Nothing 1000 Tacks Can’t Fix

I recently returned from a terrific four day Laser sailing clinic at Sailfit in Clearwater, Florida. I went with four of my regular sailing buddies, and all of us agree that we had a great time and learned a ton about laser sailing. It’s hard to say what the best parts of it were, but here is a list of choices:
• Small class of 6 people
• Entire group at more or less the same skill level
• How-to instruction from a bone fide expert and great teacher, Kurt Taulbee
• Individual, on the water coaching, one skill at a time
• Coaching to match our skill level and needs
• Video tape review of our sailing showing what we do well and what we do poorly
• Instruction on fitness and nutrition from another bona fide expert, Meka Taulbee
• Expert answers to every question we could think of
• Camaraderie with sailing buddies
• Warm water
• Escape from New England weather

Like many adult sailors and racers, I have attended my share of sailing seminars, heard one to two hour talks on the nuances of sailing a specific type of boat, and purchased a bookshelf of books and videos from experts and champions. Also like most adult racers, I have raced regularly, but practiced infrequently. I have sailed in some big regattas, trying to pick up tips and tricks from the experts, but I have not had any real coaching since the first “how to sail” lessons.

It’s amazing how much different getting some real coaching, especially from an expert, is from trying to improve sailing skills in the other ways. It is one thing to watch the champion on a video tape, but quite another to do what he does. Monkey see, monkey do has its limits. How do you know if you are doing what the champion did? Most of us can be pretty sure we’re not doing all of it, but what parts are we doing right and what parts are we doing wrong? What do we have to change? Kurt at Sailfit was great at sorting that out, and he has saved me years in trying to figure those things out myself.

I think he did the same things for all the other members of the group as well. His individualized feedback identified different strengths and weakness for each of us as we went through various skills. We each surprised ourselves a little in some of the things we did well. One of us could stand on the side deck and sail the Laser like an experienced surfer. The rest of us - not so good at that. Two others loved blind tacking. The rest - not so good at that. One could comfortably sail down wind, healed 45 degrees to windward right at the point of capsize. The rest looked more like old geezers. The process also revealed for each of us tendencies toward our own particular set of bad habits. We came away with individual lists of things to work on and Kurt’s voice in our heads telling us what we need to do to complete each skill better.

The last thing I came away with is Kurt’s response to fixing a bad habit or developing a new technique – “It’s nothing 1000 tacks can’t fix.” I don’t know if this line sticks with me because it appeals to a Midwestern hard work ethic or because it appeals to a high school coach who blows whistles through seemingly endless tacking drills. Whatever the reason, I know he’s right. But it begs the question “Are we willing to do the 1000 tacks?” Most sailors never really do them. We tend to read books and watch videos and “understand” it in our heads, but never really train our bodies to automatically execute the skills. We are also smart enough to realize that after the 1000 tacks, there are 1000 gybes, 1000 mark roundings (I suppose that’s really 1000 upwind and 1000 downwind), and 1000 starts (2000 in my case). Who’s got the time? It’s enough to make me really tired. Maybe 500 tacks are enough. Maybe 250. Oh god, I need a beer!

As soon as the weather is warmer and the wind is right and I have the time and……….., I’m going out and start those 1000 tacks. No, really. I’m going to try.

Spring Time in New England

After waiting a week for the ice to thaw, this was the first day on the water for our high school sailing team.  It's been a long snowy winter, but Spring is finally here!

Scooped!

I know I have been very, very remiss in writing for this blog, but finally when there is something good to write about, I am scooped by Tillerman! It’s not so much that he said what I have to say, but that he used the photo at the center of my story. The photo is from last week’s Sailfit seminar which I attended. It was posted on the Sailfit facebook page, but incorrectly attributed to Jody …… There is no need to name the actual sailor, but he is one of the group of five friends from New England who attended the seminar.

Aside from the obvious entertainment value, the whole episode has an important lesson to teach about sailing.

The question is how to sail a laser without actually being in it. One possibility is to just fall off and let the boat sail itself. I’m sure that it takes remarkable skill to trim the sails and adjust the steering just right to keep the boat sailing after abandoning ship, but the better it is done, the longer the swim to ever get back together with the boat again.

A second possibility as one departs the boat is holding onto the mainsheet. The primary virtue of this approach is to stay in touch with the boat until it capsizes. (But, maybe there is another possibility. I wonder if it is possible to adjust the amount of body drag to achieve correct sail trim and keep the boat upright and going. Any volunteers to try this out?) Anyway…… this seems to be the preferred method so long as one holds on with the hands and does not wrap the line around arms, legs, or torso, which could cause some serious problems.

