USGG 50-Ton Master Captain Jeff Vegas

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The Love Language of Sailing

A few days ago I was giving private lessons aboard someone’s brand-new sailboat. Their insurance company required more training for both owners before they would allow them to take it out without a licensed captain. One of the owners, John was there with his girlfriend Susan, and she said to him, “Why don’t you tell Captain Jeff about our love language?”. Of course, my immediate thought was “is this going to be TMI?” (Too Much Information)

Photo by Jonathan Borba

The Problem:

So he started off by telling me that they have been together for about 10 years and they have been sailing together from the beginning. For many years, she would mention potential collisions with something like, “There’s a sailboat off the starboard bow at 1 o’clock” and he would often snap at her with some retort like “I KNOW” or “DO YOU THINK I’M BLIND?”.

This went on for awhile, and not surprisingly, one day he almost collided with another vessel and he snapped at her again “DID YOU SEE THAT BOAT COMING?”. She replied calmly, “yes, I saw it”, and he yelled “WELL THEN, WHY DIDN’T YOU WARN ME ABOUT IT?” and she calmly said, “you’re not blind”. IT was at that moment he realized how his demeanor was not only a poor way to stay safe on his vessel, but it was not helping his relationship either, so he came up with a new plan.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

 

The First Part of the Solution:

Whenever she would point out a buoy, boat or other obstacle he might want to notice, his response would be “Roger that”. If you don’t know, “copy” or “copy that” is a term used in business and military settings to indicate that the speaker has heard and understood the previous statement. “Roger” or “Roger that” is also a term used in business and military settings, but it is supposed to indicate that the speaker agrees with the previous statement.

The semantics aren’t important, what is important is that since implementing their new communication protocol, not only are they safer, but sailing has returned to the wonderful experience it always had been, and they say their relationship is stronger than ever, because it is not strained when they are relaxing while sailing. After realizing how it changed the dynamic of their relationship while sailing, they dubbed it their “love language of sailing”.

The Second Part of the Solution:

Then they decided to take their “love language” one step further. They bought walkie-talkie headsets to use when they are too far to speak to each other without yelling. Let’s say they are trying to dock; she is on the bow and he is at the helm; the only way to communicate without the headsets is to yell. They decided that there is no nice way to yell. Even if you are trying to be helpful, but the other person is so far away they can’t hear your normal volume, the yelling could be misconstrued, so now they talk calmly into their headsets, at a normal voice, and their relationship is not strained during that process.

Image by AllClear55

If you have read my statement on the home page with the heading “You’ve heard the term ‘salty’ as it refers to someone’s demeanor, right?” then you know that their old way of being is something I experience all too often with skippers and I have never liked it. When I am at the helm of a boat, I share with everyone on board, “unlike many skippers, I will never get upset if you point out an obstacle of any sort that you think there is any chance I have not seen. I would rather have you tell me about something I already saw, than have you assume I didn’t see it”, and I have always replied with two words as well, “thank you”.

The Truth

Accidents happen on the water for all kinds of reasons, and too often, it boils down to the skipper did not see the obstacle early enough to avoid it. If you’re the salty skipper that yells at people who are trying to keep you and your vessel out of harm’s way, I suggest you adopt the “love language of sailing”.
Roger that?

Fair Winds
Captain Jeff Vegas

You Thought That Hole Was for Your Finger?

You’re about to check your oil and coolant levels before you fire up your engine for the day’s voyage because you always do that (you do always do that, right… during your pre-departure checks?). You slide the small latches to the unlocked position, and there is a little swinging door, sort of a teardrop, that covers the hole that you put your finger in to take to engine cover off. You put your finger in there and pull the cover off and set it aside. That was so smart of them to put that hole there, it makes it easy to get the cover off… but why is that swinging door over the hole?

