SIGHTINGS — cont’d two cameras in two days. The Nikon due to one too many blasts of spray, as we just weren’t able to protect it while simultaneously trimming the #1 jib on the big schooner we were sailing on. The little Lumix was a victim of a goofball friend’s well-intended cannonball off the bow of a boat as we motored by in a dinghy. As you might expect, getting today’s cameras wet is the death of them. As excontinued in middle column of next sightings page
John Dane and son-in-law Austin Sperry worked hard to win their berth on the US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics for this summer’s Olympics in Quindao, China.
storms — cont’d Area. There will be others, and we urge you to prepare for them. Here are a few suggestions: • Fenders — If you have them, use them. If you don’t have them, get some. For berthed boats, put multiple fenders on both sides of the boat. It may seem unnecessary in calm weather, but if one of your docklines chafes through or breaks in bad weather, fenders can save you a big yard bill in topside repairs. • Snubbers — The most common type, made of black rubber and available at any chandlery, look like rubber toy snakes. They aren’t cheap, but they are very effective. Get them and install them per the instructions on all your main lines (if you are in a berth, put them on both bowlines and both stern lines.) Caution — make sure you buy the proper size snubbers for your lines, or they will break or slip. • Springlines — We’re often surprised how many folks don’t know what spring lines are for or how to rig them properly. Basically, for a boat that’s in a berth or side-tied, the bow and stern lines attach those ends of the boat to the dock. The spring lines keep the boat from moving fore and aft. Properly done (look in any Chapmans or the Annapolis Book of Sailing), springs will help keep your boat in one piece when the big winds roll through. • Roller furling — Again, improper stowage is the reason so many roller furling headsails get ruined. Just days after the storm, we noted that the owner of one boat had removed the shreds of his former jib, put a new jib on and ‘stowed’ it the same way: rolled up almost all the way with a little ‘tab’ of clew left jauntily out. It looked ‘shipshape’, for sure. But as soon as big wind comes back, it’s going to grab that tab, unroll everything and it’s confetti time again. This would make it the third or fourth jib that this has happened to on this particular boat, so maybe one of these days, the owner will look around at how almost everyone else does it and get the message. The proper way, if you are going to leave the sail on, is to grossly over-roll the furler so that several coils of jibsheet wind around the sail after it’s furled. Looks sloppy, but works great. A better idea yet: if you’re not going to use the boat over the winter, remove roller furling sails from the boat completely. • Trailers — It’s a good idea to strap the boat down to the trailer. Those big, wide straps with the built-in ratchets (available at car parts stores) work well. If possible, unrig the mast — at least if you know you won’t be using the boat for extended periods. And try not to park downwind of other trailered boats whose owners don’t do any of this. — jr
dane and sperry — star power When one speaks of the Great Dane and sailing in the same breath, it has been tacitly understood for decades that the reference was to Paul Elvstrom, the great Danish sailor who won four Olympic gold medals and countless other events in 50 years of sailing. But after next summer, the moniker will need clarification, as there is currently another ‘great Dane’ in our midst. That would be John Dane III, who finally secured an Olympic berth in the Star Class on the US Sailing Team last October — after 39 years of trying. “Three classes, seven trials, a second, a third, a few fourths — and now first,” exulted Dane after winning the 16-race 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials sailed on Santa Monica Bay October 6-10. The accomplishment puts him in some pretty elite company — Paul Cayard, Mark Reynolds, Bill Buchan and Lowell North, to name a few, have all been there and done that. But what has really made Dane a media magnet is that, at 57, he is the oldest skipper ever to qualify for the U.S. Sailing Team. (Elvstrom himself may have been the oldest sailing Olympian ever. His final appearance was in the Tornado class at Seoul in 1988 at age 60.) But wait, that’s not all: Dane’s crew, 29-year-old continued on outside column of next sightings page February, 2008 •
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