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2012-09-18 15.02.49 HDR

Letter to a Young Bosun

On the surface, being a bosun is a matter of technical skill. You are expected to know all the knots, seizings, splices, etc., that might be needed in a given vessel, as well as how to apply those structures meaningfully to every rig component. You are expected to have a mental map of the location of every block, shackle, fairlead, and turnbuckle in the rig, every piece of running and standing rigging, on every spar. You are probably also expected to have a similar level of knowledge in hull- and sail-related matters, and to supervise anchoring and mooring exercises, and to be in charge of small boat operations. Plus, as my friend Raven notes, when the going gets tough, and disaster is rapidly unfolding, you are expected to know exactly where the appropriate tool or spare part is, and how to make things right while everyone else is panicking.

Put another way, you, the bosun, must understand the vessel as a series of systems, and to know – viscerally and intellectually –  how they function, how they relate to one another, and how to keep them all in optimal condition. As if that weren’t asking enough, a bosun should also be strong, tough, and agile enough to carry out any and all needed work, and to do so with an unreasonable level of skill. This is a high calling.

The best bosuns realize that there is a lot of theory behind all of the artisanal activity. Vessels are engineered structures, and if you don’t have at least some notion of the basic principles of that engineering, you are just blindly doing handwork. Therefore, while it is important to expand and hone your manual skill set, it is equally important that you study math, particularly geometry. Your rig is an energy-catching machine, and you cannot make meaningful, consistent use of its potential unless you understand the nature and magnitude of the loads that it will bear, and how it makes use of those loads. Acquaint yourself, if you haven’t already done so, with the forces in the rig and hull – tension, compression, torque, shear. Familiarize yourself with righting moments, metacenters, load algorithms, and all the other opaque-at-first technical descriptions which, for the bosun, can be pathways into the beating heart of the rig.  If you can do that, you might, for instance, be able to choose the correct cordage, spar, hardware, etc. for any job, as opposed to cloning a previous mistake. Hmm, a very high calling. But there is even more.

A bosun is also a manager, not just of jobs, but of people. You need to be able to train your crew to do things right. You need to assign jobs commensurate with skill levels, to schedule jobs so that they don’t impede vessel operations – or get in the way of other jobs. And you will need to be able to deal with the crew’s inevitable struggles/recalcitrance/doubts, to monitor the crew without fussing over them, to trust them to do their best, but also to make sure that their best is good enough.

You won’t have time to educate each crewmember in detail, but you must give them at least enough of an outline to kickstart a learning curve. And you must give them enough consistent, compelling evidence of your own competence that they will accept that you know what you are talking about. They must have some reason to believe that what they are being asked to do is best for the boat, even if they don’t understand why.

Next, a bosun works within a financial context, especially in noble-but-impecunious non-profit organizations. Even on well-funded vessels, your ideals will, on a regular basis, come up against a shortage of cash, or time, or both. Prioritizing for safety, sailing efficiency, long-term savings, short-term savings, and good old aesthetics means that you will be juggling considerations every day, in an effort to keep the vessel running. Too many bosuns ignore things until they break, or concentrate solely on the aspects they think they understand best, or get in the habit of putting out fires as a standard working mode. Good bosuns are aware of the the budget as a whole, as well as the rig as a whole, and they do what they can. This involves a certain number of hours of spent staring at the overhead on your off watches, trying to figure out how to hold things together. It also involves a certain level of skill at lobbying the skipper, the mates, and the folks back in the office.

One more important consideration, pretty much unprecedented in the history of bosunry, is the matter of gender. Historically, sailors were almost exclusively men. Not any more. As a result, today’s male bosuns are faced with the challenge of overcoming millennia of cultural conditioning; basically they need to learn how to treat women sailors as though they were, um, sailors. They have it easy. At risk of mansplaining, I will note that this is a more difficult issue for women bosuns, even in the relatively enlightened atmosphere of the sailing community. Women know, a lot better than I, that they are unlikely to get the same level of respect that a male of equal skill would automatically receive. Quite a few vessels have achieved gender parity, or something like it, but I would be remiss not to bring the subject up, as it is one of those things that, like race, sexual preference, etc., can for no good reason affect the safety and well-being of the ship, and of the crew. I asked Julia Briggs, one of our riggers, if she had any advice for women on this topic. She used to work as a commercial diver, and that is one of the most preposterone-heavy vocations on earth. She said that, among other things, it is amazing what a difference it can make if you can offhandedly, seemingly effortlessly, pull off some feat of strength or skill or agility. It doesn’t have to be a superhuman effort, but when people don’t expect you to be able to do anything, you have the opportunity to use obvious ability to shatter their misperceptions.

In conclusion, I would like to deal with a bit of etymological misperception. The word “bosun” is a corruption of “boatswain,” and the word “swain” is generally understood to mean “sweetheart,” or “lover.” Given the irascible, notably non-romantic nature of most of the bosuns I have known, the term might be assumed to be deeply ironic. But “swain” is from the Old Norse, and originally meant “attendant.” Bosuns are, and always have been, deeply committed to their vessels, not as moon-eyed lovers, but as stolid, skeptical  servants of an absurdly demanding master.

