Yachting Monthly's 200 Skipper's Tips E-Book

Tom Cunliffe

• Herausgeber: Fernhurst Books Limited
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Dip into any of the 200 tips in this handy book to make yourself a better yachtsman. They are the very best of the Skipper's Tips from the pages of Yachting Monthly magazine. Each tip is a pearl of wisdom from Britain's foremost yachting writer, Tom Cunliffe. Discover practical skills that you won't find anywhere else. Each tip is illustrated and there's something for everyone – from complete beginner to ocean navigator. Skipper's Tips is a treasure trove of nautical know-how, covering everything from seamanship and life on board to navigation and safety, with lots more in between.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Preface

Seamanship

1 A Question of Courtesy

2 Whose Right of Way?

3 Identifying a Collision Risk

4 Diver Down!

5 Turning Up

6 Look Aloft

7 Where’s Your Ball?

8 Never Stop Communicating

9 View From The Bridge

10 One Flag Worth Knowing

11 ’Ello, ’Ello, ’Ello!

12 Upwind or Downwind?

13 Going Down With The Tide

14 Colreg Mnemonics

15 Lighten Our Darkness

16 Leftover Seas

17 Sail on The Moon Tide

18 Over the Waves

19 Checking For Drag

20 Passing in the Night

Navigation

21 The Destination

22 Keep A Track

23 Explore that Plotter

24 Check if in Doubt

25 Radar Watch in the Real World

26 Follow Your Transits

27 Tidal Observations

28 Natural Tide Gauges

29 How Far From Shore Are you Anchored?

30 Using the Plotter

31 Datum Shift – The Lurking Bandit of the Plotter

32 Piloting With Radar

33 Identifying Marks

34 Datums For Gps

35 A Quick Fix

36 Estimated Positions

37 Keep Clear

38 Steering By Eye

39 A Lifeline in the Fog

40 Changing Charts

41 Take Depth Predictions With A Pinch of Salt

42 Spell it Out to Stay on Course

43 Waypoints For Danger

44 Compensating for Leeway

45 Overtaken By Time

46 Will She, Won’t She?

47 The Inside Passage that Isn’t There

48 Instant Position Lines

49 Time those Lights

50 A Path Through the Rocks

51 Serious Corners

52 Over the Falls

53 Damn Decimals

54 Hidden Dangers

55 Cog, Sog And the Log

56 Check the Waypoint

57 The Double Transit

58 Depth Sums Made Easy

59 Paying the Rates

60 Can’T See it for Looking At it

61 Standard Pressure

62 Man is Not Lost

63 One in A Hundred

64 One Final Waypoint

65 Overfalls and the Passage Plan

66 Leeway – the Easy Way

67 Single Position Lines and GPS

68 Electronic Beacons

Safety

69 Keep ’Em Handy

70 Salvage!

71 Pot Nightmare

72 Carry A Mask

73 ‘Ready About!’ But ‘Stand By To Gybe!’

