On 15-Apr-14 12:03 PM, Thomas Buzzi wrote Well as an engineer I had tried another scheme: have everyone on board pee into the water in the hopes that the warmer pee water would expand enough to lift our keel out of the mud. We tried it. It didn't work. A beer later, I knew why. The ratio of warm water volume to cold water volume was all wrong. That's when I started digging.... and underwater digging is a very slow laborious process (the reason for this as the only available solution was that there was no other boat in the area that could lend a hand/ CB or marine radios were non-existent / my vacation time was coming to an end and I had to be back at work in Munich the following Monday morning) We got to deeper water and were afloat again / sailed back across the Adriatic to Italy/ and were home in time to go to work on Monday. Connie
Conbert, Do you mean to say you used lung power with a mask and fins alone to dig a trench through bottom muck with a hatch board?? That sounds incredible! Fairwinds, Tom B, Mont 17 #258 that draws 21 inches.
On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 11:27 AM, Conbert Benneck <chbenneck@gmail.com>wrote:
On 14-Apr-14 10:07 PM, bownez@juno.com wrote:
Hi Bones,
Thanks for your kind words of encouragement.
Having just passed 93, and counting, I'm afraid that all I have left are lots of fond memories of solving boat problems / learning all sorts of new things ( designing and installing a refrigeration system in our 29-footer), so that we always had ice cubes for our Martinis, while the rest of our sailing gang (with larger boats) were still lugging blocks of ice to their boats. It was my form of One-Upsmanship on my senior Pratt & Whitney Aircraft engineer sailing buddies.
Sailing expands your horizons / your experience / and thereby makes it so much more rewarding. As a beginning sailor life is filled with the fear of the unknown (your lack of knowledge of what the hell you are doing out there), but gradually experience begins to supplant fear. Now you know what you are doing. Oh there still are surprises (usually unpleasant) caused by local conditions in an area you hadn't encountered before, but you learn from the experience.
In the Adriatic a Bora - a fiercely blowing cold wind that sweeps down on the northern Adriatic out of the Alps for a few hours and then shuts off again had us dragging an anchor (we only had one on board a friends boat we were using), and our fin keel was firmly stuck in the soft mud bottom. Trying to row out the anchor and use that to pull us into deeper water didn't work. The anchor just plowed a furrow in the soft mud...., and the boat didn't move an inch. Now what?
Finally, I did an underwater survey (with mask and swim fins) to find the shortest path to deeper water. Then, using a hatch board as a shovel, I dug an underwater trench in front of the keel to deeper water.... We made it, but that experience made a firm believer out of me that a boat should always have at least 3 anchors on board.
If I had had a second one available I could have used it to careen the boat, reducing the draft, and getting to deeper water in easier fashion.
But (after it is all over) it was fun wasn't it?
Happy Easter and good sailing,
Connie & Katrina
My Dear Connie,
Once again, I relish your words of wisdom. You are so correct sir, the learning never ends, which is one of the main reasons I find the sport so enjoyable. Every sailing outing is different, it is an adventure and a challenge. A wise man learns from his experiences and his mistakes (hopefully).
I'm so pleased you are still monitoring this fine list, don't you ever leave us.
Bones ____________________________________________________________ The #1 Worst Carb Ever? Click to Learn #1 Carb that Kills Your Blood Sugar (Don't Eat This!) http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/534ca2ae7d5c222ae30a7st03vuc