The third, but not very desirable method is holding onto the tiller extension. This seems to have been tried many times, and is apparently the best way to break a high performance carbon fiber tiller. Aluminum tillers don’t fare much better, except that they allow the sailor to stay connected to his boat. Holding onto the tiller extension was the method employed in the photo. It had two immediate results. The boat capsized (eventually) and the aluminum tiller looked like this:

This Old Hull – Laser Deck Repair with Air Pressure

Somewhat housebound after yet another New England snowstorm this winter, I’ve had the chance to work on my 23 year-old Laser hull with decks adjacent to the cockpit so soft and sagging that they seemed to be structurally unsound. My good friend and fellow Laser enthusiast, Yarg, told me that the problem might be delamination of the fiberglass-foam sandwich deck structure. Pictured below is a piece of the 1/2” thick deck material which I had cut out for an access port some years ago in order to repair a cracked mast step tube.

Inspecting the underside of the deck, using a mirror, and an existing access port next to the centerboard revealed what appeared to be perfectly intact fiberglass. However, pushing on the deck seemed to suggest an airspace as the upper deck surface made a crunching sound when it touched the rough foam surface below. My findings probing through a 1/16th inch test hole were consistent with the delamination theory as well. Perhaps the deck might be repaired by injecting epoxy into the space between the layers, but without easy access to the inside of the hull, clamping the two sides together would be problematic. Pushing from the top only would leave a seriously sagging deck. The answer appeared to be pressurizing the hull with an electric air mattress pump.

I began the repair by cautiously connecting an electric air mattress pump to the stern drain hole applying just enough pressure to cause the sagging deck to rise. Too much pressure, causing the hull to explode, would be counterproductive. Drilling holes in the tubing reduced the air pressure as necessary. After covering the deck with masking tape, I drilled an array of 1/16th inch holes into the soft areas of the deck using a hexagonal pattern, 2 inch hole to hole spacing, and 3/8th inch depth. The hand drill had a stop using a piece of dowel to prevent drilling too deep. Five 1x2s clamped across the deck prevented the deck from rising above its normal flat position when the air pressure was applied.

West Marine extra slow curing epoxy allowed enough time for me to inject all the holes before it thickened. I injected the epoxy using a West Marine syringe with a tapered nozzle that fit snugly into the 1/16th inch holes. I loaded the syringe by removing the plunger and pouring in the epoxy. It takes way too long to try to suck it into the syringe. I injected one syringe-full (about ½ ounce or 15 ml) into only 1/3 of the holes which worked out to holes with a 4 inch spacing pattern. The other 2/3 of the holes allowed for excess epoxy and air to escape. The average epoxy thickness was about 2.2 mm or 3/32th inch. It was comforting to see the excess epoxy and air bubbles flow out of almost every hole when the air pressure was turned on indicating that the epoxy had spread out well. I injected some extra epoxy into any hole that was not oozing.

After leaving the air pressure on for 24 hours (praying the pump wouldn’t conk out before the epoxy hardened) the deck appeared to be quite solid. A few of the holes were leaking air, so the pressure was turned off, and the leaking holes were sealed by injecting a little more epoxy. By the way, pressurizing the hull is a good way to find other leaks as well. Running my hand under the joint between the deck and the hull revealed a previously unknown large leak near the bow with air blowing out. I’ll do a search for smaller leaks at some point. The final step for the deck project was to apply some Gel Coat repair material to the 1/16th inch holes.

The soft, sagging deck is now flat and solid, but will it be good for another 23 years (or even 23 minutes of sailing in rough conditions)? Time will tell.

Eric

It’s Time to Ban Single Use Plastic Water Bottles

College sailing has banned single use water bottles from its events. Real rules against it! Sailors must drink from re-useable bottles and hosts must provide a source of water to refill those bottles.

The New England Scholastic Sailing Association (high school sailing) has approved the same policy on a voluntary basis.

Host schools and coaches are tired of finding bottles in their sailing waters, tired of picking up the empties after an event, and tired of disposing of the mountain of trash. The bottles are frequently discarded without recycling the plastic.

My first reaction to this information was totally selfish. How will addressing this inconvenience me? I take along bottled water when I sail and buy cases of it for high school regattas. My sailing facility does not have a readily available source of clean drinking water to provide to regatta participants. Is it really a big enough problem to warrant new efforts from me?

Upon looking into it, it IS a big enough problem. In fact, it’s big enough that I’m ashamed I haven’t changed my ways before now.

Some bottled water facts:

• 60,000,000 plastic water bottles are discarded EVERY DAY in America.

• Only 23% (highest estimate I’ve found) of plastic water bottles are recycled. The rest end up in landfills or worse, where they can leach chemicals into the ground water.

• It takes ½ cup of oil to manufacture and transport each bottle.

