The Magic Number Three

Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Florida

Ivan from the sailing vessel Moriah, is a wonderful old salt who gives seminars about all things nautical. Last week I learned something from Ivan that I had not fully appreciated before. It has to do with three, which is a magic number where boating and sailing is concerned.

Ivan was talking about belaying a line to a cleat. But let me begin with another magic number three applied to winches on a boat. This is something I learned by experiment on my first sailboat, an O'Day Mariner 19'.

Wrap the line around the winch only once and the wind will rip it tight out of your hand, perhaps with some skin with it. See below.

 

Wrap it twice and it will hold weakly if you pull strongly on the tail (the part of the line exiting the picture on the bottom).

Wrap it three times and it will hold securely in nearly all conditions, even if your let go of the tail. Three is magic.

To bring in more line, you must pick up the tail and pull gently as you turn the winch. This is called tailing. Shaking the tail with a loose grip lets the line slip through your hand and more line pays out. Thus you amplify small forces on the tail to enormous forces on the working end of the line. That's what winches are for.

But an unsecured tail is fragile. If you kick it or bump it, it might momentarily become less than three turns and slip. Secure the tail end, or use the self-tailing feature on this winch. (See below) The self-tailer is the metal finger and the double row of plastic rings at the top. Using the self-tailer frees one of your hands to do other things as you crank on the winch.

Put more than three turns on the winch and you are asking for trouble. It can cause the line to cross over itself and foul. That is a starting to happen in the picture below. Exactly three wraps; no more, no less.

 

Your winch may be as narrow as your wrist, or as wide as a pizza; no matter what the size, the magic number of turns is always three.

By the way, on boats it is always three clockwise turns. All winches on all boats work clockwise so that you never have to guess which way to wrap even if you are upside down, in the dark, and you don't know which is port or starboard.

Now for Ivan's point. What he said was, "if you ever worked on a tug boat, you soon learned that putting a locking turn on a cleat will get you fired. Three turns of any line on any cleat is sufficient. The line will break or the cleat will get pulled out of the deck before the wraps slip." The picture below shows what Ivan meant. The shape of the cleat helps jam the wraps in place.

Below is the way I've been doing it for years. One 360 degree wrap and one locking turn. The rope crossing under itself makes a locking turn. The problem with locking turns is that extreme force on the line causes the locking turn to pull tighter. On a tugboat it may become impossible to ever remove that turn. But on Tarwathie, my way served me well for years, including hurricanes. But now I'm going to change.

 

But on a sailboat, the lines are small and light. Kicking the tail can make three wraps become two wraps easily. Below is my new post-Ivan way of doing it. Three wraps plus a locking turn.

Below is the amateurish way of doing it, a half wrap plus multiple locking turns.

 

Below is the (incorrect) way that most nautical books teach you how to do it.

 

Maybe there are more uses of the magic number three on a boat. Let me know if you think of some.

 

It's Cooler Here

Fort Pierce, FL
27 27.45 N 089 18.15 W

Well, by 0400 Sunday morning we made it here where we expected to be by Thursday night.  That's reality for cruising sailors folks.   It is why we learned to avoid making plans by calendar dates.  Progress is just too unpredictable.

I can tell you though that yesterday was a rejuvination shot for our souls.  It has been two years since we were out in the blue blue blue waters of the Gulf Stream.  It was wonderful.   Initially, the day went as planned.  We motored out of Miami heading East for the Gulf Stream.  When we got there, a gentle wind E@10 came up.  We deployed all our sails fully, and soon we were doing 7.5 knots northward and enjoying every minute of it.   Alas, the wind only lasted 5-6 hours and we had to motor the rest of the way.  That was still fun.  We were able to motor at 1200 RPM, just above idle, yet we averaged 7.1 knots progress.

The blue water, sunny skies, the man-o-war in the water and the flying fish, all renewed our memories of how nice it can be out there.

Boy did our new AIS (Automatic Identification System) get a workout.   Never before have we had a passage where we encountered so much traffic; both ship traffic and motor vessel traffic.   A partial explanation is that our waypoints exactly followed the dotted line on the chart that marks the center line of the Gulf Stream.  Any northbound vessel would be attracted to that point.  

It also seemed that Murphy's Law was in effect; nearly every vessel that we saw out there passed so close that it tripped our AIS' one mile alarm zone.  That alarm was going off all day and all night.  In part it was an annoyance, but it also made us feel safer.  It gave us as much as 57 minutes advance warning that another vessel was going to pass close.   There was a tug towing a barge.  Historically, they have scared us more than anything else.  This time I was able to call the tug by name while he was still 4 miles away.  The tug captain and I cordially arranged a port-to-port passage.  Easy.

In the middle of the night, around 0100, Libby awoke me from my nap and asked for help.   No wonder why she needed help.   We had 7 ship around us within 5 miles, plus another 6 or so 5-15 miles away, and they were going every which way.  It seemed impossible to threat that needle without getting run over.  Libby found the Times Square of the ocean.

The AIS helped sort it out. 6 of the 7 ships would not come closer than 1.5 miles it said. So we could avoid them.   However there was a string of three big cruise ships that came like a conga line, the Norwegian Sun, the Carnival Dream, and the Disney Magic.  The Disney Magic would come within 0.5 miles -- too close for comfort. Worse, we crossed that conga line between the second and third ships.  I became worried that the Disney Magic would not see us because the Carnival Dream was right behind us.  I selected the Disney Magic on the AIS and pressed the CALL button.   (A bit of high tech magic called Digital Selective Calling)  10 seconds later, I was greeted by a voice saying, "Disney Magic, good evening."  The captain reassured me that they did indeed see us on radar and that all was OK.

10 minutes later the Disney Magic captain called me back. He was curious.  "How did you get our MMSI number to call directly?"  "AIS," I said. "But we can't see you on AIS," he said.  "No," I explained, "we receive AIS but can't transmit."  Aha, there are some myths among even big cruise ships.  Apparently they assume that everyone who receives AIS also transmit AIS.   From now on, instead of saying "Do you see us?"  we will say "Do you see us on radar?"

Anyhow, the wind turned against us for the last 20 miles.  That wasn't in the forecast.  Fortunately, it wasn't strong.  We arrived at the Fort Pierce Inlet at 0330.   The city lights and navigation lights everywhere made it very confusing.  If it were an unfamiliar inlet we would have stood off until daylight.   However, we're very familiar with Fort Pierce Inlet so we pressed on.   The only hazard was avoiding the numerous small motor boats heading out to fish.  Who would have imagined so many at that hour?

p.s. Daytime and night time temperature forecasts for Fort Pierce are 4-5 degrees cooler than Marathon or Miami.   Our friends George and Carol wrote from the Georgia ICW.  They said, "Slow Down! It's still winter here."    We want to make North Carolina by May 1, but we don't want any cold.   Uh oh, one of those calendar scheduling problems of the kind we hate.

Advice, Part 1

Vero Beach, FL
No LL

A reader asked:
I am writing because my husband wants to sail me around the world someday. He is in Vero Beach and he sent me a link to your blog and said "don't tell me this can't be done…these people are doing it". He grew up in a sailing family and spent many years on the boat and literally has water running through his veins…I on the other hand have never sailed but love my husband, nature, adventure, and would be up for a life on a sailboat. My problem is I am very practical and think we need a LOT of money saved up before we can live a lifestyle like yours and we still have lots of debts to pay. Do you have any advise of someone in their early 40's about getting financially prepared for life on a boat?

I have read some of your blogs and am fascinated. Did you start your sailing adventure when you retired or did you do part time sailing at first?? My husband is a nomadic artist and enjoys traveling around. We are trying to figure out a way to do his art full time and sail up and down the coast and ICW to get our sea legs. Any guidance you have would be appreciated.

It's flattering to be asked for advice. Here goes.

You can't know for sure whether or not the cruising life is suitable for you or your husband. However, money is probably not the reason. We live on about $30K/year; mostly from Social Security. I figure that is about half the rock bottom we could live on on land. Think. We don't pay rent/mortgage, taxes, utilities, no car, no car insurance, no cable ...

However, we jumped in both feet, selling house, cars, no storage bin, nothing else other than our boat. Cruisers who want to keep one foot anchored on land and who still own houses, cars, and the like find that cruising is an extra expense, not a saving.

If you or your husband can continue doing paid work while on board, more power to you. Few of us have professions that lend themselves to that.

Many men dream about cruising but few actually do it. The truth is that men adapt to the life easier than most women. You might be one of the ones who love it, but then again you might not. He might not like it either after trying it out. The thing to avoid is to be the spoiler of your husbands dreams without trying it. That could cause unnecessary resentment and guilt. I say unnecessary because it's possible that you could like cruising more than him.

Here's a plan for trying it out.

Start by chartering a cruising boat for a 1-2 week vacation. There are lovely places in the Virgins and the Bahamas where you can charter. Go for the smaller boats that you can handle yourself without a paid captain.

If you find that you liked the vacation, then try a 6-8 month cruise over the winter season. Consider it a sabbatical. If you do it on the US East Coast, then there is little or no need to sail in the open sea. If you're lucky, you may be able to borrow a cruising boat to do it rather than buying one. You get to see most of the fun part without the scary parts. Many people do that. It makes for the grand adventure of their lives even thought whether or not they're not ready to consider it as a life style.

