About something you really need

Something you might want to think about, a bit of asshat humor, and in the "Wrong then Wrong now" department...

I dont, as a rule, make pronouncements of the "everybody needs to have this" sort but every boat really needs some sort of emergency rudder that works if youre sailing out of cellphone range.

Ya think?

Fact is, building an emergency rudder that works does not cost a lot or take much skill and all of the information you need is available here for free.

That being said, there are folks who just dont GROK the DIY vibe or who are unwilling to spend the sort of silly-expensive costs of having a custom emergency rudder fabricated... Luckily for these folks there is a new emergency rudder that seems to make a lot of sense called the OceanSteer Emergency Rudder.

While not exactly cheap compared to a DIY affair it is much more reasonable than a custom fabrication. Better yet its designed to fit into a couple of flat packs so can fit into a cockpit locker or under a berth which makes a heck of a lot of sense. Definitly worth checking out.

Listening to Motion City Soundtrack

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in the I need some polka music and I need it fast department

Something interesting about a goldfishs attention span, a worthwhile read (especially the last paragraph), and a survey you might want to take...

A couple of days ago, our cat Willow started growling and a few seconds later I heard an anchor splash a few feet off our beam.

At the time I was in a bay that hosted a half-dozen boats with plenty of room to anchor anywhere and no need at all for a 48-foot cat to drop an anchor ten feet off my starboard side on a very short scope. Which, obviously, was pissing off Willow greatly, had me looking for fenders, and wondering just when did folks cruising start anchoring like it was a downtown parking lot.

The answer to the question remains somewhat hazy but I distinctly remember that in the early 90s the SOP was to anchor as far as humanly possible away from any boats already anchored...

Sure there were the odd exceptions of up close and way too personal anchoring tactics. One that stands out was when friends of ours on a Simpson cat had a bowspritted boat come up behind them so close that when they actually dropped the anchor it landed in one of their sugarscoop transoms (apparently caused by excessive imbibing of Funador brandy).

Of course, even back then bareboats already had a pretty horrible reputation for anchoring way too close but somewhere along the line it would seem the practice has become the norm and not just among bareboat folks but with term charter crews (who really should know better) and the general population of cruisers.

These days its not unusual to see a big bay, mostly empty and a small knot of boats anchored one atop the other to the point that some of the boats are putting out fenders.

It makes me wonder...

...where I can find a CD of a heavy metal polka band covering Captain Beefheart.

Listening to Temperance Movement

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Something we all need to think more about

About that war on Christmas, "Its a Wonderful Life" holiday (isnt it?) and the perpetual fear machine goes on and on and on and...

The last couple of weeks Ive been witnessing the slow agonizing death of a boat that ran aground and it has been a somewhat thought-provoking experience.

I expect Ill write more about it later but the most obvious lesson is that, these days more than ever, in spite of such things as towing services, marine professionals, and government agencies that if you get into trouble on a boat youre really on your own...

The bottom line is that no one really cares and all of those in the aforementioned safety net dont care at all (well except for whatever money they can bleed from the situation) and if you need to save your boat it really is up to you to make it happen.

Listening to Big Little Lions

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