Cruising (With) Class

By Stan Zimmerman

Many beginning sailors soon yearn for a larger boat - with a galley, head and berths - so they can extend their time on the water and range of action. However, the simple mechanics of sailing do not include the variety of arts necessary to cruise successfully.

Cruising (with) Class began as a series of lectures at the Sarasota (Florida) Sailing Squadron with the intention of teaching basic skills to beginning cruisers. Comfort on the water is not a matter of soft cushions. It comes from confidence in the ability to voyage safely.

Reading the weather, planting the anchor, calculating the tides, navigating a coast, avoiding fatigue, choosing equipment, coping with storms, reacting to disasters, these are the arts of a cruiser.

Although the book calls on the author's 25 years of cruising small sailboats, it is not a travelogue. Instead, it is a precise iteration of lessons learned the hard way, and presented in sailor-to-sailor fashion so others can avoid disaster and find comfort bred in confidence on the water.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Feb 26, 2007
• ISBN: 9781412243018

Stan Zimmerman

Stan Zimmerman is a man of many mediums (TV, film, and theater). He's been nominated for two WGA Awards for Best Comedy Episodic Writing on the classic TV series The Golden Girls and Roseanne. Stan has also written and produced on Gilmore Girls, co created the Lifetime sitcom, Rita Rocks, and wrote on both Brady Bunch movies. Stan has a BFA in Drama from NYU/Circle in the Square and has directed such LA productions as Entertaining Mr. Sloane, A Tuna Christmas, Gemini, Pledge, Heartbreak Help, and his original plays-Meet & Greet, Knife to the Heart, and Have a Good One. Stan appeared on Broadway with Nureyev & the Joffrey Ballet and in an East Coast tour of his suicide awareness play, right before I go, with Virginia Madsen and Gilmore Girls cast members. He was the Host/Showrunner on Sean Hayes's Bravo reality show Situation: Comedy and has been seen numerous times on CNN. Stan directed Colin Mochrie (Whose Line Is It Anyway?) in Hyprov (Daryl Roth Theatre). TRW Plays recently published and licensed three of Stan's works-Yes, Virginia, Silver Foxes, and right before I go. Silver Foxes, directed by Michael Urie, had its world premiere at Dallas's Uptown Players in March 2023.

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© 2001 by Stan Zimmerman

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission ofthe author.

Note to sailors

Lawyers require a notice to the reader reminding you that you are on your ownwhen you are on the water. The sea can be dangerous; navigation is not an exactscience; charts and markers are not guaranteed to be perfect. To succeed, a sailormust combine knowledge with skill. This is not a simple disclaimer – it reflectsthe fact that the sea takes many human lives every year. You can only dependupon your best judgement.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Zimmerman, Stan.

Cruising (with) class

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-55212-654-4

ISBN: 978-1-4122-4301-8 (ebook)

1. Sailing. I. Title. II. Title: Cruising class.

GV811.Z54 2001        797.1’24        C2001-910407-3

9781552126547_B4.pdf

This book was published on-demand in cooperation with Trafford Publishing.On-demand publishing is a unique process and service of making a book available for retailsale to the public taking advantage of on-demand manufacturing and Internet marketing.On-demand publishing includes promotions, retail sales, manufacturing, order fulfilment,accounting and collecting royalties on behalf of the author.

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Contents

Preface

Welcome to Cruising (with) Class

One

Sailing the Environment

Two

Safe Sailing

Three

Coastal Piloting

Four

(Fine) Points of Sail

Five

Principles of Shorthanded Sailing

Six

The Dink & Other Crutches

Seven

Storms & Other Odd Emergencies

Eight

Mates, Passengers & Pirates

Sailor’s Knots

Glossary

Annotated Bibliography

About the Author

About the Sarasota Sailing Squadron

Preface

About 70 years ago, teenagers built small boats and sailed away like Florida Huck Finns. With a rucksack, canteen and Boy Scout compass, off they went down the southwest coast every summer. It was a pre-condo coast then, and you could camp on the beach all the way to Key West. Modern Jasons, they were.

