Places To Sail       22 Problems first 500 Miles

The following is a log of some difficulties that one sailor encountered in the first 500 miles that he sailed.  One should choose where one sails carefully, since different locations produce different challenges.  The following are locations that illustrate different sailing conditions.

Twenty-two problems a sailor encountered during his first two years of sailing:      Go To Top

1)  Use the fuel kill to turn a diesel engine off.  During the sailor's first days of sailing instruction, he turned the diesel engine off using the key instead of killing the fuel.  This could have ruined the alternator.

To turn a diesel engine on. 

2)  Always tie your glasses around your neck.  He forgot to do this and lost my glasses in the water while reefing the sails.

3)  Have the tools and know how to fix a broken fuel line.  A simple repair on the outboard motor but enough to prevent us from returning to port on our first day sail.

4)  Depower the sails by heading into the wind or letting out the mainsail.  The sailor's first time out sailing, he was hit with a strong gust.  Instinctively, he took some pressure off the tiller and let the tiller return towards centerline.  The boat heeled over excessively from the gust, then came about and through the wind and headed in the opposite direction, before he regained control. 

5)  When tacking do not forget to lower the center board.  The sailor's second time sailing, he left an anchorage and headed home in 25k wind.  He was in a close reach and by my compass headed in the right direction.  However, the horizon, when looking at it lined up with the mast and bow, was moving sideways.  The boat's horizontal course was confirmed by GPS.  He was headed toward a shoal.  The problem was quickly corrected by lowering the center board.

6)  Position and cleat dock lines on sailboat before docking.  The sailor's first time into a dock, he forgot to cleat the dock lines and place them UNDER not over the life lines.  A beginner's first instinct is to cleat the lines and throw them over the lifelines to the help on shore.  However, the boat should never be secured to the docking platform with the dock lines laying over the life lines.

7)  An auto-inflatable PFD is not the best to wear in a heavy rain storm.  It is better to wear a Type I or Type II PFD in this circumstance.   Needless to say, an auto-inflatable PFD may give you the scare of your life when it suddenly inflates while you are at the helm during a heavy storm.

8)  Tie all lines that are not used.  A reefing line which looped from the boom tripped the beginner sailor when a strong gust of wind hit the sail.  It also cracked an air vent.  The sailor fell to the deck, impressing upon him the importance of having a safety harness and securing all loose lines.

9)  When sailing turn battery switch to 1 or 2 and turn off unnecessary power.  On one sail the crew forgot to turn the battery switch from all to 1 or 2.  This is only done after the motor is turned off to prevent damage to the alternator.  At the same time one of our crew ran the refrigerator to prevent food spoilage.  Luckily, our batteries still restarted the engine.  (Actually, only switching the battery to "OFF" while the motor is running will damage the alternator.  However, this may inadvertently be done when one is switching the batteries.  Thus, do not allow anyone to touch the battery switch while the motor is running.)

10)  Do not secure lines in use.  The skipper wanted to turn the boat downwind and thus had to first let the mainsail out.  The main sheet had been coiled and tied by one of the crew.  When the mainsail was  attempted to be let out, the sheet jammed into the cleat.  It took several minutes to undue the line.  At this point the only option was to head into the wind to avoid hitting shore.

11)  Hard to tell when fuel tank is full.  Fill the fuel slowly and look down into the tank to judge the amount of additional fuel needed.  Place a towel around the fuel deck filler to prevent any spillage.

12)  Be careful using power with dead batteries.  The skipper began one charter by entering the boat late at night and found the lights did not work, even though the boat was plugged in.  He turned on the power, but still no lights came on, he then went to sleep in the forward cabin.  In the morning the batteries in the aft cabin had boiled away the battery water and one could smell fumes. 

13)  Approach a fixed fuel docking platform without slats down the side very carefully.  A fuel dock was recently built and it was fixed on piles rather than floating.  The water level was low.  The skipper successfully approached the docking platform and fueled. But the bottom of the platform was just below the top of the toe rail.  A 15 knot gust of wind hit the boat, heeled the boat over and pushed it under the platform.  When the gust subsided the boat righted under the platform, bending the toe rail.

