Survival ??} Loss of: Rudder, Sails, Eng., Low on Drinking Water, etc.

[thomm225]

You can always use common sense with that list of yours and prioritize.

Water first.

Then go with your strengths. If you are not a great diesel mechanic and don't want your boat to become a parts store for engines, make sure you have extra sails and can jury rig a mast if need be.

As far rudder loss, some boats sail pretty good with out the rudder so make sure you know how the sails affect your boat say with the rudder locked amidships. And realize you may not be able to sail too close to the wind.

Robin Lee Graham broke his mast and rigged the boom as a mast I believe (or half the mast) and sailed maybe a 1000 miles like that on his 24' Offshore Cruising Yacht w/outboard.


scroll down to see jury rig mast:

http://windborneinpugetsound.blogspo...1_archive.html


http://www.natgeocreative.com/ngs/ph...QM-Cn9JG2iU=&o


save fresh water:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...d=0CC4QMygRMBE

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by HighFly_27

Wow El Pringuion,

That's Great Info. & Your Solution(s) to Major Problems.

I see that you've leaned to prepare for the unexpected/ past trouble(s); so No Repeats of the same Breakdowns. This was excatly the information I was looking for from this post.


No one can pack everything for what may go wrong; you can pack for what's (most) likely to go wrong.

Folks that don't have a lot of experience on long passages can learn from you & others.. regarding breakdowns at sea.

Thank You,

Avery

Oh it takes a while to figure out what you need... when we lost the mast ( 4 weeks after buying her) we didn't have enough fuel to make land... we did have an emergency VHF ant that let us hail a passing tanker and pick up an extra 300 litres.
If you lose your mast you will be losing anything you have hanging off it...antennas, radar, radar reflector...all your other toys.....

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by HighFly_27

Hello All,

I've thought about some of the Worst Things that could happen at sea. This Survival Scenario is based on being over a thousand miles away from known help i.e. the USCG or the like.

Scenario, your Crippled and over a 1000 miles from known help.

1. Loss of Rudder

a. Knocked completely off, gone.

b. Loss of Rudder by steering linkage but can be used with emergency tiller.

2. Loss of Main Sail.

a. Ripped to Hell and (nearly) not repairable at sea.

b. Ripped & carrying a extra sails but winds are high and can't deploy it now.

3. Engine Dead

a. Engine quit and will not start, checked everything

b. Engine gets hot and have to shut it off after 15 minutes.

4. Low on Fresh Drinking Water, 25 Galion's Remaining for 2 People.

a. You have a 115 volt water maker but your engine is not running. You were running your engine 2 hours a day to charge your battery's & operate 115 volt water maker.

b. You have a tarp to catch rainwater but it has not rained in a weeks time;
So, you're at mercy of mother nature to catch rainwater.

*** I asking for your viewpoint / knowledge of the added questions (below) because I do not know, only from what I've read in books

Is rainwater (collected at sea) drinkable upon collection ? I have read about people surviving for months at time at sea by catching rainwater.

However, I have never tried to catch rainwater at sea to determine how easy or difficult it is to collect. I have seen how dirty water is at altitude when flying thru it in a aircraft. Is or can rainwater be as dirty as I've seen it at altitude ?

Has anyone collected rainwater at sea and drank it to hone their survivor skills ?

Note:

I could not create all the type of situations that one could/ or may encounter at sea. I tried to list the ones that we're familiar with.

I'd like to hear about the major problems you've encountered at sea and how you solved your problem(s) and survived.

Closing, I've attended military survival schools & have survivor type books. I'm interested in hearing about ones actual experiences over text book explanations.

One last thing as Detective Colombo would say.

If you were setting the forward & aft. center of gravity (CG) by loading the sailboat internally; would you set it with a -- Aft CG to take rough seas better in a heavy storm ? If so, what amount in Inches or Percentage would you want the Bow to be up in relationship to a dead neutral waterline. You do not see this type of information in sailing books.


Avery

Huh?

[seasick]

Pumps, every pump aboard will be the most problematic. If you carry spares for nothing else carry spares for the pumps, diaphragms, impellers, whole pumps. Be creative. Engine raw water pump gone and twenty miles to port, hook the bilge pump to the engine and match the inflow to outflow with an open seacock. Etcetera etcetera.

[Captain Fred]

First, I like the way you are thinking...must be that survival training. My rule is "always have three ways to do anything important" e.g. steer (normal, emergency tiller, wind vane or preplanned bunkboard replacement rudder) What's important? Well, steering, communicating, navigating, getting water out of the boat, putting out fires, recovering man overboard, maintaining water supply. When you've taken care of all that, you will probably not need any of it but you will have greatly increased your chances of a successful voyage.

[Suijin]

There is no such thing as clean rain water. That said, drinking rain water, regardless of what is in it, is better than dying from dehydration.

If you don't have a purpose-built emergency rudder, research using a drogue and bridle arrangement rigged to mid-ships cleats to steer the boat. It is surprisingly effective, provided it is rigged and sized right for your boat.

Carry extra water and fuel for long passages. It's just the smart thing to do.

Regarding weight distribution, I'm a believer in putting it as low and close to the boat's CG as possible. Better overall handling in mixed conditions and better stability. I would not go loading up the stern just to try and stay dry or monkey with your handling in a following sea, in general.

And yeah, spares for all your engine's bolt on systems. And the knowledge of how to diagnose and repair/replace them.