Those kids learned their sailing skills the old fashioned way, by word-of-mouth, show-and-tell, trial-and-error-the same way sailors learned their arts for more than 5,000 years. Sailors are always eager students, seeking better knots and smarter techniques.

The origin of many nautical skills is lost in antiquity. Who invented the bowline knot, discovered the pole star, put the belly in a sail? Our lineage as sailors is long, and right down the line, each generation of sailors taught the next. Now it’s my turn to try.

With this ethic in mind, I began teaching a course for beginning cruisers at the Sarasota Sailing Squadron in the early 1980s. This book is composed of those lectures, but the core ethic remains the same: you don’t need fancy gear, expensive electronics or a snazzy boat to go cruising. What you need is curiosity, courage and skill. These lectures relay the skills necessary to cruise in a sailboat.

I’d like to thank all my students for their insightful questions and eager attention. Thanks as well go to the members of the Sarasota Sailing Squadron, the finest volunteer sailing club in the world (stop by if you think I exaggerate). But most of all, thanks to my mate and crew, Myriam and Tristan. We’ve been a sailing family from the beginning; I pray we always shall be.

Stan Zimmerman

Sarasota, Florida in the year2001

Florida, the cruiser’s cradle

Image503.JPG

Welcome to Cruising (with) Class

Come on in. Take a seat. You might want to come closer to the fire and get away from the door. It’s cold outside. We only do this in the winter, because we all should be sailing the rest of the year.

Welcome to Cruising (with) Class. I put parenthesis around with because most of the lectures will deal with adding a little style to your sailing while enhancing your safety and comfort. Along the way, I hope you gain a deeper appreciation of why you want to go out there.

The emphasis is on comfort, the kind of comfort bred in skill and culminating in safety. Many of the topics we’ll cover in these lectures may be new to you, and I hope you’ll gain some knowledge. But knowledge without application does not develop the instincts sailors need to do their business with economy and certainty at sea.

I’ll do my best to tell you what to do, but you and your crew should practice, so when an emergency arises, you’ll be able to respond in a knowledgeable and skillful manner. Lecture learning, like book learning, can be interesting but is ultimately useless unless you apply it in real life.

Safety is a comfort issue. Familiarity with the boat is a comfort issue. Confidence in the skills of yourself and your crew is a comfort issue. If you are not comfortable, there is no reason to endure the hardships of sailing a small vessel across an implacable sea. Better to stay in your LaZ-Boy™ watching cable television than be cold, wet, hungry and exhausted in the middle of a passage.

We recreational sailors are going to sea in increasing numbers. We often start by watching sailboats glide like giant swans as we stand on a beach. We read a bit, perhaps take a basic sailing course, and soon purchase a small boat.

Some of us find a Laser® or Sunfish® exhilarating, and remain small boat sailors all our lives. Others think these craft are a bit wet and cramped, too small for anything more than a cooler or a friend, so we graduate to bigger boats, boats with lids, boats with cabins. And we start looking over charts of waters further afield than our local lake, beach or bay. We begin thinking about cruising under sail, taking our stove, bed and potty with us to different places.

Others jump right to the head of the line. They hand a boat broker thousands of dollars at a boat show and-without a single nautical mile of experience-pull away from the dock in a spanking new 45-foot sloop. They soon realize sailing and cruising are different than driving down the highway, looking for motels and greasy spoons. It’s easy to say they have more money than sense, but they deserve a place on our waters too.

People come to recreational sailing and cruising from many avenues. But all sailors need to acquire and refine the same set of skills to make their time on the water safe and pleasant.