74 Whiplash

75 Keep Peering Around that Corner

76 Unseen Dangers

77 Drop Before you DIP

78 Beware of the TUG

Boat-handling

79 Keep it on the Winch

80 The Cruel Sea

81 Mainsail Only

82 Face Up To Him

83 Get Your Weight Into It

84 A Sweet Lead

85 Look Behind You!

86 Adjust Your Cars

87 Easy On the Chafe

88 Don’t Believe the Helmsman

89 Reduce Sail Downwind – the Easy Way

90 Bow Thrusters

91 Shape of the Water

92 Be Disobedient

93 Ditch Extra Windage

94 Calibrate the Log

95 Out of Arm’s Way

96 Doubling Up On Anchor Power

97 The Sweetest of Gybes

98 Help Your Crew

99 A Shorter Scope

100 No Hooks On the Leech

101 To Spring Or Not To Spring?

102 Mainsail Twist – the Simple Test

103 When the Going Gets Tough

104 Pump Her in

105 Give Them the End

106 Aground!

107 Halyard Tension

108 A Clean Tow

109 Hull Speed

110 Stalling the Main

111 Back Up to the Gale

112 Variable Draught

113 Flutter Clutter

114 Slough it Off

115 Amidships for Peace

116 Heel Her Off

117 When in Doubt, Drop the Main

118 Decent Shorelines

119 Don’t Forget the Ladder

120 Flip the Fenders in

121 Fenders Port Side!

122 Flake to Run Free

123 A Mind of Her Own

124 Keep ’Em Clear

125 Towing Speed

126 Holding Station

127 Bury it Behind the Main

128 Hang ’Em High

129 The Mighty Bull Rope

130 Turn it Up

131 Fairleads and Sliplines

132 Face Up to Keeping Way On

133 Slip Safely In

134 Hey, Big Fender!

135 Give Her Some Air

136 Backing Off

Ropes and knots

137 Coils of Rope

138 Freshen that NIP

139 All Set?

140 Stress-Free Home-Port Berthing

141 A Long Bowline

142 Give it Some Slack

143 Keep Coils Turning With the Sun

144 Dipping Your Loops

145 A Hitch in Time

Life on board

146 Careening in the Twenty-First Century

147 Pop A Pill

148 Keeping Your Bits and Pieces

149 Nothing Lasts for Ever

150 Bleeding Obvious

151 Hang ’Em High!

152 Look Out for the Cook

153 Be Kind to Your Best Friend

154 Dutch Treat

155 Watch the AMPS

156 Fixing the Flapping

157 Stow the Boards

158 Get Shot of it

159 A Piece of String

160 Shove it in

161 Don’t Overdo the Tension

162 A Clean Cut

163 Button Up

164 A Gallon of Regular Ain’t What it Used To Be

165 Recycle the Newspaper and Take A Snap

166 Dropping the Bucket

167 Yawl Or Ketch?

168 Use Your Loaf!

169 Weigh Them Up

170 Other People’s Rules

171 Beat the Chafe at Zero Cost

172 Fill ‘Er Up!

173 Hands Free

174 Chafe Paranoia

175 A Greener Cup of Tea

176 Don’t Just Save it for Your Chips

177 An Electrical Shield

178 Tom and Dick

179 Slip Sliding Away

180 The Creeping Impeller Blues

181 A Sorry Sight

182 Give the Kids A Lure

183 Sleep When you Need It

184 Learn to Design

185 Blood On the Deck

186 Dodgy Sunset

187 Boot Top – Aesthetic Or Pragmatic?

188 Cheapest Chain Markers

189 Led Alternatives

Weather

190 A Spring in the Wind

191 Halo, Halo

192 Squall!

193 Get the Grib

194 Cyclonic

195 Very Poor

196 Watch the Glass

197 Sea Fog Cooking in the Islands

198 A Heavy Hitter

199 Fog On the Way

200 Predict Sea Breeze

This edition first published 2010 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Copyright 2010 Tom Cunliffe

Registered office

John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com.

The right of Tom Cunliffe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Photographs: © Tom Cunliffe and Yachting Monthly/IPC Media

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

THE CHARTS REPRODUCED SHOULD NOT BE USED FOR NAVIGATIONAL PURPOSES.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cunliffe, Tom, 1947-

Yachting monthly 200 skipper’s tips : instant skills to improve your seamanship / Tom Cunliffe.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-97288-5 (pbk.)

1. Yachting. 2. Seamanship. 3. Navigation. I. Yachting monthly and motor boating magazine. II. Title.

GV811.C873 2010

797.1’24–dc22

2010028562

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Set in 8/9 Humanist 777 BT Light by Thomson Digital, India

PREFACE

Longer ago that I’d care to admit, the editor of Yachting Monthly asked me to pen a few tips for skippers and crews. I wasn’t acknowledged as author of these early efforts, but I soon found I was delivering a group of them each month. I’ve never had proprietary rights to this page of goodies and I fully expected that it wouldn’t last, but it kept right on going through the GPS revolution and the arrival of the reliable chart-plotter. Today, I still sit down once every four weeks to deliver these bite-sized chunks of information.

Writing tips isn’t always the easiest of jobs. For a start, pitching the right level of reader expertise takes some thought. A jewel for one skipper might be blatantly obvious to another. Some perfectly competent people have no natural interest in electronics but feel that maybe they should. For them, a quick idea about checking a waypoint might save a lot of embarrassment. To a technophile whose greatest delight is pressing buttons and reading manuals, it’s an insult to put it in the magazine. On the other side of the five-pound note, an old gaffer who uses rolling hitches and topsail halyard bends as matter of course may take amiss any offer of help in securing to a single bollard. He’s right, of course, but I wonder how he’d get on peeling spinnakers on a dark, windy night.

Another pitfall for the tip-writer is the inevitable danger of repetition. After all, sailing is not exactly astrophysics. I often think there isn’t much to it really, yet every time I go out there I discover a fresh slant on an old issue. After twenty years, a degree of saying what has been said can’t be avoided, but at least I try to offer the nugget in a different way or from a new perspective.

Please bear all this in mind as you dip into this little book. Also, try to be kind to my old-fashioned insistence on referring to boats as ‘she’ and people as ‘he’ where only a personal pronoun will do. English is inadequate in this department, and no disrespect is intended to the ladies. I can’t keep writing ‘he or she’, and the day I use ‘their’ for a single person will be the day they tip my last remains in the broad Atlantic.

I’m grateful to Wiley for coming up with the idea and to YM for giving us our head to get on with it. You may recognise some old friends or the tips may all be new to you, but, whoever you may be, I hope you find something useful.

Tom Cunliffe

June 2010

SEAMANSHIP

1 A QUESTION OF COURTESY

Not all boats that race are flat-out ‘Grand Prix’ jobs. Many a cruiser enjoys the odd weekend’s sport with the local club. Such a boat could easily be taken for a cruiser, which on any other day she may well be. Today, however, she isn’t flying an ensign, and this is the international sign that she’s racing. As soon as she finishes or retires, she should hoist her ensign again so that her fellow competitors and anyone else around knows that she’s no longer subject to the racing rules. Right now, those of us who are cruising might like to give her clear wind. It could be us one day.