If both of you want more, then consider full time cruising.

The magic number for many cruisers seems to be 2 years. By the end of 2 years, everyone knows with certainty if the cruising life is or is not for them. There are few secrets and no privacy on a boat (indeed, that's one of the obstacles) so you won't need a confrontation to pronounce the verdict; both of you will be keenly aware of each other's feelings.

After 2 years have passed, if you still want to cruise, that would be a good time to dispose of your land-based assets, and your expenses will go down drastically.

Continued tomorrow...

Who is a Cruiser?

Cocoa, Florida

28 21.156 N 080 43.147 W

The rule is simple, anyone who wants to call him/herself a cruiser can do so. Chances of contradiction (other than in a bar fight) are slim.

Full time cruisers (lIke us). We live on board and cruise all year long. Despite that we tend to spend 8 months of the year of the year in fixed locations and only 4 months per year cruising to a different spot every night.. Perhaps 25% of the cruisers we know are full time cruisers.

Part time cruisers. Most of our cruising friends do so part time. They still have houses. They own cars. Typically, they leave their boats for the summer and live elsewhere.

One time cruisers. People who sail at home on home waters but who want to experience a year of sailing as a once in a lifetime experience.

Trial cruisers. These are the people who want to try cruising for a year or three before making a decision. I have a tip for them. Two years seems to be the magic number. After two years you will know confidently what you do or don't want to do in your future. If you are not happy after two years, prolonging it to three years is unnecessary.

Opportunistic cruisers. I really admire the people who cruise until they run out of money. Then they go find work for long enough to build up the kitty and star cruising again. I greatly admire the courage of those people; especially the younger ones. One couple we adored started that life at age 19.

Family cruisers. Another admirable group. These people want to give their children the life experience of growing up on the boat while cruising. In our experience, such children are likely to become highly successful in life. They gain enormous self confidence.

Live aboards. These are people who live on a boat, but they don't go anywhere in the boat. This group is the subject of much discrimination. On our first year, we were warned to never refer to ourselves as live aboards. Municipalities think of them as bums or squatters. They try to pass laws to forbid them. The truth is that some live aboards live up to that bad reputation but many don't. A live aboard's focus may be on the water (making them more like cruisers) or on land (making them more like land-based residents).

Circumnavigstors are the elite. Everyone admires them.

Circumnavigators with children are the elite among circumnavigators.

If you see well tanned people walking along the road, near the water, wearing t-shirts! baseball cap and Crocs, and carrying four bags full of groceries, they may be cruisers.

Unwilling cruisers. I heard of more than one case where the man wants to cruise whole the wife follows under protest. In extreme cases, the wife stays on board the boat all day with air conditioning and TV. We think it very unfair to force a partner to cruise unwillingly. But often an unwilling cruiser situation can be transformed into a much happier part-time cruising compromise. A second solution is that of the bachelor cruiser; the man cruises alone part time while the wife stays home. We can't think of a single case where the man-woman roles are reversed.

Single man bachelor cruisers. These men cruise single-handed and pick up girlfriends in each new port and invite them to spend the night on the "luxury yacht." We met several such cruisers over the years. What can one say to that other than wow?

Mission cruisers. For example a man who paddled his kayak 8000 miles. The teen who rowed a 23 foot sailboat (minus mast and sails) from Cleveland to Key West. A man with an 18 foot aluminum canoe with 15 hp outboard on a trip from Rochester to Key West. Those are the kind of people who walk the Appalacisn Trail when not cruising.

Armchair cruisers. I suspect that there is a huge army of armchair cruisers who dream of cruising in the future. Some of them read this blog. Many of them succeed eventually. But a warning: our friend Sandra on Carpe Diem, was an oncology nurse. She saw numerous patients who had their life's dream snatched away by unexpected illness. Carpe Diem is a very appropriate motto.

See also CLODs, (Cruisers Living on Dirt)

Just Do It

Zebulon, NC

Well, it was a long hard drive to get here.   We had a last minute surprise.  Our grandaughter Sara and great-grandaughter Anna asked to hitch a ride to Dave & Cathy's house where they are going to visit for a while.  Naturally, we are delighted to have their company.

On the other hand, our car was already stuffed full of camping gear, yet Sara has tons of baby equipment.  Fortunately, we could use the canoe as a cargo trailer.  We did that.  I had a bit of fear of being stopped for driving a Beverly Hillbillies type of vehicle, but it all worked out fine.

Before that, I got a call from a W28 owner, and would be cruiser.  He wanted to ask questions about cruising.   Libby and I did our best to answer his questions.   After the call, I realized that his real problem was simply reluctance to take the plunge on such a non-orthodox life style.  I wished I had said to him Just Do It!

Cruising is not for everybody.  That applies to couples and to single people.   They can talk to others, and ask advice, but in the end the only way to know for sure is to try it out.   The magic number seems to be two years.   After two years of cruising, you will almost surely be certain.  Cruising is or is not for you.   If not, then you can give it up and try somethings else.  If yes, then you can finish cutting the ties to land-based life such as houses, cars, and storage bins, and do so without trepidation.

Part time cruising is also a perfectly viable solution for many people.  Indeed, by my estimate, 80% of the cruisers we meed do it part time.   It also seems that after 10 years of full-time cruising, Libby and I are gradually slipping into the  part-time model.

Just about the only choice that I can say is almost always wrong, is to sit home dreaming about living the cruising life, but not actually doing it.  Once again: Just Do It.

Rookies

Vero Beach
27.39.56 N 080 22.27 W


Vero Beach is a great place to meet cruisers of all kinds.   A large fraction of East Coast cruisers are heading directly for the Bahamas.   Few go to Marathon, but almost all of them stop in Vero.   Of course we meet veteran cruisers here, but I notice that every year there is a larger proportion of rookies than veterans.  The total population of cruisers does not seem to be cruising.  Therefore, many of these rookies must give up after the first season. What can we conclude from that?


The cruising life is not agreeable to everyone.   The freedom of movement and the simplification of life style veteran cruisers find to be the greatest appeal.   To others however, they experience it seen as estrangement from family and friends, and deprivation of the accustomed comforts of modern life.  We do after all, live most of our lives in a 10x15 foot area for two people smaller than a typical jail cell for one person.  What can we say about that?  To each their own.


It must also be true that many of these rookie cruisers have no intention of making it a life style.  They are on a once-in-a-lifetime extended vacation.   Some of them must be fulfilling a major bucket list item.  Good for them I say.  They are out there doing it rather than staying at home wishing they were doing something different.   


It must also be true that the terrible economy has a major effect.  Libby and I had no idea how lucky we were to get rid of our house and cars and other possessions in 2005, before the bad economy.  In today's markets it might be nearly impossible for people to extract themselves from the constraints of property ownership and the employment treadmill.   For those people we can do nothing more than express sympathy.  It would be very frustrating to have the will and the means to cruise, yet to be unable to escape another life style.


A final possibility is that some of these rookies are following my advice.   Very often we meet people who would like to cruise, but who are not confident that both husband and wife will like it.   I advise them to try it for one winter season.  The 80-20 rule should apply.  After one season, 80% of the trial cruisers will know better if they want more.  The ones who do, can try again for a full year.   After that there should only be 4% still undecided.  We've been told, that the magic number seems to be two years.  After two years of cruising, just about everyone is decided -- they either like it or they don't.


Did I talk about financial exploitation of these rookies by the magazines, and by the sellers of marine equipment?  I'll save that for another day.

Speech #14: Cooling Hot Conversations

Have you ever lost a close friend? I lost a 50 year long friendship with a couple on the other end of the political spectrum because I was afraid to engage them in debate. All I dared talk to them about was the weather. The friendship became boring, it withered and died. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is apathy.

It is a societal problem. We become ever more polarized because we only dare to have conversations with people who agree with us. That is unhealthy. I am here today to offer my personal tips to avoid that.

The meaning of the words all and none are crystal clear. Everyplace in between all and none is some. There are hundreds of synonyms for some. I call them SoS words Here are a few examples.

few/little/lot/couple/handful, many, most, hardly any, almost all, the vast majority, paltry/piddling/smattering, a bit/quite a bit, and so on.

All those Sos words mean more than 0% and less than 100% but it is not defined how many percent they do mean.

Here's the problem. In my mind, many is more than few. In your mind many is more than few. But when we converse, there is no guarantee that my many is more than your few. That causes misunderstandings and needless arguments.

Let me give you an example. I'll pick on Manal. Please forgive me Manal. Manal knows that there are about 70000 drug overdose deaths in America every year. But she doesn't say that. Se says “there a lot of OD deaths.” Sam, works for a life insurance company. He knows about the 70000 OD deaths. Sam and Manal are in complete agreement! But Sam also thinks about the 2.7 million deaths for other reasons so he says “no there are only a few OD deaths”. Now we set the stage for a pointless and stupid argument. Why? Because they used Sos words instead of numbers, and because they are not arguing about facts but rather the choice of words to describe the facts.

So here are my 3 tips.

Number 1

Replace Sos words in your speech with numbers even if you have no basis for the actual number.

We should have three magic numbers. 20% 50% and 80% When you use one of those numbers in an argument, it should be understood that you just pulled the number out of the air to avoid using a Sos word. There is no need to challenge, “Where did you get that percent?”