• It requires 3 times as much water to make the bottle as it does to fill it.

• In producing each bottle, the CO2 released into the atmosphere would fill 12 balloons.

• Bottled water costs between 200 to 10,000 times as much as tap water.

• Virtually every independent study on bottled water shows some contamination from bacteria and/or synthetic chemicals.

• Many of the leading brands are not mountain spring water, but merely tap water that has been run through filters.

A simple alternative is tap water in reusable plastic, aluminum, or stainless steel bottles. Reusable metal bottles can be bought for as little as $4 each when purchased in bulk. Plastic bottles are even cheaper.

If water quality is the issue, it should be comforting to know that the safety of tap water is more regulated than the safety of bottled water. Other quality issues depend on a comparison of specific bottled products to specific tap water sources. When necessary, filters are available to upgrade the chemical and mineral purity, odor, and taste of tap water. We can almost always find a suitable tap water source.

When you think about it, you have to admit that re-usable bottles and tap water, especially when filtered, would work in almost every situation where we commonly drink bottled water. It’s hard to rationalize the need for wasteful production and distribution processes and the harmful environmental consequences of single use water bottles.

We have two fundamental choices. As the saying goes, we become part of the solution or we are part of the problem.

Every time we refill a bottle, we reduce the number of new bottles by one, and we take a step in the right direction. 59,999,999 bottles on the heap. Our reuse might encourage a friend to do the same. 59,999,998 bottles on the heap. College sailors are doing their part, and now, so are many high school sailors. 59, 998,000 bottles on the heap.



Here’s a visual representation of the rate at which plastic bottles are discarded.

The internet offers lots of information of the subject. Here are some sites and videos that make the point in 13 minutes or less.

Back2tap.com website with a 9 minute video reviewing the problems with bottled water - http://www.youtube.com/v/FjyLABrtmqA&hl=en&fs=1&autoplay=1

http://Storyofstuff.org/bottled water/ - offers an entertaining 10 minute video explaining the life cycle of single use bottles with an anti-bottled water industry tone.

Penn and Teller have a 13 minute entertaining video debunking the perceived quality of bottled water - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfPAjUvvnIc

A short tap water vs. bottled water discussion - http://www.wimp.com/bottledwater/

The Path to FAIRNESS

The recent talk on Tillerman’s blog and discussion on the Laser Forum mark another milestone down a new road for laser sailing and perhaps a new understanding of the term “one design.” The old laser map to FAIRNESS directed us down one of two over priced toll roads (New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway), but the sailors’ free market, global positioning systems have recalculated and shown us another road. The new road is getting a lot of traffic, perhaps most of it, but there seems to be a question about whether both the old and the new are headed to the same FAIRNESS. One FAIRNESS is in the state of supplier to customer relationships, and the other is in the state of competitor to competitor relationships. I believe that they are sister cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Boston and Cambridge.
I contend that both roads will lead you to fairness among competitors. Despite the highway confusion, I think laser sailing is as fair and equal as any sailing, except for the influence of those damn #@*&^% mommy boats. I also think that the free market is more effective than the class rules in keeping it that way.

I don’t mean to promote a free market like some damn #@*&^% Republican politician with tunnel vision. Instead, I mean to encourage equity in the context of a little guy vs. big guy, David vs. Goliath story.

When it comes to sails, Big Laser has used its monopolistic position to exploit its customers for a long time now. They sell a lousy product (mediocre, at best) for a ridiculously high price, a combination of planned obsolescence and authoritarian pricing that would make any damn #@*&^% super-capitalist proud. To the customers, it seems like extortion. To Big Laser, it may just be making a living and keeping the wheels of business turning. After all, they are sailors and boat builders, not damn #@*&^% Wall Street bankers. I like to think that they did not anticipate that the requirement to use overly-expensive sails would come to undermine the universally acclaimed goal of fairness. BUT IT HAS. Many sailors can not or will not spend what it takes to keep up with those who have unlimited budgets. Do the class rules help even the playing field? Not so far.

Thankfully, the free market has allowed a young upstart like Jim Meyers at Intensity sails to jump in, make a living for himself, and fulfill a need in the marketplace. (Cue America the Beautiful in a medley with the Chinese national anthem – that’s where the sails are actually made.) From my talks with Jim, I understand his business to be mostly a response to overpriced products he finds in the market, most notably the class legal Laser sail. By giving us more bang for our buck, he is leading us to FAIRNESS in the state of supplier to customer relationships. He is giving us the same product for one third the price, complete with prompt and friendly service.

But is it really the same product? It sure seems to be. Jim says it is as close to the North sail as possible. (The North cloth is proprietary, so he uses the closest product he can find, which seems to be slightly more durable.) Sailors don’t seem to be finding any competitive differences. Although Intensity makes no claims about this, it seems to me that with its sails, we maintain FAIRNESS in the state of competitor to competitor relationships.

