Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Before you take a new boat to sea, you do a “sea trial” to make sure everything is working. Today was the day for the sea trials. It was early afternoon when we went out, so the clear morning had been replaced by stupendous thunderstorm clouds. By about 1PM they were already hard at work cooling the surface …
It was a fun day. I had to go to the top of the mizzen mast (the small mast in the back of the boat) to bring down a halyard (the rope that hoists the sail) and to attach lazy jacks, which are ropes that bundle in the sail when you drop it. It was great fun. (I hope the sailors in the crowd will excuse my defining terms as I go along … most folks aren’t sailors.) Here’s the view from halfway up the mast.
There are five men in the crew, and all of us have at least a thousand sea miles under our keel, some much more. I figure I’ve gone ten thousand miles at sea, and one of the guys has more sea time than that. It’s a pleasure to work with people who know what they are doing. We went out and dropped the anchor, then hauled it back in to make sure it was in good order. After that we cruised around a bit. One of the crew brought his girlfriend from the Solomon Islands …
The ship in the picture above is an oil tanker. There’s no fuel dock, so they moor offshore and unload by submarine hose. We came back into Vuda Point Marina in good order. All systems seem to be working.
In the late afternoon, I put together my po’ boy ocean thermometer … it’s a regular thermometer given to me by a friend from this blog (many thanks, amigo) that I mounted in a piece of plastic pipe to keep it from breaking. Actually, my friend mailed it to me in the pipe, so today I just modified it to take a line, and I cut a hole to make it readable inside the pipe.
Eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit in the shade … but the evening was lovely, a beautiful sunset from the bar, the thatched-roof building that you see on the right of the picture above the thermometer … I have no idea who the woman is, but she completed the picture nicely. Fiji, gotta love it.
Tomorrow, it’s provisioning, and then on Thursday we should set sail, “God willing and the creeks don’t rise” as my Momma used to say …
Best wishes to all, here’s hoping that the creeks don’t rise,
w.
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But! But, how do you get the thermometer into the ship’s intake?
South Sea voyages, warm sunshine, desert islands, dusky maidens… reminds me of my long-ago youth, reading adventure stories. A great read – thanks Willis.
I too wish you fair winds and calm seas. (Following seas can be uncomfortable by causing a ship to yaw.)
A midwesterner, I was turned off to sailing my plebe summer at boat school. Our sailing instructors were all brand new ensigns who had just graduated. They were all previous members of the academy sailing teams. They taught us to sail by letting us crew for them as they raced each other in the academy yawls. My instructor taught us the commands and how to handle the lines. Unfortunately, he never explained the strategy of racing and the maneuvers he employed during the daily race. In addition, the winch for my assigned line was broken and I had to do the sheeting in by hand. I learned that sailing was not fun ; it was a punishment. That was unfortunate because later I discovered that my great, great, great, great grandfather was a shipbuilder and privateer during the Revolution.
My worst time at sea was three days and nights during a severe storm off Cape Hatteras. We were sailing south to the carribean. We were consistently taking 45 degree rolls and the majority of the crew was seasick. I was navigator. Early on the morning of our fourth day while I was plotting a fix, the ship rolled hard to starboard and I watched the inclinometer reach 55 degrees and the ship just hung there for what seemed like forever and then it snapped back to port tossing one sailor clear across the bridge. He actually landed feet first on the door leading to the port bridge wing before falling to the deck. He was uninjured but shaken. The storm quickly dissipated after that.
Willis, hope you do not run into any bad weather. Be safe.
A little boat school humor. We had a little book called reef points given to each plebe (freshman). It contained all the information that a plebe was required to know when asked by an upperclassman. Plebes spent most of their free time during plebe summer before the academic year started polishing their shoes and memorizing reef points. One bit of information was the commands to the crew to bring a full-rigged ship about, that is to turn it around and head in the opposite direction.
Upperclassman to plebe: “Maggot, how do you bring a full-rigged ship about”?
(Stop me if you have heard this.)
Panicked plebe: “Sir, full-rigged ship, about. . . .face, sir”!!
It’s a safe bet that “South River Independent” is familiar with Luders yawls.
http://www.usna.edu/Sailing/lectures/qualifyingNavy44.php
Thinking back to my surface Navy days, which were in the early 1970s, I remember that the sonar operators aboard my old destroyers were interested in the water temperature vs. depth profile so they dropped bathythermographs (BTs) to collect that information. I have been reading the information on this site for less than a year, but I do not recall any mention of BTs. Are they still being used? I think all Navy ships, not just the sonar-equipped ships, made By drops. Retired Kit P: you sub guys probably used them too. You used the thermocline to hide from us surface guys.
Maybe I jumped to a conclusion Retired Kit P. You said nuke, but you might have been surface, not a submariner.
Not By drops; BT drops. Auto correct scores again.
SR
Sorry to hear that some jerks took the fun out of sailing. I pride myself on teaching folks to sail without yelling.
In high school in Indiana, I failed the physical to get into the naval academy. Later as a machinist mate in the early seventies, I learned that seawater temperature was very important. Also learned to cheat on my eye test to get into NESEP.
However, as an officer, I failed the vision part of the sub physical. As a result, I was stationed at Newport, RI twice where I learned to sail. Unfortunately, I did not have time to sail until a few years after getting out of the navy.
Last year was the first year that I got to sail almost as often as I would like. There are many places with the non-snobby sailors who would be happy to share the experience. There are many old boats that can be picked up for a song.
On my first destroyer, the Chief Engineer was from Indiana. As he was only about 5ft 7in, he specialized in Indiana’s second sport: checkers. He taught me how to play. It took me awhile, but I considered it to be a major achievement when I beat him in a game. We played a lot while we were deployed to the Med. I won some more when I was at my best. When I was a kid, I could never beat my father playing checkers. The first thing I did when I visited my parents was to challenge my father to a game. He had not been playing for years and I was at the top of my game. After I beat him, I felt terrible. It is near the top of my list of things I regret doing. I always tell young men to never beat their fathers at anything.
Which ships were you on in the early 70s? I was on Steiner (DD-863) and Robert A Owens (DD-827), both home ported in Norfolk, VA. My last ship was an amphib, Portland (LSD-7), at Little Creek, VA. I went to the Department Head school in New Port in 73 and was almost assigned to the Holder (DD-?) In Boston, but went to Owens instead.