called off after four days. Velasco was lucky enough to find a raft and was the only one who survived having washed up on shore after ten days at sea.  Márquez spent twenty six hour days interviewing Velasco about his ordeal. Taking copious notes and asking trick questions to expose any contradictions in the sailors account. It was so detailed that it still makes an impression on me today and I think about it every time I hear about a rescue at sea. I recommend it.

ANOTHER GOOD REASON FOR HAVING AN AIS TRANSPONDER

I installed an AIS transponder on board BIANKA two years ago. It seemed like a good idea to me. At times when sailing I've been surprised by a tug and barge sneaking up behind my at certain choke points like Execution Rocks on Long Island Sound. Situations that had me wondering now where did he come from?  Having AIS gives you a heads up of where those BIG boats are and what they are doing. Having an AIS transponder lets those other boats know what you are doing or at least your name so they can call it out on the VHF. Instead of saying "white sailboat sailing southwest by buoy X.  Also when navigating places like New York Harbor or the Hudson River it really comes in handy for both boats to make and see the subtle changes in course that eliminate the possibility of a collision. In short it gives everybody some piece of mind.
Recently on a foggy winters day off Long Island another very good reason for having an AIS transponder on board became clear. A tugboat named SEA LION was sinking rapidly off of Long Island coast in a thick fog. Captain Bjoern Kils of NY Media Boat was in the area on the boat APERTURE when he heard:

"MAYDAY. This is the ‘Sea Lion’. We’re sinking. Men in the Water.
Water in the wheelhouse. This is our last transmission. We’re going down." - NYMEDIABOAT

The Coast Guard rebroadcast the Sea Lions coordinates but, somewhere things got broadcast, copied or heard wrong:

"I wrote down the numbers and plotted the coordinates. The location showed close to Lake Champlain in upstate New York, about 180 miles to the north, making it unlikely that I was able to hear the actual radio transmission from the ‘Sea Lion’ so clearly. I deemed the given coordinates as improbable and started working my on-board navigation system pulling up a list of close-by ships. Most commercial vessels are outfitted with an AIS transceiver as part of an automated tracking and collision avoidance system, so chances are that they were still transmitting.
There she was! SEA LION — right on top of that list with a position only about two nautical miles to the south of my location. Putting down the throttle, we made it to the scene in just a few minutes, running 35 knots in 6-foot seas and less than 200 feet visibility."  -NYMEDIABOAT

As Captain Kils said after the rescue:

“I think it's fair to say that the AIS system saved these guys’ lives,” Kils says. “The coordinates broadcasted by the Coast Guard were 180 miles to the north of the sinking vessel — I’m not sure why. By working my AIS system I was able to mark the Sea Lion’s actual location. Realizing I was only 2 nautical miles away from her position enabled me to respond, resulting in a rescue, not a recovery.”- SOUNDINGS

The crew of the Tugboat were very lucky to have been rescued so quickly in those frigid waters. While mistakes can happen when humans try to get out location  coordinates in panicky emergency situations working electronic systems like AIS are dispassionate and will keep broadcasting the GPS coordinates until the power is lost. In this case it saved four lives. Thanks to Captain Kils and another boat in the area and having an AIS transponder on the sinking boat.
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AMEC CAMINO-101 Class B AIS Transponder
Garmin AIS 600 Automatic Identification System Transceiver w/ Programming
Raymarine AIS650 Class B Transceiver - Includes Programming Fee

MOVIES FOR SAILORS: All Is Lost

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I had been looking forward to seeing this movie since I first heard about it being screened at the Cannes Film festival earlier this year. It takes a lot for me to become interested in going to see a movie especially in a theater. I subscribe to the notion that I will not be found on my death bed wishing I had spent more time watching movies, TV shows or playing video games or any other means by which many people seem to entertain themselves to death with these days. Time is precious and as one gets older one had better realize that and the sooner the better. From interviews with the films director J.C Chandor it seems that notion was also one of the reasons he wrote the movie. I also found it interesting that Chandor was inspired by seeing the boats stored for the winter that sailed during the summer in BIANKA's home waters of Long Island Sound as he explained in this article:

"It all started on a train in fall 2010. Writer-director J.C. Chandor found himself regularly commuting between Manhattan, where he was editing his first film, Margin Call, and Providence, R.I., where he lives with his wife and two young children. The tracks run along the coast of Connecticut, where he would see hundreds of boats -- not yachts, but more middle-class sailing vessels -- piled up on land for the winter. "There's sort of an absurdity of a boat on land," he remembers thinking.
At the same time, Chandor also found his thoughts revolving around questions of death -- and life. When he was 19, he survived a car accident that claimed the life of a friend. And during his early 30s -- when, he felt, he was letting his professional life slip by as he worked on music videos and commercials -- he witnessed the death of both his grandmothers. Suddenly, he says, "I had this tremendous energy about seizing the day, that every day has to be treated as a gift."- Hollywood Reporter