This course is geared for people graduating to boats with lids. Folks who understand sailing a cruiser is different than sailing a Sunfish®. Not that the sailing itself is any different, for all boats sail the same-trim in to go upwind, sheet out for downwind. But beyond the simple mechanics of sailing, there are a myriad of differences between the skill of sailing and the art of cruising. It’s these aspects that we’ll examine.

When you begin cruising under sail, you join an ancient association. While our lines are made of modern materials, our knots come from antiquity. The pole star we use at night is the same as the one used by the Phoenicians and Polynesians. Much sailing lore is handed down in show-and-tell fashion. Sailors share. Thus sailors are always students, looking for a better knot, a superior technique, ways to enhance their safety and improve their comfort on the water. Imagine how many old salts stood under their masts teaching knots to a circle of raw novices, be they Phoenician, Arab, Polynesian or American.

Almost 20 years ago, I began this class for beginning cruisers at the Sarasota Sailing Squadron in Sarasota, Florida. It assumes students know the fundamentals of sailing, but they are either new to the cruising game or are already experienced cruisers but new to Florida. This book is drawn from the class, and benefits from the many questions posed by students. I retain the lecture format, because it’s the way sailors learn.

Let me tackle a common question that comes up in every session of Cruising (with) Class. A student inevitably comes up during a break or after class to ask, I just bought a 22-foot sloop. How far do you think I can go? My standard answer isn’t immediately satisfying: It all depends on the courage and skill of the skipper and crew.

In the Deutches Museum in Munich, there is a Polynesian catamaran built in the 17th century. Her 35-foot overall length is about the same as a modern ocean-capable sloop. The outrigger is a small tree trunk, the main hull is a hollowed-out palm bole, a rattan trampoline stretches between the two, and the sails are woven from palm fronds. How far could she go? With no navigational equipment, the ship’s crew regularly traveled hundreds and even thousands of miles between Pacific landfalls.

She carried no bimini top or water tank, no storm jib or spray hood, no galley or berths. She is a centerpiece of the Maritime Hall of Exhibits because she is an apex of refinement in ocean sailing. Made with no cotton cloth or iron, she is a combination of natural material and human cunning. Surrounded by models of liners and tankers and racing sailboats, she is a pure cruiser designed to follow the imagination of her crew. She is humbling.

Humble is an apt word to describe the relationship of a cruising sailor to the sea. An old sailor’s hymn says-in part-Oh Lord, the sea is so great and my boat is so small. It is a humility made of many parts. One is fear, for the ocean is inhospitable and unforgiving. Man alone, unsupported, cannot survive long.

Another element is awe, for in its rages and splendors, the sea is vast and untamable. One aspect of awe comes from a personal relationship with raw nature-the same feeling inspired by the Grand Canyon in Arizona, or the endless sweep of dunes in the Sahara-the sense of feeling very small in a landscape of endless grandeur.

Words seem pale on a page compared to the reality cruising sailors seek. We suspect and soon know the experience defies description by mere words. It is authentic perception we desire, albeit in comfort and safety. Today’s modern materials and designs make it possible for people of average means to discover these old sailor secrets. Landlubbers for millennia were forced to accept a dry substitute by storytellers like Homer and Melville; today we can experience the sea’s majesty firsthand.

We live in an increasing chaotic world. Our connectivity via cell phone, fax, e-mail, videoconferencing and web chat threatens to overwhelm us. Dailiness becomes hourliness as the pace accelerates. Change surrounds us. Our perspectives, even our values, are challenged incessantly.

Many of us need to find our centers again. To know the important from the trivial, to clear our minds of the clang-clang-clanging of modern life, to flee the fax and phone if only for a few hours to snatch a piece of peace for our minds and souls.

This is what drove me to sailing, and eventually to live aboard a boat moored in Sarasota Bay. As a news reporter, life was full of phone calls and confrontational interviews. Crooked politicians, crazed dope dealers, bent cops, political prosecutors and fearful bureaucrats filled my days, my mind.