If you hear your opponent exaggerate, he might say 99.9%, let it go. My trick is pretend that he said the less inflammatory 80%. I try not to allow the debate to be diverted from facts to an argument about the choice of words or choice of numbers.

To be really mellow and achieve Zen, translate all of those Sos words and all of those percent numbers in your head to the universal word some. My opponent said “the vast majority” while I was thinking “hardly any.” But, we are both saying some. Instead of arguing, rejoice in your agreement and move on.

Tip 2: Troll Repellent

Suppose you say, “Sometimes X is true.” An argumentative opponent responds, “Yeah, but sometimes X is not true.” The other guy is using a debate tactic called trolling. You can ward off trolling simply by saying in the first place “Sometimes X is true, sometimes not.” Those two extra words, sometimes not, do nothing to change the meaning of your sentence. There is no linguistic or logical reason to include them. But using those two words acknowledges the contrary case up front and that repels trolls like garlic repels vampires.
Now combine tips 1 and 2. You should say “X is true 80% of the time and false 20% of the time.”

Tip 3: Choose Your Battles

When a conversation has already degraded to an argument over characterizations rather than facts, stay out of it. Suppose there is a heated argument about whether something is good or bad. There is 0% chance of you persuading anyone to flip flop on their opinions, only 20% chance of you improving the argument, and 80% chance of you increasing everyone's blood pressure by adding yet another voice to am already silly argument. Believe me, that strategy can add years to your life expectency.

There is less than 20% chance of my tips changing global society. Nevertheless, I am 80% sure that it is worth trying.

Moment Near Disaster

I'm sure you've heard the expression, "My life is measured by hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror." The expression may be a bit overstated but it is essentially true. A life's memories consist primarily of a few choice moments. When we approached retirement, Libby and I thought back on life's choice moments and we realized that very many of them were moments on sailboats. This is the story of one of those moments.

One fine fall day in the mid 1970s we decided to go sailing on Champlain. At the time, Libby and I owned a 19 foot O'Day Mariner. Our friends John and Mary Ann owned an International 14. The Mariner was a day sailor, while the 14 was a classic wooden racing dinghy. We couldn't decide which boat to sail so we brought both of them up to Chazy where Libby's aunt and uncle owned a lovely place on the lake. My sister Nancy also came along for the day trip.

It was a long drive up, more than 3.5 hours en route, but the day was sunny and it was windy. Very windy. At the time I had no sailing experience on Lake Champlain so I didn't fully respect the dangers.

We decided that first out, we would take the 14. It was meant for a crew of two, so John and I hopped in and set out. I believe that we were wearing life jackets, but I don't remember for sure. At first, the ride was exhilarating. The 14 came out of the water and planed right away and we zoomed along. I loved it. It was my first (and last) time sailing on her. However, the further we got away from shore, the stronger the winds. I believe that the winds were in excess of 30 knots. Very soon we were fully engaged in trying to keep her upright. We hooked our feet under the hiking straps and leaned way back to windward. Then John headed her high in to the wind to control the heeling forces.

The 14 was equipped with a trapeze. I always wanted to try out a trapeze. To this day I still haven't done that. A trapeze is a rig that leads a line from high up on the mast down to a hook at chest height. To use it, you wear a harness with a ring on your chest. You hook the ring on to the trapeze hook and then you can let go with both hands, set your feet on the side of the hull and lean back until your head is just above the water, thus maximizing the righting moment of your body. On this day, I couldn't let go or move my body enough to use the trapeze without risking a capsize.

We began taking on water over the leeward rail because of excessive heel. However, the 14 had a self bailer that efficiently sucked the water right back out. When we were about 1 mile out from shore we decided that we must come about. Coming about on such a little boat is difficult. You have to get very low to get your body under the boom, then crawl up to the rail on the other side. At the same time, these motions of two crew persons must be coordinated with the changing heading of the boat to counterbalance the wind forces. Remarkably, we accomplished that maneuver without a hitch. Feeling in peril, we decided to head back in to the camp.

Heading back in meant that we were more on a broad reach than a close reach. The sails had to be eased, and we could not head in to the wind to ease heeling forces. It didn't work. In less than 30 seconds, the heeling forces overpowered us and we capsized. Fortunately, the water was not too cold. The next job was to get her righted and sail again.

We climbed up on the inverted hull and grabbed hold of the center board. Like magic, the boat turned over and righted herself. Also like magic, we climbed on board, grabbed the tiller and the sheets, and soon we were sailing again, but this time with a boat full of water.

With so much water in the boat she was very unstable. Still we miraculously held her upright and as we picked up speed, that neat little self bailer began to suck away all the water. I was impressed. However, before she was dry another gust came along and over we went again.

This time, righting the boat did not work well at all. Every time we grabbed the center board and rolled her over, the wind would catch the sail as she came up right and roll her over again the other way. We righted her three times and three times the wind knocked her down again before we could climb in. The mast had filled with water making the boat top heavy. There is supposed to be a foam ball at the top of the mast to provide buoyancy and to prevent water from filling the mast when capsized. We had no such ball. The third knockdown was the bad one. That time, the sails and the rig came down on top of John. Worse, the hook on the trapeze caught in John's clothes or his harness and it pulled him under water.

I was hanging on to the stern and I saw John's face being pulled under water. I held the boat with one hand and stretched out the other one to grab John's hand. When I had him, I pulled back in. His face came back above water but he was stuck. What to do next? I couldn't let go or try another approach without him being pulled under water again. Therefore, we both just continued to pull with our outstretched arms. Thankfully, after a minute or so, something snapped and released John. I think it was a bungee cord on the trapeze that snapped.

We were too cold and too tired to try to right the dinghy again, so we just hung on to the overturned hull. Eventually, Libby cousin Wendell saw our predicament and came out with a motor boat and rescued us. We towed the 14 back to shore upside down.

Well, like a bunch of fools, what do you think we did next after drying off? We launched the Mariner to go sailing of course. This time it was John and Nancy and I. We wanted to sail her up to the Little Chazy River where there was a boat ramp. Our experience on the Mariner was entirely different. The wind was still blowing at 30 plus knots and the chop was 4-5 feet. Yet the Mariner is a very seaworthy vessel and she handled the conditions very well. We sailed about 3 miles up wind to the river feeling perfectly secure and perfectly under control the whole way. The only excitement came when I tried to lower the jib.

The Mariner had no lifelines and a very small foredeck. I went up to the bow to lower the sail, but when I got there we were hit by a number of extra big waves. Up went the bow 6-8 feet, then down it crashed in to the trough. When it came down, my feet lifted off the deck and soon I was hanging horizontally in the air, four feet above the deck. Fortunately, I had a strong grip on the fore stay. I didn't let go. This happened three times before things settled down.

It wasn't until some days or weeks later when we reflected on what danger we were really in that day and how close John came to drowning. It is a memory I'm not fond of recalling.

So what was the lesson learned that day? Stay on shore you fools when the weather is too much for your vessel. What in the world were we thinking?

Pamlico Sound

Pamlico Sound
35 14 N 075 45 W

This is the first time we've ever sailed out in Pamlico Sound. It's like an enormous lagoon here, comparable in size to the Bahamian Grand Bank. We're en route to Ocracoke Island. That's yet another paradise location. It is reachable only by water. No cell phones, no ships. It is said to have a quaint little village populated by artists. I'll write more after we look around.

Yesterday, at Blackbeard Sailing Club, some of the members started showing up for the weekend. We had lunch with Ed on Tarwathie. Ed told us about the grandson he is so proud of. Ed's grandson is a professional crew on Americas Cup yachts. Wow! That's about as high as you can get in sailing heirarchy.

We also got to meet Les and Suzzane from Last Dance, our hosts. We also met Charlie and Terry. Dave and Leigh were there also tending to their Gulfstar 44 that they just bought. So what did we do? We did what boaters always do when hanging around the docks, we sat around with a few drinks, and we swapped stories. We also got in to a little mischief, which is completely typical of dockside behavior.

The mischief involved a bike that Charlie had borrowed. He rode it out on the dock and parked it next to Tarwathie, as we sat in the cockpit and told stories. Wouldn't you know it, a gust of wind came along, it toppled the bike and splash down it fell into the water. Time for a Chinese fire drill, one would think. I rummaged around to find the small Danforth anchor that we use on the dinghy. I thought that we could use it as a grappling hook. Before I got it though, Terry fetched a double
boat hook. Someone else had lashed together two 12 foot boat hooks to make a single 20 foot long hook. It worked like magic. In less than a minute, they hooked the bike and pulled it up. In two more minutes of fishing they also hooked and retrieved the bike's basket which had fallen off. It made a good afternoon and a source for yet another story to tell on yet another day. Such stories tend to improve with each telling, so that after a number of years, they are truly amazing.

We're likely to stay at Ocracoke for several days because high winds are expected to come Monday and Tuesday. After leaving Ocracoke, we'll head for Manteo and perhaps spend a couple of days there. We probably won't get to Elizabeth City until next weekend. That's fine. We're in no hurry, and we're exploring places we haven't been before.

A Young Engineer's Story

Editor’s note: One of the nice things about writing a blog is that you get to set the rules yourself. In this case I elect to post an article that has nothing to do with sailing. Instead it is an article I wrote about my youth; the high point of my career when I was only 23 years old. Although the subject is sometimes technical you don’t need any technical knowledge to read it and enjoy it.

