The Advantage of Being Knocked Down While Poor
Unlike Bayesian, My Leaky 40-Year-Old Wooden Sloop Popped Right Back Up
A week ago I met remotely with three New York Times reporters doing a deep dive (no pun intended) on the Bayesian catastrophe. I had provided them with the Bayesian Stability Information Booklet, which, in the parlance of journalism, I had “obtained.”
Much of the interview was spent with me referring technical questions to the two ship designers with whom I have been collaborating for Loose Cannon stories—Tad Roberts and Roger Long. They have since been interviewed as well.
These reporters were really smart, but did not indicate that they were sailors or even boaters. In that context, I think my contribution to the mix was twofold.
First, I had echoed Substack colleague Phil Friedman’s observation that, while the Stability Booklet has advice for the skipper under normal operating conditions, it fails to address “Murphy’s Law,” which was clearly at work during the Bayesian calamity. If I may quote myself here: “Disasters at sea rarely seem come as a single trooper, rather in squads and platoons.”
Secondly, I have been knocked down on an old sailboat of mine, the first one that had accomodations. And I could testify to the speed at which a knockdown happens, even when you think you’ve got a little bit of warning.
My knockdown happened about 40 years ago, so I recruited one of the guys who shared the excitement to supplement my own fading recollections. Chef Charles is his name, as it appears in many of my maritime adventures down through the decades.
Charles doesn’t get all the details right, but he does remember stuff that I had forgotten entirely. His observations are in regular type like this (next to the red line), while mine are in italics.
I have a couple of very vivid memories. One is standing upright on the high side of the cockpit looking down on my friend Jim Conner as sea water rushed over the cockpit coaming and buried him. He held on to the tiller by wrapping both arms around it. The look on his face was one of shock and surprise.
Leading up to the "event," we were crusing along merrily off Salisbury Beach in the Meerschaum, a 28-foot wooden sloop, 18 inches of freeboard blah, blah, blah. Behind us perhaps over Isle of Shoals was brewing a very large black sky heading our way.
Our home base was at Newburyport, Massachusetts. On that particular day we had taken a right after exiting the mouth of the Merrimack River, which put us in Ipswich Bay off the towns of Ipswich and Essex. I was at the helm and looked behind us to see dark clouds like bear claws coming off the land right at us.
You may have said somebody should get the rain gear out. Two seconds later the mast wiped over the boat and wind rose to 30-40 knots.
Yes, I did. I thought I had enough time to put on foulies, rather than more sensibly dousing the mainsail at once. I usually accuse others of exaggerating wind and current, but I would have said over 50 knots—hurricane force. We went at least 90 degrees over as the wind ripped through. I think I had only had enough time to get one arm in the jacket.
The mainsail was in the water, filled. Not sure if we closed the companionway boards prior or after. It was obvious the main needed to be hauled down. It was preventing us from coming up right. Being on the high side I cracked up to the mast and undid the halyard and pulled that sucker down as hard as I could.
Suddenly Meerschaum popped up, and, after securing the main sail and boom, she was flying on the jib, really flying! No sooner than it began it was over and the most eerie weather occurred. Hazy, fog. Visibility: zero. Wind speed: zero. Suddenly a skiff appeared out of the mist. It was weird on the approach because someone called it a "ghost ship." I half expected to find a skeleton in it. We grabbed it, and thought we had salvaged it.
I don’t remember the fog part, but the surface of the ocean was glassy, and the skiff sitting absolutely still in the middle of nothing struck all of us as weird. I wonder whether the entire knockdown and subsequent sleighride lasted even two minutes. For me everything was happening in slow motion.
We tied the skiff up on the dock, went to our post-sail cocktail bar. When we returned the skiff was nowhere to be found.
I had a mooring on the Newburyport waterfront at the time, which we tied to upon our return. And, yes, we went to Michael’s Harborside bar and restaurant as was our tradition after a lively daysail. But I had actually hung the skiff to the back of the boat, so that her owner would reclaim her when he or she eventually came through. I assume that’s what happened because she was gone a few days later.
Afterword
Meerschaum had been built of longleaf yellow pine over oak frames, probably in the 1940s. She had a couple thousand pounds of external lead ballast, no opening ports, hatches on center and, unlike Bayesian, no vents in the hull. I’m sure we began taking on some water, but it happened afterwards as the strain on the windward chainplates had surely opened up the carvel planking in their vicinity. She was a real leaker alright, but not enough to call it downflooding.
The real miracle was that her old spruce mast had held together, along with her ancient standing rigging. We were too broke to have upgraded any of that. Like Bayesian, she had gone over in an instant, but she sprung back upright just as quickly. This was a boat I had bought for $3,600 in 1979.
One just never knows about the weather no matter how much research. We were moving our 40' Passport sloop from San Juan Islands WA to San Francisco. We even hired a captain to lead us, just in case, a crew of 5 including the captain. We were hit by a storm that we saw coming from the South so we headed out to open sea, away from the coast. It was a fight but exhilarating and we felt like Old Salts when it was over and our hired captain said that was the worst storm he had ever seen. It had even sent our oven flying across the galley. But that was just the baby. In an hour, we were doing 22 knots with just a storm sail, absolutely flying on the surface of the water. By the time the alarm was given, just long seconds, Mama hit and pulled the storm sail out of the deck by the six big bolts and wrapped around the main mast. We did not ever go completely around but the main mast was hitting the water on both sides and we had trailing seas of God knows what. We turned on the autopilot, battened down and waited. I was scared but I knew that the Passport was designed for the worst. Plus, in preparation, I had read Joshua Slocum's book, Sailing Around the World Alone. If he could survive everything that Mother Nature threw at him in his self-made wood craft, we would survive this storm in this modern, well-designed and well-built sailboat. And I will say that we were always haltered and clipped in while on deck no matter the weather and followed all safety protocols. This was 1995.
There must be some transition in sailboat design that moves from you will survive a knock-down to you will never have a knock-down. Any number of racing sailors have been over to spreaders in the water on boats that aren't damaged and continue racing. Not small boats, 50', 60' racer cruisers, planing designs and displacement boats. This boat can be tipped on it's side by wind alone, no sails up, and it doesn't recover? Not many power boats would suffer that catastrophe, or perhaps these monster yachts have different expectations.