That hole was not put there for your finger, it was put there for the fire extinguisher. Mind blown? Mine was when I first learned about it several years ago and I recently was reminded how many people don’t know it’s safe purpose. It’s rather simple actually… as you know, adding oxygen to a fire feeds that fire, and you never want to feed a fire on board your vessel, so if your engine compartment is on fire, take the extinguisher nozzle and put it in that hole and discharge it into the engine compartment. It’s much safer than taking the door off… and now you know!
Fair Winds
Captain Jeff Vegas

 

After I posted this to my blog, it told me there were not enough words to be relevant to the search engines. Is it cheesy for me to add these extra words just to get to a word count over 300?
Probably, but why does a good idea have to have a minimum number of words to be worth finding? Confucius didn’t use a lot of words, so why should I? Alright, this is 301 words exactly.

40 Conversation Starters for Any Voyage, Short or Long.

I love sailing with people that I have just met, and, of course, I want them to have a great experience and I, selfishly, also want to have a great experience.

Sometimes there are lulls in the conversation, and if you want to get a nice small group to chat, here are (I think) some great questions to ask… starting with the one I ask almost everyone who boards a boat with me:
What is your favorite boat name, and why? (for clarity, this is not necessarily the name of a boat you own) Boat names seem to have some important meaning to their owners and almost always have a nautical theme, so I ask my passengers to come up with the name that they want to bestow on a boat… it tells me something about their personality. I also always give them one boat name I really like. For example, I spent many years as a real estate agent, and when I set out with 2 of my real estate agent friends to buy a boat, we discussed calling it Reeltor (Realtor, but like a fishing reel)

Here are a few others:

  • Tell me about your best day on the water.
  • If you could have a superhero or cartoon caracter for a best friend, who would it be?
  • If you could have any real animal as a pet (so not a unicorn or bigfoot), which would you choose and why?
  • Where is one place you’d love to travel to again?
  • What’s your favorite comfort food?
  • What was the best meal you ever enjoyed?
  • What do you love most about your home?
  • What gives you goosebumps?
  • Tell me about your childhood best friend.

  • What’s one habit you want to improve on, one habit you want to get rid of, and one habit you want to keep “as-is”?
  • If you were to sing a duet with a famous singer, living or dead, who would it be and why?
  • Who do you most admire, living or dead?
  • What was the first big ticket item you pruchased as an adult?
  • Have you kept any meaningful memorabilia from when you were a kid?
  • What instrument that you don’t play, do you most wish you did?
  • If you could travel back in time, specifically to your life, when would you go back to and why?
  • What is the compliment you hear most often?
  • What’s your earliest memory?
  • What are some of your best memories about your parents or whoever raised you?
  • What is something you have accomplished so far that your younger self would be very proud of?
  • What did you like most about school? (and don’t say nothing… even if you did not like school much, there was something you liked)
  • What superpower do you wish you had?

  • What superpower do you have? (your best real trait, like negotiating or ??)
  • What accomplishments are you most proud of?
  • What is the best thing about your house?
  • What do you want to be when you grow up?
  • If you could live in any other country for 1 year (money is no object), where would you go?
  • What’s one of your favorite memories from your childhood?
  • What was your favorite subject in school? Which characteristics are you happy that you inherited from your parents?
  • What food reminds you most of home?
  • What about the state of our current planet would be most surprising to your younger self?
  • What was your very first job?
  • What’s one act of kindness you experienced today?
  • What do you do for enjoyment?
  • Do you prefer being around other people or spending time alone?
  • If you had a whole day to yourself, what would it look like, what would you do, and where would you go?
  • Who do people tell you you look like?
  • Do you collect anything?
  • What’s one thing your loved ones would be surprised to learn about you?

If that does not spark some interesting conversations, please find people who are alive LOL.

Image by rawpixel.com

Fair Winds
Captain Jeff Vegas

Pre-Departure Checks Can Keep a Bad Day from Getting Worse.

