S A I L I N G   S T O R I E S

2. Surfing a 42-Footer !   |  3. "Help! Help! We're On The Rocks !!"   |   4. Karma and Buying a Used Boat

"John and Vaughn's Wild Ride"

By Vaughn McGrath

== 30 June 1994 ( Non-fiction ) ==

John had a big sailboat.
It was was 42 feet long and called a sloop. It was kept in Annapolis, Maryland.
John wanted to sail the big boat to Marblehead in Massachusetts.
He asked his friend Vaughn to help him sail to Marblehead.
John and Vaughn loved to sail.

They left Annapolis on a hot and humid day.
It was 2:30 p.m. when they motored the boat through the Spar Creek Drawbridge and into the Chesapeake Bay.
There were a lot of sailboats on the water that day. Some of the boats they saw were sailed by cadets from the Naval Academy.
John and Vaughn raised "Horizons" huge sails and turned north toward the Bay Bridge.

The Bay Bridge is very long and very high so very big boats can sail under it.
Although the bridge is wide, everyone has to sail under its middle because the water around the bridge is not very deep.
John and Vaughn saw some big ships and a tugboat pushing a barge go under the bridge in front of them.
You have to be very careful when you sail under the Bay Bridge.

Just as they were nearing the bridge Vaughn pointed out to John that he saw a squall line approaching them.
A squall line is a fast moving rain storm with lots of wind.
John was not concerned because the radio had said the squall had winds of 27-knots and "Horizons" could sail through stronger winds even under full sail.
They put on their rain jackets.
John and Vaughn did not mind sailing in the rain.

As the squall approached, the water started to get rough
and the sky around it was covered by a dark black cloud.
But John and his big boat had been in much worse so he was not concerned.
As the wind got stronger Vaughn adjusted the sail to help keep "Horizons" sailing on course.
It began to rain and they could see lightning approaching and hear the rumble of thunder.
Lightning can be dangerious, John and Vaughn do not like sailing when there's lightning.

Suddenly the rain began to come down harder and it got very dark and much windier.
John was having a hard time seeing very far ahead and Vaughn was having a hard time adjusting the big sail against the strong gusts.
The squall had turned into a storm and they began to loose some control of the boat.

The wind and the rain continued getting stronger forming waves six feet high.
Against a darkening black sky
the water around them had turned green.

Now the wind was blowing more than the 30-knots John had allowed for.
"Horizons" struggled to make headway against the wind.
The sides of the boat were going under the water and it was too windy to bring the sail down.
Vaughn could do little to help "Horizons" sail against the storm.
John decided to turn the boat around so that the wind would be pushing them.

It seemed easier to sail once they had the wind behind them.
John told Vaughn to go below and get life jackets from behind the dinette.
There were a lot of compartments behind the dinette so it seemed to take a long time for Vaughn to find the jackets in the dim cabin.
When he returned to the cockpit the waves were much higher, the sky was as dark as night, and the wind was gusting at more than 40 knots, blowing the rain sideways instead of down.
They could no longer see ahead of them and there were lightning hits all around the boat.

The wind was trying to push the boat faster than it was designed to go.
"Horizons" bow plowed into the resisting water and the waves began
catching up from behind them. The seams of the out-stretched sail were now straining to their limits and threatening to tear.
A torn and flaying sail can be very dangerous.

When Vaughn grabbed the life jackets he wasn't aware that there was more than one size on board and in the dim light he had accidentally brought John a child's size.
It wasn't safe to return below for another jacket so he gave John the safety-harness to wear while he put on the other jacket.

With the wind pushing, "Horizons" was quickly back toward the Bay Bridge.
But they couldn't see the bridge through the driving rain
only hear its horns sounding a warning of its presence.
The wind was pushing them very fast
and they were covering a lot of distance in a short time.
Ahead of them in the darkness was shallow water and the legs supporting the bridge.
They had to turn back into the wind.

