The excitement of a new boat, even after you’ve toiled over it to prepare for its maiden voyage, should not be an excuse to neglect your safety preparation, nor forget your operational checklists... Read more
Articles are of general interest to the entire CCA membership, and are not particular to any specific station. Categories include Feature Articles, Safety Moments, White Papers and For Ocean Racers.
In view of Stan’s apparent knowledge, I delegated the pilotage to him and, stupidly, didn’t keep an eye on the charts and the marks although I had read up on the passage. At that stage we did not have a chart plotter so we were relying on paper charts and eyeball navigation in very clear visibility. Read more
Each group was also shown the effectiveness of the inexpensive ABC or BC dry chemical extinguishers, again using a short well-aimed blast at the fire. However, during one of my demonstrations, I accidentally grabbed the halon extinguisher that I had used in a discussion of different fire-fighting agents. I pulled the pin, aimed the nozzle and let forth a brief blast of banned, terrible-for-the-environment, not-Sierra Club approved halon Read more
I idly looked aloft at the tricolor light, and it appeared to be showing its red light aft, which didn’t register as a problem, at least initially, until I looked aloft again and now saw the green light showing aft. It became obvious that the light fixture was unscrewing from the mast due to the movement of the boat as we sailed upwind plus the tapered threads used to attach the mounting post to the aluminum mast. I mulled over the possible explanations for a while, but what… Read more
A few minutes later, however, the familiar sound stopped, and the swing of the rudder and tiller came to a halt with perhaps 10 degrees of port rudder locked in. Before I could get to the tiller and lift the tiller pilot off its pin, the boat flew through an uncontrolled gybe ... Read more
... We were being blown onto the dock and had to make a hard turn to starboard into the wind to get out of the boatyard. This was not really a problem, but just when I went to use the bow thruster that we had tested days earlier, it failed. A little single screw backing and filling got us safely out of the slip and underway to our mooring. Read more- The story in MarineLog on this year’s Summer Solstice seemed both familiar and odd at the same time. A yacht valued at $1,500,000 burned to the waterline, and later sank, while undergoing some routine maintenance at a marina in Washington state. Closed circuit cameras showed that around 2:00 am, the fire started in the cockpit, and then grew slowly over an hour or so before someone noticed it and called the fire department. By then, the yacht was engulfed in flames.… Read more
- This story is not a bluewater sailing story, but it illustrates how you can get into trouble in calm waters within sight of home. A friend of mine had this happen to him a few years ago and told me the story the next day, while he was still somewhat shaken up. Read more
“From the CCA School of Hard Rocks
Read more
“Safety Moments, presented at CCA Stations and Posts”
Read more
By Chuck Hawley, San Francisco Station, May 2023
From Spain to Maine to Ukraine. A wide-ranging collection of narratives in the post-COVID era.
Read more