A good read on drowning

I pulled the following directly from this website.  Its a good interesting read, and pertains directly to those who spend time on the water, alone, with friends, with children.

My advice is to wear your lifejacket, everyday, everytime you are out on the boat.  I have a comfy life jacket that has pockets, doesnt get hot, but breaks the wind on cool days too.  It never gets in the way.  It only works when I wear it.  Anyway, read on:

Drowning Doesnt Look Like Drowning

The new captain jumped from the cockpit, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the owners who were swimming between their anchored sportfisher and the beach. “I think he thinks you’re drowning,” the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other and she had screamed but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sand bar. “We’re fine, what is he doing?” she asked, a little annoyed. “We’re fine!” the husband yelled, waving him off, but his captain kept swimming hard. ”Move!” he barked as he sprinted between the stunned owners. Directly behind them, not ten feet away, their nine-year-old daughter was drowning. Safely above the surface in the arms of the captain, she burst into tears, “Daddy!”
How did this captain know, from fifty feet away, what the father couldn’t recognize from just ten? Drowning is not the violent, splashing, call for help that most people expect. The captain was trained to recognize drowning by experts and years of experience. The father, on the other hand, had learned what drowning looks like by watching television. If you spend time on or near the water (hint: that’s all of us) then you should make sure that you and your crew knows what to look for whenever people enter the water. Until she cried a tearful, “Daddy,” she hadn’t made a sound. As a former Coast Guard rescue swimmer, I wasn’t surprised at all by this story. Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for, is rarely seen in real life.
The Instinctive Drowning Response – so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D.,  is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water.  And it does not look like most people expect.  There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind.  To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this:  It is the number two cause of accidental death in children, age 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents) – of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult.  In ten percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch them do it, having no idea it is happening (source: CDC).  Drowning does not look like drowning – Dr. Pia, in an article in the Coast Guard’s On Scene Magazine, described the instinctive drowning response like this:

1. Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. Th e respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary or overlaid function. Breathing must be fulfilled, before speech occurs.
2. Drowning people’s mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. The mouths of drowning people are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help. When the drowning people’s mouths are above the surface, they exhale and inhale quickly as their mouths start to sink below the surface of the water.
3. Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water, permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.
4. Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.
5. From beginning to end of the Instinctive Drowning Response people’s bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick. Unless rescued by a trained lifeguard, these drowning people can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.

(Source: On Scene Magazine: Fall 2006)

This doesn’t mean that a person that is yelling for help and thrashing isn’t in real trouble – they are experience aquatic distress. Not always present before the instinctive drowning response, aquatic distress doesn’t last long – but unlike true drowning, these victims can still assist in there own rescue.  They can grab lifelines, throw rings, etc.

Look for these other signs of drowning when persons are n the water:

• Head low in the water, mouth at water level
• Head tilted back with mouth open
• Eyes glassy and empty, unable to focus
• Eyes closed
• Hair over forehead or eyes
• Not using legs – Vertical
• Hyperventilating or gasping
• Trying to swim in a particular direction but not making headway
• Trying to roll over on the back
• Ladder climb, rarely out of the water.

So if a crew member falls overboard and every looks O.K. – don’t be too sure.  Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they don’t look like they’re drowning.  They may just look like they are treading water and looking up at the deck.  One  way to be sure?  Ask them: “Are you alright?” If they can answer at all – they probably are.  If they return  a blank stare – you may have less than 30 seconds to get to them.  And parents: children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why.
If you have any questions at all – please post them in the gCaptain forums under “maritime safety”
disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the Department of Homeland Security or the U.S. Coast Guard.

Bad back

Well I went ahead and blew out my back again and now Im on some fun pain medications that make me feel quite fuzzy.

So I went ahead in my haze actually tied (marlin style lacing, scroll down here to see) my sail to the yard and boom as opposed to using plastic zip-ties, though those worked really well.  I optimized my downhaul a little better and most importantly, added a cleat on the boom to give me one level of outhaul purchase.  The outhaul runs from the clew to a loop at the end of the boom, then forward to a cleat.  Only one purchase, but already a marked improvement.  I re-tied the block tiedowns, re-sat the haylard block in the yard, jimmied things nice and straight and shes ready to rock now. 

Hopefully all this will take care of wrinkles, gaps, and inefficient sail shapes that have hindered speed and progress so far.  Time will tell.

Back, heal thyself!  Wind bring your forces to me!  Zinea, Pterodactylus, fly!

Barnacle Bill magazine

 A subscription wont break your bank and youll get exceptional value for money. There is a good team of contributors and an enthusiastic and knowledgeable editor so its going to be a good read.  Its on topic for us small boat fans, this deserves support.  ( Plus its cheap while this deal is running).