John started the engine while Vaughn prepared to haul down the mainsail after they turn around when suddenly a foaming green wave broke over the stern and tilted "Horizons" bow well under. The fog horn on the bridge supports scorned loudly above their shoulders as the bow came around and they began heading back into the wind and away from the bridge. It was raining even harder and the motor began to strain under full power.
Vaughn was getting worried about John not having on a life jacket.
He knew that it was going to get worse.

Vaughn took out the mini-flashlight that he kept in his jacket pocket and struggled below to get another life jacket for John.
The boat was pitching and the cabin floor was wet where the rain had blown in.
He lost his footing once and had to stop himself from striking into the nav-station.
Vaughn had just returned with John's life jacket when a flash of lightning revealed the bow of another sailboat coming out of the rain on a collision course.
Both John and the other boat responded together and veered their boats away just in time.
The 27-footer then took some refuge by tucking-in behind "Horizons"
as though she was her duckling.

The tops of the waves, some now over ten feet, were being blown off in long white sheets.
Vaughn was right about things getting worse.
He took the wheel while John put on the life jacket. He could barely see the bow through the rain.
And then it began to hail.

At first it was like getting hit by grains of sand,
but soon they increased in size to that of small stones,
thrown by a wind that had increased to nearly fifty knots.
When John took the wheel again he had to look through a small slit
formed by his visor and the collar of his slicker.
But he really couldn't see anything through the hail.
Vaughn tried to look forward to act as another pair of eyes for the boat but the hail made it too difficult.
Every so often "Horizons" diesel engine would cough on an air bubble
formed in its fuel line by the rolling boat and threatening to stall and quit.

The roaring sound of the sea and the wind made it hard for them to communicate.
All Vaughn could do was keep his back to the wind and watch John for hand signals.
He also keep a watchful eye on the other sailboat that had fallen in behind them.

The storm had begun about 20 minutes earlier and was now at its worst.
"Horizons" bow broke through the waves sending sheets of water
crashing over the length of the 42' boat and onto John and Vaughn.
They had to hold on very tightly as the waves broke around them.
John had to concentrate hard on keeping "Horizons" pointed into the wind.

The wind leveled off.
If nothing broke,
or they did not run aground in the shallow Chesapeake Bay,
or be hit by one of the large ships,
they felt they would be ok.
John and Vaughn tried not to be scared.
They trusted in "Horizons" and their skills.

Both were also concerned about the smaller boat that was behind them,
they could no longer see it through the rain.
Most squalls don't last a long time
and this one had already lasted about a half an hour.
They both tied to figure out how far they had come.

The compass was telling them their direction.
Vaughn yelled to John, "I think we're heading for deep water, watch out for ships."
John thought they were too and he nodded back.
Deep water or not they had no choice.
They had to motor into the wind.

The hail hurt John's lips and they swelled up.
A lot of the hail was dime-size and looked like Saturn.
They spun in the cockpit by the wind like tiny toy tops.
The sea was black with dark grey caps,
And the clouds came down to touch the water.

Just when things seemed at its worse they could start to make out the trailing edge of the squall off in the distance.
Within a few minutes the hail let up and the wind was calming down.
At first they noticed that they could see a little ways beyond the bow
and slowly, the clouds rose above the tops of the waves.
It was still raining hard but the sky was getting brighter.
Both of them were anxious to see where "Horizons" actually was.

When the rain stopped they looked around and were happy that
there were no large ships near by.
They were in the deep water of mid-bay,
not far from where they both thought they would be.
The other sailboat was motoring safely about a mile off.
Ahead of them rays of sunshine began to burn through the scattering clouds.
Behind them rumbled away the squall, like some stampede of Buffalos
in an old western movie.

They inspected "Horizons" but didn't find anything broken or loose.
Vaughn looked down to see that the cockpit had filled in places with hail.
It had piled around his ankles and he had hail in his shoes.
They both used their hands to scoop the hail out of the cockpit
and began to exclaim to each other about what had happened.
Vaughn took the wheel while John went below to find their location on the charts and to check for any damage.
When he returned he gave a new course to sail and said that everything below was fine except that the radios were out.
Vaughn looked to the top of the mast and saw that the antennas had exploded,
hit by lightning in the roar of the storm.

