Delivery
by Pintal
Delivery is different from racing and different from cruising, there is an expectation from the owner that the boat will arrive at a particular time, in a particular state for a particular price. Like racing there is a crucial time element and like cruising there is a shortage of crew and long passages so ones reliance on ones assets is greater. If someone asks how was the trip, the ideal trips answer is “nothing, it was boring”. The dramatic trips at the height of the drama are terrifying, great for stories in the bar,. But as I once explained to a US Immigration officer in Niagara Falls, many’s the time I would have preferred to have been behind that safe land bound desk. Than risking my life for $200 a day( I now charge $350-400 a day) and its still not really full compensation.
The crucial elements to a good delivery are in order, the crew, the boat and the food that is because you have some control over these three elements, the route and weather are beyond the scope of control, one can avoid the worst aspects of these sometimes, but three days out en route to the Caribbean if the weather changes beyond the forecast you have no options really, even on ones route. The critical factors on the boats part are its fuel capacity, sailing ability and the autopilot.
For a voyage of 1500 miles you need at least 4-5 days worth of fuel, if you have no autopilot you need four crew members at minimum, normal crew is three, doing a watch schedule of 3 hours on during daylight and 2 hours on at night, the day being from 0600 to1800. Standard rules apply, no pissing over the rail, watch captain is in charge of all running of boat on his watch, no leaving the cockpit at night without a harness and a second person on deck. At night every one wears a life vest irrespective of weather. Hatch boards in, in conditions over F5. The log is entered every watch change at minimum. One beer per day at 1730 hours ( happy hour).
From a captains point of view the navigation instruments aboard are important, I bring my own, ie my laptop with Nobeltec chart software and a handheld GPS (Garmin Etrex), I have bailed out all sorts of boats whose ship board systems have collapsed at the vital moment. So I run mine alongside the ships. Ship board failures involve E Series failing (Oyster 485), Northstar GPS(Oyster 66), GPS failure (Oyster 53) the list is endless. BUT it all points to the fact that one electronic system is not enough. On the Big Ez, despite spending $50,000 on a communication system and dedicated computer both that and my laptop failed off Puerto Rico. I carried the can so terminating my association with the boat.
Radar is a essential in North American waters because of the high prevalence of fog. I suppose the same is true of British and Irish waters its just that no yachts had radar when I sailed there. If you have a Raymarine system then you should have a smart pilot(controller) so if your autopilot head unit fails you have a back up. It is also useful to have at the nav station to help fill out the log, if you don’t have a multi there. Radar apart from picking up obstructions, and other ships, can be really handy at night in identifying squall lines, so allowing one to reef before the wind hits you with driving rain. A new gismo which is really useful is AIS, not only does it pick up ships beyond the horizon, but gives you the name so when you call them on the VHF they answer immediately. For the nosey, like my friend Eric it gives you their destination and basic type passenger, tanker or cargo. Even the USS Enterprise had one on last week, but the give away was her beam 154' for a length of 560', and she was bound for Newport sailing in the wrong direction and disappeared from the screen after an hour or so.
The boats sailing and motoring ability is important when I first took Alcyone from Florida to Newport she was awful, couldn’t beat for anything and her ancient engine could barley manage 5 knots. Now she can manage 6 knots in 9 knots of breeze with her mizzen staysail up and her new Yanmar engine can get us up to 8 knots, if we don’t worry about fuel burn. Oysters are relatively wet boats in that a lot of water is shipped over the bow, but the dodger is big and effective so little comes into the cockpit. Having said that the 46 is subject to boarding seas from the aft quarter. For life aboard a fridge and freezer is good, although a serious ice box and blocks of island ice work. Here again there is a reliance on electrical power and even though you may have a generator and an engine, both can stop and will at some stage. When this happens the wind disappears as well, ie 400 miles south of Bermuda, 300 miles north of the islands, with a defunct diesel injector pump and the generator had a coolant problem we couldn’t workout, we drifted in an Oyster 62 for a day, just before Christmas to add to the drama. We eventually found a piece of zinc anode from the intake manifold jammed up in the union nut on the intake to the generator raw water pump. But we still had to sail into and drop anchor in Simpson Bay St Maarten under sail.
That is why on my website I have the saying “expect the unexpected”. Sail handling is another area where delivery requires a different technique, one has not got a lot of crew and one wants to sail as fast as possible. Roller reefing genoas and staysails are good, electric winches or hydraulics on the furler are good, roller reefing mainsails I don’t like in particular the Seldon manual type, good slab reefing is very hard to beat, even in very heavy conditions two of us, one on the helm and one at the mast can reef Venture Oyster 62 with minimum of difficulty. I once had to, in a following sea and 30 knots of wind, hove to off Charleston in Venture for 2 hours, whilst two freighters pick up pilots and proceeded before me through the jetties.
One piece of equipment I never used in Europe that is essential here is a thermometer, sailing across the gulf stream one need to know the temperature, the change from 82° south of the stream, to 92° in the stream to 77° down to 55° north of the stream and the attendant weather and sea state change is dramatic. No one explained that the stream has water that is the equivalent to HOT bath water.
One thing all three cruising, racing and delivery do have in common s the choice of shipmates or crew. DO NOT GO TO SEA WITH PEOPLE YOU DON’T TRUST OR LIKE. The results in a serious situation can end in fatalities even when that needn’t have happened. When I go down to sleep of watch in the Delaware River I need to know that the guy up on the helm is competent at reading ships lights and the radar as well as understanding the basic navigation. Actually sailing between Newport and Annapolis requires more skill than sailing Newport to Bermuda.. On our way up here I came on watch and noticed that the radar showed the course line going to the bottom of the screen, on checking Nobeltec the boat was upside down, up top the compass showed our heading was due south. We were blazing along at 7 knots in the wrong direction, and had been for two hours. In the open ocean it cost us four hours of travel time, in restricted waters !!!! End of story.
My first deliveries were on Korsar ( S&S34) with Bob Mollard from Dun Laoghaire to Bangor, Crosshaven, Falmouth, Holyhead and Plymouth to Schull, it was these voyages that taught me how to navigate, and general seamanship, we had no radar and GPS hadn’t been invented yet. If we stopped in the water in the middle of the Irish Sea, we had no idea that we were gently going backwards. To find Holyhead in the fog one sailed a course that took you south, so you did not end up missing the headland and carry on along the North Wales coast and have to beat back against the tide which was nigh on impossible.
I am finishing this off in August after leaving Ravenglass by train from Whitehaven on a blowy rainy Sunday the Irish Sea (Solway Firth) looked as inviting as dip in the Chesapeake, steel grey sea lots of breakers, even the wind generators were turned off, four hours later in sunshine in the south midlands belting along at 130 mph I had forgotten how pleasurable rail travel is, I even saw two steam engines in Carlisle waiting for the 40th Anniversary special of the end of steam on BR.
Pintal is the nom de plume that has been writing articles about sailing and politics of sailing since the early ‘80's. Sea time includes some 65,000 miles offshore, racing, delivery and cruising in the waters of Ireland, England, France, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Scotland, Mediterranean, Newfoundland, Great Lakes, Vancouver Island, East Coast United States, Gulf Coast, Bahamas, Bermuda and the Caribbean.