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The last of the major work

From the last post to Saturday morning (6/12), I have been either at work or home working 9am-1am to get my beautiful Goat Island Skiff ready for launching.  The weather is here, the time is now.  Basically, its a bunch of small items that needed to be taken care of, like gluing the middle seat on:

This is the last time youll see the my patented "Forest of Bricks" to hold down the seat during gluing.  I waited to glue this part because I wanted to make the varnishing of the boat underneath the seat easier.  Less bending and contorting to get under the seat, if you get my drift.

Wait, what? Varnish the inside? Yes, I decided to varnish the inside.  Using a roller, 3 coats, light sanding in between the coats.  It went on easy, no problems.  I also put a 4th coat of varnish on the floor mixed with non-skid grit, and it came out really nice.

These taped off areas got the non-skid.  I used the non-skid material for sale at Duckworks, it worked really nice in the varnish.

Another item of critical importance was a trailer.  So I got one.  A new one.  Holy Splurge!

Its a nice trailer.  I repositioned the bunks to perpendicular to the frame so the hull doesnt "hog" around the bunks.

Also, I needed a tiller extension.  Actually, what I needed was rudder hardware, but thats a post in itself.  BEHOLD!  My Battlestick!

I also had to figure out how to rig this thing.  Its a "balanced lug" rig, and Ive never sailed one nor rigged one, so that took a few hours to figure out.  Its actually going to take a while to figure out to be honest with you, because there are a bunch of variables.  I just wanted it to be up and viable for a first sail.  Part of the fun is tweaking the rig as you sail along! 

Oh boy!  What next!


Theres only one thing left (besides multiple small detail oriented tasks...)

A nice day for a picnic

Is it a good sign when your friends take pictures of your boat?

Summer Daze

Home again and back to work

Home again.

It’s a long way home from Vancouver to my ship in Auckland, Skytrain in Vancouver (great public transport, quick, quiet and cheap! Well done Vancouver BC) then a flight to San Fran, (very nice airport terminal by the way, so much better than LAX, in future I’ll be  paying the slight difference in airfares to avoid the latter) then the loooong 11 ½ hour flight across the Pacific,  then two buses and a 2 km walk towing my suitcase. 25 hours in all. 

You have no idea how glad I was to walk up to the crest of the hill and look down on the river!

Just a comment on airline comfort, Air New Zealand now has seats where a family or friends can fold the oversized leg rests of adjacent seats out to make a couch. Behind me there was a couple with a young child, and they were able to get much more comfortable than is usual in cattle class.

I was super lucky on this flight and was the only one in a row of three so was able to lie down flat, got some “real” sleep which makes a big difference. Recommended, even if you can’t get an empty row those seats are better than any others I’ve seen.

Other than that, I watched (again, for about the fifth time) the first two episodes of  “The Hobbit”, noting all the places in the scenery that I know and have been to.

Its an odd feeling watching a fantasy movie and recognising the mountains and the hills in the background, fun though.

I made it through the trip in fairly good shape which is a relief, a couple of trips ago I would not be fit for much for a week or more afterward but today I’m good. It will take a day or two to reset the sleep cycle, but today I’m going to be working on the drawing board some, have to do some lawnmowing, will be off up the river in the kayak for my excersize run for the day, and will be putting the mast box into SEI. 

There is not so much to do to the little boat now, and I’m determined to get her in and sailing in time for our summer.

I miss sailing small boats, they give a feeling of connection to the water that bigger boats don’t, and its been a while since I had a boat that I could sail on impulse, my little gaff sloop takes an hour from arriving at the ramp to sailing, and an hour to pull her out and unrig her.  Much too long for a sail after supper, but SEI will take maybe 10 mins, less if I leave the rig set up and just bundle the sail and spars.

Note that the rig fits in the length of the boat so its all “inside” when being transported, I trimmed the mast by about 100mm and altered the plans to do this, makes things much easier.

On sails, for SEI I have one of the OZ Racer RSS sails from Mik Storer, you can get these from Duckworksmagazine 

www.duckworksbbs.com/sails/rss/index.htm

Nice sails, very well made, and super well priced!  I expect to be able to put up a post telling all about performance and set, but from what I have seen so far I’m impressed.

Its dead of winter here, the shortest day is only two weeks away, we lose another four minutes out of an already short day, dawn is about 7 30 am, and sunset about 5 15pm.  Yes I know its not anything like the UK or the Northern states, Canada or Scandinavia, but its still wetter and colder than summer, so its heater on so the pens will work, and sitting at the drawing board with my dog curled up asleep in the warm.

Nice, I don’t mind the weather at all.

But roll on springtime.

J

Nose to the grindstone again

Or at least hands to the sanding block,  I’m unexpectedly home so have a chance to get some work done on SEI.  Its cold here, but the daytime temps are ok for WEST epoxy with fast hardener, and the sun comes in through the big windows keeping the shop warm enough for me to work in without heavy clothing.