The preceding is a much-expanded version of correspondence with Erika McDowell, serving as of this writing as bosun in the brig Lady Washington. Although I have watched, worked with, and at least sometimes admired bosuns for my entire professional career, I have never been one; it is a much bigger set of shoes than I could ever hope to fill. But my particular skill set overlaps with the aloft portion of the bosun’s, hence the  correspondence, and the rigging-heavy slant of what I had to say.

If you enjoyed this essay, you might like to explore my previous blog posts. Warning: some of them have nothing at all to do with sailing, but you might enjoy them anyway.

If you are interested in learning rigging skills, you will find books, videos, classes, and more in our Catalog.

And speaking of being aloft, my most recent book is called Falling, a series of non-fatal stories about the perils of life aloft. You can find the ebook and audiobook through Amazon and Apple. If you would like a printed copy, complete with autograph, write to catalog@briontoss.com, or call 360-385-1080.PS,Shortly after I posted this article, Maggie Ostler, of the barque Picton Castle wrote to tell me about their Bosun School. If you or someone you know aspires to this high calling, this might be a link for you:

https://www.picton-castle.com/bosun-school.html

 

Fair Leads,

Brion Toss

Julia, bowsprit (1)

Our New Rigger

Hi,

The days of large crews are in the  past for me, but we still work on quite a few rigs, and we still work with some great riggers. I’ll be featuring some more of them in the future, but for now, meet our latest hire, Julia Briggs. She’s been a commercial diver, among other things, but is now more interested in going aloft than alow, and is proving herself to be a remarkably talented rigger. The picture at the top is of her at the bowsprit of a boat we are just finishing up. Its standing rigging is a remarkable 3-strand Vectran, made by Whitehill. Julia did much of the splicing in the rig, as well as installing and tuning it.

We mostly work on more conventional rigs, though. Here is Julia setting up to go aloft for a rig survey:

Of course, rigging is not always about climbing; yacht yoga is a frequent requirement. The other day we had to get at some hardware that was deep, deep in a tiny lazarette. It was a job that required a certain amount of contortion:

Yup, aloft is better. Here is Julia slushing the fully-served gang of Spectra on a lovely Ingrid ketch:

Finally, I will note that we get to meet the neatest people. Here is Julia and, post-mast-stepping, with the extraordinary Deb Greene, geologist, all-around adventurous person, and probably soon an author. Sorry to block the shot, Deb:

More fun people and boats in the future. For now I will leave  you with a plug for my little ebook, Falling. To get yours, click Here, or go Amazon, or to ibooks at Apple, and type in the title or my name.

Fair leads,

Brion

Cropped Falling Cover

Nice things people are saying about “Falling”

Falling, my e-book about life aloft is finally out, so it is time to share some of the kind words that other authors are saying about it. Here are a few:

“All who have met Brion know he has a way with words. This is fully on display in this delightful little book, rich with experience and loaded with fascinating stories. It will entertain, and perhaps educate, anyone who has ever gone aloft.”

Nigel Calder, author of Nigel Calder’s Cruising Handbook, The Boatowner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual, and lots more.

 

 

 

Rigging a boat can, like writing a book or telling a joke or crafting a life as crew, be complicated. Rigger, writer, humorist, and wonder-man Brion Toss, not only dares all four, but does so with romping wit and infinite generosity in his fabulously funny and informative ‘little book’ Falling…”

Kaci Cronkhite, author of Finding PAX

 

“Brion Toss is a rigging master, a fine writer and a perfectionist. In this book he is also a courageous man, who dares to focus on failures!

Now, as the man who walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers, falling is not in my vocabulary—and yet I must confess: mistakes have been my greatest teachers.

We learn from disasters much more than from victorious achievements.

So read and learn (and be frightened), so that you do not fall prey to inattention and amateurism— so that you do not fall, period.”

Philippe Petit, Man on Wire ,

Author of The Walk, Creativity: the Perfect Crime, To Reach the Clouds, etc.

 

 

“In Falling, this engaging and amusing storyteller shares his wisdom from extensive experience climbing and descending from high structures…”

Wendy Hinman, award-winning author of Tightwads on the Loose, and Sea Trials.

 

Falling is available on Amazon and Apple. Download your copy today.

To read a sample, click HERE, and then click on “Look Inside.”

Cropped Falling Cover

“Falling” Drops on the Seventh!

Hello all,

My new e-book, Falling, is about working aloft. It features true stories about bungy jumping, industrial rigging, parachuting, sailing vessels, and more, and you can pre-order it now on Apple and Amazon.

To get your copy from Amazon, Order Here

To get your copy from Apple, get on your IOS device and seek “Falling,” by Brion Toss, in ibooks.

If you are planning to be at the Wooden Boat Festival this weekend, I will be reading selections from the book, as well as talking about all things rigging.

Fair leads,

Brion Toss

064 (2)

Rig Survey, Part 3: Surveying the Components

Rig Survey Part 3: Surveying the Components

 

Cracked swages, chafed rope, corroded fasteners, deformed shackles, these are the kinds of things that most people – and I think most surveyors – think of when you say “rig survey.” In this view the rig is a series of components, and it is the job of the surveyor to hunt through it, and winnow out anything that is faulty.

It can be great fun, a thrill-of-the-hunt experience, and you get a lovely wash of endorphins when you find something, but that same wash tends to shut down your peripheral vision, tends to keep you from seeing the roots of the problem, as well as related failures in other components. Let’s take that cracked swage. Why is it cracked? It might be from internal corrosion, or fatigue, or an out-of-spec swaging machine, or bad metal, or any combination of those and other factors.