Nostalgia: The First Full Scope Simulator, Dresden II
By Dick Mills
Simulators IX, Volume 24, No 4, Society For Computer Simulation, 1992

Abstract

The nuclear power plant training simulator industry was born Monday June 17, 1968 in Morris Illinois, with the inauguration of the Dresden 2 simulator. Many in the industry are familiar with "The Little Blue Schoolhouse" where this simulator is housed. It was built by a consortium of three General Electric divisions starting in 1966. The goal was to provide training which AEC would accept in lieu of the requirement that each operator participate in 5 startups or shutdowns every year.

With no good precedents, no real time models, no standards, and with the hottest new box from the GE Process Computer Department, and technology from the Saturn V rocket, the simulator was quite a challenge. In the end, it was delivered ahead of schedule, under budget, approved by AEC, and the event was reported by Walter Cronkite.

This paper is a light hearted memoir of the project, project members, and the times. It should be enjoyable to those familiar with the industry and big software projects.

Introduction

This paper is a highly personal recollection of the project by a, then, very young and innocent member of the project team. It is intended to be amusing. The names of actual people have been changed to protect the innocent.

In the mid 1960's, the nuclear industry was just making the transition from building pilot plants to production reactors. A contemporary problem was operator training. The AEC required each operator to participate in at least 5 startup or shutdown operations per year in order to remain current. As a result, to train and maintain proficiency of 5 shift crews, it was apparent that new reactors would have to spend a lot of their time starting and stopping just for training purposes.

General Electric's customer engineer in the Chicago office lobbied with his G.E., the customer, and with the AEC to build a simulator to alleviate this problem. He was successful, and the initial unofficial agreement was that if the simulator could be built, and was "sufficiently realistic", it could be used to replace up to 3 of the 5 required startups. The reference plant was to be Dresden II, in Morris Illinois. The plant would be commissioned after the simulator. We didn't call it "The Dresden Simulator", but rather "The Nuclear Power Plant Simulator" because there were no others.

Since there was no precedent, regarding how much realism would be sufficient, nor any precedent of doing a power plant model in real time, the simulator was a real challenge. Most engineers considered it flatly impossible. A major vendor of flight simulators was invited to make a proposal, but GE chose instead to build the simulator as an internal project.

Actually, there was a preceding simulator; the simulator for the nuclear ship NS Savannah. I know little about this simulator, except the handed-down stories that it was done in the early 1960's and that it made such a negative impression on “The Admiral” that he was strongly opposed to the idea of simulators, and negative on computers in general, throughout his career. At the time of the Dresden project, news of the NS Savannah case was either unknown or suppressed, and little is still known to the author. It is therefore conveniently disregarded in the race for being first.

The project was scheduled for completion in 24 months at a cost of $2 million. Actually, it was done 2 months ahead of schedule, $0.25 million under budget, and was proclaimed "good enough" by the AEC. It was a success by all counts.

The Cast of Players

The project was done by teams from three corners of the USA. GE Apollo Support Department, (ASD), in Daytona Beach Florida, was the prime contractor. This department had just completed the project for launch control computers for the Saturn V rocket as part of the Apollo program. They assigned about 15 people to the simulator project.

I worked for GE Electric Utility Engineering Operation (EUEO) in Schenectady New York. EUEO was an in-house consulting group within G.E. One senior engineer (Doug), one programmer, and one 22 year old trainee (me) were assigned to the project. Doug was amazing. He seemed to know by instinct all about the equipment, the process physics, and modeling. I learned a lot working with Doug.

GE Nuclear Energy Department (NED) in San Jose California was the customer. They wanted to reserve their best people for actual power plants. However, the simulator was so fascinating, that it attracted the attention of some of San Jose's best, despite the low dollar value of the contract.

The Project Plan

The split of work was easy to understand. We in Schenectady would do "the dynamic model". This included the models of point kinetics, reactor and auxiliaries, turbine, control, and electrical systems. San Jose supplied project management, data package services, and the 3D neutronics model. ASD would do the hardware and all remaining software. We called the ASD part the logic model because much of it involved logic and component interfaces with switches and lamps on the panels.

The project began in the fall of 1966 and was planned to last for two years. Planning and data collection activities filled most of 1966.

In 1967, the three groups worked mostly at home in isolation. In Schenectady, we did our modeling in FORTRAN using a GE simulation program called FACE. We would get one turn-around per day running test cases. At 0800 we would get the results of the previous day's job. We would examine it, make changes, add new stuff, and prepare cards for the next run. By noon, we would usually have the job submitted to be fetched the following morning. Afternoons we worked on other projects.

In November, we shipped FORTRAN listings to ASD. San Jose did the same with the 3D neutronics model. ASD hand translated these listings to assembler. One-time hand translation is not such a bad job. ASD did it, they checked it, and made very few errors. They also interfaced the global variables to the control panels. This part of the job was done with zero defects. It worked flawlessly from the first day.

The final phase of the project, starting in January 1968, was the system integration and test in Daytona Beach. Doug stayed home in Schenectady, and I was appointed to support our part of the project on site. As I'll soon describe, those became some of the most memorable months of my life.

Soul of a New Simulator

Since I was so young and so green, I thought it normal for big projects like this one to be ahead of schedule and under budget. Years later, I read Tracy Kidder's book, Soul of a New Machine. I was immediately reminded of the Dresden project, and understood much better how and why it was so successful. The parallels were especially strong during the last months.

The final 6 months of the project were carried out at ASD in Daytona Beach Florida; not at all a bad place. GE made an arrangement with the King's Inn, a beach front motel. We had a block of beach front rooms for the first 6 months of 1968. We stayed through the motorcycle races, through the Daytona 500 stock car race, and through the college student spring break invasion. At one point I had a half dozen nubile coeds willing to pay me $100 each to share my room. I am married so, needless to say, I declined, but it sure did boost my self esteem.

The work schedule was incredible, although it didn't seem so at the time. We met at 7:30 for breakfast, and would be in the control room by 8:30. An hour for lunch, and 2 hours for dinner, would be our breaks. We would quit around midnight. Then, we would often go out to the bars and for drinks before retiring for 4 to 5 hours of sleep. This is the schedule we used Monday through Saturday. Sundays we didn't start work until noon. One Sunday a school of whales became beached down the way. It was sad.

Most of us were young, but Harold was in his 40s. He complained about how hard it was to keep up with us kids, but we didn't understand him. Harold's job was to observe and to report to the project manager, John, what was going on. I was only 23, and Hertz refused to rent me a car. Harold graciously volunteered to be my chauffeur for the duration. We became great buddies.

Bill was in his fifties. He is an extraordinary man. Bill had been a GE employee for 20 or 30 years, and had lived in each of 14 foreign countries for a year or more. He was a genuine connoisseur, not a phony. Bill was sent out by San Jose. He didn't seem to have any regular duties, but Bill's true function soon became apparent. Once or twice a week, Bill would grab several of us and take us out for a dinner. These dinners were so spectacular and lavish that they made lifetime memories. After these dinners we were not only relieved of stress, but also rested and eager to work. We often went back to work after the dinners rather than going directly to bed.

Bill had a purple Jaguar and a blond wife 30 years younger than he. Soon after the simulator project was finished, Bill and his wife disappeared, abandoning their apartment, its contents, and the Jaguar. Harold claimed to have gotten a letter from them a year later. He said they established a trading post along the upper Amazon in the Emerald Forest. Nobody ever heard from them again.

John was the project manager. He was really mysterious. He stayed in San Jose. I met him there in 1966, and didn't see him again until 1968 at the inauguration in Morris. In the meantime, nobody saw or heard from John except Harold, but Harold never told us what John was saying. Again, the similarities to Tracy Kidder's book are remarkable.

Swelled Head

Personally, my reputation, and lifetime career direction were established on the test floor at ASD. Most of the ASD people were stars from the Apollo program. They were old, (i.e. 25 to 30), while I was only 23 years old. They also had salaries about double mine. I was awed by them. My job was to stand around and wait for troubles to occur with the dynamic model so that I could fix them or call Schenectady. While waiting, I couldn't help observing and learning.

One day, everything hit the fan. Someone discovered a major bug so massive in extent that it would have threatened the whole project schedule. There were about thirty people in the room and they were all shocked and depressed. "Oh no! What will we do now? We're hosed!" Well, the night before I had been reading the computer manual to put me to sleep and I got an idea from what I had read. I suggested a simple fix that would take less than 30 seconds to make. There was long silent pause; then someone exclaimed, "That's brilliant! Let's do it." Everybody turned and stared at me as if I were a zoo animal. I guess what they were staring at was the sight of my head inflating. To this day, I have not entirely recovered from Daytona Beach hubris.

My Mamma Done Told Me

We were troubled with blinking lights. In the turbine EHC part of the panels were a lot of red and green lights showing valve positions. Every once in a while, during steady-state operations, it seemed as if there were a wave of light which would pass across the panel. We all saw it, but it happened so infrequently and so fast that nobody was sure exactly what they saw. We certainly didn't know what was wrong.

