Bad Habits 1 - Please don't do this

As sailors, we learn from all sorts. It could have been Uncle Nick, your mom, or the summer camp counsellor. We take some of those earliest lessons forward with us, generalizing the basic skills through different boats and experiences. Most of the time, this works out all right. On the other hand, sometimes we keep reinforcing bad habits.

Sweet! Let's throw a lawn chair in that action!

Here, left, is what ought to be instantly recognizable as a bad idea: halliards thrown below "to get them out of the way" (of what, one wonders). Two sail ties later, and a stray PFD, and you have a hopeless mess and possible catastrophe waiting to make an indelible mark on your personal sailing history. 

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that  this should never happen on your boat. Sailors aren't neat freaks because we have a fetish, we're neat freaks because we want control. The skipper here and crew have no control because when they want to strike (lower) sail, the guarantee of fair-running lines has, shall we say, expired. (A nice, briny way of describing these 'coils', above, is to say they are fouled.)

I'll add pictures of how it could be done soon, but I prefer figure-eight coiling the lines around winches. You can round-coil if you want, but most small boat lines are going to be double-braided construction, and double-braid takes to figure-eighting very nicely. Where to hang the coils? Aboard a J-24 you can use the spinnaker trim winches. However, if you are racing, you're going to need those winches--so at the least, when you send the halliards down below, make sure that they're coiled and that the bitter end--that is, the end of the line itself, as opposed to the rest of the line, which is the working end-- isn't in the coil itself. You care about this because when lines foul on themselves, it's often because the bitter end that causes the mischief by somehow inserting itself into the middle of the coil.

I've only raced a bit, but when I was on bow and later, trimmer, I spent any 'off time' gathering up sheets and halliards and re-coiling them, or 'dressing them'. This actually got on my first skipper's nerves, and, in hindsight, was totally unnecessary. However, I also always knew that if we needed to blow our vang, we'd be able to do it. Good coiling is cheap insurance.

Next here is a photo dear to my heart, because this happened to me a couple of weekends ago: Just after we struck sail, my crew detached the jib halliard. See how it's neatly clipped, at the ready, on the pulpit.

What's the big deal? When underway, you want your sails ready to go. Having to send someone up to re-set the halliard is not something you want to deal with when you're getting set onto, say, a ferry dock with an engine failure just after leaving the cove entrance. Not that this has ever happened to me, I'm just saying.

Another lesson here is one for the skipper, and it just goes to show: experience or no experience, if you don't keep a 'high SA' (Situational Awareness, i.e., knowing what the hell is going on around you) mistakes are going to happen. I saw the crew member go forward; did I look up afterward to check the work? No I did not. I post this here to publicly fall on my sword as a warning to others: I've made this mistake, now, go out and make your own. No copying me!

Ongoing inspection is a reality in sailing. Check, inspect, re-inspect. Things move on a boat, they get taken apart--what's and who's to say that everything got put back together shipshape? Which reminds me: when we were done for the evening, I didn't re-check the bilge. There was a tiny bit of water in it before we left--less than a gallon--so I didn't pump. How can I establish a trend if I don't check after the sail? Another item I neglected.

Sounds like I need to work on a checklist! More on that soon.

Keep your sticks on the ice, boys--

Julian