Balky outboards, compass tricks and finding bottom
with Tom Cunliffe
THINK DEEPLY
When chartering, I am always maddened to be told that the echo sounder is calibrated “to depth under the keel, plus a bit for safety.” Such operators seem to imagine that the instrument’s sole purpose is to stop people running aground. As a navigator I find this patronising. The echo sounder is a primary piloting tool, not a panic avoider. It should tell me the exact depth of the water so I can use this for further calculations. My boat draws 7ft The sounder reads water depth. If it says 7ft, I’m on the bottom. Not difficult, is it? When the charter-boat unit says zero and I’m still afloat because of some arbitrary and undisclosed safety margin, where does that leave me? A “margin for safety” leaves me feeling disturbingly unsafe, so if your sounder is set to something other than depth of water, get out the leadline for a dead accurate depth, then calibrate the sounder accordingly. If you haven’t a leadline, lash a few shackles on the end of a piece of string and break out the ship’s tape measure.
EASY ON THE CORD
Under pressure from my wife, who has always had difficulty starting outboards, I sold my last gas unit a few years ago and now use electric. In my silent new world I’m always sad to see people heaving away at old-fashioned outboard starter cords in vain frustration. The wretched things remind me of motorcycle kick-starts. They always fail in front of a crowd. If an outboard won’t fire after halfdozen pulls, it might be suffering some terminal malaise. However, it’s far more likely that it has simply flooded its carburetor. Nine times out of 10 you can cure this simply by starving it of gas. Shut the fuel tap, deactivate any choke mechanism, close the throttle right down then give it a few brisk pulls. Once it fires, as it probably will rather unconvincingly, pick up the revs gingerly with the throttle, turn the fuel back on and away you go.
KEEP THE BATTENS IN
Have you ever had difficulties with full-length battens slipping out? On charter boats, I’ve occasionally had them popping out of the leech like longbow arrows. With my own mainsail, if the leech end gets a bit slack, the luff end will also slither out of its holder with wretched results. You’ll have already learned the trick of shoving them in from the leech with a short length of batten and securing them with a Velcro pocket. If this fails, you may find the sailmaker has left you a pair of small loops, one either side, which you can use to pass a lashing and do away with the problem for good. If there are no loops and you’ve had an issue, ask him to work them in at this winter’s valeting.
A MATTER OF COURSE
Steering a compass course is never a problem when you’re looking over the top of the compass card, as you do with an oldfashioned binnacle or a typical modern wheel steering arrangement. It soon becomes ingrained that the lubber line coincides with the ship’s head, so if it moves right of the heading, it is visually obvious to steer the bow to port to bring it back onto line. A bulkhead compass, or worse, an electronic readout, can be more difficult, unless you remember this simple rule to get back on track: if the number shown by the compass or the screen is higher than the required course, turn to port. If it’s lower, come to starboard. The only catch is that if the course is 355 degrees and the compass shows 005, you should think of it as 365. The rest is plain sailing. s