For me being on a boat intensifies those feelings of each day being a "gift" with every sunrise and sunset I see. But, it is not always fun either. I've been out in bad conditions a number of times when things stopped becoming "fun". Certainly not as bad as depicted in the movie but, miserable enough to be a learning experience. One thing you can say about the one and only character in ALL IS LOST played by a well weathered Robert Redford is that he is a "Jonah"  a sailor with an incredible amount of bad luck. But, experienced sailor's know that "stuff" happens when you're sailing and usually when you don't expect it. The movie highlights this by having events start to break bad for Redford's character on what would appear to be an otherwise beautiful day. That's the way it is sometimes on the water. The trick is to not panic and sometimes things are not as bad as it first appears as I have learned. But, the film also adds credence to the adage that the sea will find out everything you did wrong.

Chandor via Redford shows this side of sailing all pretty well too. Even as Redford's character meticulously assembles his survival supplies one mistake nearly cost him losing his all important water supply. He then had to improvise or die and that is just the way it is out on the water. The movie has several of these moments and also captures quite realistically what could happen as a sailboat and life raft are tossed about in storms. Including being rolled, dismasted and overturned. There are some things that would have made sense in real life situations that are missing in the film. For example to have an EPIRB beacon on board that would have made a rescue for Redford's more certain. But, not every sailor carries one (or wants to carry one) and they can certainly fail as most of his other technology on board did. My only major complaint is that one interior scene had entirely to much camera shaking that I found distracting. It looked more like Redford's character was in an earthquake rather than down below in a boat being pounded by waves. Otherwise I thought the film was a well done in that it realistically captured the things that can go wrong when one ventures out on the water in a boat and the lengths one may have to go through in order to survive. I give it the Captain Mike thumbs up.
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All Is Lost

ONE YEAR AGO: Superstorm Sandy

It was one year ago that Superstorm Sandy hit this area.

I found BIANKA a thousand feet away from where I left her the night before Sandy came ashore. She was still attached to her mooring. The storm surge had lifted it off the bottom and the boat dragged it across the harbor. Luckily there was no real damage and she did not collide with any other boats. But other boats were not so lucky:

 My Honda BP2 outboard spent four days on the bottom of the harbor:

after the dock the dingy was tied up to broke apart and flipped the dingy:

Other than that I was lucky. The only major damage on board was from a bent up Charlie Noble vent stack:

This happen because I forgot to secure the forward hatch when I left the boat. The hatch was closed but, the 95 MPH winds of Sandy blew it open and smashed the vent.

Other boats suffered much more damage especially ones at the docks:

Others from collisions with other boats as they got dragged through the harbor:

Though compared to some of the other harbors and boatyards in other locations things were not so bad in comparison. In the aftermath of the storm since power and communications were knocked out on land for over two weeks. I moved back on board where things were more normal. Still there were a number of lessons were learned that I put into this post.

A WINTERS TALE: CASTAWAY IN THE COLD

I recently finished a book called Cast Away in the Cold An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner by I.I. Hayes and is available as free Kindle download
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It's a fictional tale but, still a good nautical read about survival in a harsh environment.  In the book a retired sea captain named John Hardy befriends some local children and tells them the story of how he first went to sea. He was raised on a farm and soon grew tired of the labor involved. So he ran away to New Bedford Massachusetts with the plan to get on a ship and go to sea:
“Up to this period of my life, I had never been ten miles from home, and had never seen a city, so of course everything was new to me. By this time, however, I had come to reflect seriously on my folly, and this, coupled with hunger and fatigue, so far banished curiosity from my mind that I was not in the least impressed by what I saw. In truth, I very heartily wished myself back on the farm; for if the labor there was not to my liking, it was at least not so hard as what I had performed these past two days, in walking along the dusty road,—and then I was, when on the farm, never without the means to satisfy my hunger.

“What I should have done at this critical stage, had not some one come to my assistance, I cannot imagine. I was afraid to ask any questions of the passers-by, for I did not really know what to ask them, or how to explain my situation; and, seeing that everybody was gaping at me with wonder and curiosity (and many of them were clearly laughing at my absurd appearance), I hurried on, not having the least idea of where I should go or what I should do.

“At length I saw a man with a very red face approaching on the opposite side of the street, and from his general appearance I guessed him to be a sailor; so, driven almost to desperation, I crossed over to him, looking, I am sure, the very picture of despair, and I thus accosted him: ‘If you please, sir, can you tell me where I can go and ship for a voyage?’