If the crack is vertical, then it is most likely a product of corrosion, because corrosion always entails expansion of the material, and this will try to blow the swage apart, creating vertical cracks. But then it makes sense to ask why is it corroded? Get out a magnet and put it on the wire. If it sticks, the wire is type 302/304, which is less corrosion-resistant than type 316. And then it makes sense to ask how old is this wire, and where has it been living? If the answer is, oh, 4 years and Hawaii, then we have a piece of rigging that was not suited to the environment it was sent to. And then we must wonder what else in the rig might have been ill-suited to that environment. You will start looking more closely at the quality of the chainplates, and how well they were sealed. You will get obsessive about checking all fasteners for galvanic corrosion, and all running rigging for UV damage. In other words, you will use that crack, not as a trophy, but as a window into the rest of the rig.

Your follow-up actions will change accordingly. Instead of recommending replacing the component, you will specify the better alloy, and maybe recommend that the client finds a shop that dips its wire ends in sealant before swaging, to prevent the internal corrosion that can happen even to that better alloy.

Similarly, a deformed shackle might lead you to consider that whoever rigged this boat might not have been real enthusiastic about calculating loads. If the shackle was on a halyard, you would determine the loads on that halyard (ideally from windspeed and sail area calculations, but at least from ropemaker’s recommendations) and see how the current halyard stacks up. Let’s say it is the proper size, strength, and degree of inelasticity. You would still follow its path, making sure it fits the masthead sheave, that if it goes through a rope clutch that the clutch is up to those loads, and that if it goes aft that the deck turning block is up to taking a load that is almost 1 ½ times that on the halyard, and that the winch won’t require grunting-level exertion to tighten the halyard.

Especially if you find inadequate components – or even overbuilt ones – in the halyard’s run, you might cast the same load-sensitive sensibility on mooring lines, traveler car, spinnaker pole, jib furler, and anything else in the rig that needs to be scaled to the loads it will see. Hint: that means everything in the rig.

If you are sure of the condition and suitability of your components, check the movable bits. Are the clevis pins and turnbuckle studs cottered? Are screws  and shackle pins stuck/backing out/stripped/bent/broken? Do the winch pawl springs spring? Do the sheaves rotate? Components in sailboats have sub-components, and those sub-components are generally receptive to attention from human beings. Also vengeful if they don’t get that attention. Survey is a way to participate in the rig, to be a component yourself.

Finally, what  do you do if a component is in perfect condition? What if it is new, of a strength commensurate with the load (times a safety factor), made from durable, corrosion-resistant materials, and securely installed. What could be wrong with it? How could it possibly be of concern to a surveyor? This is not a rhetorical question, because all of those virtues can be utterly undone unless they possess optimal vectoring and positioning, what the old salts called “fair leads.”

If a jib furler line doesn’t exit the drum at a 90 degree angle, if a reef clewline has too much outhaul and not enough downhaul effect, if  a Genoa sheet interferes with deck traffic, if your mainsheet boom blocks can twist, or if any line has to make a sharp turn when it exits a rope clutch, then you don’t have fair leads. If a deck padeye isn’t oriented for maximum strength, if chainplates don’t line up with their shrouds, if spreaders don’t bisect the angle of the shrouds that pass over them, or if a winch regularly overrides, you don’t have fair leads.

To sum up, then, surveying rig components is a matter, not just of assessing condition, but also determining suitability and quality,  checking for harmony with other rig components, and seeing if what you are looking at is conforming to the needs of geometry and common sense.

 

After this post, I will be taking a break for a while. Yet another ankle surgery is in my immediate future, and I expect it will wreak havoc with my writing schedule, among other things. I intend to concentrate on getting the Falling book published, and will be posting notifications, so please stand by for that.

Thank you to all those who have been so supportive of my attempts at writing. I hope to have more for you soon.

In the interim, there are lots of articles and puzzles to enjoy in the back issues of this blog, and our online store is, as always, open for business.

Fair leads,

Brion Toss

 

Wallace_Carothers,_in_the_lab

Rig Survey, Part 2: Surveying the Materials

It is 1934. Wallace Carothers, a chemist for DuPont, is at work in his laboratory. He is lean, intense, bespectacled. All around him are beakers and flames and retorts. His boss comes into the room and says, “Carothers, I want you to develop the worst possible material for mooring lines.”

The chemist immediately starts listing properties that might meet this demand. “Let’s see, he says, we could make it vulnerable to UV degradation, because mooring lines are out in the sun all the time.”

“Good, good, what else?”

Well, let’s make it easy to chafe. Mooring lines see a lot of chafe.”

“Excellent.”

“And maybe we could come up with something that would chafe itself internally under extreme loads, so you couldn’t tell that it was about to fail. Oh, and let’s make it out of something that is weaker when it is wet!”

“Carothers, I knew you were the right man for the job. I look forward to seeing the –”

“Wait, I though of something else. Let’s make it so that, when it breaks under high load, it snaps back at you at, oh, about 600 feet per second!”

