Experience Matters

Several years ago my wife and I wanted to bring our sailboat from the Antelope Island Marina to the South Shore Marina on the Great Salt Lake. We knew a storm would be blowing in the next day and wanted to get the task done before it came. We staged a car at the southern marina and then drove to the northern one. We loaded up the boat with ourselves and some winter-weather gear because of the month, February. Then we rigged a few safety devices to help protect us just in case something surprised us. Adding a preventer to the mainsail help ensure we wouldn't break the boat in a sudden wind shift.

The first 15 minutes of the trip went well and the wind filled in nicely. While sometimes you have to use the boat motor on such trips, it looked like we would be able to sail the whole way. At about minute 16, the weather changed dramatically, the storm arrived 15 hours early, and we found ourselves in 60 knots (about 66 miles per hour) of wind pushing us in the direction we wanted to go. Unfortunately our sailboat is not built to handle such wind and things got crazy. We ended up dropping both sails and still scooted along at a blistering 16 knots. That doesn't sound very fast but is 3 times the speed we normally sail.

One would think we had our excitement and once the wind died down all would be well. The wind did die down but then a snowstorm rolled in. I had planned to navigate visually but when the snow started falling, we couldn't see more than a few feet in front of the bow. The large smokestack from the smelter at the south-end of the lake that we aim for quickly disappeared. I had never bothered to install a compass in the cockpit and so I couldn't use that to help me. Ultimately I used the direction of the waves to guide me for the next several hours.

Eventually I could see a vertical line of blinking lights in the distance and hoped it to be the smokestack from the smelter as I knew it had aviation lights to warn low-flying planes. When the depth-finder on the boat went from 20 feet of water to 8 in about 2 feet, I knew I was off course and had to decide between turning hard to the left or hard to the right. I guessed and went right. The guess paid off and we quickly saw the breakwater for the South Shore Marina. We had blindly made it within a couple hundred yards of our final destination. As we continued I could see the expected lights on the smokestack and realized I had been heading towards a radio tower I had never noticed before.

We got into the marina at the south-end of the lake and quickly tied up the boat. I think my wife even kissed the dock once safely off the vessel. We both felt glad to be unharmed and relieved not to have to file an insurance claim for running the boat aground.

The moral of the story is that there is no substitute for experience. Sometimes we think we know something, like navigation but it isn't until we are tested that we know for sure. Since that day, I now know there are two tall objects at the south end of the Great Salt Lake with flashing lights. More importantly I know that the radio tower has brighter lights but the smokestack has 2 lights per row instead of just one. These are things you don't pay attention to on a sunny day. After all, why would you?

YouTube: It is not Just for Fixing Cars

My family always has a tradition of taking our sailboat out on the Great Salt Lake every 4th of July, anchoring the boat, and swimming/floating for hours. Sometimes we also actually get the sails up and go sailing. The Great Salt Lake is very shallow and is only 35 feet (10 meters) at its deepest. That means you have to walk a long way from the edge of the lake to get to where the water is deep enough to float. Taking a boat is the best way to get to where you can relax and float.

Unfortunately we thought we would have to miss our annual outing as I could not fix the engine on the boat. We really need the engine to get the boat in and out of the marina. Yes, it is a sailboat and we could use the sails to move the boat around but that is very difficult and best done only during emergencies. I have sailed the boat in and out of our slip and the process taught me a whole new list of cuss words I shouldn't use in front of small children.

As the name of the lake indicates, The Great Salt Lake is full of salt. Right now it is about 3 times as salty as the ocean. We often joke that if you drop a wrench into the lake, it will rust to nothing before the wrench lands on the bottom. That salt is not harmful to the sailboat as the hull is made of fiberglass. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the engine. Our little outboard engine slurps up water from the lake to help cool the engine. At the end of a day of sailing, we run fresh water through the engine to clean out all of the salt. After 19 years of sucking in salt, our engine clogged and I needed to take it apart to clean it.

We had the engine off the boat over the winter and had a local marine store service the engine. One of the things we asked them to do is replace the water pump. They did but they didn't replace the thermostat in the engine and I felt it might be the issue. When we put the engine back on the boat, it ran fine for the first 2 sailing trips and then gave us all indications that it wasn't being cooled properly.

Having replaced quite a few automobile thermostats, I knew the job is not that difficult. I got to the boat early one day over the recent break and pulled off the thermostat housing. Sure enough the 19-year old thermostat looked more like rust than any usable part. I pulled out the old one only to discover the new part didn't fit. I actually wanted to test if water was running through the engine and so I left the thermostat out, put the housing back on the engine, and started it up. There is a telltale that sprays a stream of water out of the engine and into the lake when everything is working correctly. Nothing came out. Knowing that you don't want to run an engine very long without a working thermostat, I shut the engine down, rinsed it off, and headed to the marine parts store. I worked with the manager there to use the serial number of the engine, which I had taken a picture of on my smartphone, and found the correct part. The correct part cost $6 less and so they refunded me the difference.

I didn't want to go back to the boat as the Utah sun was blazing away and being outside felt like being on the surface of the sun. Instead I came home and tried to take my mind off the fact I still hadn't fixed my engine. The next morning my wife and I got ready to head back out to the boat and see if we couldn't get it working. Before leaving home, I found a great YouTube video about fixing the cooling system on outboard motors. The guy narrating the video was from Australia and had an engine with a similar problem to mine. He tried a few things that I always try and had similar results. Then he gave me a small piece of information that I suspected but didn't know: not all of the water that cools the engine exits from the telltale. This effectively said that my engine might be cooling correctly and that the clog could be in the Y-valve where some of the water is diverted to the telltale and the rest exits the engine near the prop.

My wife and I headed to the boat armed with new information. I pulled off the thermostat housing and thoroughly rinsed the cooling path. I also followed the telltale hose all the way to the Y-valve and used compressed air to clean that out. I put the new thermostat back in and it fit perfectly. Then I started the engine and everything worked perfectly. An hour later, our children arrived ready for our annual tradition. YouTube is not just for fixing cars.

Sailing Log

Saturday I went sailing on the Great Salt Lake. Every time the boat goes out, an entry is made in our log book. This week I noticed that we are getting to the end of the book and so I stopped by the local boating shop on the way home. I couldn't find their log books and so I asked one of the sales people for help. She said that their selection was very limited because everyone is moving to computers to keep track of their boating adventures. Nothing matched what I was looking for and so I figured I could just order something online.

Saturday evening I pulled out my laptop and did a search for log books in the hopes of finding the exact same book we have used for our previous 2 log books. Unfortunately it is out of print and while I could order the book from Amazon, it will cost me $122! It is only worth about $20 and so I kept searching. Unfortunately I can't find anything that matches exactly what I am looking for and so I am going to have to make my own. It will be as simple as purchasing waterproof paper, printing log sheets on both sides of the paper, and having it spiral bound at Kinkos/FedEx.

Now don't get me wrong. I love computers and think they are great for keeping track of information. However they don't really mix with water. We ruined a perfectly good laptop when we sailed back from Hawaii. The computer survived the 21-day trip but was useless afterwards. While you can purchase water-resistant laptops, they are expensive and completely unnecessary when compared with the low cost of waterproof paper and a cheap pen. This is one of those examples were we try to apply technology to a problem where it is not needed.