This continued for some weeks. Finally one evening, one of ASD's best programmers exclaimed, "Aha! I've got it." He explained that one of the female engineers on the' project, who wasn't there at the moment, had violated one of the cardinal rules of real time programming. She had an array of lights, in in her program she initially set the array to zero, then calculated the ones which should be on. The problem came when the asynchronous panel input/output program, would happen to sample just in the middle the critical block of code.

The programmers all shook their heads in disgust for such an unforgivable error. One of them said, "My mamma done told me; Don't ever use GLOBAL COMMON for scratch." I never forgot that lesson and in all these years I never committed that particular error.

The Super Swing

In April, we began to notice an irritating instability. It was an oscillation which touched all the major variables in the reactor, turbine, feed water and recirc systems. It never lasted more than 30 seconds, and then it would disappear. Inception didn't seem to be correlated with anything we could find. The circumstances made it particularly difficult to find the cause of the oscillation. I tried and others tried too to find the cause without success. Nevertheless, we didn't worry about it because it didn't disrupt the work very much.

About a month before shipment, somebody was getting nervous. San Jose sent out a delegation of their big guns. Nobody said so, but we all knew that their purpose of being there was to fix the problem which we weren't capable of fixing ourselves. It had reached the point where it was jeopardizing the whole project.

During the morning the experts there, the oscillation came and went twice. The experts were looking nervous because they didn't have any more idea of what to do than we did. Furthermore, they didn’t understand our models and they didn’t know how to program this computer. They faced egg on their faces.

Suddenly, I was seized by an impulse. Without explanation, I rushed to the computer and changed the neutron point kinetics time constant from 0.1 to 0.2 seconds. It only took me 5 seconds to make the change. Somehow, via an intuitive guess, I knew that this would fix the swing and it did. I swear that the idea came to me just at that moment. It was not something I was holding back. My good guess also saved the experts from San Jose a lot of trouble and embarrassment. They didn't have to find the bug the hard way, they escaped reading code in binary, and nor did they have to face the prospect that they couldn't fix it. They were certainly grateful. My head swelled another three sizes.

Days In The Sun

The ASD and San Jose guys with the high salaries, got paid overtime for 92 hour weeks including time-and-a-half, double-time, and triple-time. Most pocketed an extra year's pay for these few months. One guy bought a new Corvette for cash with the excess money. It was my misfortune that Schenectady didn't pay overtime at all. At the end of the project, I tried to tell my boss, Doctor K, how hard I worked, and how much pay I missed out on. His offer was, "Take a couple of days off."

Elves, Trolls, And Gnomes

We had no compiler, no assembler, no keyboard, or printer that we could use with the simulator computer. There was an IBM Selectric typewriter but it couldn't be used for programming. Our method of working was to use bound copies of assembler listings, with changes marked in pencil. We made changes in code and data directly, in binary, using the buttons on the computer console. If the change worked, we would snapshot the whole core onto the drum, and pencil in the change in the listing. Once a week or so, the palace elves (I never found out who) would take our listings away to some GE office in Orlando. They would update card decks from the penciled notes and run them through a cross assembler on a big mainframe. We would have fresh listings in the morning. I can't remember a single case where the elves committed even the smallest error of omission or commission. Their nocturnal activities were, to the best of my memory, always flawless.

Behind the main panels was a rack about the size of a refrigerator. It was the panel I/O hardware. Even by today's standards, it was remarkably compact. Especially considering that we had no integrated circuits. It was also very reliable. It worked almost always from the very first day. Once in a while though, we would get some anomalous results. When that happened, a truly mysterious ritual would be acted out. Someone would call "the man". A guy would appear with a box that looked like a Geiger counter. He also had a wand, about 1 meter long, attached to the box. He waved the wand around the cabinet, stuck it into the openings, and presto the problems would be gone for a week or two. I never found out what was real, what was put-on, or what was pure troll magic.

San Jose hired this guy, Gregor, to be the salesman for the simulator time. One day in March 1968, he walked onto the floor. We were targeting an August project completion. Gregor said that he had sold out all the simulator time for the next two years. Great! Then he said that he had forgotten Dresden II, the reference plant. To make amends, he sold them two months at the front end. He hoped that we would be able to accelerate the delivery to be ready by June instead! For a while, Gregor was the project gnome.

Free Memory

The computer we used for the project was a General Electric GEPAC 4020. In 1967, it was brand new and the hottest machine on the block. Its competitors in those days were the PDP/8 and the Link GP/4. The IBM 1800 had not been released. We got 4020 serial number 2. Exxon, in Aruba, was more important than we. They got serial number 1.

The 4020 had no floating point, 24K words of core memory (24 bits per word). We had 130K words of drum, about half the capacity of today's floppy disk. There was no operating system. We started with a "naked" machine. The machine language, called PAL, was simple and easy to learn. As a point of calibration, the computing power we had to work with on the simulator was comparable to the old Apple II computers, or perhaps 2% of the power of a 1992 PC.

[about 0.01% of a 2006 PC]

One day, somebody noticed in the literature that core memory was priced in 8K banks, but that spare parts were listed in 16K banks only. We had paid for 24K, the documents said 24K, but only 16K or 32K was possible. We checked and sure enough, we had been using 32K for several months without noticing.

Despite the fact that we had no operating system, and no FORTRAN, we did have global COMMON. At least we had a contiguous area of memory where we stored all the variables. A copy of this on drum was a snapshot or IC.

We had two cycles for model programs, one Hertz and ten Hertz. For many years to come, our competitors accused the Dresden simulator as being "not real time", even though they used the same frequencies, one and ten Hertz. I never understood the basis of their criticism.

All debugging was done using the switches on the computer console. One could stop the computer, then examine and modify programs and data in binary using the lights and buttons. To make a snapshot, one loaded the A register with the snapshot number and executed a JSR to a program which wrote data to drum. Program changes were all done by "patches". It sounds wild thinking back, but most of us memorized several hundred of the most important program and data addresses in octal. Nine years later I won a bet by correctly recalling the octal address of reactor pressure.

The AEC Inspector

The immediate goal of the simulator project was to win approval for substitution of simulator training for up to 3 of the 5 required startups. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) had unofficially indicated that they would approve the idea if the simulator was "good enough". To prove the goodness, we had to get someone from the AEC to come to Daytona Beach to look at it.

That turned out to be a problem because, at the time, Federal employees were allowed $25 per day for room and meals. In Daytona Beach, motel rooms cost much more than $25 per night, not to mention meals, so government employees couldn't afford to come. After some weeks of impasse, Bill made "arrangements", and the AEC inspector arrived. He played with the simulator one morning. In the afternoon we let him pull the rods until he had nuclear criticality.

Pulling critical in real time with real simulated instruments was so much fun it was almost irresistible. We had to repeat it for every visiting engineer from San Jose, and of course we did it for the AEC man. Each of us, including the AEC man, felt as if he were Enrico Fermi himself under the bleachers in Chicago in 1942. In the evening, Bill took him out for dinner. The simulator was pronounced "good enough" to be used for training in lieu of a certain amount of real plant experience. Ignominious as it may seem, this pronouncement was, and still is, the foundation of our simulator industry.

Inauguration Day

The day of the inauguration, June 17, 1968 was a lot of fun. GE invited press and TV reporters from all over the country. They had a tent set up for a big buffet and open bar in the afternoon. The reporters must have known about the party because about 150 of them showed up. The following Sunday, the New York Times gave it about half of a page, and the 3 TV networks each gave it about 5 minutes on the news. Walter Cronkite was the one who told the world "and that's the way it was” that evening to the background sound of an alarm horn from our simulator.

We jammed more than 100 VIPs and reporters into the very small control room for the grand finale. My job was simple. We had one remaining bug which caused an alarm horn to honk all the time. My job in the demonstration was to hold my finger on the alarm silence button to keep it from honking.

The climax came when we did the station blackout malfunction. The room went black as the overhead lights went out. The horns sounded, (I had released the button). Hundreds of green lights suddenly became red illuminating the faces in the room the color of fresh blood. A woman screamed. Everyone else gasped. This was the birth moment of our industry.

After a few seconds, the lights came back on when the simulator had faithfully started the diesel and began restoring loads. When the recirc pumps started, the simulator did just as we had programmed, and beautifully dimmed the room lights simulating low voltage. We were especially proud of this, because controlling fluorescent lights with a computer was a neat trick. The spice was provided by a Commonwealth Edison VP in the back of the room. His angry voice protested, "We have adequate house power. Our lights don't dim!"

The ultimate irony came as I looked over my shoulder. Outside, peeking in the window, were four Dresden operators who were supposedly being trained that morning. It was their training which we were celebrating. There was no room for them to get into the building, so they had boosted themselves up to the window for a peek. This picture of me was taken on that day.

Later in the day, the press retired to the tent for beer and bourbon. I drove back to O`Hare airport and heard the bulletin on the car radio about the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. I should have stayed for the bourbon. The picture below shows me on that day.

The Instructor's Panel

The instructor's control panel was a marvel of human factors engineering. It had a rectangular matrix of buttons. Most buttons had a maintained position, and a local (i.e. not computer controlled) back light to show status.

Each thing the instructor could do had its own dedicated button. Yes, that's right, an individual button for every IC and one for every malfunction. The matrix of buttons served at the same time as a menu, a control device, a monitor of current status, and a limit to how many functions we could simulate. At the bottom of the consoles were a couple of thumb switches used to set the values of external parameters.