 

This is a somewhat, um, fictionalized account, but Carothers was a real person, and he really did invent a fiber with all of the properties listed above. We call it Nylon, and the odds are very good that your mooring lines are made out of it because, despite all of its drawbacks, it provides us with one crucial property: elasticity. It stretches, taking up the shock loads that mooring lines (and anchor rodes) must endure as a matter of course. Without this elasticity, it is very hard to avoid ripping hardware off of docks and decks, and without causing the crew to stumble about quite so much every time a wake goes by, so we put up with all the material’s drawbacks in order to take advantage of its singular virtue.

Similar tales could be told about every other component of a vessel’s rig. Stainless, to take another example, is obviously the worst possible material to make chainplates out of (only corrodes where you can’t see it, stays deceptively shiny, gets brittle as it ages, etc.), but again, we forgive it its shortcomings because it possesses a great combination of relatively high strength, ease of machining, and overall corrosion-resistance. So we use it.

It is obvious, then, that one cannot be an effective surveyor, of rigging or anything else, if one does not understand the properties of the materials that one is surveying.

If I am surveying a carbon fiber mast, I had better know that it is far more noble, galvanically, than stainless steel. If I don’t know that, then I might not check the fasteners that might have been put into it, to see if they have been properly isolated. If they haven’t been, the carbon fiber might be reducing the fasteners to dust.

If I am surveying an aluminum mast, I had better know that it is far less noble than those same fasteners, which therefore might be eating the mast.

If I am surveying a high-modulus (HM) halyard, I had better know that almost anything but a proper eyesplice will weaken that line by at least 60%. If a boat has a knot in the end of its Spectra halyard, and it hasn’t broken, then it is either scarily close to breaking, or expensively oversized, or possibly both.

And if I am surveying some of those aforementioned stainless chainplates, I had better know that the only way I can be sure that they are not crevice-corroding in the deck is if I remove them and put a microscope on them. Surveyors consistently fail to recommend this, which might be why the leading cause of dismastings, according to Boat U.S. statistics, is chainplate failure.

Once we understand the materials we are working with, we need to consider them in context. A nylon halyard, even in excellent condition, is still a lousy tool for that job, because its inherent elasticity makes for inconsistent sail shape. Likewise a Spectra anchor rode, no matter how pristine the rope is, might be counted on to tear the windlass off your deck, because of shock loads. Chain is similarly inelastic, but it is also heavy enough to produce a catenary, which provides some degree of gradual takeup of load, and this catenary can be further complemented by rope snubbers.

This brings us to considering the possibilities of materials. If we can work out a way to insert snubbers into the length of a Spectra rode, we could have a rode that is far lighter, stronger, and likely cheaper than chain, and this is exactly what some companies are working on. By understanding Spectra’s virtues, and understanding the specific demands of the context of anchoring, we can work to adapt the material to new uses. Surveying isn’t just a matter of noticing that something is breaking; it is the search for rig optimization.

Next week: Surveying the Components

 

This is the second in a series on rig surveying. To see the first part, along with a dense backlog on all sorts of topics, visit Our Blog.

If you want to get a look at new content a day ahead of the general public, scroll down to the bottom of the page and subscribe.

Also be sure to visit our Online Store, for all sorts of rigging tools, gear, materials, and educational content.

Wander around the site a bit for information on consultations and rig surveys, as well as actual rigging of boats (yes, I still do that, too).

 

Fair leads,

Brion Toss

Rig Survey Part 1: Surveying the Design

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As surveyors, our work is based on the skills and knowledge of others, on lessons learned, often at great expense, given as a gift to us. A surveyor is the holder of a template, a vision collated of the ideal and the practicable, a filter through which to view our subjects.

This template, in order to be valuable, must be firm and certain enough to provide a foundation for standards, and yet plastic enough to allow for changes wrought by new technologies, new theories and perspectives, and new data from the field. It must allow us to make our own contributions, our own gifts, and to provide a way for the surveyor to keep the forest in mind while examining individual trees, and even individual leaves. Concerted study and analysis is indispensable if one hopes to be a good surveyor; the creation of such a tactically and strategically all-encompassing template is clearly beyond the abilities of any one individual. We must, as in any other worthwhile endeavor, stand on the shoulders of giants.

Surveying is often seen as the process of noticing decay, and this is a big part of the art; fractures, corrosion, dents, and other flaws can compromise a rig, making it unsuited to face the demands placed on it by the sea. But meaningful survey is also about design, for how can we know how serious a problem is if we don’t understand how the problem affects the system? Design is abstract, but it has real consequences. Here’s an example:

Hunter sailboats feature the B&R rig, a brilliantly innovative take on the standard Bermudian rig. Because it is innovative, it is often misunderstood, especially in the matter of tuning; the loads interact and accumulate much differently than they do in a standard Bermudian rig. A well-tuned B&R is a marvel of forces resolved in three dimensions, an exquisitely balanced cascade of tension and compression. A poorly-tuned B&R is an ungainly assembly of wires and struts that are at war with one another. Most B&R’s are not well-tuned. I learned about this from Lars Bergstrom, the “B” in “B&R”. I came to the conversation with a dim-but-serviceable grasp of the principles of geometry, and a notion of how to apply those principles to a sailing rig; He gave me an appreciation for the variables of load paths that clarified how his rig works – and in the process he gave me a better idea of how standard rigs work. I was able to bring this information into the category of surveying because Lars’s ideas accurately predicted that mistuning a B &R rig can, among other things, tend to accelerate fatigue on the lower shrouds. I won’t go into the details here, but the short form is that, if you proceed carelessly, the wires at the middle and top of the mast can add loads to the already-loaded lower shrouds.