Only on the water would they vanish. As I rowed to the boat each evening, going home, the shoreside worries stayed on the beach as I slipped back into boat time. Underway my attention was filed with wind direction and sail trim and staying on course.

Cruising is not about destinations. You can get there easier by car, or as is often said, a Boeing 747 goes to weather better than any boat. If you want to see Antigua or Tonga or Tarpon Springs, book a flight or jump in your car. It’s easier, faster and more comfortable than sitting in the cramped confines of a sailboat cockpit for days on end.

Cruising a sailboat reclaims your center, but does it in roundabout fashion by taking you away from your center. Away from the house and lawn, away from the clang-clang, away from unwanted visitors and drop-by neighbors, away from the in-basket and the staff meetings. Boating segregates the trivial from the important.

Then in that fine anchorage at the end of a good day’s sailing, you can view your center anew from outside, spiritually refreshed and recharged to return there. This is the key to the sport’s attraction, not the mastery of knots or the final coat of varnish. It is a return to the timelessness of the sea, which respects no person. Instead it demands self-reliance to achieve any success.

In building that self-reliance-the knowledge that comes from skill-you become a different person. You are no longer the enthused entrepreneur, the frantic single parent, the wage slave, the overpressured professional. Now you are a sailor, one of an ancient fraternity. A person of patience and courage, confident but humble. You have found your center.

The focus of the lectures and most of the practical examples will be drawn from the southwest coast of Florida and its many islands, where I draw much of my sailing experience. It is probably the most benign area of the world to learn how to cruise in a sailboat, yet offers the opportunity to embark on serious voyages to exotic destinations only a few days away. Other examples will come from the Chesapeake Bay, where I spent nearly a decade as a weekend cruiser. These lectures, I hope, will allow Florida sailors (and sailors anywhere) to understand the basic skills necessary to cruise in comfort and safety.

I will concentrate on the most difficult aspects of the cruiser’s art-sailing up and down the coast. One old-salt adage says, The land is the enemy of the boat, not the sea. By staying in close proximity to the coast-or even sailing inside the coast along the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW)-the cruiser stands in greater peril than upon the open ocean. We’ll talk about offshore work too, but coastal work demands the greatest attention.

The primary emphasis is on the who, keeping the skipper and crew in top condition, happy and safe, dry and alert. People-not equipment-are the primary factors for safety, navigation and propulsion aboard a cruising sailboat. Comfort is key.

The response over the years to Cruising (with) Class prompted me to put this material in a more widely accessible form. These lectures are an offering to all sailors, but most importantly to the beginning cruiser, whether aboard a chartered Caribbean craft or buying that first boat with a lid. My aim is to help you arrive at your destination safe, dry and content.

Put another log on the fire, and we’ll get started.

One

Sailing the Environment

Sailing is a never-ending contest by a skipper and crew to bring their vessel to her destination using the wind and tide. While the weather is a perennial topic of conversation, it is also a worthy subject to study. Understanding your local weather-how warm and cold fronts play out, what storms are dangerous and what storms aren’t-will make you a safer, swifter and more confident sailor.

Understanding the water and the seafloor of your cruising area will produce similar benefits. River, bay and ocean currents sculpt the sea bottom over which you travel. Appreciating how and why the water acts the way it does-and learning how you can use it for your benefit-will keep you afloat and enable you to visit places you didn’t think you could ever see. Even the birds and the trees can help you in your piloting.

In this chapter, we’ll look at southwest Florida’s weather and water, with suggestions on how to use these natural forces to your advantage. It is intended as a case study, using Florida as an example of how to examine weather anywhere. For folks in other cruising areas, I hope this discussion will encourage you to look at your local winds and waters in a different light…not as adversaries to be overcome, but as allies if properly understood and recruited.

The interplay of wind and the waves it creates, currents and the shallows they create, the ballet of high-and low-pressure systems in the atmosphere-these compose the canvas upon which the cruiser paints a voyage. The local environment shapes the planning and execution of any cruise. By understanding it, you can minimize your risks and make these permanent factors work in your favor.