The wind behind the squall had shifted to push them toward their destination.
John idled down "Horizons" weary engine and Vaughn trimmed her wing-on-wing.
They talked about what they had done right,
and they talked about what they could have done better.
They knew they had been lucky, they only had to tell that to each other once.

The sun burned away the last of the clouds and created a steady wind.
It was a beautiful day to be sailing.

--==/==--

Title, "John and Vaughn's Wild Ride" with all due respects to
Kenneth Graham, and Mr. Toad, "The Wind In The Willows".

With thanks to John, Annapolis, Maryland and "Horizons".

--==/==--

Vaughn McGrath, when he's not sailing around Salem Sound on "French Curves" ,
owns McGrathics.com, an advertising design studio in historic Marblehead, MA.

For personal use only. | copyright 1994 | Vaughn McGrath

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"Surfing a 42-Footer !"

By Vaughn McGrath

"Horizons" eventually made it to Old Saybrook Connecticut where she was laid up for a week to install a new water tank, new heat exchanger and for some deck work. John and and I were to sail her to Marblehead in Massachusetts about 23 hours away. I hoped to helm most of the time so I could log some hours toward my Captains licence. This worked out well since John wanted to program waypoints into his new GPS and was more interested in being below. We left Old Saybrook about Noon on Friday and motored the few miles down the Connecticut River to Long Island Sound, passing along the way dozens of swans cruising majestically along the shore. We passed the light house pointing the way to the Sound and raised the sails to catch the freshening off-shore winds.

As we chased a school of dolphins eastward toward the canal we basked in the warm, beautiful day. I took the helm early and held it through most of the day. About two hours after leaving port I noticed the engine noise suddenly changing pitch and there was also a faint high-pitched hiss coming from somewhere astern. I began looking around for the cause of the new sound and caught the smell of steam. I traced the sound and steam smell to a stern locker where the boat yard had just installed the new hot water tank. One of the new hoses on the heat exchanger had come loose and was pumping steaming water into the stern lazarette. I got John's attention when I throttled back the engine and then told him to bring up some tools. He quickly climbed into the lazarette and tightened the loosened hose clamps and then started the bilge pump to empty out the accumulated water.

Things were back to normal so I continued to head us toward the Canal. We had fair skies and a following wind as we sailed eastward beneath Connecticut and then Rhode Island. After passing Fisher Island Light we saw the New London Ferry's crossing past each other in their mid-journey between New London and Long Island.

Fog rolled in and hid Block Island and Newport. We were expecting a following-tide to assist us down Buzzards Bay but we hadn't expected an additional surge from a storm that was slipping in from the South of us. The fog climbed to become a blanket over our heads that our mast's top cut a path through. The sun set behind us and we begun to seek the channel marker lights through the fog that will lead us down Buzzards Bay to the canal. With the onset of darkness the two of us prepared ourselves by putting on extra clothing, slickers, a life jacket and safety harnesses. We each added a waterproof light and a glow-stick in our jacket pockets.

When John switched on the running lights the light in the compass went dead and there wasn't a spare bulb on board that would fit it. I needed the compass to stear by so we taped a flashlight to the binnacle. Meanwhile John positioned himself on the companionway ladder where he could keep an eye aftward as well as on the radar and GPS. The channel was narrow and used by a lot of large ships that can suddenly loom up from behind you. An extra set of eyes aft might just keep you from getting run over.

When we were halfway up the bay the offshore storm and tide had combined to built up rollers that were parading up the channel from astern. They quickly rose to ten-foot waves and too high and close together to try to bring "Horizons" around to head back into them. Besides, turning around in the middle of a busy shipping channel in the fog at night could be to a dangerous thing to do.

The walls of water coming up from behind would glisten in the stern light as they roared out of the darkness. Each wave would lift the stern and then roll the huge boat sideways. "Horizons" would surf down the wave for a short while until the wave eventually slipped under her keel and the boat would right itself again. Then I'd turn back, correcting the course and wait for the next wave to approach. Too quickly we'd be surfing down the next wave, in a 42-foot boat no less ... and in the dark and the fog!

