DIY for motivated masochists, sorry, boat owners

Optimize Your Cruising Sailboat: 101 Ways to Make Your Sailboat Better

By John Roberts,

ISBN: 0-07-141951-9

Boat Improvements for the Practical Sailor

By Stephen J. Fishman

ISBN: 1-57409-068-2

The weather outside may be frightful, but the cabin sole’s delightful, or so the sailor’s take on the old song might go. ‘Tis the season for hot toddies by the fire, to be sure, but only after a good weekend day’s work on a cloaked boat.

Yes, now, in the proverbial dead of, and not in the merry month of May, is the best time to attack those fix-it projects aboard. Whether you own a boat of sail or power, the one thing all folk of the sea seem to have in common is the inordinate amount of maintenance, improvement, repair and plain upkeep their vessels demand. That’s why a good nautical library tends to break down into two parts: one, books of rousing tales of adventure at sea, and the other? Books with chapter headings like “How to Fix Your Refrigeration Before The Steaks Thaw” and “Advanced Crimping”.

Winter boat shows may convince you to get fancy electronic gear or robotic PFDs, but a couple of books reviewed below address the more practical side of boating: where to put stuff, and how to correct the flaws and shortcomings endemic to the production boat industry, where they sure know how to make good looking boats, but try to find chart stowage or a decent wet locker these days. Or fiddles where fiddles should be. Or a place to stow binoculars or that probably not at all waterproof GPS that keeps bouncing around the cockpit.

Well, I could go on, but these books do it better, and provide easy to make solutions for ambitious sailors looking to add comfort, class and safety to their pride and joy. Both books are similar to Ferenc Mate’s now-venerable The Finely Fitted Yacht, but are much more up-to-date and don’t feature Mate’s idiosyncratic sense of encrusted humour. The first book, Optimize Your Cruising Sailboat, is a new one from John Roberts, who did something similar with Why Didn’t I Think ofThat?, a compendium of sailor-tested tips, tricks and fabrications for a more pleasant trip at sea. This book is somewhat more in-depth and rigorous, being divided into sections headed Make Your Boat More Comfortable, Easier to Handle, More Seaworthy and so on.

Roberts assumes an intermediate level of skill on the part of the reader, such that if you aren’t comfortable cutting new portholes or drilling and bedding deck hardware, call guys who can and point at the diagrams. Projects like fabricating companionway doors and covering the interior cabin lining with wood are fairly labour-intensive, but making stern rail seating could be done to a professional-looking standard on a calm afternoon. Roberts does reintroduce some bygone ideas to the modern boat owner that are too clever to stay forgotten, like angled teak grab bars in the head, grab poles in today’s cavernous cabins, and the nearly extinct art of installing lee cloths, which is a very handy and I think essential method of staying put when off watch in a seaway.

Some things Roberts mentions, like how to rig reef lines and why fixed props slow boats down, are pretty basic, but I still found this a worthwhile read, as would any fan of the books of Don Casey or the various columns in Cruising World and similar magazines.

By contrast, BoatImprovements for the Practical Sailor has fewer projects, but greater depth. This book is a well-written set of instructions on how to do common improvements and repairs right, the first time. Particularly helpful are diagrams and names of some of the specialty tools, techniques and products used in boat repair, with a sound evaluation of all the alternatives and their proper use. Good examples include: how to bring control lines to the cockpit, how to insulate the engine compartment, installing a second shore power inlet, and how to maximize battery and bilge pump performance. Fishman’s style is clear and concise, and as he’s essentially self-taught, his tone is pleasantly matter-of-fact. There are several projects dealing with the installation or improvement of electronic gear, such as cockpit stereos and VHFs, TVs and their antennas, and the like. As many sailors use their boats as small, pointy cottages as much as sail-powered vessels, Fishman’s projects will appeal to them.

