Passage Making
(Another Day in the Office)
With a crew of three plus me, I have set watches of three hours on and six hours off. All twenty-four hours for my crew to cover which is not to say I don{t contribute many hours of vigilance. During anyone’s watch, be it during a sunny day or the middle of a very dark night, I am on call. All decisions about sail trim or when to charge the batteries are mine alone. The crew’s job is to inform me of change to which I can offer my opinion and facilitate the necessary adjustments, sail trim, coarse changes, etc.
So, let’s start early in the morning with the onset of breakfast time. Usually the off-watch are sleeping. So no set time for breakfast can be adhered to. Usually I look for at least two of my crew to be ready to eat although I have cooked breakfast twice to fulfill the appetites of all. Porridge (oatmeal) is the normal fare, spiced up with cinnamon, nuts, brown sugar, or whatever is fancied. As long as there are at least two coffee drinkers awake, I like to brew a percolator full of “real coffee”. Tea or instant coffee is available at anytime of the day or night, although to be good mannered I insist that all awake should be offered a hot drink at the same time for the purpose of gas economy and politeness. Further economies can be made by making two cups of teach with one tea bag.
With breakfast out of the way, all dishes saltwater rinsed are then washed in hot water, dried, and put away. Plans are make for the other two meals of the day. Lentils and/or beans are scheduled for soaking and the stock of bread is assessed. I often bake bread every other day although sometimes more often. Preparation should start early after breakfast. That way we can have fresh bread with tuna salad, sardines, etc. for lunch.
Another culinary delight is fresh fish. Albeit personally I do much more fishing than catching! However, there is nothing as good for you or as pleasing to the palette that a filet of yellow-fin tuna. It’s seldom that the fish don’t go from rod to pan to mouth in less than an hour!
After breakfast when everyone is washed and fully awake, we usually entertain ourselves with card games, reading books, and intense conversations on all sorts of subjects.
At anytime, adjustments to the rig are called for. Often due to a threatening dark cloud or change in wind direction. At all times, the rig is conservative yet appropriate to make efficient use of the conditions. During the day, all crew above decks gets involved in the trimming process. I delegate work to each crew depending on my assessment of their capabilities, with safety paramount.
During the first few days of company with a crew member, I won’t allow much involvement, preferring to assess their abilities and attitude. It’s of no consequence to me that a person purports to having x amount of experience, sea miles, or whatever. It is important to me that crew follow my commands and never presume. It won’t take me long to get to know who is competent enough on watch to allow me to get some rest.
One time I was asked, or told, to “lighten up” by a guy on watch who was allowing the cockpit to become a skating rink due to incoming rainwater. Should I ignore the water and let someone slip, trip, and hurt themselves? I don’t think so. I endeavor to run my ship as safely as possible; if this means the guy has to get off his butt, reach for the drying towel, and dry up the wet area, so be it.
Every hour or so, depending on conditions, I check the horizon for warning signs of weather changes and/or wind direction. Is that a squall brewing? Should I roll up the Genoa and run with just the working jib? Every minute of the day I try to keep myself aware of my ship’s environment. My crew learns to help me and I encourage them to consult me at any time. There is no such thing as a stupid question; only a stupid answer. I try not to be arrogant with my responses, but rather honor the fact that I have been asked a question and discuss the choices of change if time allows. If no time is available at the moment and rig changes or course changes must be made in a hurry, I like to discuss the actions taken at the earliest convenience. A debriefing as it were.
During passages, we set the handheld GPS to “Go to” waypoints which have been identified from charts and the computer plotter program. We adjust the boat’s track to correspond with the bearing of the next waypoint and ultimately our port or anchorage of destination. This may have to be 10 to 20 degrees off course to cope with wind direction, especially following winds and in consideration of swell direction.
For this we employ “Otto”, the autopilot. He is a good worker as efficiently as possible or else his appetite for battery amps increases. By constant attention and adjustment of his response level and rudder gain he can be kept working happily without eating too much. Whilst on the subject of power consumption, attention is given to the voltage of the house batteries. The use of any power consuming device is kept to an efficient minimum so as to reserve power for the automatic steering. 8Lights are turned on to use and off when not being used).
If there is a calming of conditions such as that only 1.5 knots of boat speed is achieved, the motor can be started and the batteries charged. Tropicbird has 75 watt solar panels and these, depending on sun conditions, help with battery charging but naturally only during daylight hours. Historically, once the sun has gone down, a half hour of engine running battery charging is enough to feed the autohelm throughout the night. I certainly don’t like to run the engine just to charge the batteries unless I can fulfill another purpose at the same time. Purposes such as making up the course adjustment due to wind or waves or providing full amperage whilst using the SSB radio or computer plotter. All these variants need to be assessed and evaluated prior to any action.
Every day is different, marked by breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For the crew, the privilege of six hours undisturbed rest. For me, the satisfaction of knowing I have done everything possible to get from “A” to “B” safely with both myself and my crew rested and satisfied with a job well done.
Whilst it may seem that the day is filled with work, it never seems that way. Time flies when you are having fun and the days just fly by. No sooner have you settled into a passage of many days, you have arrived, dropped anchor, and are sitting back with a full stomach of healthy, tasty food watching a movie under that stars.
During every day, I “stop and smell the roses” marveling at the ever changing scene all around me. The sunsets, sunrises, glow of the moon, twinkling stars, phosphorescent at night, dolphins, whales, flying fish and much much more are marvels to entertain the mere mortal passage maker.
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