Though it seemed longer, we rode like this for about fourty minutes until we approached the safety of Cape Cod Canal where the waves began flattening out, us a bit paler for the experience.

--==/==--

Vaughn McGrath, when he's not sailing around Salem Sound on French Curves,
owns McGrathics.com, an advertising design studio in historic Marblehead, MA.

For personal use only. | copyright 1994 | Vaughn McGrath

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Help! Help!
We're On The Rocks !!

or ...
"If you can keep yours when all about you are loosing theirs ..."

by Vaughn McGrath

--==/==--

Living around Salem Sound and not sailing is like living in Aspen and not skiing. So the year after I moved to historic Marblehead, MA I got the sailing "bug". I took a dozen hours of sailing lessons, bought a Catalina 22' and began exploring the waters around Salem Sound.

Growing up around the Finger Lakes I had never realized how much the tides influences sailing until I moved to Massachusetts Bay where tides of 10-11' are common. The higher water hides ledges or rocks that are submerged just under the surface. While at low tide some of the usually submerged ledges are high enough out of the water to confuse the novice to mistake them for islands. It's no surprise that the bottom of Salem Sound is littered with the remains of countless ships that have run afoul there.

During my first season sailing these waters I sailed off toward two of islands, only in reality one of the "islands" was actually a large ledge that was now exposed by the low tide. Additional rocks were also just under the surface. I got my first clue that something was wrong was when I noticed that a "wake" just ahead of me wasn't moving. Once I realized that I was looking at a breaker I glanced over the side and was shocked to see boulders, covering the bottom, just beneath my keel.

My guest had momentarily gone below so I warned her that I was making an abrupt turn around. I wanted to retrace my path back to safe water exactly but in the middle of my turn my fixed keel rode up and over a boulder and crashed into another one, stopping us dead.

After that, things started to happen very quickly!

Immediately "French Curves" pirouetted 90-degrees on her keel, sideways to the wind, and I heard everything below that wasn't already secured, including Pamela, crash onto the cabin floor. Waves began bouncing the hull against the submerged rocks and the wind was trying to push us over, and water was coming over the sides and into the cockpit. We were trapped.

I realized that the first thing that I had to do was to get the sails down. I unsnapped the jib sheet from it's jam cleat and reached toward the fiddle block to release the main. That's when I caught sight of the tiller sliding away and over the stern of the boat!

I lurched for the end of the tiller and caught the last few inches of the handle just as it was slipping under the water. But now I needed help. I only had the tiller by three fingers and I couldn't free my other hand from the mainsheet tackle that was keeping me in the bouncing boat. I needed Pamela's help but when I called to her she told me she was radioing for help first. I tried to impress on her that if she would come and work with me that we wouldn't need anyone else's help. No, she intended to get us rescued. I heard her calling into the mike of the marine radio while I struggled with the rudder, "Help, Help, We're On The Rocks!" She sounded panicky.

After repeating her call four or five times I was able to convince her that she wasn't getting a reply and that she needed to come into the cockpit with two life jackets and help me. (She didn't realize that the breaker switch was off and she had dialed the radio to channel-19, where I keep my CB, instead of 16. She was on the wrong channel and she wasn't transmitting anyway).

With the sheets released the boat started to settle down and I was able to wrestle most of the tiller and heavy rudder into the cockpit. Pamela finally came topside and I directed her to put on her vest while I went to strike the sails. I then asked her to bring up one of the oars used for our dingy. With the sails down I moved us both to the starboard side, tipping the boat over a few degrees, and started to paddle toward deeper water. Immediately things began calming down as the keel lifted off the rocks that had restrained us.

Once I could no longer see the bottom I got us both back in the cockpit and lowered the outboard. Using the motor to steer with I set a course and had Pamela slowly motor us away from the ledges. I went below to check for water and damages. Fortunately nothing found. In fact the only damage would turn out to be a just few gouges in the bottom paint, and that done to my pride.

A few minutes later I pulled up the outboard, reset the rudder in the gudgeons, raised sail and headed for the well marked South Channel. It's easy to see how this could have turned out a lot worse. We were lucky. But I wanted to make sure that in the future I'd be more prepared for emergencies. Pamela should have received a reply to her distress call considering the sheer number of other boats in the area. But I don't sail with the marine radio turned on because of the battery drain and she didn't know to flip on the panel breaker. Also around this area, her giving our location as "on the rocks" is like telling someone that you'll meet them at the tree, when you live in a forest.

Later I would move the marine radio so the mike will reach into the cockpit where I can use it while still sailing. The channel-16 instant-on switch is now labeled HELP and I keep the radio turned off but have the breaker switch on when I have guests on board. To prevent a repeat of nearly loosing the rudder I added a safety line to it by removing the bolt that attaches the tiller to the rudder and replaced it with an eye bolt. A line was secured from the stern and clipped onto the eye bolt. ( See photo

But most importantly... I vowed to always know where I am.

I now give a "stewardess" talk each time I sail with new guests. I begin by telling them how to stop the boat, where life jackets are and how to call for help. While I'm sailing I point out landmarks so guest know about where we are.

--==/==--

Vaughn McGrath, when he's not sailing around Salem Sound on "French Curves" ,
owns McGrathics.com, an advertising design studio in historic Marblehead, MA.

For personal use only. | copyright 1994 | Vaughn McGrath

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Karma and Buying a Used Boat

By Vaughn McGrath

I'd been sailing my Catalina22 #4289 for about ten years and she was developing some expensive problems. The most critical was that the tops of the bolts holding the fixed keel had corroded away to the point that only the fiberglass was keeping the keel on. Also, much of the hardware items had passed their useful life. Instead of investing money into saving old #4289 I began looking for a replacement. To my luck, an opportunity sat just a few mooring away.

Someone had donated a Catalina22 to our YMCA for the tax deduction. Seeing the For Sale sign on her I rowed by to check her out. She was about ten-years newer than old #4289 and had some nice features that my old boat didn't have: roller furling, safety lines, split backstay, and a pop-top. Once I confirmed that she was a fixed-keel model (I'm an ocean sailor) I knew that I wanted to make an offer.

I called the "Y" and quickly learned that they considered the boat to be a white elephant. They weren't in the boat business and they were lamenting about the cost of hauling and storage for the coming winter. I asked what they wanted for her and they said, "make us an offer". For some reason I said $400.00 and they said okay! I was shocked! I confirmed that they would accept $400.00 for her and then ran to the bank for a money order.

The sails were not on board but I was assured that they were in storage. I donated old #4289 to the Massachusetts Maritime College and then made arrangements to haul my new acquisition out for the season. However, a few days later I received a call from the "Y" saying that they could not locate the sails and perhaps they had been stolen. Suddenly my $400.00 purchase just got more expensive! Since the "Y" considered my "purchase" to actually be a "donation", they felt that I had bought the boat "as is".

Just to cover my bases, I filed a report with our harbormaster's office just in case he spotted a C-22 sailing by with my sail number on the mainsail. He also gave me a copy of the report and said, "this is for your insurance company". Well I hadn't planned on filing a claim, after all, I'd only paid $400.00 for the boat but he suggest that I talk to my insurance agent to see what they said. My agent wasn't sure either but said that they would check with the insurance company. To my surprise I got a call a few days later from an insurance investigator about my missing sails. I pointed out several times that I had only paid $400.00 for the boat but he said that it wasn't a problem. I quickly figured out that he was an independent investigator and he gets paid only when he reviews a claim so it was in his best interest to push this through. Just to keep things honest I called my agent again and explained the situation once more but they told me not to worry and to leave it up to the investigator. A few weeks later a received a cheque to pay for two brand new sails!

The bottom line is: I donated old #4289 for an $1060.00 tax write off; I bought the new boat from the nonprofit YMCA for a $400.00 tax write off; and then my insurance company bought me two brand new sails! There is a God! Ironically the insurance company then canceled my policy even though it was their agent and their investigator that encouraged me to file the claim. Go figure!

So as I sit here on my new boat with my laptop typing this letter I can only say, good things come to good people.