No ensign? Then she’s probably racing

2 WHOSE RIGHT OF WAY?

A useful aide-mémoire when crossing another vessel in daylight with both boats under power, is to ask yourself which of her sidelights you would be seeing if it were dark. A red (port) light would suggest that you are to take care, so stay out of her way. Green is for ‘go’, so if you see her starboard bow you can stand on carefully.

Picture the lights to work out who has right of way in daylight under power

3 IDENTIFYING A COLLISION RISK

Out at sea, collision risk is checked by ascertaining whether or not the vessel in question is maintaining a steady bearing relative to you. Initially, this is spotted by keeping your head still and seeing whether a distant ship remains in place over a particular stanchion, shroud, or other likely item. If it looks like a possibility but you are uncertain, you will take the ship’s compass bearing, and keep checking as range closes. You might even use the electronic bearing line on your radar.

Line up the ship with a stanchion if there’s nothing in the background to use as a reference

In confined waters, it is more convenient to note whether or not the other craft appears steady relative to its background. While difficult to prove mathematically, this old rule of thumb works every time unless the other craft is almost on the beach. If the other vessel stays in front of the same far-off field, chimney or parked car as you approach, you are on a collision heading, so watch out!

4 DIVER DOWN!

Learning all the code flags is no longer a part of any yachting syllabus, but every watchkeeper must be aware of the meaning of the ‘A’ flag. It says: “I have a diver down. Keep well clear at slow speed.” Sometimes these flags are made of plywood, sometimes of fabric, but it is always dive boats that show them. Watch out for them and comply with their request. If you miss one, you could be responsible for causing a serious accident. Even if you don’t hurt anyone, you’ll get a well-deserved earful from the cox’n of the dive boat.

Be vigilant if you see Flag A flying

5 TURNING UP

The only certainty about how to make fast to a cleat is that there are a number of equally good ways of doing it. In deciding which to use, the questions to ask are:

If I secure it like this, will it be impossible for the rope to come off by mistake?Will it also be impossible for the rope to jam up on the cleat?Have I put the turns on in such a way that, as I begin to take them off again, the rope can be surged under load if required?

Three ‘yes’ answers, and you’ve got it right. Notice that in the first picture (Cleat 1), care is being taken that the second half of the initial turn on a poorly but typically aligned cleat cannot lock under load against the first half. Cleat 2 shows a neat, safe job in progress, with figures of eight going on in a non-jammable way. Cleat 3 shows a classic ‘half a turn, two figures-of-eight and a final round turn’ solution. Usually a winner, but if you’re short of rope or the cleat isn’t big enough, have no fear of using a locking hitch as in Cleat 4. These are not the only ways, though.

6 LOOK ALOFT

If you set your rig up yourself you may be completely confident in it but if it was left to anyone else to do, it’s worth checking your pins and clevises before a passage. If you can’t conveniently go aloft, rack the binoculars down to their shortest range, clean the lenses and take a serious look aloft. You’ll be surprised at what you can see.

Use binoculars to check your rig

7 WHERE’S YOUR BALL?

We all know that we should hoist a black ball when we drop anchor, yet many of us neglect to do so. One reason for this is that the ball is often tucked behind a tool-box at the back of a locker and it’s easy to ‘forget’ to go and get it. So why not stow it in the anchor locker where it’ll always be to hand?

A good skipper should keep his crew informed – it’s a great way to boost morale

8 NEVER STOP COMMUNICATING

Any skipper can become so involved with the challenges of command that he or she forgets to keep the crew in the picture. It’s as important for a briefing to include the basics of the coming passage as to explain where the life raft is and how to use the heads. As the miles roll along, morale is boosted if all hands are advised about progress. A man freezing in the cockpit will cope better if he knows the tide will turn in the next hour and that the gruesome sea state should soon begin to ease; an encouraging remark about there only being another 15 miles to go might save a mutiny. It sounds obvious, but it’s often ignored.

Stow your anchor ball in the chain locker and you’ll always be able to find it

9 VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE

It’s been said often enough, but it’s easy to forget what the chaps on the big ships can’t see. Here’s an unusual view of the Solent, showing ‘what the pilot saw’ as a yacht scuttled under his bows a good quarter mile ahead. This one was quite safe as it happened, but if she’d been a bit closer and things had gone wrong for her, the people on the bridge wouldn’t even have known they’d hit her.

What the pilot sees . . .

10 ONE FLAG WORTH KNOWING

The days when Yachtmasters had to learn all the signal flags are mercifully long past. However, the ability to recognise one or two of the signals remains a useful safety factor. The ‘T’ flag looks like a French ensign with the colours back to front. It means that the vessel flying it is engaged in pair trawling. Somewhere away on her beam will be her partner, and the consequences of finding yourself between them don’t bear thinking about. You won’t see pair trawling often – the practice is banned in UK waters – but continental fishing boats really do show this flag even though you might feel their lights sometimes leave much to be desired.

Code Flag T looks like the French ensign with the colours reversed