So I’m sanding off the plank landings, the fillet between the skeg and the bottom and will be running a coat of ‘poxy with microballoons over the ‘glass to fill the weave before a final sand and then primer paint.

Sandpaper time.   Again.  Powered by elbow grease, It always seems to come to this.

I’ve several part pots of Toplac white oil based marine enamel, they came with my ship and that’s what I plan to use when I repaint her in our spring, and am very tempted to use that so I can get accustomed to its peculiarities before getting into the really big job of repainting the 40 ft motor boat.

So SEI will be white, boring but practical, pale green inside to reduce the glare, maybe some darker green highlights and possibly varnish on the seat tops just to tell people that she is a wooden boat.

Its nice to be at a stage where I can see the launching day off in the distance, we’re in the depths of winter here now, traditionally the worst is still to come but the daffodil plants are poking their heads up, I saw the first lamb of this season the other day and we’ve gained over an hour of daylight since the shortest day so there is, just occasionally,  a hint that there might be spring sometime .

I’d like to be sailing SEI when the good weather comes.

On the techo side of things, Howard Rice and I are both of us fans of anything that saves time when building  boats.  Our time on earth is limited so anything that speeds the building up means that we can build more of them, plus SCAMP Camp is a real teacher in that respect.

To explain, SCAMP Camp is 10 days, plus a little work over the in between weekend if the students want.  It’s a challenge to bring beginnner students along faste enough to get those boats ready to ship out on day ten, and anything that saves time is welcome.

We’ve been using the Ryobi cordless brad nailer for a while now, and it’s a real asset, saves about the equivalent of a day on each boat which is major.

We use the Makita builders laser cross level which not only makes it much easier to get the boats straight and true, but it takes a lot less time to do it.

The latest addition to our bag of tricks is the WEST System six10 cartridge epoxy glue system.  

The two parts of the glue are housed in separate chambers within the cartridge, and extruded through the blue mixing tube on the left of the "gun".  There are spares of those available as they are not cleanable but there does not seem to be a problem keeping a part used cartridge.

We don’t use it everywhere on the boats, just for the planking where the ability to run a controlled bead along an edge is very useful, and much faster than mixing by hand, pushing that into a ziploc bag and doing the cake decorating thing.  Sure its more expensive by volume, but there is very little waste and to give you an idea, at SCAMP Camp this year we were hanging a plank every 10 minutes, just about an hour and a half to do a pair of planks on each of the four boats we were building.  I remember that at the first SCAMP Camp we took more than double that,  that’s a saving of about half a day per boat.

Howard Rice running a bead of epoxy along the edge of a SCAMP plank.  The striped shirt is not compulsory equipment for this sort of job but it sure helps ( create laughter at least).

http://www.westsystem.com/ss/new-six10-epoxy-adhesive/

Well worth the little extra cost!

Interior Work

After much deliberation, I have decided to use varnish on the inside of my Goat Island Skiff (sorry Clint).

Originally I was going to use paint, primarily for the durability, and also what I figured would be less sanding.  However, after the exterior was painted I was acutely made aware that paint highlights every single defect.  Varnish doesnt as much as paint.  To make the paint look good, I would have to sand in strange and tight areas for long periods of time.  This is not something that interests me.  The lazy way out is to varnish so all the irregularities disappear into the grain.  Then, all I have to do is lightly sand the varnish a few times to provide tooth for the next coat.  I figure, 3 at a minimum for UV protection.  This means my white epoxy fillets which were going to be painted are now going to take on a yellowy color.  Im ok with this.

Not to mention that pretty much everybody who saw the boat pleaded with me to keep it wood.  As the Aubuchon guy said, "Not enough wood boats in the world, you might as well show it off."  My wifes excitement at keeping it bright sealed the deal.

And BOY if it doesnt look good!

The varnish I use is Interlux Schooner Gold 96.  It goes on easy, I dont thin it, and it tips off really nice with a foam brush.  In the interior I used a West System foam roller, its very thin and doesnt absorb lots of liquid.  I found this at Goose Bay Lumber.  The varnish went onto my sanded interior very easily.  It took a little over an hour to varnish the entire boat.  I then hit it with a little brush to make sure all the nooks and crannies got varnish too, primarily to protect the fillets and glue joints from UV exposure.  Its only the first coat so there are a few small holiday and some areas with more varnish than others but all in all, it looks great.  The best part is that you can only see the defects if you stare right into the glare, otherwise, it looks like a smooth surface!  Yes laziness!

Much time was also spent on a myriad of other small tasks that must get done for this boat to be ready.

I have rudder gudgeons coming from Australia, my hitch will be installed next week, and hopefully before you know it, Ill be sailing!  It cant come soon enough.