{"id":7100,"date":"2014-07-07T09:37:19","date_gmt":"2014-07-07T15:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/macblaze.ca\/?p=7100"},"modified":"2015-02-26T09:22:57","modified_gmt":"2015-02-26T16:22:57","slug":"43-things-i-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/?p=7100","title":{"rendered":"43 Things I Learned"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>I had posted this on a sailing forum for others&#8217; edification and thought I would repost it here.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>We learned a lot of things, some of which we already knew, or just thought we did. Here&#8217;s my partial list:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Heaving to is your friend; and easy too.<\/li>\n<li>The old saying about thinking about reefing too late is actually pretty damn accurate<\/li>\n<li>Single line reefing systems are often obstinate<\/li>\n<li>Fridges in a sailboat are\u2026quirky<\/li>\n<li>I really wonder why there aren&#8217;t grab bars on the bulkheads in the aft berth. How the hell does anyone get out of those things quickly at 2 am?<\/li>\n<li>You get out of\u00a0bed\u00a0at 2 am quickly a lot more than you would think<\/li>\n<li>Gauges that measure liquids (water,\u00a0diesel, holding tanks) never seem to work<\/li>\n<li>A 3 hour\u00a0motor\u00a0quickly becomes a 6 hour sail, with very little regret<\/li>\n<li>9 and half hours is a long day, but man can it ever be a glorious day<\/li>\n<li>4-5 foot waves are not as scary as it sounds<\/li>\n<li>A 17\u00a0knot\u00a0gust with just the main up is scarier<\/li>\n<li>If you don&#8217;t like the\u00a0weather: wait. The damn thing changes fast<\/li>\n<li>The infamous Johnstone Strait plays mind games with you. Gale force to glass in a couple of days<\/li>\n<li>Docking at empty docks is easy to get used to<\/li>\n<li>When\u00a0docking\u00a0at a marina with a strong cross\u00a0current, don&#8217;t be first in<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t give the yahoos on the\u00a0dock\u00a0a line. Seriously don&#8217;t.<\/li>\n<li>The beam of a 33&#8242; sailboat is much smaller than the beam of a 38&#8242; sailboat. It shouldn&#8217;t take you a week of\u00a0docking\u00a0to figure that out.<\/li>\n<li>Gloves will not keep your hands warm and dry on a windy, rainy day. Having a second pair is a godsend.<\/li>\n<li>Powerboaters really are, well, oblivious<\/li>\n<li>You can raise an\u00a0anchor\u00a0with a\u00a0spinnaker\u00a0halyard\u00a0if your\u00a0windlass\u00a0craps out. Who knew?<\/li>\n<li>Windlasses crap out.<\/li>\n<li>There are more things on a boat that go bang in the night than you can ever have possibly imagined<\/li>\n<li>An 11\u00a0knot\u00a0wind\u00a0can die faster than you can get the main up<\/li>\n<li>A 2006\u00a0Bavaria\u00a033&#8242; has the worst\u00a0galley\u00a0configuration ever<\/li>\n<li>An undersized\u00a0RIB\u00a0can almost be worse than no\u00a0dinghy\u00a0at all<\/li>\n<li>Stern tying isn&#8217;t as hard as I thought. Except for the stupid, unstable, undersized\u00a0dinghy.<\/li>\n<li>Leaving the\u00a0hatch\u00a0almost all the way open is not the same thing as leaving it all the way open. Ow!<\/li>\n<li>Apparently you can hear the McDonalds drive-through on channel 68 in the middle of Desolation Sound. WTF?<\/li>\n<li>Charts are big, and critical information is always on the fold.<\/li>\n<li>The phrase &#8216;local knowledge&#8217; will prevent you from taking a lot of shortcuts<\/li>\n<li>A\u00a0shower\u00a0underway in 4-5 foot seas is actually kinda fun<\/li>\n<li>Wiping down the whole\u00a0head\u00a0after a\u00a0shower\u00a0will earn you bonus points<\/li>\n<li>Putting a\u00a0winch, aft docking cleat,\u00a0diesel\u00a0fill, bbq, life ring and a horseshoe life sling at the same place is not a good way to arrange things<\/li>\n<li>BBQs make a real mess on the transom<\/li>\n<li>Holding\u00a0tanks\u00a0are\u2026 well they are\u2026 sigh.<\/li>\n<li>A gravity system\u00a0holding tank\u00a0can be unblocked by plugging every damn hole and vent and pumpin&#8217; the sh*t right out of it. Just don&#8217;t figure that out at the anchorage.<\/li>\n<li>The guy with the self-tacking\u00a0jib\u00a0was cheating. But I beat him anyway \ud83d\ude42<\/li>\n<li>My 2006\u00a0charter\u00a0boat was a nice boat, but it was a floating dung heap compared to the one-owner 2007 Tartan 3400 we sailed with<\/li>\n<li>Learn from the experienced guys.<\/li>\n<li>Never trust the experienced guys.<\/li>\n<li>Boater are damn nice people, from the\u00a0Catalina 30\u00a0right up to the Selene 65<\/li>\n<li>There is nothing, I mean nothing, as depressing as a speed of 3.5 knots and having a SOG of 2.9 at the end of an 8-hour day<\/li>\n<li>Sailing with\u00a0dolphins\u00a0in your wake for 45 min is THE\u00a0SINGLE\u00a0BEST THING EVER!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had posted this on a sailing forum for others&#8217; edification and thought I would repost it here. We learned a lot of things, some of which we already knew, or just thought we did. Here&#8217;s my partial list: Heaving to is your friend; and easy too. The old saying about thinking about reefing too [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,90],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7100"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}