The problem and the pluses of books like these is that hardly anyone will read them from cover to cover, because the improvements range from dead obvious to fairly daunting (anyone up for fabbing a V-berth cedar closet? Fishman is) and for some people, these are just another pair of hobbyist books. For others, however, if even one chapter provokes an “aha! I can do that and save hundreds!” moment, they are well worth the read and the price.

Anything but a ride at Disneyland

Dangerous Waters: Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas 

By John S. Burnett 

ISBN: 0-525-94679-9

This was a frightening read eight years ago and it's still unfortunately quite relevant. It was also a necessary one for me to read at the time as it solidified my determination to skip the Red Sea and selected parts of Indonesian waters in any future cruising plans and has proven prophetic in terms of how bad things have got. The more recent The Pirates of Somalia (review here) is a more current and specific companion piece, but Dangerous Waters shows the macro picture of how the pirating of international shipping is happening...still...elsewhere. 

The author, a long-time and experienced yachtsman and former merchantman, takes as his start point his own first-hand experience with piracy a decade ago and explains how this nefarious trade has exploded in certain crucial parts of the world and may well represent a terroristic as well as an economic threat to the law-abiding countries of the world.

Burnett’s own pirate encounter could have been nastier, but it was sufficiently disturbing to spark a interest in the topic that now, as his book demonstrates, seems encyclopedic. The author chooses to focus on South-east Asia, particularly the heavily traveled Malacca Straits, Singapore and the northern coasts of Indonesia. He makes a convincing case that assaults on merchant shipping, yachts and cruise liners, ranging from simple theft to full-blown hijackings and murder, are an increasing and increasingly dangerous phenomenon that may soon feature a political element. If the image of two skyscrapers plummeting to the ground did not alarm First World citizenry, imagine the effect of an 1,100-foot long tanker laden with 300,000 tons of petroleum ramming at over 20 knots into a city’s waterfront. Catastrophic doesn’t begin to cover it, which is why Burnett’s book should be bedside reading for international security policymakers.

Burnett touches lightly on the opportunistic—and sometimes fatal—pirate attacks on sail cruisers and passenger ships, but his main focus is on cargo ships, particularly the massive oil, gas and bulk carriers that play so large a part in today’s “just-in-time” world economy. Burnett’s personal observations, made on several trips through known pirate waters, are that very few ships are secure from attack, and that today’s largely automated ships and scanty crews present few obstacles to sufficiently motivated pirates. Two-stroke outboards and bamboo ladders, homemade knives and the element of surprise frequently suffice to raid even the largest of supertankers. 

Lest the term “pirates” conjures up romantic notions of Robin Hood-like rascals, Burnett’s raw descriptions of shoeless village boys with machetes and attitude should shut them down quickly. Today’s pirates range from fisherman seizing the moment to highly organized, lavishly equipped and heavily armed international crime syndicates who can seize, repaint, reflag and empty of cargo any ship in a matter of hours. Unlikely as it may seem, many huge vessels “disappear” this way every year, and very few people outside the shipping industry acknowledge or even know of the extent of the problem. So-called “phantom ships” are subsequently used to transport illegal cargo such as drugs, arms and illegal immigrants. Burnett cites as part of this problem the simultaneously convoluted and lax rules regarding “flags of convenience” and the inadequacy of the “laws of the sea”, which leaves international waters essentially unpoliced, precisely because they belong to no one nation.

Burnett profiles the few and generally understaffed and underfunded locals in the region dedicated to fighting piracy, and they’re a tough and determined lot working against steep odds. Although there are signs that governments and the shipping industry are taking more effective steps to combat piracy, Burnett suggests that a lack of awareness of ship vulnerability is a large obstacle. Imagine, he posits, if a FedEx 747 were hijacked and taken to a foreign airfield. Vast military, police and governmental resources would be devoted to its immediate and safe recovery, and CNN would probably hire an F-18 to get “live footage”. And yet ships are attacked and sometimes stolen by the dozens every month, and no one wants, seemingly, to know.

This well-written and compelling book may change that yet.