A few years ago, a friend of mine backed out of the dock only to learn that his steering linkage had broken, and he no longer had control over the vessel… what now?

And just a few weeks ago my friend Mark shared with me via email “I did the normal pre-departure checks prior to sailing Thursday & Friday and found no problems. Then on Saturday, I found the bilge below the motor full of water when I looked into the engine compartment prior to leaving the slip. I found this to be saltwater, so I shut the raw water sea cock and searched for the leak. It turned out to be at the impeller housing, or at the end of the hose that connects to the impeller housing. It is under the alternator and super hard to access so I can’t tell for sure where the water is coming from, but there was a stream of water shooting out that slowly filled the bilge below the motor with sea water over the course of a day or so. I borrowed a hand pump from a guy a few slips down to remove the water so the engine wasn’t sitting in salt water.

As I mentioned, there were no problems found during my checks before sailing Thursday or Friday, but there was on Saturday.”

This means it’s really important to do all the pre-departure checks every day before you shove off.

Look, you can’t prevent every issue, but these things happen and wouldn’t you rather find out before you untie if possible? Every vessel is different so every one will have its own version of the list. Here are a couple that I recommend that I don’t think a lot of private skippers do. And I suggest you do these every time:

  • When you start your engine, check over the side of your vessel to make sure the engine is expelling water. Water is what cools your engine, and if water is not coming through for some reason, the time to find out is now.
  • Then, just before you untie, put your vessel in gear; forward for 30 seconds and then reverse for 30 seconds. In forward gear, look over the stern of your vessel and you should see the water a little disturbed. When in reverse gear, look over the side.
  • Finally, turn your rudder all the way left and all the way right. If you have an autopilot, it probably has an instrument in it that tells you where your rudder is in relation to center. Watch that dial as you turn the wheel. If everything looks good and feels normal, then you can shove off (if the linkage is broken, the wheel will spin too easily).

Fortunately for my friend who lost steering, there were a few boaters on the docks willing to help out. He threw them some lines and they wrangled the boat back into the slip. But an extra 2 minutes spent running a couple of prelaunch checks would have been an even better solution.

If you need a pre-departure checklist, drop me a line and I’ll send you mine… it will likely need some adjusting based on how your vessel is different than mine, but it will help you get started, and I assure you there are way more than these 3 items on it.
Fair Winds
Captain Jeff Vegas

Boat BBQs – Worth the Risk?

When on land, the BBQ is my favorite cooking apparatus, so on board the boat, it’s only natural I want to use one too. Whether catching fish or just grilling the kabobs we brought with us, BBQ’s and the outdoors just go together in my opinion.

Image by Karolina Grabowska from Pixabay

However, just because your boat is surrounded by water does not make it fireproof. Each year, boat BBQs cause fires that damage and sometimes destroy boats, which means, like so many other things related to boats, BBQs need to be treated with respect. Most BBQ fires occur because someone didn’t make good decisions. Now I am not a fan of using charcoal grills on a boat, personally, but if you are going to, consider only using charcoal that does not need lighter fluid. If you do use lighter fluid, only use fluid specifically made for the charcoal grill. Never use gasoline or alcohol. They are extremely dangerous.

The BBQ should always be clear of the boat when in use, which usually means hanging over the gunwale (unlike in the photo below) so any hot ashes or drips go into the water. Make sure the wind is blowing away from the boat, so any breeze does not blow these things onto the deck anyway. In fact if there is more than a light breeze, you probably shouldn’t even start the grill.

Image by Monica Volpin from Pixabay

Which is another reason for using propane over charcoal. If conditions become unsafe after starting the propane grill, it’s much easier to extinguish the flames. Also note that many marina’s prohibit BBQ’s on the docks, so make sure you check with yours to understand the rules. Finally, always keep the documentation and follow the manufacturers safety recommendations. No matter how tasty those BBQed wings will be, it’s not worth catching your boat on fire.

Fair Winds
Captain Jeff Vegas