If B&R rigs were more common, it is likely that the knowledge of how to treat them would be more common. As it is, they are rare, and confined almost exclusively to boats made by Hunter; they have become something of an identifying symbol for that one manufacturer. In terms of general perception, how to tune them, much less how their characteristics relate to the hull form, matter less than that they are a distinct, somewhat quirky visual cue that says, “Hunter.”

This rig has evolved over the years. Some early ones were masthead rigs, whereas nowadays fractional is the rule. Hunter’s used to have standing backstays, which became gradually vestigial, until they were discarded altogether. Over the same period the spreaders swept further and further aft, so that the shrouds incrementally took over the backstay’s function.

Over the same period, Hunter owner demographics evolved into a group that in general has no interest in furling a big main the old-fashioned way. That’s why you now have to special-order conventional mains’l furling; in-mast furling is now standard. This mains’l furling fact is crucial to riggers, and thus rig surveyors, because for in-mast furling to work efficiently, mast bend must be minimized, ideally not exceeding 2”, according to the specifications of Selden, the builder of these excellent masts. Otherwise the luff of the sail, instead of floating relatively freely in the cavity of the mast, bears on one spot, at the point of greatest mast bend, inducing unacceptable amounts of friction when furling and setting. Fair enough, but Lars Bergstrom had in mind a rig that was emphatically meant to be bent, and which was stable and efficient with a strong bend in it. It is a mast that won’t wander about, a mast that can be shaped to an exquisite degree, to get the most out of the main. This is important, because in this boat, as with any fractional rig, the jib is relatively small, and acts to deliver energy to the powerhouse that is the main. The aft sweep of the spreaders, in addition to pulling the masthead aft, produces compression that pushes the spreaders forward, and this facilitates getting a strong bend. Tuning the bend to within 2” or so of straight, without producing uneven stresses in the rig, takes serious skill, because you have to defang all that spreader compression; judging by all the problems we see related to tune in these boats, some riggers do not possess this skill.

The B&R rig is notable for its sharply aft-swept spreaders and in-mast furling, but other manufacturers produce similar rigs. A popular and very nice example is imported from France by Sparcraft, and in the American version of the manual the instruction is to tune the mast with no bend at all. But as with the B&R, the angle of the spreaders means the mast really wants to bend, and making it absolutely straight is just about impossible without some serious tuning distortions. After trying and failing, on one boat, to get a straight mast without imposing weird rig loads, I tried easing things off, and went for the same 2” bend that Selden recommends. It was as if the rig breathed a sigh of relief, and there was no increase in furling difficulty. I checked with Sparcraft on this, and they very kindly referred me to the French engineer who had designed the rig. He emphatically agreed that the 2” bend was the only mast shape that made sense, given those swept spreaders. But because the American manual remains unchanged, a good rig survey will frequently turn up unhappy loads — with resultant fatigue and performance issues — in these rigs.

This is just one example of how design can have an impact on rig survey. Other examples include the evolution of shroud staying angles, loading of components in discontinuous rigs, hardware failures inside single-line-reefing booms, and primary winch leads on center-cockpit boats, to name just a few. Rig survey, then, isn’t just about the strengths and weaknesses of materials, but the strengths and weaknesses of the surveyor’s understanding of the design.

 

In the next installment, we will look at Surveying the Materials. Meanwhile if you would like more information on this topic, see the pertinent sections in The Rigger’s Apprentice, and in my Rig Tuning video. You will find those and lots of other DVD’s, books, tools, and supplies in our online Store .

If you are in the mood for a good rigging puzzle, you can find the current one Here. It’s about winches.

If you would like to see my posts a day earlier than the public, sign up below.

Fair leads,

Brion Toss

Ascender in use as a belay

Not Falling Far, Part 3: The Ascender

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My friend Rose Loper used to be a test pilot, the first woman to hold that job at Boeing. Given the preposterone-heavy demographic of the profession this means that, even more than is usual, she had to be at least twice as good at her job as her male counterparts. If you want to meet someone preternaturally capable and calm, you want to meet Rose.

She is also fun-loving, warm, and adventurous, so naturally she became a sailor. She and her spouse Jannie bought a big Halberg-Rassy cutter, and set out to cruise the world. I met them when they came to Port Townsend for some rigging upgrades, and one of the things they were interested in was gear for going aloft. Rose bought one of our climbing harnesses, and she patiently endured my obsessively detailed lecture on its use: how to adjust it for comfort and security; how to attach halyards to it; how to use the multipurpose tether that is built into it; how to use lanyards on anything that might dent a skull if dropped from on high; and other niceties that we have found make going aloft, if never actually safe, at least not actively dangerous.

We also discussed the merits of the various ways that one can climb  a mast. There are numerous methods, and I am about to describe two of them. Bear with me, there is a payoff on all this.

We always go aloft using two halyards: a primary and a safety. I prefer to haul myself aloft on the primary, and have a deck crew tend the safety, but it is also possible to have the deck crew provide the hauling power, leaving the climber to tend their own safety. Rose preferred this method, and I told her that one way to do this task is with a device called an “ascender.” Basically this is a clamp on the rope that is attached to your chair. It slides up a belayed halyard, but won’t slide down. If the primary halyard fails, the ascender grips immediately, which is why in this application it is called a “fall-arrest device.” You are left dangling up there, and will need to figure out a way to get to deck, but things could be worse.