An inspiration to the aspirational sailor

High Endeavours: The Extraordinary Life and Adventures of Miles and Beryl Smeeton

By Miles Clark

Prairie Books

$26.95, 447 pp. (likely less as a second-hand book)

ISBN: 0-88833-313-7

Trolling back through my shelves, I thought I'd see what books really impressed me and inspired me to think outside of my sailing comfort zone.. This biography of Miles and Beryl Smeeton, epic cruisers of the ‘50s and ‘60s, was skillfully done by Miles Clark, their godson and a yachting writer in his own right. It's a real find.

The Smeetons, thanks to husband Miles’s many and popular books, were already well-known some 50 years ago as pioneering world cruisers of amazing persistence and grit. The epitome of the “can-do” couple, the Smeetons were risk-takers in the post-war years when equipment was minimal and rescue by others was out of the question. You had to have the resources to save your own life and your own boat, which, given that the Smeetons actually did this, makes them expert cruisers. As Clark’s tale shows, however, as a couple and as individuals, they were so much more. Both were insatiably curious explorers and adventurers, and theirs is one of the most interesting biographies—and most memorable love stories—I have ever read.

Both Miles and Beryl came from military families, and perhaps it was the intimate experience of violent loss combined with the qualities of self-reliance and openness to adventure that made them such a good match. Arguably, it was Beryl and not Miles who was the greater adventurer, lighting off as she did in the 1930s alone, linguistically unprepared and determinedly “on-the-cheap” on cross-Asian tours and a memorably grueling tour of Patagonia. It is difficult today in an era of helicopter skiing, Goretex, EPIRBs and GPSes to imagine how or even why a middle-class Englishwoman would travel the least-charted parts of the globe, but Beryl’s taste for exoticism knew few limits.

Miles, an accomplished and extraordinarily tall (over six and a half feet) officer in the Indian army, had somewhat more bourgeois comfort levels,  but nonetheless had an equal urge to push his physical and mental limits. An accomplished horseman, rock-climber and hiker, and—during World War II—warrior and leader, Miles did bring to Beryl’s almost manic adventuring a leaven of experience and common sense. Still, by war’s end, and with a young child in tow, the Smeetons entered their 40s not with the desire to settle down, but to buy a wooden ketch they barely knew how to sail (the famous Tzu Hang), and then to sell up and homestead in British Columbia. As with all their seemingly circuitous schemes, the B.C. farm led to more sailing—the Smeetons, typically, soon became expert—and eight years of world cruising.

As related in the bestseller Once Is Enough, the Smeetons endured not one, but two horrific dismastings on the approach to Cape Horn. Characteristically, despite nearly getting killed, the Smeetons eventually completed a circumnavigation, including high-latitude, quasi-“research” trips that garnered them fame and awards. The only criticism I would have of their jam-packed lives is that their only daughter Clio seemed to endure long absences in boarding schools--and perhaps the anxiety of wondering whether her parents would die falling off a mountain or drowning beneath the sea—while Beryl and Miles burnt away their smoldering wanderlust.

Again, it is difficult to think of a couple in their mid-fifties (both Beryl and Miles were born around 1905), armed only with sextant, charts and a first-generation transistor radio, undertaking world cruising before virtually any facilities, rescue or weather services were in existence for "little boats", and, tackling the sort of conditions that put off Volvo 60 racers today. Along with the Hiscocks, Francis Chicester and a  few other pioneering cruisers and racers, the Smeetons showed the way.

Less well-known, if equally fascinating, is how the Smeetons (who eventually became Canadian citizens), started a wildlife sanctuary in Cochrane, Alberta in the late ‘60s that eventually led to the re-introduction of the Swift Fox, a small canid that had been hunted to extinction on the Prairies. Whether it was the sea, the mountains or death itself, the Smeetons were up to the challenge, it seems, and this is one of the greatest sailor stories you’ll ever read, even if 75% of it takes place on dry land. It's the best introduction I can imagine to the more specific sailing works the Smeetons wrote themselves.