Living aboard a sailboat safely

Living aboard a sailboat safely is great fun, it will be even more fun if you do it in a prudent manner.


This is mostly common sense but lets review some of the things my bride and I did to insure that we were as safe as possible.

Let's divide them up into at anchor, at the dock, on the hard and on passage. In the 8 years of cruising in the Caribbean I would guess we were at anchor 85%, at the dock 11%, on the hard 2% and underway 2%.

At Anchor

This was by far where we spent most of our time. 98% of the time in sight of other boats. I can recall some secluded spots where we by ourselves for several days but mostly we had company.

Sailboat Dinghy theft

This never happened to us or any of our friends. Best way to secure your dinghy is to haul it out of the water at night. Dinghy davits are necessary to do this. It not only made the dinghy less attractive to thieves it was quieter at night.

Locking your dinghy at the dock will also make your dinghy less attractive to thieves. Be careful at crowded dinghy docks, TTYA in Trinidad, Coral Bay in St John USVI, leave enough scope to let others get around your dinghy. You can really get some cruisers mad if you fail to do so.

Living aboard a sailboat safely at anchor other than dinghy security depends upon the boat you have.

Note that Shadowtime had a freeboard of 4 to 5 feet.

For you landlubbers that is the distance from the water to your deck rail.

Unless you have a rope and are strong as all get out you are not going to find it easy to board Shadowtime except when invited.

If you had wine, food or cold beer the ladder would be lowered quickly.
 
With the ladder up and the dinghy in the davits, note block and tackle gear on either side, we felt pretty secure.


At the dock

For us this meant Bahia Redonda in Puerto La Cruz Venezuela or the Trinidad and Tobago Yacht Club. They were both secure and any stranger would stand out like a sore thumb. Even so we usually locked the hatch when gone for a bit. Living aboard a sailboat safely is common sense.

If you are a cruiser you gotta go to the T and T Carnival...all January and February up to Lent.

The Trini's know how to party.

Jouvert, or Carnival is on Fat Tuesday.

The cruisers join a Carnival Club, maybe $20 includes a "costume". It isn't much of a getup.

Hey, what do you expect for $20, with all you can drink?


You start the parade at 1AM, that is 1AM, and follow 3 trucks thru the streets of Port Of Spain.

One truck has the sound, another has beer and rum, the last truck is the mud truck and you too will be covered from head to toe by dawn. All done in great fun and safely.

Underway
 
Now this is a bit more serious. Living aboard a sailboat safely when you are going somewhere is all about proper preparation.

First you never ever make a passage without a good weather report, which you get on your single side band radio. We never left safe harbor unless the seas were less than 4 to 6 foot, with the wind hopefully on the beam or behind, and less than 15 knots. We ended up motorsailing half the time, but who cares it is calm and comfortable. Don't see many of the yellowslicker crowd when you cruise.

Most passages were at night, you want to arrive during daylight.

Count on 5 knot average speed and plan your arrival at 9AM.

That gives you 8 hours of cushion if you have a problem.

You ran your jacklines, a safety device to make sure you stayed attached to the boat, bow to the stern.

No matter how hot is was you wear a safety harness and attach yourself to the jacklines. Our harnesses  were cool, they had an gas cartiridge life vest in case you fell over...we never did, we never heard of anyone else falling over.

Living aboard a sailboat safely...prepare for the worst, expect the best.

We were both in the cockpit throuhgout the passage...head  breaks the only exception. Never go below to sleep with the mate on deck.

I set the autopilot, and watched the radar and the GPS.
You couldn't see much visually, due to the running lights being on. Never run without those on...it is both illegal and stupid. Living aboard a sailboat safely has no room for stupid.

Have all your food and drink with you in the cockpit.

When going up the Windwards and Leewards. Your longest passage will be 90 miles, Virgin Gorda BVI to St Maarten. That will take 16 hours.

Our longest passage was Venezuela to St Croix, which we did twice, 72 and 66 hours.

How were those trips...piece of cake since we always waited for good weather. What did we do...it can be boring, read books during day, nap at night.

On The hard

Living aboard a sailboat safely isn't all that easy here. Going up and down the ladder can be difficult. When on the hard you are working and it is easy to get careless. Pay extra attention here.

A necessary evil, but I did not want to be worrying about hurricanes in the summer .

We pulled our boat out of the water in May, at Peakes in Trinidad or Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor. We usually spent 3 to 4 nights before we left for the US and once we arrived back in the Islands.

It is a pain...you get on and off the boat by a metal ladder, you are about 10 feet up. You can't use the head so a middle of the night visit to the locker room is always a fun deal. Seriously, you have to be very careful on the ladder.

It is hot on the hard . When anchored the bow swings into the wind and you have a nice sea breeze. You have little chance of being pointed into the wind on the hard, you just have to suffer.

However this is a very important time and you gat a lot of work done. We took our inventory, bleached and oiled all the teak inside, and generally put the boat to bed. All sails were taken down, bimini and dodger removed, dinghy hauled on board and secured.

You were oh so glad when you could splash and start having fun.

Conclusion

Living aboard a sailboat safely makes it fun. And thats what you are doing is having fun. It is a great life but you don't turn your brain off completly...well there are times when you do...when you cruise.

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