Southwest Florida weather is normally benign and very predictable. It will show specific signals to the alert pilot. Cold fronts sweep down from the north, and warm fronts sweep up from the south. It’s hot in the summer and cooler in the winter. The sun is either shining or it isn’t.

This is weather even a three-year-old can understand, and as a consequence we usually dismiss these obvious signals. But learning to ride the cold fronts can speed a voyage; timing a trip for the cooler months will reduce sunburn risk.

There are weather perils along this coast. These weather patterns are not lethal, but can cause serious problems for the unwary sailor.

Thunderstorms

Thunderstorms are muggers. They are sudden and violent. I consider them the most significant weather threat to the casual sailor. They are a feature not only of Florida but the entire eastern seaboard. The variety on the Chesapeake Bay are especially feared. Every sailor will be caught unprepared once by a thunderstorm. If you are caught unprepared a second time, shame on you.

Thunderstorms are fed by the land breeze/sea breeze phenomenon, as cool and moist air reacts with hot and dry air. A sea breeze, laden with moisture and cooled by evaporation from the sea tangles with hotter, dryer air rising from the interior to create a thermal imbalance that causes strong rain (the moisture difference) and high winds (the pressure difference, caused by the temperature difference).

Thunderstorms are active from May through November, created as hot, dry air warmed by the sunshine over land collides with cooler, moist air forming over the water. These are isolated systems, called cells.

At any time of year, organized lines of thunderstorms can form along the leading edge of an approaching cold front. These are sometimes called squalls or squall lines, and occur over open ocean as well as land, as the cold front pushes south. Tonight, however, we’ll focus on the isolated summertime variety.

The classic summer thunderstorm is best viewed from miles away. It is a very tall cloud formation with a sheer, flat top-sometimes called an anvil head. These cells move with astonishing speed, sometimes in excess of 25 knots. You won’t outrun them in a sailboat.

However the thunderstorm that hits you will be too close to see its anvil, or even the height of the cloud, because you are sailing under its skirts. Florida thunderstorm cells seldom travel north/south, and are a common summer afternoon phenomena as they develop over the interior of the peninsula and move toward the coast in defiance of the sea breeze. Cells in other states can have different travel patterns.

Offshore, Florida thunderstorm cells are primarily a late night/ early morning phenomena, and more easily recognized because flashes of lightning are prominent in the night sky.

The summer afternoon thunderstorm is dangerous because its leading edge can carry winds in excess of 60 knots. Cells move swiftly, so if you see clouds building on the horizon, keep them in sight and on your mind. The wind will not build gradually, and in fact the reverse is often true-the standard summertime sea breeze can diminish as the cell begins to exert its influence locally.

I cannot give you a specific trigger to begin your preparations. The one sure sign you are about to be hit by a thunderstorm is a sudden gust of noticeably cold air. The approaching wall of wind immediately follows this chill, and by the time you notice the cold air, you are moments away from hell’s doorstep.

Another short-fuse warning indicator is the creation of white-caps by the windwall as it bears down on you. During the Stiletto National Championships several years ago, one racer recalled watching the 23-foot catamarans flip over-one by one-as the wall of wind swept down the bay. These last-minute preliminary indicators are best observed when you are already prepared for the cell and waiting for it to strike. Don’t use them as your trigger to get ready because at this point, the final seconds are counting down.

The best trigger to begin preparations is your own anxiety. Let your anxiety be your guide.

The primary rule of reducing sail is reef when you first think of it.

You might see grey curtains of rain over the mainland, or notice visibility is diminishing in a particular direction. Lightning and thunder are positive indicators; remember to count the seconds between the bolt and the thunder; sound travels at five seconds per mile.

There are two steps to get ready to accept the blow. First, prepare the boat. Then prepare yourself and your crew. This is a sequence you’ll come to use in other circumstances.