While ascenders work automatically on the way up, most of them require tending on the way down. This was the case with this ascender, and this is where Rose got into trouble. The clamping mechanism is spring-loaded, and you can easily overcome the spring simply by squeezing a projecting piece on the side of the ascender. Now you can come down, and if the primary fails, all you have to do is to let go. The spring snaps the cam onto the rope, and there you are, safely dangling. Sounds easy, right?

So yes, Rose went up her mast to do some maintenance, with the ascender automatically tending itself on the way up. And yes she held it open while Jannie lowered her back towards deck. And yes Jannie had a brief moment of imbalance, and the halyard popped off the outboard end of the winch that the rope was on, and suddenly Rose was in freefall.

This is where it helps to have been a test pilot. As time slowed to the proverbial crawl, Rose looked over at her hand, and said to herself, “Brion told me I have to let go.” And she did. It all happened in an instant, she only fell a very short distance, so no massive jolt when she fetched up, no harm was done. But it took a conscious, non-panicking, steel-nerved act of will to open her hand.

The reason that it was so hard to let go is that our arboreal ancestors gifted us with a powerful reflex: if you start to fall, you grab the nearest object and hang on for all you are worth. This reflex is one of the reasons we still exist as a species. It is a good reflex. You want to have this reflex. Unless of course the thing that you are hanging onto will kill you if you don’t let go of it. There are numerous sad stories about people who just couldn’t manage to let go. There is a metaphor in there somewhere.

This was the third part of the three-part “Not Falling Far” series. To see part 1, “The Flag,” click Here To see part 2, “The Bounce Test,” click Here.

Enjoy the story? Looking for more? You’re in luck! “Falling,” which in includes all three of these stories along with other tales from aloft, both thrilling and amusing, is now for sale on Amazon.com in handy e-book form! Or click here to get it on Apple iBooks!

From dropped tools to collapsed towers to near-fatal falls, the litany of accidents and near-accidents is long… and the sometimes miraculous outcomes are both instructive and thought-provoking.

Not a technical manual, “Falling” is nonetheless a must-have companion in the library of anyone working at heights.

To immerse yourself in dozens of stories and puzzles, as many of you seem to be doing, scroll your way through our Blog.

And if you are looking for superlative rigging gear, including books and videos, our online Store awaits you.

Oh, and our most recent puzzle, Recirculating Purchase, got more than twice as many hits as our previous one-day record. If you are looking for a good puzzle, this one might be for you.

Fair leads,

Brion Toss

To Engineer is Human

 

 

All sailboat rigging is engineered, which is to say that, somewhere along the line, someone gave some thought to how much load was going to come where, and worked to make everything strong enough that things probably wouldn’t break.  This engineering might have been done to the fifteenth decimal place, using near-sentient computers to track vectors, moduli, moments, accelerated loads, and all the other variables we’ve managed to identify, quantify, and give Latinate names to.  Or the engineering’s most visible outward manifestation might have been the squint in the eyes of the semi-literate artisan who gauged all those variables from a somewhat less formalized data base.  Neither approach, by itself, would necessarily be a guarantor of success or failure, nor would any other single approach, because  intuition, memory, comparison, analysis, analogy, and all the other mental tools available to us are only tools, only ways to filter and massage and play with information.  We get it right – sometimes – but that’s a long way from saying that the process of engineering leads inevitably to structural satori.  In the words of writer Henry Petroski, “To engineer is human”; we do our best, but the outcome is an expression of our own wonderfully, quirkily imperfect minds.

 

In rigging, I believe the imperfection is often amplified, because the general populace understands tension structures much less well than they understand buildings, engines, plumbing, and other common technologies. You get a lot more anomalous, off-the-chart weirdness in rigging than you get in other engineered forms; people charge in, thinking “It’s just some strings holding up a stick; how complex can it be?”  I once had a client who wanted to make a really dangerous modification to his mast, making it taller without compensating for the changes in unsupported length or the decreased staying angles.  I went through the numbers, but to no avail.  “Brion”, he finally said, “I’m a hydraulics engineer, I know what I’m doing”.  I was too stunned to speak for a minute. Obviously he saw rig design as an intrinsically simple exercise and hydraulics engineering as an intrinsically involved one, so that if you had mastered the latter you had somehow mastered the former. That this was not the case was brought home by the behavior of the mast after his modifications.

 

So riggers operate under a double design challenge: they must deal with an exquisitely elaborated, multi-variable, constantly evolving art; and they must fight the prevalent assumption that what they’re doing is somewhat less mentally challenging than cleaning a swimming pool.

If they’re not up to those challenges, what you get is, as it turns out, an all-too-typical contemporary sailboat rig:  wire too big or too small; weak and/or corrosion-prone terminals; weak and/or foul-led chainplates and tangs; out-of-tune tune: frustratingly-led running rig of less-than-ideal construction; and all the other details, profound and incremental, that add up to decreased performance, safety, sailing ease, and appearance.

