I am rereading MOBY DICK for the third or fourth time and by chance am at Chapter 42, The Whiteness of the Whale. Glancing up I see unaccustomed whiteness.
Rain turned to sleet and snow after sunset and continued for part of the night. By the time I woke at 6:30 the front had moved offshore. We have only an accumulation of about an inch/2-3 cms, but the temperature is well below freezing and it will last a while. We have no reason to go anywhere and won’t.
I was surprised this morning to see a boat underway. A 35’ ketch was powering slowly up Skull Creek from the south. She seems a cruiser with solar panels and a lot of stuff on the deck that most cruisers feel a need to carry and towing a rigid dinghy. Through binoculars I saw she had fenders out and that there were two people in the cockpit. As I expected she was heading for the marina after a cold night at anchor somewhere along the creek. I watched her tie up to a snow covered dock. I haven’t seen anyone else moving about in the marina and I don’t plan on going down there until the snow is gone. GANNET’s mast is still where it should be.
I have been thinking more about boat speed.
On all my boats a limiting factor has been when the boat started moving more quickly than whatever self-steering system I was using could control. I have very seldom been willing to sit at the tiller and steer for long out of sight of land. An exception was the day rounding Cape Horn in EGREGIOUS and later on that same five month long passage when EGREGIOUS encountered by far the strongest wind I have ever experienced south of Australia. Off Cape Horn I steered all day. Off Australia only a few hours. I remember thinking then that it was too bad no one would know I had gotten so far before being killed.
I do not remember the exact boat speeds EGREGIOUS made under bare poles off Cape Horn and did not record it in STORM PASSAGE. In the storm off Australia she was making 9 and 10 knots under bare poles. She had no electrical system, but did have, as did CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE, a self-powered boat speed indicator.
CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE’s best day’s runs were between 146-149 miles. Her boat speed indicator readout stopped at 10 knots. In the storm that drove us around Tahiti in winds recorded at 54 knots in Papeete Harbor, CTs boat speed indicator was often pegged at 10 knots.
I have had only three or four 200 mile days and they all came on RESURGAM at about the same location near the Equator a thousand or fifteen hundred miles west of Panama on passages to the Marquesas though a circumnavigation apart. An Equatorial counter current runs there and it aided the day’s runs. RESURGAM was reaching both times. Once with the wind on the beam, once with it slightly forward.
I goggled She 36 to check my memory and found what I am reasonably certain wrong information, including that they displace 14,000 pounds and have a 29’ waterline. Finally on the Sparkman and Stevens, who designed the boat, site I found what tallies with my memory, a waterline of 26’ and a displacement of 10,500 pounds. She 36s were ¾ Tonners under the then IOR racing rule. Those numbers are consistent with the ¾ ton rating of 24.5. Both EGREGIOUS and THE HAWKE OF TUONELA were One Tonners with ratings at the time of 27.5. They had about 30’ waterlines and should have been about a half knot faster than RESURGAM. However I found that I made passages as fast or faster in RESURGAM than I did in the bigger boats because she was so well designed that the self-steering vanes—Aries on EGREGIOUS and RESURGAM; Monitor on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA— could control her longer and get her closer to her potential maximum speed than they could the other boats.
I also find online varying weights for Drascombe Luggers, from more than 800 pounds/362 kilos to 600 pounds/272 kilos. Whichever a very light boat— one of the lightest if not the lightest to be sailed across the Pacific and the Indian Oceans—and with very little wetted surface. She must have accelerated quickly, but my impression is that I have never had a boat that accelerates as quickly as GANNET. We are sailing at 6 or 7 knots, pick up a little more wind or a wave and instantly we are doing double digits. The highest speed I have observed on her is 13.7 knots. I was hand steering sailing one morning inside Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in Far Northern Queensland with the asymmetrical set. We may have gone faster. I was not constantly looking at the Velocitek. Around noon I got hungry and engaged the tiller pilot, hoping it could handle the little sloop long enough for me to duck below and grab something to eat. It couldn’t. I was no sooner in The Great Cabin than we broached and GANNET was on her side. Struggling to the companionway I was able to reach the continuous line controlling the asymmetrical furling gear and got the flogging sail furled, GANNET back on her bottom, set the jib which the tiller pilot could handle, and proceeded on our way. Those who race Moore 24s reach speeds approaching, perhaps exceeding 20 knots. I like going fast, but I also like to get to the other side.
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