Nobody ever asked for training on how to operate the instructor's panel. In Morris, we put it right in the middle of the control room, just a few feet behind the operators. We didn't know about pedagogy, and nobody complained.

The Green Book

While I was doing all these things in Daytona Beach, Doug continued working on documentation back in Schenectady. It was finished about the same time the simulator was delivered.

The result was an enormous book, about 4 inches thick, full of equations, block diagrams, and curves from transient tests. It was obvious to everybody that this was high calorie technology. In combination with its thickness and timeliness, it impressed the hell out of everybody. It was bound in a green leather cover, and it soon became known as "The Green Book." It was marked as strictly proprietary General Electric information.

Nearly a decade later, I had occasion to have contact with a competitor who had delivered some BWR simulators. I was shocked to hear their engineers refer casually to "The Green Book". They were not supposed to have seen it or even heard of it!

My only consolation to having been the victim of industrial espionage was my knowledge that "The Green Book" documented the state of the models eight months before delivery. The changes made and bugs fixed in Daytona Beach during integration were never reported to Schenectady, nor incorporated in "The Green Book". I dreamt, hopefully, of my competitors wasting millions trying to fix bugs that had been fixed before.

Conclusion

A significant point regarding the simulator project never occurred to me until writing this paper. Whose decision was it to authorize so much paid overtime while the project was continuously ahead of schedule? Furthermore, how did the project come in under budget after paying these extra costs for overtime? Maybe the mysterious project manager John, was more Machiavellian than I ever suspected.

In any event, we who earn a living building or owning nuclear power plant training simulators all owe a debt to this pioneering project.

Single Handed, but Tweeting, Part 1

Umatilla, FL

My friend Peter Ryan on his Westsail Onapua, just completed an 11 day single-handed passage from Hampton, VA to Virgin Gorda in the BVIs.  He had a modern gadget called Inreach that allowed him to "tweet" during the voyage.  I think that Peter's tweets are very interesting.  The dynamics of tweeting are subtly different thatn blogging.

Peter gave me permission to post his tweets here.  I'll comment on them in my next post.  For now, let Peter's words speak for themselves.

Day 1 , 4.9 knots: Am heading out of the Chesapeake in 25 knots with Mystic which is an Allergy 35 and doing 6 knots. Woohoo!

Day 1 : Snacking on flat bread crackers just so my stomach stays settled in this rough weather

Day 1 : I have so much good food on board the boat it is hard to decide what to eat. Am picking at the moment and just had a tomato. I need to eat food that will rot

Day 1 : I hadn't realized that my tracking wasn't turned on and I don't know where all those messages went

Day 1 , 4.9 knots: Books fruit and bits and pieces are littering the sole. I thought I had buttoned up everything well but I was mistaken. Wave height is starting to subside

Day 1 : It's turning chilly and I have had to put on some extra layers. Sun is no longer shining

Day 1 : So far today, I have completed 57 nautical miles at an average of 5.7 knots in 8 hours with just less than 300 to go. Whew!

Day 1 : I started out with Mystic, an Alberg35 and I was really hoping that we could stay together during this voyage, but unfortunately they are going a lot slower

Day 1 : This trip has a couple of serious consequences in that not only do I not have internet access for 2 weeks but also I will miss the presidential election

Day 1 : Because I left a day ahead of most of the boats in the Rally, I am going to be missing the Halloween party but having this great wind to sail is worth it

Day 1 : It's the middle of the night and I can't sleep because it is so exhilarating watching the boat tear along at 6 knots in complete darkness cutting the waves

Day 2 : I finally got some sleep. Even though it was only an hour at least it will help my sanity. It's still blowing 15 knots and boat is doing 6.5 knots

Day 2 : Even though it is still mostly dark I had a yogurt. I don't feel that I can get back to sleep at this point even though I only had 2 hours of sleep

Day 2 : I have my sails up and my engine full on and I am still only making 3 knots speed over ground. I have a log measuring speed through water and it says 6.5 knot

Day 2 : Tried to sleep but the boat keeps on wandering. Have been going over in my mind of how to deal with the storm that is due Friday

Day 2 : The water temperature here in the middle of the gulf stream is 77 compared to yesterday in Hampton of just 61. I am hot today and was shivering yesterday.

Day 3 : Slept very well last night with my last one for 2 hours. A little dawn is just starting to appear and so the magic of sunrise begins

Day 3 : Well it turns out that my second day wasn't so bad after all with 110 miles. I thought that the gulf stream would slow me down a lot more.

Day 3 : I just transferred one of my 6 five gallon diesel jugs into the fuel tank using my new syphon hose. Much easier than using my Baja filter.

Day 3 , 6.6 knots: I have 1000 miles to go and I have already sailed 260 miles. if I get good winds like I have had it would be feasible to assume I could make it in 8 days.

Day 3 : My sail repair tape didn't hold the tear so I have resorted to using guerilla tape. Lots of it. I have another genoa if this one gives out.

Day 3 : Both my solar panels were caked in salt so I gave them a good clean. Because I do not have the motor running, I rely on them 4 my radio, autopilot and fridge

Day 3 : Often safety on a boat is a matter of keeping yr eyes open. The end of my autopilot was sticking out a little and when I looked closely it was about 2 fall of

Day 3 : I think I was a bit overzealous in the fruits and vegetables provisioning department and so to help I had tomatoes, celery, carrots and an Apple for lunch

Day 3 : Except when I am down below in the cabin, I always wear my life jacket. If I go forward I also clip on to my jacklines.

Day 3 : Just had a very refreshing nap but got woken up by my AIS alarm from a ship 8 miles south of me

Day 3 : I am trying to decide what to eat tonight. I've had enough of salads & have a hankering 4 some beans & rice and some brussel sprouts that I could roast. Mmmm!

Day 3 : 1 neat thing about this trip is that I have sailed all the way with a little motor sailing across the GS What cruisers never let on is how much they motor.

Day 3 : I have been having problems with Bluetooth connectivity between my satellite device and my smartphone and I think I have narrowed it down to the refrigerator

Day 3 : I decided to trim my beard while I was cooking the brussel sprouts and nearly burnt them. You'd think I'd learn. Never ever leave a propane stove cooking. Grr

Day 3 : Does anybody know what time it is? I am supposed to listen to the evening chat for the SDR at 8pm AST but I don't know if it changes with daylight savings.

Day 3 : Listening to the band "Lady Hawke" while I am eating dinner. One thing about single handing is that crew or neighbors never complain about my music selection

Day 3 : Just listened to the SDR SSB net on 8107 and heard a couple of boat reports just north of me where they reported little wind. am still getting NE at 10 knot

Day 4 : I have been sleeping in the quarter berth so far on this trip. Normally if the boat is rocking a lot, I will put a Cushion on the sole and sleep there.

Day 4 : The wind lightened up considerably and started coming from my Port stern quarter so I turned the engine on. I want to be as far SE away from tomorrow's storm

Day 4 : I woke after a hour sleep and the wind had got back up so I switched the motor off and now I am making a healthy 5.5 knots. It is cold away from the GS

Day 4 : Boat is making a steady 5 knots and when the boat is happy, I am happy. It is amazing how noisy the way is in the dark especially sitting in the cockpit.

Day 4 : I saw another ship, just the 2nd one on this voyage. I haven't read any books yet cos I have been focusing on getting the boat working well but I will today

Day 4 : So far today I have averaged 5.2 knots so I should have a healthy 130 mile day which will bring me up to near 400 miles for the first 3 days of the voyage.

Day 4 : Even though I have not felt seasick, I have not felt like eating after dark & I have 2 make an extra effort. U do seem 2 need very strong sea legs 4 this trip

Day 4 : When I left VA I didn't change my clocks for daylight saving so now I am automatically on AST. It's not like I have to be anywhere at a certain time.

Day 4 : Just had a small squall come over the boat with wind on the nose and rain. Thank goodness I was awake.

Day 4 : Feeling nauseous so I ate yogurt and muesli. It could be to do with my sleep routine being out of whack.

Day 4 : Am motoring into a light ESE breeze. Have pulled the genoa off completely to sew it even though the guerilla tape held it just fine.

Day 4 : Am trying to prepare myself mentally for what is going to be coming tomorrow night and Saturday. The most important thing is safety. Making headway comes 2nd

Day 4 : Another small sparrow hitched a ride and tried to eat my mainsheet. I fell asleep in the cockpit and missed listening to the cruiser's SSB net this morning.

Day 4 , 3.8 knots: Been motoring all day into slight headwinds. Blue sky and hot. Definitely T-shirt and Short weather. Been sleeping off and on most of the day to catch up

Day 4 : Wo fishing. I very rarely throw a lure overboard because it is too much to manage the boat and fish at the same time. Plus a fish is usually too much to eat.

Day 4 : I have a problem with my refrigerator stopping my Inreach satellite device from working. Not sure how to solve the problem.

Day 4 : I had my daily statutory ration of salad for lunch today and I am about to make zucchini, onion and Mac and cheese for dinner.

Day 4 : A ship! A ship! I see another boat. Just the 3rd boat I have see in 3 days

Day 4 : Just had a long chat with the ship nav officer and he said that he picked up my AIS signal from 10 miles away. He also said 2 expect 25knot westerlies tomorro

Day 4 : I heard that the boats that left yesterday are having bad weather and 2 had to divert. I am counting my lucky stars with fabulous sailing conditions.

