In my first thread on discovering this forum, I hoped to discuss a novel way of heaving to. I was at pains to explain that I saw this novel way as offering unique benefits in situations
other than bad
weather.
Partly in the hope of avoiding the usual partisan sh*t fight on storm management, and partly because it was the truth, as I saw it.
I was also hoping to find out who else had heard of this technique, or come up with it, truly novel ideas being like hens' teeth.
I was unable to make any headway in discussing the topic, because of disbelief, shading almost into ridicule, for my notion that (in all situations short of a gale or worse) the sacred destiny of a boat was
not inexorably to forge forever forwards.
I
recall attracting particular ridicule for the notion of heaving to at mealtimes.
I'm one of those strange people who can actively enjoy sailing to windward, even
offshore, at least some of the time. I
recall a trip with thirteen other people where we were on port tack for ten days straight, and I was the only person not climbing the walls by day ten.
Even so, I cannot enjoy eating, let alone digest a good meal, when hanging on grimly while falling off every fifth wave ... and it's hell on wineglasses
....
The
lost mile(s) are in my experience quickly won back with a rested, refreshed watch on
deck, and the social reconnection of everyone sitting down together and focussed on each other, rather than the boat, puts me in mind of an era when most
family mealtimes ashore were like that
Before the invention of the TV dinner .... (sigh)
I remember reading about a motorbike from the first decades of the twentieth century, featuring a radial
engine, whose cylinders were effectively the spokes of the front (!)
wheel, and whose crankshaft was the front axle.
The
engine was bump started, and (lacking any way of declutching) if you needed to yield right of way (perhaps, to a bullock dray!) you simply circled until the way was clear.
That sort of solution seemed to me, at the time of starting my first thread, to be the prevailing mindset on this forum: or perhaps another analogy was a plane trip: you were either going somewhere, or flying a holding pattern, or you were there.
(in which case, reverting to boats: you are tied to a marina or lying to an anchor)
After pages of being slapped down, I very nearly left without a backward glance.
I'm very heartened to find, from the very different flavour of this thread, that either the forum culture has evolved, or I caught it at a bad moment.
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