You prepare the boat for a squall by reducing the amount of sail. Go forward and drop the jib. Tie the sail to the lifelines; make sure to include the sheets too, so they won’t flop into the water and tangle in your propeller or rudder. Keep a couple of sail ties wrapped around the bow rail for this eventuality. Lower the jib quickly and tie it up; neatness counts only a little here. Unclip the jib halyard and secure it properly. You don’t want the halyard wrapped around the forestay, or bouncing up and down, hauling the sail up and down with it.

Then reef the mainsail. You should know how to do this on a heaving deck in mid-ocean in the middle of the night, blindfolded. But you probably don’t, so develop this skill with drills on sunny days. The reefing exercise should be finished long before the storm strikes. When the windwall is bearing down on you is not the time to determine which line is the halyard, or which cringle goes in which hook. Reefing should be routine. We’ll talk more about reefing in a later lecture.

The second step is preparing yourself, your crew and any passengers. When you suspect a thunderstorm may cross your course, pull out your foul weather gear-especially your boots-and put them on. The rain that accompanies the thunderstorm will soak you; the wind will chill you; and your most effective sailing instrument-yourself-will have diminished capacity.

So, first step-reef the sails. Second step-prepare yourself and your crew. Tell your passengers what is happening, and instruct them to go below immediately upon your order. Thunderstorms are savage but brief. In less than a half-hour, the sun probably will be back. But if you are unprepared, the sun will be shining upon your sopping boat shoes, your drenched passengers, your ripped mainsail and your bruised crew. My, what a happy lot we’ve become.

Your routine should be automatic, done simply, easily and efficiently. Mine works like this-pull on my sailing gloves, drop and secure the jib, reef the main, then grab the boots, and don my foul weather pants. Lastly I’ll comfort the passengers. Between the black clouds and yellow boots, they’ll need some comforting if they haven’t survived one of these howlers before. All this preparation takes only a few minutes.

Because visibility will drop to zero, perhaps for 15 minutes or longer, the helmsman should take a good visual fix of position. You’ll be sailing blind for awhile, so mark the relative position of other vessels, note your compass course and eyeball the chart. You want to avoid a collision or grounding while you’re sailing through the squall. Then sit back and wait for the fun.

If you’re in the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), pay particular attention to the mark behind you as well as the mark in front. Note your course again, and double-check your depth finder. Sailing in a ditch with zero visibility is possible, but challenging.

Another and different tactic is to drop all sail and ride out the storm at anchor. Offshore this is seldom an option-although I’ve done it-because the motion of the boat is quite extreme. But in Sarasota Bay and other inland waters, this is a valid approach but do not anchor in the channel.

In places like Lemon Bay, Little Sarasota Bay and others, the water is quite shallow beyond the dredged and marked channel, so if anchoring is your option, take your position fix, match it with the chart (using channel marker numbers for example), and pull out of the waterway to a spot with sufficient depth. Being aground in a thunderstorm is not the worst of all possible strategies; being run over is.

Truly adventurous cowboys sometimes ride the storm with full sail set, spinnakers drawing like racehorses, tearing across the water like a hydroplane. This tactic is hard on the boat and gear. It is also dangerous, because should someone fall over the side, recovery will be next to impossible.

A final thought on thunderstorms concerns lightning. Southwest Florida is the lightning capital of the world. Electric utilities from all over the United States support a research station near Tampa Bay because lightning strikes are more frequent there than any place else. You might think that tall aluminum pole sticking out of the middle of your boat would make an attractive target for bolts of lightning. You’ve probably worried about that.

Two schools of thought exist on how to handle this problem. One school-the one I use-says, Do nothing. If you get hit, it’s karma so lead a righteous life and everything should be OK. The second school takes elaborate pains to electrically bond and ground the boat. All metallic components are tied together-seacocks, motor, electronics, shrouds, stays, mast, all things metal-to