Day 4 : The chocolate rations are going well. One piece a day sort of like the rum rations in the Navy for morale however the odd piece may disappear like things do.

Day 4 : I actually ate dinner tonight in the formal dining room which meant I had to put on a new T-shirt & change out of the 1 that I have been wearing since Hampton

Day 5 : I have Lee cloths for constraining u while sleeping but I never use them. I like to get up&look around the boat&get back 2 sleep with minimal interruption.

Day 5 , 3.3 knots: A nice little breeze has sprung up. Is it the real deal or is it just a passing phase? Do I raise my sails and head off in a new direction or do I wait and see what comes of it? I waited and half an hour later it died. Frustrating.

Day 5 : Clear starry sky tonight from horizon2horizon. There is no moon so it is pitch black but you can see a slight mist all the way around the boat. Quite magical.

Day 5 : There is a counter current of about half a knot that I have been fighting for a few hours now. I have a speed log on the hull that measures my speed  through the water and I can compare it to the GPS SOG (speed over ground)

Day 5 : Even though it is not cold, i like to use a heavy wool blanket to sleep under because it is comfortable and cosy. Sleeping on a boat is difficult anyway so  you need as much help as you can get.

Day 5 : I have 100 gallons of diesel on board which can get me 600 miles or about 5 days of motoring. I have probably used about 15 gallons so far and have come a third of the way so I am in good shape

Day 5 : I slept well last night in preparation4the forecast bad weather. I got up a half dozen times&each time slept for about an hour or two. I don't set an alarm.

Day 5 : The ocean is huge. You would think that with 83 other boats out here that I would see at least one! But no.& don't get me started on all those stars up there.

Day 5 : I am about to go up on deck and video record the sunrise. I plan on putting all the sunrises and sunsets for this voyage into a video to show how calm it is.

Day 5 : I broke down this morning and made myself a cup of coffee. Now I am sitting in the cockpit, watching a glorious start to the day and sipping my cup of joe

Day 5 , 2.7 knots: Let's just debunk this nonsense about the Westsail being as slow as a wet snail. It just ain't so. Period. Full stop. The 5th day out in the Rally and I am second in the pack of 83 boats. Ok so I did leave a little early, but so did half of the pack. Anyway time will tell. Let's see when we get to the BVI.

Day 5 : My 4th day was not a good day distance wise. Just 90 miles with most motoring against a one knot current and light breezes. 500Nm down and 800Nm to go

Day 5 : Yet another one of those small birds has come to keep me company. And I mean really close. Like inches away from me. The thing is, I am 500 miles from land

Day 5 : I'm having to sail at 170 degrees to overcome this current to get me on the rhumb line at 150 degrees. Plus it is a one knot drag. Frustrating!

Day 5 : I think I have solved my problem with the refrigerator causing interference with my satellite device. I relocated it outside in a Ziploc bag. Here's hoping.

Day 5 : I spent the last few hours getting ready for the rain and gales that are supposed to hit early tomorrow morning. I stored everything loose from the cockpit

Day 5 : I spent the last few hours getting ready for the rain and gales that are supposed to hit early tomorrow morning. I stored everything loose from the cockpit I spent the last few hours getting ready for the rain and gales that are supposed to hit early tomorrow morning. I stored everything loose from the cockpit of 25 knots from behind is a reefed main and staysail. Now if it all goes south, then I will dump the main and run with just  the staysail. If it is lighter than that, then I will raise my smaller genoa and after that, shake out the reef.

Day 6 : The wind clocked around overnight and now it is blowing from the north at about 10 knots. The glassy seas that we had yesterday are now starting to chop up

Day 6 : I got lots of sleep last night from about 9pm until 5 pm in half a dozen one to two hour intervals. I figured I will not be getting any sleep tonight.

Day 6 : I started reading a "Michael Palmer" thriller last night and immediately got hooked. There are some writers who can make mundane stuff so interesting.

Day 6 : This morning I have decided to have a cooked breakfast. Porridge& an egg with my coffee outside in the cockpit watching the sunrise. It doesn't get any better

Day 6 : I have the boat all buttoned up with a very conservative sail plan. I could be going a lot faster but with squalls about I'd rather take it safely

Day 6 : Sometime today I will pass our halfway mark with 700Nm to go and 600 down. We had a 100 mile day yesterday motoring, but today it will be pure sailing.

Day 6 : The SSB net this morning was a bit of a mess with multiple people all talking over the top of others. It sounds like quite a few rally boats have dropped out

Day 6 : Just transferred one of my 5 gallon jugs of diesel into my fuel tank to get the weight down lower. I have 2 left now which means so far I have used 20 gallons

Day 6 : Going into my 6th day, my ship's stores are in good shape. I had2 throw out half a bag of lemons but all the other fruits and vegetables are in good condition

Day 6 : I just realized I had not mounted my running backstays. I even put the leeward one up. The rigging will need all the help it can get for tonight's blow.

Day 6 , 4.3 knots: I'm going all out4lunch because it mightBthe last decent meal I get4 a while. Herring fillets in curry pineapple sauce, couscous, roasted garlic&brusselSprout

Day 6 : I just saw a flying fish. Often times they will fly onto the deck at night and in the morning u use them 4 bait. It's the same as birds flying into glass. Sad

Day 6 : It is a beautiful day with puffy white clouds skipping across the sky, but there is a big black bad looking squall that is behind me that I hope will go away.

Day 6 : Well you never know how these things are going to go and it looked like it would pass me by so I grabbed my jacket. Well big mistake! That squall hit me hard.

Day 6 : Wind starting to build. Grabbed a can of cold tomato soup for dinner. All hands on deck!

Day 6 : Well I am still waiting for some serious wind. Friends on a boat just north of me have 25 knots so it is on its way shortly. This message may b the last 2day

Day 6 : Slept for an hour or so and weather still not bad. Getting along at 5 knots in 15 knots of wind. Very nice ride and warm out. No rain or squalls.

Day 6 : If it was daylight, I would be adding canvas, but I am in no hurry and this way, the ride is smooth and the crew gets plenty of sleep. Will reconsider at dawn

Day 7 : Slept for 2 hours and woke up just in time for a squall. Lots of rain and wind and the windvane handled it with ease. Now the boat is back on track doing 5Kn

Day 7 : I was dozing when my AIS alarm went off&outside was a huge ship 0.5Nm off my stern. My AIS should have warned me sooner&he said he saw no AIS from me. Weird!

Day 7 : Even though it is windy and nasty outside, it is cosy & warm inside the cabin of my boat and the boat has a very gentle motion as it slices through the water

Day 7 : I was told that I could trade with some of the residents of the Caribbean islands so I did bring some items including eyeglasses, DVD's, and kids books

Day 7 : I changed the AIS alarm setup 2 warn me of any ships coming within a 10 mile radius. Usually I have it setup 4 1 mile. Still not sure if that was the problem.

Day 7 : I still haven't seen any gale force winds and right now they are about 15 knots. All the boats 40 Nm to the east of me have been getting 20 knots all night.

Day 7 : 

Day 7 : My experience so far with satellite communications is not good. I tried calling on my spot global phone with out luck because of spotty service and my Delorme Inreach keeps needing to be restarted to connect to the satellite. Grrr!

Day 7 : Ok. Winds have finally picked up. It is definitely blowing gale force winds now. All I can do at this stage is hope that all my preparations are enough

Day 7 , 4.9 knots: Finally! I finally got some wind! At long last. Doing 6 knots under staysail and reefed main. No rain. Boat in it's prime. This is what it was built for.

Day 7 : I worked out why my satellite phone wasn't working. You need to put a 011 before the one (USA) and the area code and then the number. Whew! Technology!

Day 7 : My 6th day was just another mediocre 100 mile day with 600 miles2go and 700 down. I have only just got gale force winds and the boat is in its element

Day 7 : I'm still trying to figure out what the problem is with my Inreach. At first I thought it was the refrigerator, then the fact it was inside the cabin and now I'm still trying to figure out what the problem is with my Inreach. At first I thought it was the refrigerator, then the fact it was inside the cabin and now

Day 7 : Ok another big ship just appeared off my stern 5 miles away and she(yes it was a "she" with an American accent, which is double unusual) told me that her AIS had picked me up 12 miles away

Day 7 : I have never seen a rogue wave and I hope i never do. Today there are some 15 footers but they r not breaking, their period is 8 secs and they are harmless.

Day 7 , 6. knots: I do not like having green water down inside my cabin so I have a rule to put one of the washboards in the companionway when a reef goes in the main sail

Day 7 , 6.6 knots: Been blowing 30 for most of the day and had 4 squalls coming from the North so I have been on a broad reach and sometimes running before the winds.

Day 7 : Above all else, it is the noise that is the scariest part of a storm at sea. You get used to the large waves but the howling winds are frightening.

Day 7 , 6.6 knots: It was a tough day today and it looks like it will continue through the night and into tomorrow. Boat is definitely being pushed hard and so far all is well.

Day 7 : I have steered the boat off the rhumb line in more of a broad reach and southerly direction to ease the pressure on the rig and to have the most gentle ride.