 

There are two reasons that we don’t see more rig failures than we do. The first is that sailboats live in in an “artificial safety factor,” because they are – or should be – engineered to withstand far higher loads than they are ever likely to see in their entire lives. A typical monohull rig, for instance, should be engineered to withstand loads at the vessel’s maximum righting moment, which might occur at about 60 degrees of heel. This is not an angle that a boat is likely to see, but it could happen, so we have to design around the possibility. Not content with that, we layer on a considerable safety factor, too. In the real world one has to be kind of crazy to heel one’s boat even as much as 30 degrees. Too much spilled coffee and sliding sailors. That kind of heel does happen, and it can feel scary, but the loads there are at maybe a quarter of the strength of the rig. Multihulls tend to live closer to their maximum righting moment, which is one reason that for them we compensate with an even higher safety factor.

Since our rigs are so much stronger than they need to be, they hardly ever break, so it is easy to be lulled into a false sense of security. The trouble is that you don’t get to choose when your boat goes to full righting moment – you could get caught by a gust at any time. Perhaps more significantly, as we are lulled things degrade, and sometimes, given attitudes about rigging, they weren’t optimal to begin with.

The second reason we don’t see more rig failures is that, somewhere along the line, there usually are people in design and fabrication who understand what is actually happening in a rig, and are taking things seriously. They produce gear that is so strong, so appropriate, so right for the job, that it’s hard to foul it up completely. You might think of this as the social aspect of engineering; at any remotely advanced technological level, making things is a team effort, and the members of a good team can make up for the shortcomings of other team members.  Every time I install a toggle on a rig, I take it on faith, backed up by experience, that the people who smelt the ore, formulated the alloy, formed the plate, set the specs on the bending machine, and made the clevis pins, knew what they were doing. Or at least that most of them did. What is more, I have to believe that they cared about what they were doing, and that part of that caring was expressed in educating others, bringing them along for their own sake, as well as the sake of the team. If they do this, I can keep counting on them. This caring is a blessing on every piece of gear I install. If it is absent, all of my elaborate calculations, fussing, and opinions on what’s right are reduced, at least, in their significance.

I believe that all of us want to do things well, and that we only need to become acquainted with the rewards of doing things well: satisfaction; autonomy; a sense that you are part of something greater than yourself; and the inspiring burden of knowing that you are responsible for the safety of other people. And yes, on the mundane side, a likelihood of ongoing employment. This urge to do well is so strong that, to paraphrase Mr. Petroski, you might say that to be human is to engineer.

 

 

Note: If the above appealed to you, then you will probably enjoy Mr. Petroski’s book To Engineer is Human. It inspired the title of this piece, and its content, and much of my professional and personal life. You can find it through any bookstore worthy of the name.

 

Our catalog has been largely overhauled recently, thanks to the tender ministrations of our friend and techie Scott Wilson. Take a look around. Thanks, Scott.

You’ll find lots of other articles in the blog section of our site. I always love hearing from you, so feel free to chime in with suggestions, corrections, puzzle ideas, etc.

 

 

The Client From Hell

 

Our clients tend to be wonderfully self-selecting; if they were the kind of jerks that we would rather not deal with, they probably wouldn’t be into cruising under sail to begin with. Year after year we see the truth of this, in the form of a succession of sailors who are perceptive, resourceful, generous, sensible, and infectiously enthusiastic, to name just a few of their virtues. Plus they pay their bills on time, and have even been known to complain that the bill wasn’t high enough.

If you think I’m exaggerating, bear in mind that it takes a rare kind of individual even to consider the cruising life. We are talking about people who convert a large amount of money – often every available bit of their money –  into  a small, fragile, unstable parody of a living space. Their goal is to pilot that wobbly space into harm’s way, in circumstances where the chance of trouble of one sort or another is high, and where the chance of aid varies from slim to nonexistent. In addition, a cruising boat takes its occupants, by its nature, into alien lands, among alien peoples, just for the sake of doing so. Again, it’s a rare type of person who finds all of this attractive, and in almost every case it is a type that is wonderful to be around.

Every once in a while, however, we encounter  a cruiser who obviously got lost en route to a strip mine, who possesses all the charm and social grace of a flatulent badger, who is by turns insulting, distrustful, querulous, and parsimonious.  This is the kind of person who interprets  my every suggestion as a thinly-disguised attempt to add to the cost of the project, who dismisses my hard-won experience as so much empty opinion, and who regards their own completely baseless opinions as the height of wisdom.

Or to put it another way, these infuriating individuals cause me to re-examine my precious-but-often-deluded beliefs. They refuse to accept unquestioningly that I am an infallible source of wisdom. They insist, whether they are aware of it or not, that I pay serious attention to the ideals and standards that are at the heart of this business.

It is possible to be nice as well as usefully critical, but my experience is that people who like and trust us are reluctant to point out issues, even when they see them., so we get a lot fewer corrections from nice people. We can easily miss shortcomings they don’t notice, or don’t bring up. Of course, it is wonderful when people that I respect in turn respect me. It is gratifying when they confirm, both in the yard and in subsequent correspondence from far-off places, that our ingenious and elegant work actually did what we said it would do: make cruising under sail easier, more efficient, safer, and more comfortable. But one of the consequences of having a swelled head is that it tends to squeeze one’s eyes shut. Unhappy clients, lacking though they might be in social graces, can open our eyes to errors, to less-than-ideal solutions, to missed opportunities. It is just a painful way to get educated.

