Info Diving and Seamanship

[drl]

I drink port wine exclusively with my left hand. Well, I would if I did...

And port wine is (usually) red!

 

[Brett Hatch]

When you show up late to a party, all that's left to drink is the port.

 

[Akimbo]

For the visual etymologists on ScubaBoard... which is not the same as Starboard

​

 

[MichaelMc]

How to remember Port and Starboard:

Short words:
Port, Left, Red

Long words:
Starboard, Right, Green

 

[Schwob]

so

So, not asking to be nit-picky, just asking:
So the historical reasons may be clear, but today, when on a vessel, be that a junk or a sailing canoe or something else altogether, if it happens to have a non centric stearing board or other type of non centric single rudder and if that happens to be on the left side, which side is then officially starboard. Still the right side irrespective of the historical reasons for the name?
(And in the sailing canoe for example the stearing Board side May charged, pending on tack, so going with the historical interpretation may help ... or not, pending on those on board and going with the current, stearing hardware independent, convention seems to make more sense... just thinking...

 

[Storker]

And port wine is (usually) red!

White port is an abomination and an affront to humanity. The only proper port is red. Preferably bottled after no more than two years in the barrel and not opened until it has reached at least voting age in the bottle.

 

[TuckerIdaho]

Port is also ONLY from the Porto region of Portugal. Anything else is absolutely not Port.

 

[captain]

A few more terms:

Scuttlebutt - Gossip, rumors, so called because sailors used to gather around the scuttlebutt, a cask on the ship for drinking water.

Sea cock - A through-hull fitting with a valve that can shut off the flow of water between the boat's interior and exterior (usually below the water line).

Right-hand lay - The twist of stranded rope commonly used, with the strands twisting to the right: Z-twist.

Dead reckoning - The navigation means used to determine position, calculated from the course steered and the speed through the water, without obtaining a fix; a dead reckoning position is indicated on a chart by marking a half circle with a dot on the track line; the time is placed at an angle to the horizontal and to the track line.

Stuffing box - A through hull fitting for the drive shaft or rudder shaft usually packed with several circles of waxed
line or rope to create a seal for rotating parts. Also known as a packing gland.

Schooner - A fore-and-aft rigged sailing vessel with two or more masts, with the foremost shorter than the mainmast.

Dead reckoning- If you don't reckon right you may end up dead

Funny story (or not so funny if you were they guy this happened to or the captain).
While I was working on a 55' Trimaran sailing vessel, the owner told me a story about when they were all loaded up and ready to set sail to Hawaii as a maiden run doing a major sea crossing. Just before they cast off one of the mates needed to use the head. He was actually a guest and didn't really know much about sailing but insisted that he was a quick learner and would learn-on-the-job. So he's down in one of the ama's doing his business and yells up to somebody up top on how to get the water to run so he could flush. Mel, the captain, told him to turn the sea cock handle 90 degrees so it was in line with the direction of flow (on). So everybody's gathered topside waiting for this guy to finish and suddenly they hear a faint "help! help! help! coming from down below.
This guy had torqued on the sea cock to open it, and it was made of plastic. It had been years since it was used so it was frozen up and the plastic was old and brittle. He snapped off the whole works holding the sea cock in his hand as the outside ocean water is rushing in spraying him with a 1" garden hose force of water and flooding the whole bilge!
So the captain jumped down there and grabbed a rag and shoved it in the hole to slow it down while the others bailed water out (on top of the bilge pumps).
They ended up hauling out (again!) and replacing every plastic through hull in the boat, and there are many, with silicon bronze. Apparently the original builder got cheap towards the end and didn't want to spend the hundreds in took to buy the best.
Can you imagine if they were 300 miles out already and had that happen!

Lesson: Absolutely don't skimp on critical hardware. Even more than a regulator or other dive gear, your life actually does depend on it and it would be a slow torturous ordeal out in open ocean with no dry land to step on if any of that stuff gives at the worst possible time. This includes checking all your safety gear like life rafts. Just because a life raft sits in a sealed case and is never used does not mean it doesn't get checked annually.

I also found out that even the best marine plywood will still rot under the water line right around a bronze fitting that hasn't been properly zinced. I had no idea this could happen until such a problem was pointed out by a marine surveyor. We found many of these and had to fix them with West System epoxy and added backing pads.
Good thing we found them too, because instead of another busted off sea cock, there could have been a huge gaping hole about 4" in diameter!

All metal through hull fittings must be electrically bonded together and to a sacrificial zinc anode to prevent electrolytic corrosion of the through hull fitting.

 

[Akimbo]

Dead reckoning- If you don't reckon right you may end up dead

The most dramatic example I can think of is Honda Point disaster where seven US Navy destroyers ran aground almost 100 years ago. It's hard to believe for people who never knew what the world was like before Radar, GPS, and ATIS.

 

[TuckerIdaho]

Funny story (or not so funny if you were they guy this happened to or the captain).
While I was working on a 55' Trimaran sailing vessel, the owner told me a story about when they were all loaded up and ready to set sail to Hawaii as a maiden run doing a major sea crossing. Just before they cast off one of the mates needed to use the head. He was actually a guest and didn't really know much about sailing but insisted that he was a quick learner and would learn-on-the-job. So he's down in one of the ama's doing his business and yells up to somebody up top on how to get the water to run so he could flush. Mel, the captain, told him to turn the sea cock handle 90 degrees so it was in line with the direction of flow (on). So everybody's gathered topside waiting for this guy to finish and suddenly they hear a faint "help! help! help! coming from down below.
This guy had torqued on the sea cock to open it, and it was made of plastic. It had been years since it was used so it was frozen up and the plastic was old and brittle. He snapped off the whole works holding the sea cock in his hand as the outside ocean water is rushing in spraying him with a 1" garden hose force of water and flooding the whole bilge!
So the captain jumped down there and grabbed a rag and shoved it in the hole to slow it down while the others bailed water out (on top of the bilge pumps).
They ended up hauling out (again!) and replacing every plastic through hull in the boat, and there are many, with silicon bronze. Apparently the original builder got cheap towards the end and didn't want to spend the hundreds in took to buy the best.
Can you imagine if they were 300 miles out already and had that happen!

Lesson: Absolutely don't skimp on critical hardware. Even more than a regulator or other dive gear, your life actually does depend on it and it would be a slow torturous ordeal out in open ocean with no dry land to step on if any of that stuff gives at the worst possible time. This includes checking all your safety gear like life rafts. Just because a life raft sits in a sealed case and is never used does not mean it doesn't get checked annually.

I also found out that even the best marine plywood will still rot under the water line right around a bronze fitting that hasn't been properly zinced. I had no idea this could happen until such a problem was pointed out by a marine surveyor. We found many of these and had to fix them with West System epoxy and added backing pads.
Good thing we found them too, because instead of another busted off sea cock, there could have been a huge gaping hole about 4" in diameter!

1st one: anyone who doesn't check every seacock before going offshore (and in reality every season) isn't anyone who you want to get on a boat with. ever. its also incredibly rare for marleon thru hulls to "get brittle and break off".

2nd: marine plywood rots out because of exposure to water from being improperly sealed and the thru hull not being bedded properly, not a lack of a zinc. when something rots out from electrolysis like a thru hull it's from the surface with the most exposure, which would be the outside of the mushroom. using marine plywood is fine as a thru hull backing plate, as long as the hardware is properly sealed.