“‘A voyage!’ shouted he, in reply, ‘a voyage! A pretty looking fellow you for a voyage!’—which observation very much confused me. Then he asked me a great many questions, using a great many hard names, the meaning of which I did not at all understand, and the necessity for which I could not exactly see. I noticed that he called me ‘landlubber’ very frequently, but I had no idea whether he meant to compliment or abuse me, though it seemed more likely to me that it was the latter. After a while, however, he seemed to have grown tired of talking, or had exhausted all his strange words, for he turned short round and bade me follow him, which I did, with very much the feelings a culprit must have when he is going to prison".

Of course he gets on a ship and things get even worse as he experiences his first bout of sea sickness:

“In the first place, you see, they gave me such wretched food to eat, all out of a rusty old tin plate, and I was all the time so sick from the motion of the vessel as we went tossing up and down on the rough sea, and from the tobacco-smoke of the forecastle, and all the other bad smells, that I could hardly eat a mouthful, so that I was half ready to die of starvation; and, as if this was not misery enough, the sailors were all the time, when in the forecastle, quarrelling like so many wild beasts in a cage; and as two of them had pistols, and all of them had knives, I was every minute in dread lest they should take it into their heads to murder each other, and kill me by mistake. So, I can tell you, being a young sailor-boy isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.”

“O, wasn’t it dreadful!” said Alice, “to be sick all the time, and nobody there to take care of you.”

“Well, I wasn’t so sick, maybe, after all,” answered the Captain, smiling,—“only sea-sick, you know; and then, for the credit of the ship, I’ll say that, if you had nice plum-pudding every day for dinner, you would think it horrid stuff if you were sea-sick.”

“But don’t people die when they are sea-sick?” inquired Alice.

“Not often, child,” answered the Captain, playfully; “but they feel all the time as if they were going to, and when they don’t feel that way, they feel as if they’d like to.

He eventually gets his sea legs and actually starts to become familiar with the ways of the ship he is on as it sails into the Arctic waters to hunt for whales and seals.  But, disaster soon strikes and he finds himself alone stranded in the Arctic:

“We were but a moment getting into the boats. The boat which I was in had something the start of the other two. Just as we were pulling away, the master of the ship came on deck, and ordered us to do what, had the red-faced mate done an hour before, would have made it impossible that this danger should have come upon us. ‘Carry your line out to the fast ice,’ was the order we received from the master; and every one of us, realizing the great danger, pulled as hard as he could. The ‘fast ice’ was dimly in sight when we started, for we had drifted while at breakfast towards it, as well as towards the berg. Only a few minutes were needed to reach it. We jumped out and dug a hole, and planted the ice-anchor. The ship was out of sight, buried in the fog. A faint voice came from the ship. It was, ‘Hurry up! we have struck.’ They evidently could not see us. The line was fastened to the anchor in an instant, and the second mate shouted, ‘Haul in! haul in!’ There was no answer but ‘Hurry up! we have struck.’ ‘Haul in! haul in!’ shouted the second mate, but still there was no answer. ‘They can’t hear nor see,’ said he, hurriedly; and then, turning to me, said, ‘Hardy, you watch the anchor that it don’t give way. Boys, jump in the boat, and we’ll go nearer the ship so they can hear.’ The boat was gone quickly into the fog, and I was then alone on the ice by the anchor,—how much and truly alone you shall hear. 

So begins Captain Hardy's story of Arctic survival.  As I read the book and was impressed by it's detail of how people stranded in the harsh Arctic environment could survive for an extended period of time. It was then I found it's author Issac I. Hayes had been part of the Second Grinnell Expedition to search for John Franklin.  An expedition which became a matter of survival as the expedition's ship Advance became stuck in ice. Three members of the crew died and the others including Hayes embarked on an epic journey of Arctic survival. No wonder this book has such detail how to survive in Arctic conditions. Hayes is also the author of other non fiction books about his Arctic adventures:
An Arctic Boat Journey: In the Autumn of 1854

and
The Land of Desolation, being a personal narrative of adventures in Greenland. With illustrations

PROPANE RAN OUT NOW WHAT?

How about building a rocket stove? I first came upon the idea of  building a rocket stove a few weeks ago looking at this post on BOAT BITS.  Keep STOVE LAB 2010 in mind next time the propane runs out while cruising miles from nowhere or if you'd like to go ashore and make some hot tea while you are there walking about. On the other hand it might be good to know how to make one if you need it to survive too!
Hmmm maybe a  Aviation Tin Snip set might be useful to on board after all! For a detailed tutorial on how to build a rocket stove take a look here: