How to make your first love fall in love again.... this time with sailing!

There are many great relationships, where the man loves sailing, and the woman loves staying ashore. People have therefore asked me the question: "How did you get that woman to love sailing as well?". What I should have done, is use "Would you like to sail around the world with me?" as a standard pick-up line. The second question would then not be: "What is your favourite dish" or "What sports do you do" or even  "What music do you like?" no the second question would be: "Do you ever get sea sick?". But no... when I met Elizabeth, on the glacier, she made me quickly forget about the questions I should have asked, and instead we looked at the stars on the glacier, we looked in each others eyes and we fell in love. Only too late did I realise, that the woman I was now madly in love with had never sailed before in her life... However, sailingwise she did have a few things going for her, she was a surfer, and into kayaking, and I even managed to get her to like snow and water kite surfing. Stay tuned for how I got the love of my life into sailing.

The Plan: Happy couple sailing in fantastic weather

The North Sea in Spring is perhaps not the best place to take the Love of your Life sailing for the first time. That is, if you want her to go sailing with you ever again, and especially if you would like to sail halfway around the globe with her. The cunning plan, was to introduce Elizabeth gently into sailing, stacking all possible positive factors to my benefit that I could think off: Starting with a spacious 40 foot catamaran, filled with some of our best friends. Sailing Easter time in Greece - good weather guaranteed, and topped off with rounding Santorini, the most romantic island.

A spacious 40 foot Nautitech catamaran

Some of our best friends were joining on the trip - Thank you Amira for taking the picture

Easter in Greece - good weather guaranteed

I should have known better, and Lady Luck ended up teaching me a lesson or two. While back in  Norway is was the best Easter ever (30 degrees, blue sky, hardly any wind), in Greece it wast the worst Easter since the past 15 years. We experienced 12 degrees throughout the week, lots of rain, and multiple days with 35 knots of wind. (we decided not to sail on the day it was blowing a staggering 45 knots). Easter is to early for the Meltemi, so this was a "Normal" storm being thrown at us.

This was my worst scenario being realised. And, off course it could have been the end of the line, for a Relationship that included sailing. Even worse, this could have been the end of the line for A Small Boy with a Big Dream.  On Andy's birthday, we rounded Santorini in miserable weather. However, this made Andy's birthday cake taste all the better that evening.

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Santorini on Andy's birthday. A whole lot less romantic, in the rain and 12 C.

Making Andy's birthday cake taste all the better.

Sailing back to Athens in 35 knots

With the sun and a good friend, 35 knots does not look so bad

Mono hull passing by at 35 knots of true wind speed

Sharing the fun: helming in 35 knots on a wet, outlying helm station. We are still smiling :)

This radar reflector (btw it does NOT work as radar reflector) came down in Elizabeths face. The only reason this was a happy ending were the protective sunglasses.

To make matters worse, we did not have enough warm clothing (we were actually very well prepared for "typical" Greek weather, not for the Straight of Siberia), the Nautitech catamaran has an outlying, and very wet steering stand, we did not thrust the autopilot to steer us through these waves, so we had a very wet steering experience, and to top it all off, Elizabeth got a radar reflector hurled at her!!!

After this episode, Lady Luck had her way, and Elizabeth was put off sailing for the rest of her life. I am now working to get a professional crew to sail the boat to Australia with me. No! This is how it could have gone but it didn't. Elizabeth loves sailing, especially in bad weather. And even better, she did not get sea sick even once. Rather than Lady Luck stacking the odds against me, perhaps she knew that the only way to get Elizabeth into sailing, was to make it challenging enough.

This was later confirmed, by Elizabeth taking a sailing course in February in the Solent. Again it was blowing 35 knots. She came back, all smiles, and very confident with her sailing skills.  Now she says that sailing in light wind days is boring, and sailing only gets intersesting at 35 knots!

Thank you Lady Luck!

And thank you to our friends, who where there with us in Greece!!

 And most of all thank you Elizabeth, for falling in love again, this time with sailing!!!

Movie Review: All is Lost

A colleague at work mentioned that I should watch "All is Lost" as preparation for our sailing trip, as I might learn a few things. I though I was well prepared with my sailing skills, offshore survival training, emergency preparedness training, medical course and risk reviews, but you never know if you can learn a trick or two from an old dog i.e. Robert Redford.

*** Spoiler Alert ***

Clearly Captain Rob is not the most safety conscious sailor and he did not follow the RYA schooling. Here are some observations:
When he detects the leak, the first thing captain Rob does is not calling a mayday on VHF, setting of the EPIRB satellite beacon, stuffing the hole with anything that is at hand, or pulling a sail over the leak, or getting the life raft and ditch bag ready or even starting the bailers. No, the first thing he does, is getting the mainsail down, an action that does not help him whatsoever. Then he manages to collide into the container a second time.

Finally, after some agonizing minutes, where all the good advice I shouted out at captain Rob was ignored, he manages to tack the other way and the hole is safe and clear above the water line. At this point captain Rob is safe, and he could use the time to pull a sail on the outside of the hull, and start stuffing things on the inside.

