Low tech cruising
by Christine Kling
I’ve lived my life a little bit backwards. The stereotype is the young person is a techie sort, and the old folks need help changing channels. I might be a geek now, but back when I started cruising in the 1970′s we were about as low tech as you can imagine.
Consider this: I sailed with Jim Kling from Lahaina, Maui to the Marquesas, across the islands of the South Pacific and then back to Hawaii and eventually on to California. Through all those thousands of miles, we didn’t even have a VHF radio on board. The one and only piece of electronics was a Heathkit depth sounder (I just Googled it for a link and found an online museum). For those who don’t remember those, they were sold as DIY kits that folks could put together at home with a soldering iron.
The boat was not insured, so Jim had invested his money in ground tackle. But in those days, we carried a hi-tensile Danforth and 350 feet of galvanized chain. The boat carried only 60 gallons of fuel, so the expectation on all those 1,000+ mile passages was that we would sail. We hand-pumped the water from the tanks, and when the wind quit, we waited instead of turning on the iron genny.
One of the biggest differences was the sort of dinghy people had. Hard bottom inflatables had not yet been invented. The boat didn’t have room to put a hard dinghy on deck. So Jim had gone for the biggest dinghy he could afford, and we carried a 12-foot oval-shaped Avon with a 2-stroke British Seagull outboard.
I remember one time in Hiva Oa in the Marquesas when we were being plagued by these tremendous gusts that would come down through the valleys. Though we were anchored in the lee of the island, the trade winds would blow over the top of the island and accelerate down through the valleys causing these occasional 50 knot gusts. Our donut dinghy was tied behind the boat and as these gusts hit us, we watched as the dinghy went airborne at the end of the painter. One morning a squall came through and the winds grew even worse. The third gust was the charm and the dinghy flipped over with the Seagull outboard attached. The outboard disappeared.
Jim had the presence of mind to grab a fishing weight and some monofilament and he dropped a fender-as-buoy in the 35-40 water where we were swinging on the hook. After the squall passed, we were pointing in a different direction, but we saw the buoy off our beam.
When the weather cleared, Jim righted the dinghy and went out with a grapnel to drag for the outboard. He searched the area for 30 minutes and finally gave up. He went to retrieve his fishing weight from the bottom and it felt surprisingly heavy. When he pulled in the line, the monofilament was wrapped round and round the prop of the Seagull.
That afternoon, we went ashore and cleaned out the outboard and washed it in a fresh water stream. We carefully dried it out, added a new plug, some new gas and zoom, she fired right up. We always used to say about that outboard, she never ran right, but she always ran. We weren’t speeding our way on a plane to far off anchorages, but she always ran.
We didn’t have iPods or Internet or movies on board. The only thing to do was to read. Because we didn’t have a generator or solar panels or a wind generator, we almost never ran the engine, and yet we didn’t think about charging the batteries. We used no electricity. For entertainment in the evenings, we used a Coleman kerosene lantern and we read books.
I think back on that time with fondness, but I know I could never go back. I am thrilled with the changes technology has brought to our lives. Sailors today who never crossed oceans back in the days before GPS will never love it and cherish it as I do. To me, my AIS radio is a marvel, and DSC is a terrific way to get ships to answer you back! I would never want to sail without my iPad and my digital charts and navigation programs. And crowd-sourcing charts through programs like Active Captain is changing the way charts are used.
While I may cherish my memories of those days of low-tech cruising, I’m riding the wave of change, and I’m not about to become one of those old ladies who can’t even program her DVR.
Fair winds!
Christine
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