[HighFly_27]

Captured Rainwater

1st and Foremost, I get it about capturing rainwater to survive. Some of you do it all the time and it's a day to day practice.

I have heard that the bottled water will load up with bacteria over time. Would you boil your captured rain water or any water that you've had on board for a long period of time ?!?

I remember from my survival training & books. We'd boil water from streams, etc. and had purifying tablets to drop in.

I'm not trying to get rapped around the axle on rainwater usage. I'm trying to determine what's smart & doing the right thing to survive when using rainwater on a daily basis. If I had the means to boil it, is that the right answer or not deemed necessary ?!?

Avery

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by seasick

......Engine raw water pump gone and twenty miles to port, hook the bilge pump to the engine and match the inflow to outflow with an open seacock. Etcetera etcetera.

Engine raw water pump u/s in a glassy calm in Banka Strait with what turned out to be 8 days motoring ahead....

Connect garden hose to engine sea cock... other end to shower sump pump... garden hose back to raw water strainer. Worked good, expect to change impellor every 72 hours

[shufti]

1. Loss of Rudder

Broke a tie rod end off the connecting arm (between twin rudders) last weekend about 50nm from home. Used 'Knead it' to repair the broken rod. Unbelievable stuff - so solid that a lesser boatie would have been tempted for a second to leave it in place <grin>.

I'd advise putting a tube or two if this stuff in your toolbox. It was a trip-saver for us.

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by shufti

Broke a tie rod end off the connecting arm (between twin rudders) last weekend about 50nm from home. Used 'Knead it' to repair the broken rod. Unbelievable stuff - so solid that a lesser boatie would have been tempted for a second to leave it in place <grin>.

I'd advise putting a tube or two if this stuff in your toolbox. It was a trip-saver for us.

My Admiral would have fixed that with tape.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by Suijin

There is no such thing as clean rain water...

I guess you don't live near me.
My rainwater has to travel about 220 degrees of longitude across the Southern Ocean from the last population centre before it reaches me. I haven't measured it but that's a very long way, more than halfway around the world.

Apart from that, many many stations (ranches for the US folk) in Oz use rainwater untreated on a daily basis. Of course it is no where near as pure as the stuff in my area but they seem to get by all right.

Mid ocean I would expect most rain was distilled from the ocean within a few hundred miles on where it falls but FTR, this is just a partly informed guess.

And yes, I would be wary of rain that has formed over nearby large populated land masses ie North America, Europe and Asia etc. However if the prevailing weather was onshore then I would be less concerned.

[shufti]

Originally Posted by Cadence

My Admiral would have fixed that with tape.

Hehe - tape was considered (as were a host of options before I remembered I had the knead-it on board). Only about 8-10mm of threaded rod to grip to though precluded that idea.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by Wotname

.......
Apart from that, many many stations (ranches for the US folk) in Oz use rainwater untreated on a daily basis. Of course it is no where near as pure as the stuff in my area but they seem to get by all right.
............
And yes, I would be wary of rain that has formed over nearby large populated land masses ie North America, Europe and Asia etc. However if the prevailing weather was onshore then I would be less concerned.

Been drinking tank water for yonks at Casa del Pingo..... no ill effects... but rather remarkable the amount of dust that gets washed out of the sky.

Better a bit of camel dung dust than a town water supply full of pesticides, herbicides and the occasional mafia victim ( caramelised).

Best to play safe however and stick to rum.

[Foolish]

Highfly: you've got the right thinking in wondering about these things, so I'll let you in on a little secret. Don't ask if your motor will quit, because it will quit - no question. The same goes for your electronics. Don't ask if they will quit, because they will quit - no question. And your motor and electronics will quit at the worst possible moment - like when you're skimming along a lee shore, or when a tug boat with a barge is aiming at you, or when you are just about to enter the breakwater at your dock. (All of these, and many more have happened to me.)

So now that you absolutely know that they will quit, then you can start to plan for what to do about it. Lots of good solutions have been presented above. But I'll give you this as an idea. When you are out on the water for your normal weekly sail, give it some thought: "What would I do if my motor broke - RIGHT NOW" What would I do if my mast broke - RIGHT NOW" "What would I do if my rudder broke - RIGHT NOW" And then it gets a little trickier like "What would I do if the boom hit my wife on the head - RIGHT NOW"

There are a million things that will go wrong on your boat. Some of them give you time before a crisis. Some of them require immediate action to avoid the worst. So when things are going well, start to think of how you would handle various things in either of those cases. Once you have gone over a dozen scenarios in your mind, then you'll find that anything else just becomes repetitive, because you've already got it solved.

[hamburking]

I'll add my voice to having the engine quit so many times. I prefer just not to start it...sail onto the anchorage, sail off...maybe there is only one start left in it...so I'll save that for when I really need it. I've been out there with just 3 small kids when the engine quit. I've been out there alone. Sometimes you can get it going again, sometimes you can't.

I've had the main tear from luff to leach...caught the boom before it hit the deck.

Almost sank once, when my crew left the head valve open and seawater started to syphon into the boat. It was ankle deep in the cabin, and we were miles from shore in a big blow. I thought we were going down. Boy was I happy when I figured out it was just the head.

My kids think its funny...they think everyone can sail into a slip at a crowded marina. They are confident I can fix anything that breaks. They think I can make a supper out of any old cans found at the back of the deep lockers when we get stuck in the middle of noplace waiting for a storm to blow itself out.

I prepare. I bring spares. I go. Its an adventure. If you want to be absolutely sure everything is ok...don't leave the dock.