Day 7 : As bad as the weather is outside, I never at anytime feel unsafe on board. The boat heels easily, but once there it is rock solid and always stays upright.

Day 7 : Dinner tonight was a can of potato soup, some crackers and apple for dessert. It's going to be a long night.

Day 7 , 1.6 knots: I just spent the last 2 hours slowing the boat down by pulling most of the sails down and heaving to. Chris Parker, the infamous weather guru sent me an email

Day 7 : He explained that x slowing right down,i should be able2 sail2the BVI but if I kept going I will get stuck in Puerto Rico because of the direction of the wind

Day 7 : Up at midnight to check on everything and all seems to be well. I am slowly drifting south at 2 knots which should keep me between 25N and 26N Monday.

Day 7 : The idea of staying between these latitudes is that the wind there on Tuesday will allow me to sail to BVI. Will take another look tomorrow.

Day 8 : Many people like to describe "heaving to" as an oasis. A picnic on a white sandy beach. It is not. You are in the soup. Ok it is a lot better but it is noisy.

Day 8 , 2.2 knots: Winds have reduced considerably down to 20 knots but waves are confused albeit lower. Today I am going 2 relax, do some cleaning & wait until the winds change

Day 8 : Decisions, decisions. What 2 do. The problem is that the wind is going to clock and I don't want to go 2 Puerto Rico. So now I'm aiming as east as possible

Day 8 : I am still glad I took the more westerly course compared to all the others. And that is because they got hammered pretty hard compared to my one day yesterday

Day 8 : The first clue that something was amiss was that my reef points were squeaky. The 2nd was my reefing line was on my foredeck. You guessed it....it chafed thru

Day 8 : Winds out of the north at 20 knots, sailing due east @ 6 knots with a reef in the main, my staysail and my smaller genoa. I've been on port tack all this trip

Day 8 : I went out on my foredeck2take some GoPro shots because it is a gorgeous day & the boat is smoking, and had a wave drench me. I won't be needing a shower 2day

Day 8 : So tired of reading and feeling like a bit of activity, I stuck my fishing line out for hour. I'm glad I didn't catch anything because it would be too much

Day 8 , 7.1 knots: I have had hallucinations in the past from sleep deprivation which can be so unsettling so on this trip I have been getting lots of rest.

Day 8 : I am trying to figure out what to eat tonight. I have a yearning for pumpkin and I have a zucchini that I need to eat. Where is the internet when I need it?

Day 8 : "Are we there yet?" Ok I am so ready to get to where I am going, lowering my sails and sleeping for a week in a boat that doesn't feel like a washing machine.

Day 8 : Cooking on a lurching boat can be a little challenging. I just cut up an onion and garlic and it all turned into a projectile landing on the galley sole.

Day 9 : It's 3am and pitch black outside except for the twinkling stars. I feel the warm wind on my face and listen to the rushing water and thank God I am alive.

Day 9 , 6.6 knots: I shook a reef out of the main because the wind had moderated somewhat. I'm still doing 6 knots and aiming north of the BVI knowing that the wind will clock

Day 9 : Broaching in a sailboat is an experience that is hard2forget. Careening down the face of a wave at full tilt with confidence is the reason to have a full keel

Day 9 : After being a week at sea, everything has salt on it. The dodger sparkles with the crystallized NaCl and your hands constantly feel like they need washing

Day 9 : Just 400 miles 2 go & with this wind moderating it probably means a Friday landfall. That will mean just an 11 day trip which in theory should have taken 14

Day 9 : I'm mindful of the fact that today is election day in the USA and I pray that whoever wins, they make Peace their top priority

Day 9 : I decided to get serious about fishing and put three lures out. A cedar plug & 2 squids but came up empty. I've always had good luck before sunset but no time

Day 9 : The wind is slowly moderating and I need to swap out my genoa for a larger one but every time I decide I will go get it, the wind pipes up.

Day 9 : Listening to Louis Armstrong sing you r so beautiful while cooking courgettes, Lima beans, and quinoa with the last of my mangoes for dessert.

Day 10 , 4.9 knots: Well I still have good winds for sailing despite the fact that they were supposed to clock and moderate. I have averaged 5.5 knots for the last 70 miles

Day 10 : I have several different places I can sleep on Onapua but the best one by far for motion is the quarter berth in the main cabin deep in the center of the boat

Day 10 : I am always looking forward instead of enjoying the moment. Rather than thinking about the BVI I should be enjoying the sunshine, the wind and waves, nature.

Day 10 , 6. knots: Well another 130 mile day averaging 5.5 knots. All of my days have been 100+ days except for the one day motoring and the other day when I heaved to overnight

Day 10 : 1 of the noises when I am sailing is the prop shaft spinning. As I approach hull speed at about 7.5 knots the vibrations tell me that I am going fast as poss

Day 10 : I have been going full on with my fishing this morning. Different lures, all 3 lines out, baying to the moon...oh wait it's daylight...ok never mind...no luck

Day 10 : Looking back over the voyage so far, it has been so steady and relaxing. The motion of the boat slicing through even rough water is so steady that it has (con

Day 10 : Meant that I have been able to get great night's sleeps. The only time I felt a little quesy was when I was heaving 2 and that was because I was reading below

Day 10 : I have no salads, plenty of fruit but am running low on vegetables. A cabbage keeps looking at me and a whole big pineapple that I don't know what to do with.

Day 10 , 5.4 knots: U wouldn't think that there would be 1 right out here, but I am fighting a 1 knot current. I have a log that measures the h2o speed&I can compare it 2 my GPS.

Day 10 : There has been no blue sky 2day so my solar panels have not replenished the batteries from overnight&right now it is raining. Sailing weather is not all good

Day 10 : You fight for every half a knot when sailing so I don't like the idea of dragging fishing lures behind the boat slowing it down especially diving lures.

Day 10 : I have asked my friend who's an official 4 the Salty Dawg rally 2 please arrange a parade for me when I arrive at the Bitter End town. He said that the  

Day 10 : Bergameister was friends with the brass band conductor too but wasn't promising anything

Day 10 : Some scary looking squalls downwind of me. Too boisterous to do any cooking tonight so it will be a cold can of soup and peanut butter sandwiches for dinner.

Day 10 : Had a full suite of sails up today & with 20 knots it made things interesting. I reefed at Sunset & pulled my genoa down which was exciting to say the least

Day 10 , 4.9 knots: I noticed 2 casualties of today's very fast ride. A snap shackle had parted ways on my leeward running backstay. Secondly, the turnbuckle on the bow whisker

Day 10 : Had disappeared. I will fix both of them in the light of dawn. Until then I will stay cosy and warm down below in my cabin while the tempest rages outside.

Day 10 : Woke up after a short while to find it raining with the wind clocking and lightening so I did what any modern sailor does these days..raise the iron Genny

Day 10 : One of the first things I want to do when I get to the BVI's is to go for a run. The problem with being on a sailboat, is that you never get any exercise.

Day 11 : Nothing is certain yet but when I get2the BVI tomorrow, 25 rally boats will b there with 50 yet2 arrive Except4start&finish, I will not have seen 1 other boat

Day 11 : Like me, I suspect that a lot of crew in the SDR are in it for the challenge. For me it was to show that you could take a small old boat and cross an ocean

Day 11 : List of things to do when I get to the BVI'S. Give thanks Call kids Shower Have a cold beer&celebrate Shop 4 salads, yogurt, bananas Get on the internet SLEEP

Day 11 , 6. knots: Easterlies, 12 knots, clear blue sky, doing 5.8 knots SOG (speed over ground)at 160 degrees true. Full suite of sails with autopilot & batteries fully charged

Day 11 : This one bird that I don't recognize, has been flying off the stern of my boat all morning. It almost looks like a penguin and every now and then it rests.

Day 11 : Not catching fish continues. I'm justifying it by saying that I am here to fish, not to catch fish. Friends on another boat are hauling them in every day.

Day 11 : Beans, spinach and mashed potatoes with an Apple for dinner

Day 11 : I think I have finally found a solution to my Inreach satellite device crashing. Now I shut my smartphone app down after sending messages.

Day 11 : Now motoring directly into a 10 knot SE wind. Exactly the direction I want to go. Big squall to windward of me. I'm hoping that it will miss me.

Day 11 , 4.3 knots: This last 100 miles has really knocked the gloss off this voyage. Motoring into headwinds is like riding a bucking bronco and I just had a squall to deal with

Day 12 , 3.8 knots: I have bruises all over my body from banging into things on this trip. My chins hurt, my left shoulder and in particular my hands from holding on so tightly.

Day 12 , 4.3 knots: I have heard some very good things about the Caribbean and in particular the Virgin islands but I can't see myself doing this every year the many cruisers do

Day 12 : I just raised my yellow flag on my starboard stay 2 signal that when anchored tonight, my boat is in quarantine until I can visit the customs, health & I dept

Day 12 , 5.4 knots: Land Ahoy! Even though I am 20 miles away, I can see a big hill peeking through the haze. Anagada is closer 2 me than Virgin Gourda, but all I can see r rocks

Day 12 : Like this place already. Water has changed color from a deep blue to a green. Islands are all around, temperature is perfect & there is a nice breeze blowing

Day 12 : I just had my first hot fresh water shower in 11 days and boy oh boy, did it ever feel good!!!!