How, then can we maintain our quality control without going through conflict? Can we, on our own, motivate ourselves to keep our standards up, to seek continually to achieve the Perfect Gang? We can, but we rarely do. No matter our sense of pride and ethics, we are understandably inclined to think the best about ourselves. Even with a generous helping of spiritual aspiration,  virtue only enables one to seek knowledge, and to act on what one knows; it cannot guarantee full or accurate perception. Far from it; no matter how principled we might be – or think we are – we have an innate need to feel that we have achieved competence in the world. We all aspire to be respected by others, and it can be tempting to think that we inherently deserve respect, even if that feeling is based on the flimsiest of evidence. That’s why it can be mighty handy to have someone around who is skeptical, or even just plain rude. Not attractive characteristics, to be sure, but there is an old saying that goes, “Pay attention to people who don’t like you, for they will tell you your faults.”

An example: We did a furler, mainsheet, and a few other upgrades for a visiting cruiser.  We installed the brand of furler he insisted on having, even though it was a brand that we advised against. He was similarly dismissive of several other of our suggestions. This behavior annoyed us no end, but that was nothing compared to how we felt when he informed us that we were responsible for his having to recut his Genoa after the new furler was installed. It turns out that the brand he had chosen features a very high standard drum height, much higher than that of his old furler, so that the sail was now way too long to fit the furler. It would have been relatively easy to modify the new unit’s drum height  beforehand — all it takes is a few minutes with a hacksaw and a drill press — but we hadn’t discussed the height change with him.

On the one hand, he was the know-it-all who had insisted on the superiority of his chosen brand; we just installed the thing. On the other hand, installation of anything in a cruising rig must always be more than a matter of cutting, drilling, and tapping.  There is always a design component, and  there are always hardware quirks and requirements to be met, if one wants to avoid ending up hip deep in  a can of variables. One design detail with cruising vessel Genoas is that the tack should properly be at least a little bit higher than the bow pulpit railing. That way the foot of the sail won’t chafe on the pulpit, the crew will be able to see under the sail when under way, and the sail is much less likely to scoop up an errant wave at sea. The old furler had the tack right at the deck as for a racing boat; it was just wrong for a cruising boat. We knew this, but we were just too miffed to stop and think about it, let alone talk it over with the client. Granted, the guy had an attitude problem, but so did we.

One more example: I am in the habit of thinking out loud around clients. Often I will do this consciously, with the intent of including them in the process of selecting and installing the things that will make their rigs work. I want them to know why we’re doing what we’re doing. If they seem particularly receptive, I’ll go on in detail, describing options and variants of options, working with them towards an ideal. Or that’s the intent; sometimes I just think out loud. The latter is probably what was going on one day when I brought up the subject of a client’s bobstay. This is a man who one would not ordinarily describe as cheerful. Far from it. From the very beginning, when I was even slower than usual at getting an inspection done, our relationship had bordered on the adversarial. Maybe it’s just that peppy and dour don’t mesh real well, but it wasn’t just my perception; no one in the shop wanted to work with him either, and a couple of times we seriously considered suggesting that he take his job down the road.

Anyway, back to the bobstay. Originally, I’d suggested reinforcing the cranse iron and stem fitting for this highly-loaded stay, but the more I looked at it, the less vital the reinforcement seemed. The sprit was very short, very stout, and very well-secured to the boat. In addition, there was a Solent Stay throughbolted to the stem that was going to take the storm stays’l loads, and the relative angle of jibstay and bobstay was unusually favorable. So I mentioned to the client that maybe the reinforcing wasn’t so vital after all, then moved on to other topics. The next day the client gave me a firm lecture, saying that he feared that, as the job rushed to completion that I was trying to cut corners in order to finish on time. I thought, “Oh, boy, Lone Ranger shot with silver bullet,”  but realized that communication is every bit as much a skill as splicing or trigonometric calculations. Yes, the client saw my words in the worst possible light, but he wasn’t the one babbling on with every thought that came into his head. We ended up reinforcing that cranse iron, which cost the client needless expense, because I could not get him off a path that I had unwittingly set him on.

Well, we finally restepped that man’s mast. It had been a big, thorough job, involving just about everything that could be done, including the masthead, mast step, halyards, reefs, vang, mainsheet, all kinds of deck gear. Everything went beautifully, with every member of our team working at full efficiency, swarming all over the boat leading lines, attaching terminals, hanging the foil and boom — it was a joy. At one point, when I was on shore to set the rake of the mast, I happened to strike up a conversation with the owner. It was the first real conversation we had ever had, and in it he revealed, in a few halting words, a deep appreciation for history, spoke of considerable experience in commercial vessels, and shared a few thoughts on the nature of cruising. It was all very self-effacing, even shy, and I realized that, no matter his faults, I had severely misunderstood him, and had thereby missed out on some great conversations, as well as making the job more difficult than it needed to be. We stood there together in a light drizzle, watching the rig come together, relaxing for a blessed moment.

Many years ago, our dear friend Mary Tietjen, a woman with vast skill and experience at running organizations, did us the incomparable favor of running a series of strategic planning sessions for our business. The whole crew participated, and one of the topics we brought up was “The Client from Hell”. We described some of these people, and asked what, oh what we could do to avoid them. At the time, I found her response a bit depressing. Now it seems like a good thing. She took a long, slow look at each one of us, then replied in her laconic drawl, “There’s things you can do to make things better. But there will always be a client from hell”.

 

 

 

 

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