What is Captain Rob doing, when he is going down into the boat to have a nap when the boat is still half full of water? Captain Rob's safety thinking is highlighted by the fact that:

• He needs to cut a handle for the bailing pump, and does not have one to hand
• He has to connect up his VHF antenna, it was not even connected before the collision.
• What is that about when he call a S.O.S.? Mayday Mayday Mayday is how you start an emergency call?
• Why does captain Rob not keep his sat phone in a waterproof bag?
• Why is he not wearing a life jacket?
• Where are the storm tactics? Captain Rob  does not use his sea, anchor that he earlier used to connect to the container, streaming warps, taking the seas from the behind, running the engine to keep up with the waves, and worst of all, he is still not wearing a life jacket.
• He is finally deploying the life raft, when the boat is floating high up on the water. Man up Captain Rob, and instead of sissily deploying the raft, deploy the bailer!
• Really! Getting into the life raft, when the boat is still high up in the water! Not only are did you just earn the title of coward the size of a blue whale, you just took a very unnecessary risk. BTW, where is the ditch bag? At least stock up with water and supplies before you make the jump.
• Filling up the fresh water canister with the sea water pump from the sink?
• In clear weather, with a boat that is not sinking, you leave the boat again? Man up and start pumping the water out you sissy!
• In the life raft, for the first 24 hours, do not eat or drink, get your body in energy preservation mode
• Where is your hand water maker our solar still?
• Where are you keeping that knife Captain Rob? The correct place in in a bag at the end of the painter line in the water. No wonder you managed to sink your life raft.
• Way to go: Setting of the flare without safety glasses or gloves. This is really the time to use the parachute flares.
• Shooting flares when there are no vessels in sight?
• Setting your only life raft on FIRE!

Katadyn Survivor 35, a hand operated water maker.

Some miscellaneous observations:

• who is steering when he is down below, he clearly does not have an auto pilot...
• It is beyond me, how with so little wind the boat even generated enough speed to create a hole like the one that was created.
• How did the boat turn over? the waves where not even that high....
• Man Over Board by yourself is Game Over..... to get back to the boat is extreme luck! 
• How did he let go of the mast, without even cutting the shrouds or the faulty VHF connection
• Where did the swell go after the big storm?
• How did you manage to sink the life raft!
• The hacked together water maker has little chance of actually working in wave motion.
• Captain Rob can suddenly read the map and writing without his glasses.
• There is land in the background! where is that on the map.
• Where did the glass bottle come from?

Final rating: Too agonizing to watch without writing a blog post with what Captain Rob does wrong and Hollywood gets wrong. No expert sailors consulted in the making of the movie. It turns out that actual courses are a much better preparation than Hollywood...

This would have been on the movie screen, if I was there for the life screening.

Tuxington asks: "Wherrrrrre is the ships cat?" Lunington says: "To be purrrrfectly honest, Captain Rrrrrrrob cannot likely keep his cat alive in even the best of conditions. Miauw!"

Gear: Ditch Bag Contents

For those of you wondering what on earth is a "ditch bag" and why we are writing a post about it, I would refer to the survival story of Maurice and Marilyn Baily whom with their family survived at sea in a life raft for 117 days http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_and_Maralyn_Bailey.  Their story of survival was heroic and possibly as a result of their extensive training and preparation of a ditch bag.  While I hope that we never have to board a life raft, its worthwhile to spend some time putting together that container of supplies which would, at the very least, give us peace of mind our chances of survival and rescue would be improved.  I refer to the RYA (Royal Yachting Association) sea survival handbook for the items we chose to include, plus some additional extras for our feline crew members.

Contents

• Ditch bag x2 - must have positive flotation and be waterproof with easy to carry handles
• Portable EPIRB x1 - Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon  This is to send out a signal to satellite that we are in trouble and need rescue
• Handheld VHF (with extra batteries) x1 - To communicate with vessels on within the horizon that might have their VHF turned on
• Selection of flares
• Waterproof LED flashlight (extra batteries) x1 -  to make light signals at night 
• Signal mirror x1 - send light signals during the day to ships or helicopters
• Portable watermaker x1 - make fresh water from seawater to stay hydrated
• 3 weeks of food - high energy bars that have all the vitamins/minerals..Ill pick the chocolate ones of course
• Extra pair of prescription glasses and sun glasses
• Survival books (RYA manual)
• First aid kit and medicine
• Sunscreen and lip balm
• Spare cell phone with working sim card
• Boat papers, passports, credit cards, cash, driving license, house keys, boat keys, car keys, insurance papers, cat passports, vaccination recoords important documents on thumb drive in a dry bag
• Duct tape x1 roll - just ask the Mythbusters how long you can survive on an island with just a roll of duct tape.  Dont want to be without it.
• Lighter in waterproof bag - fire = warmth = cooked dinner on deserted island
• scissors - to cut packages easily, kept with medical kit
• Empty water bottles - storage of watermaker water and rainwater
• Small fishing kit - to catch some sushi while in our life raft to go nicely with the chocolate energy bars
• Toothbrush and feminine products
• Tin opener for food tins from galley
• rearming kits for life vests
• resealable polyethylene bags to keep things dry
• Large plastic bin liners
• Cutting board to cut any caught fish and extra galley food
• Inflatable cushions to use for pillows and back support
• kitchen knife and sharpener
• Food tins from galley
• Handheld compass to read bearings from the raft
• handheld GPS to relay coordinates to rescuers
• Dinghy or liferaft pump
• Sailing or leather gloves
• Spare warm dry cloths in dry bags
• Swim goggles
• Thermal underwear in dry bag with cloths
• paper and pen in sealed bag
• sea sickness pills
• chemical heat packs
• Cat toenail clippers to prevent clawing up inflatable boat
• Supply of pet napkins to clean them up
• 3 weeks supply of wet cat food in sealed packets
• Towels/sponges to dry things out