14)  When lowering the mainsail, head the boat into the wind and always flack the mainsail by using backward tension on the leech (back edge) of the sail.  During one trip we were lowering the mainsail and the wind shifted (a common excuse used for sailing mistakes) knocking the flacked sail off the boom.  The sail hit one of the sailor's hands and leveraged the front end  of a batten into the sail.  The sail tore about six inches and was temporally repaired with sail tape.

15)  Never tighten the jib reefing line using a winch handle.  On one of the charters, the crew was in a high-wind situation and chose to decrease the sail area by rolling in the jib.  Because of the force of the wind, the jib rolled in tightly and about 10% of the sail would not roll around the forestay.  Despite pulling on the reefing line, we could not get the jib to fully reef.  One of the crew started to place the line on a winch with the intention of using a winch handle to tighten the line.  He was immediately stopped.  On inspecting the reefing line, it was fully out and only attached to the forestay by a stopper knot.  The line was too short, but there was nothing we could do about it at the time.  If the line would have been forcefully pulled, it could have broken the forestay and in the high-wind conditions this could of destabilized the mast and demasted the boat.   Sailor's Tip:  Never force a line, check it to see where it is caught.

16)  The GPS readings of true versus magnetic north, nautical miles versus statute miles, and measurements of distance (degrees and second versus fractions of degrees) corresponds to your chart.  If the GPS heading does not match the charted heading, remember that your GPS system may be reading true north and your compass is reading  magnetic coordinates.  You must always know the difference in degrees between the magnetic and true north compass, this difference will vary by location.   Also, be sure to set your GPS units to nautical miles and not statute miles.  Another potential problem is that nautical charts determine location in degrees, minutes, and tenth of minutes.  However, some charts use seconds.   Most GPS systems are initially set to read degrees, and minutes with minutes displayed in two decimal points, most have an option to read minutes and seconds.  Thus, a GPS reading of 79 degrees, 50.30 minutes corresponds to a chart location of 79 degrees 50 minutes and 18 seconds.  It is not located halfway between 50 and 51 minutes.

17)  When a storm approaches always know your compass heading.  While sailing up a wide river, the boat was hit with a storm.  The crew lost visual contact of the shore and due to the intense rain could not see the GPS.  The skipper had to heave-to and let the storm pass because he did not have an accurate compass heading.  (If the storm did not pass quickly, he would have obtained a heading down below in the cabin using the boat's chart and GPS.)

18)  Not everything that floats is a log.  On one trip the skipper spent several hours dodging numerous logs to prevent damage to the hull, only to observe that some of the objects had eyes.  They were harbor seals playing with the boat.

19)  Check the shape of your sail.  On one charter, the sailboat was unable to successfully tack into the wind on a close-hauled approach because the end of the boom was over-elevated by almost two feet.  Until the problem was detected and the boom lowered by releasing the boom topping lift and boom vang, the sailboat could not make any headway. 
--The boom topping lift keeps the boom from falling when the mainsail is taken down.  The boom topping lift should be released after the mainsail is hoisted.  This allows the mainsail to assume a proper shape and switch from side to side, as one changes tacks, without hitting or being restricted by the boom topping lift.

20)  Always pull the dingy above the tide line.  In a lake, pulling the dingy on to the shore is enough.  However, if there are tides you must pull the dingy above the tide line or it may float away if the tide comes in.

21)  Always check that the engine is spitting water out the exhaust.  On one of the sails the skipper turned the motor on because of high currents and to avoid a rocky shoal which the boat was going to hit under sail power alone.  The current was pushing the boat sideways despite the crew's best sailing effort.   After a few minutes, the carbon monoxide alarm went off and fumes were coming out of the cabin.  It was noted that the boat's motor was not spitting water out the stern exhaust port.  Diesel engines are sea watered cooled through the exhaust system.  If the boat is not spitting water out the stern, either the water though-hull or strainer is clogged, or the exhaust system has become dislodged from the engine and sea water is being pumped into the bilge and fumes into the cabin.  In this case the exhaust system fell off the engine.  This problem required us being towed 16 miles to home port.

22)  Approach a new port on a compass heading and, if possible, with a lookout at the bow.  Because of the above problem, the skipper promptly went into a relatively deserted harbor at low tide.  Judging distances by vision was not effective and he had a hard grounding. 

The skipper learned five things from this incident:

Web page last updated:  12/16/2007