Caroline's Voyage

Chapter 3


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 Chapter 3. 

It's a miiracle. The TV station that interviewed me in New York got a call from a yacht broker in City Island, NY (which is quite near New York City), who said one of the boat companies they represent has a boat for me to use. We’re not exactly sure how this will work, but Betsy’s dad, who’s a lawyer in Boston, will work out the details for me. I can hardly believe it.

 

Mom and I are going back to New York to inspect the boat that’s been offered. It’s a Trimaran. That means it has three hulls. The main one in the center is where you live and drive the boat, and the two other hulls are like the outriggers that the ancient Polynesians used to travel from South America to the South Seas and maybe New Zealand (and that’s exactly where I’m heading). They’re very fast off the wind. Sorry, that’s a term we use sailing. I know not everyone knows these terms and I’ll need to remember that. “Off the wind” means with the wind direction on your side (beam) or in back (aft) of you. A lot of the sailing I’ll do will be like that, because I’m planning to go around from east to west in the tradewinds that circle the globe. So a Trimaran is not a bad choice. Anyway, boats are all a compromise. The tris are faster than mono hulls in the conditions I’m probably going to meet, and that could be a big help, since small monohulls max-out in the 4 to 5 knot range. I should be able to average twice that speed. 

:

 

 

 

Picture of a Trimaran 

 

 I don't think I'll go as fast as this boat is.

When I’m not in the trade wind zone, I may need to sail close to the wind sometimes. Tristan Jones, the great solo voyager, wrote in one of his books (I forget which one) that to be safe you need a boat that will tack through 100 degrees. My racer of course will do better than that, a little under 80 degrees. What this means is if the wind is coming from the direction you need to go, you have to zig-zag (tacking) up wind as close to the wind direction as possible with the wind filling your hauled-in sails on one side and then shifting (tacking) over to the other side – inching one way, then the other, until you get to where you need to be. You can use the same technique to climb up a snowy slope on skis, but then it’s called traversing. Anyway, being able to tack through 100 degrees means you can stay as close as 50 degrees from the wind direction on each tack. Too much more than that and you might not be able to climb upwind off a rocky shore, or you might end up right back where you started.  

 

 

Tristan Jones used a Trimaran for several of his long ocean voyages.  He describes going so fast in his tri that the apparent wind actually moved around to the front of the boat and had the same effect as if the true wind were coming from that more forward direction. You can experience this in any sailboat, but the effect is hardly noticeable in a deep draft mono hull like my racer. I might need to slow the Trimaran down like Tristan Jones did in order to avoid having to tack. Confused? I don’t blame you. Let me try again.

 

True wind is the real direction from which it’s blowing. In a dead calm there’s no true wind at all. So if I hop on my bike and peddle five mph in any direction, I have the apparent wind in my face – 5 mph worth. If there’s five mph of true wind from the north and I ride south at 5 mph I will have zero apparent wind. If I’m peddling east in a true wind of 5 mph from the north I will have apparent wind of 7 or 8 mph from near 45 degrees to my left in front of me, not 5 mph from 90 degrees like it would be if I was facing east but not moving. Still clear as mud, right? 

 

The guys in the yard where I work kid me that I’ve never sailed a Trimaran.

 

“You know, Caroline, that if some rogue wave flips you over, you’re gonna stay there . . .  down side up. Those things don’t come back upright by themselves.”

 

“Hey, they don’t sink either,” I said.

 

“Okay Banks”, they laugh, “So then what are you going to do? You’ll be sitting under a raft in the middle of the ocean – shark bait.”

 

“This boat has an escape hatch in its bottom that I can crawl out if I turn turtle.”

 

“And . . . then what?”

 

“It might depend on where it happened,” I said. “How about if I call you guys on my satellite phone. You can send the Coast Guard to come get me.”

 

They laugh, shake their heads, and we all go back to work.

 

Maybe I really could sit outside on the bottom, upside down, and still use my satellite phone and the EPIRB beacon to summon help, but I’d be exposed to the weather while I waited to be rescued. Or maybe I could duck back down inside to get food and water, or even use it as a shelter part of the time. Here’s what I might look like sitting upside down:

 

 

 

 

 If I'm upside down

 

 

 

 

 

 I clearly have some research to do.

 

 

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