I’ve seen this list a couple places. Most recently on the sailing blog of Morgan’s Cloud:
What Really Matters
* Keep the water out
* Keep the crew on the boat
* Keep the keel side down
* Keep the mast up
* Keep the rudder on
* The rest is small stuff.
Ha! I said that I could never understand how people could sleep on a boat with their bed wet and in the midst of drips. I remember it well. I really could NOT understand this. Well, now I do.
I slept very well, thank you, in a WET bed. I simply laid a series of plastic trash bags on top of the huge wet area in the middle of the bed, put towels on top of that…David and I got in bed and slept soundly after the winds died down last night at 2 am. The wet bed came from me not setting up the plastic correctly in my little hammock (see post about drip here) and the sideways blowing of rain against the chart house wall. I fixed the plastic and all was good. When a new spot began to drip right over my pillow as the winds pushed the water right through some unknown little crack in the chart house wall, without even thinking about it twice, I grabbed a specialized bit of plastic and absorbent cloth from the bathroom (um…better known as a feminine napkin), taped it in place with packing tape, smiled and went to sleep.
So, how could I NOT strip down the bed and simply just decide to lay down and sleep? Well, there was a bit of logic to it. At least in the first three reasons–One, if I stripped the bed I’d have had to find a place to hang up the sheets to dry–there was no such place as I had clothes hanging up drying in all the usual spots. Second, I’d have had to get out the back up “emergency” clean sheets–this was NO emergency. Third reason–all the other beds/places to lay down are crammed full of stuff right now and it would take alot of work and un-organizing things to make it possible for both David and I to sleep anywhere but our bed. And finally, the most important reason of all–I was exhausted.
The mattress is dry; the sheets have been drying all day 🙂 and life is back to normal more or less. Well…there is that funny little bit of absorbent and plastic taped to the beam over my pillow…
Have you who are cruisers noted how frequently the winds comes up at all the wrong times? Forgetting about winds that arise when you’re entering the anchorage, tight harbor or marina slip, there’s also the winds that typically arise once you’ve left the boat for several hours ashore.
That’s what happened yesterday. We left the boat in late morning with 10 knots of breeze and the National Weather Service (NWS) predicting rising winds in the high teens and gusts to 25. Well, silly me, I didn’t have our hand held vhf on as I ran errands about town and, even sillier, didn’t use the Internet access on my cel phone to keep track of the NWS weather statements for our area. So, when we exited a restaurant with friends at 8:00 pm, we were really surprised to see winds so strong we could hardly walk to the car! And, for the hecklers who may be lurking here, that had nothing to do with drinking!
We drove anxiously back to the boat’s location without too much worry since the she is tied alongside a courtesy dock rather than at anchor or tightly fit into a slip. The only problem with the location is that the marina’s wave attenuation system was removed and the hold ups in contracts and permits meant the new one not installed yet. Every storm beats the poor boats docked there relentlessly. With the winds coming from the Southeast, the couple miles of fetch across a big bay (to the East) would be allowing waves and surge right into the marina and everything would be rocking and rolling.
The winds were pushing the boat away from the dock rather than onto it. We arrived, added a couple of lines and changed a few things. It did take me a while to gage the timing so that I could stretch/leap across to the boat at the right moment of surge. I HATE those situations when the boat is 5 feet from the pier and you’re freezing cold and shivering and wondering how you’re going to get your leg to reach out a foot–much less the distance required by the situation! It is those times that I wonder “why am I doing this?”
Ah, once aboard, everything was fine other than the fact that my nice clean dress pants and dress coat were soaked in the heavy salt spray. Not just this time, but every time I put on something especially nice, I find my self kneeling on the deck securing something in a downpour thinking that I might as well not ever “dress up.” This is my excuse for looking like a homeless person most of the time–and I’m sticking to it!
The weather stayed nasty until about 2 am. Late evening and night winds were steady around 30 knots and little spells at 40 knots with a couple spurious gusts higher.
After turning on the marine VHF radio, I quickly heard that a Gale Warning had been issued at 1pm (about an hour after we left the boat in the late morning) with the associated higher winds to last until the following morning 7 am. I don’t know if my lesson learned is to not dress up–or to keep my portable radio tuned into channel 16.