For several years now, more and more Intensity sails have been used for local club racing - to the chagrin of Big Laser (as I discussed last year). Tillerman reports that Cedar Point has altered their sailing instructions to include them. I did the same for our local regatta three years ago. In the two places I sail most frequently, there are far more Intensity sails on the water than North sails. I suspect that in the fleet as a whole in our local club there are at least five Intensity sails for each North sail. I wonder what percentage of North sail owners also have an Intensity sail or two.

The market is shouting its approval of equal or better products at lower prices. And the shout is increasing in intensity. (Pun intended.) Intensity sails will be seen more and more at bigger regattas. Is anyone going to complain that those of us in the middle (I wish) to the back of the pack are using them? Will we be asked to leave? (So far, I have been non-confrontational and have used my North sail at Regattas, even though I might do better with a newer Intensity.) Does anyone really think that the $180 sail has an advantage over the $563 sail? I think the only advantage is a new sail versus an old sail. If we could buy sails for $180, everyone would be more likely to have a new sail, and therefore a more level playing field. The rules say buying a $180 sail instead of a $563 sail is cheating, but common sense and the marketplace know that FAIRNESS is not the operative concept here.

The consternation over all this will continue to go on for a number of years, but the market forces will eventually win out in some way. The Intensity Laser class will thrive at the local and regional level, and we’ll all have fun and FAIR sailing. Big Laser will have to decide if it wants a separate class for world class and Olympic sailors or whether it should make some compromises to keep it all together. Assuming that those who make the rules and set the prices want to keep it all together, why are taking so long to do something about it?

Cooler Than Ollie

It is common knowledge that the Ollie box has been one of the great innovations in small boat sailing. It is a waterproof automatic timing and horn system for starting races. It can be programmed with up to three different sequences, selectable from inside the box. It has made life easier for many, many race committees and kept timing precise for the racers. It is unquestionably a great invention!

But as clever and useful as the Ollie box is, my good friend and fellow laser sailor, Eric, wondered if there might be a way to have an automated system that we could use in our informal racing where no race committee boat or race committee person is present. Could there be an alternative to rabbit starts that would help us all hone our time and distance judgment in starting? Could we just float an Ollie box and have one of the racers initiate the sequence?

Ollie boxes are expensive and fairly heavy, and one would sink like a stone if given the chance. It didn’t take much thought to realize that any flotation scheme risked losing the Ollie if something went wrong. It was particularly worrisome that it would not be our Ollie box at the bottom of the lake, it would be our Yacht club’s. Eric decided to start from scratch and develop another floating automated starting system that could be operated by a passing racer. Here is his description of his ingenious and low cost solution.

The device is built into a medium-sized picnic cooler which is about 10 inches wide so that it can be transported in a Laser cockpit. A 5 lb. barbell is used as an anchor attached with a 50 ft. line to a cleat on the forward end of the cooler. Excess line is wrapped around the cooler handle so the scope can be adjusted according to the water depth. The cover is secured and sealed by good old duct tape.

There are just two control switches, “Start” and “Abort,” which are doorbell buttons mounted on the aft end of the cooler. There is no separate power switch. The unit turns on when the start button is pressed, and automatically powers down at the end of the start sequence or when “Abort” is pressed. 

 A standard 3-minute dinghy starting sequence is used beginning with 5 short warning beeps and ending with a 5-second countdown to the long start blast. The short tones are ¼ second long with ¼ second spacing. Long tones are 1 second with ½ second spacing. The final start blast is 2 seconds long.

 The sound source is a waterproof piezoelectric marine horn which has been likened to the sound of a dying duck. It is not terribly loud, but on the other hand, it does not destroy the eardrums of the sailor starting at the “boat” end of the line.

 

The electronics are housed in a small waterproof plastic box (in case the outer duct tape seal fails). The power is supplied by 8 D-cell batteries mounted to the floor of the cooler so they also serve as ballast along with two 4 lb barbells. The calculated battery capacity is about 2,400 starts, so battery life is really just limited by shelf life. Three empty 2 liter soft drink bottles are included in the enclosure for emergency flotation.

 

The electronics consist of a small microprocessor board (ARMite single board controller, Coridium Network Control Systems) with a few extra solid state components added to interface with the buttons and horn, along with some circuitry for the auto power-down. The software is just a small (about 170 line) program written in BASIC.

 

Overall, the system works pretty well, although I am sure there are improvements that could be made. Naturally, we have to use the honor system when it comes to being over early at the start. Maybe someone can come up with a paintball system to mark a boat that is OCS.

Yarg