{"id":156736,"date":"2025-02-17T06:13:12","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T06:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/?p=156736"},"modified":"2025-02-18T11:35:28","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T11:35:28","slug":"most-of-our-life-on-land-we-spend-hiding-from-ourselves-but-at-sea-there-is-no-escape-nikki-henderson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/comment\/most-of-our-life-on-land-we-spend-hiding-from-ourselves-but-at-sea-there-is-no-escape-nikki-henderson-156736","title":{"rendered":"Most of our life on land we spend hiding from ourselves. But at sea there is no escape – Nikki Henderson"},"content":"The sailing world is small. But of the 350 or so passengers on board the Boeing 777 I took recently from Heathrow to Seattle, my seat neighbour turned out to be a French cruiser. How do you spot a sailor on a plane? Very tanned hands and feet; eats dinner with a spoon; reads Yachting World. Six hours in, one of us broke the ice: \u201cYou\u2019re a good sleeper in uncomfortable positions!\u201d\r\n\r\nThat launched us down all sorts of meandering seamanship<\/a> conversation topics. \u201cCan you home school and liveaboard with teenagers?\u201d (Conclusion: it\u2019s more fun for the parents to cruise with teenagers, and more fun for the teenagers to cruise before they are teenagers.) Or: \u201cWhy don\u2019t many pro sailors own cruising boats over 50ft? Because we know better than to buy too big a boat \u2013 or because we can\u2019t afford one?\u201d (We agreed on the latter \u2013 sailors are romantics and would buy something \u2018big and stupid\u2019, or classic and even sillier if they could.)\r\n\r\nMy neighbour had a racing background in sailing. His trip to Seattle was his last before heading out to Tahiti, to work and liveaboard with his family. Sharing this dream, I asked him about his transition from racing to cruising.\r\n\r\nHe said that for him it had required a whole different mindset \u2013 he had to \u2018learn to chill out\u2019 and reorientate his passagemaking strategy. His conservative approach to night sailing could now be summed up as: \u201cAt dusk, not just the crew, but also the boat gets into her pyjamas.\u201d\r\n\r\nI\u2019ve always struggled with the concept of reefing<\/a> down for the night as an oversimplified preventative measure. And it\u2019s not always the right choice: boats feel as uncomfortable when underpowered as they do when overpowered. Experienced crew get irritable when they have to sail a boat with her handbrake on.\r\n\r\nI\u2019ve often wondered, does this \u2018rule\u2019 just exist because people haven\u2019t set their boats up for quick solo reefing? Because the crew aren\u2019t trained properly? Because the skippers are nervous? Or too lazy to get out of bed?!\r\n\r\nArticle continues below...<\/em>\r\n\r\n[collection]\r\n

Seamanship and making appropriate decisions<\/h2>\r\nSeamanship isn\u2019t about sailing boats slowly. It\u2019s about sailing boats safely. It\u2019s about making appropriate decisions for the conditions you\u2019re in. Sometimes this means reefing down, but sometimes it doesn\u2019t. The best sailors understand how to make this call, when to throttle back and when to power up.\r\n\r\nAlways reefing before dark just because \u2018that\u2019s the rule\u2019 is inherently risky. Following any blanket rules blindly is not seamanlike. To make good decisions you need to be connected with the variables: people, boats, weather.\r\n\r\nThe requirement for \u2018one way to do something\u2019 is a disconnect from the reality that things don\u2019t always go to plan. It\u2019s as if we\u2019re trying to sanitise sailing. Being a crew member is not like being a passenger on a plane. As much as we might want the [auto]pilot to be in control, to not have to touch the lines or the sails, and sleep all night \u2013 it\u2019s not always possible at sea.\r\n\r\nHaving said all that, \u2018putting the boat in her pyjamas\u2019 is something I can get on board with. So, what\u2019s the difference? \u2018Reef for the night\u2019 and \u2018getting into pyjamas\u2019 imply the same seamanlike message that everything is harder and riskier at night, so take it a bit easier while it\u2019s dark.\r\n\r\nThe important nuance is that \u2018wearing pyjamas\u2019 is a strategic guideline while \u2018reef at night\u2019 is an operational rule. The beauty of strategy is that when applied it can result in different actions depending on the circumstance. If you have an evening \u2018pyjamas\u2019 routine, you take actions to keep within a safe limit according to the situation. But you stay flexible, and in touch with reality.\r\n\r\nSo for some nights this might mean taking a reef. For others it could mean taking down the spinnaker. For a competent crew flying an asymmetric, they might hoist a wrap net. An amateur crew sailing deep might drop the main altogether to mitigate the risk of crash gybing. Or maybe they add a preventer. And some combination of navigation lights, compass light, putting the dishes away and other bedtime habits would feature.\r\n\r\nSince my chat with my plane neighbour I\u2019ve been thinking of the power of these human phrases. While I don\u2019t believe in one-size-fits-all rules, I do want to make sailing accessible. So strategic sayings might just help. Bite-sized and digestible, they\u2019re a perfect tool for keeping you in the right lane. Some include \u2018light the stage\u2019 for manoeuvres at night; \u2018one hand for you and one for the boat\u2019 when moving around. Do you have any others?\r\n\r\n
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\"\"<\/a>If you enjoyed this\u2026.<\/h2>\r\n
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Ahoy there, from halfway to the Caribbean! This is my third attempt at writing this column. The first go was interrupted by a squall. We underestimated its strength, surfed down a wave at 19 knots and then spent the rest of the watch slightly overly vigilant, as if that would make up for our previous 35-knot misjudgement. Attempt No2 was on my 0300-0600 watch. After a coffee, several snacks, meandering down the B&G settings menu with no purpose, and two log entries made exactly to the minute on the hour, I conceded that writing was not a sufficiently \u2018staying-awake\u2019 activity \u2013 and stepped outside to stargaze. With Starlink I quickly realised I could log in every day \u2013 and yes, write an article about sailing, for sailors, while sailing \u2013 but I could also follow the Vend\u00e9e Globe tracker, and see the solo racers thrashing about in the Southern Ocean, hitting speed records, and sleeping in 20-minute intervals. Their concerns are in a different league to mine, moaning about 35 knots or struggling to write a column on a 3am watch. So, having put my \u2018struggle\u2019 into perspective (in other words, comparative luxury) I\u2019m knuckling down. Offshore sailing has a way of putting your life, and your \u2018problems\u2019, into perspective. A sailing friend of mine, Sophie, once told me that offshore sailing is a magnifier for your romantic relationship. It exposes the cracks and blows them up, like it does for the boat itself. You don\u2019t go to sea to save your relationship, you go to sea to find out what needs work! Article continues below… Going to sea magnifies your reality. My crewmate, George, and I were comparing sailing to his previous life in the US marine core. Just as on the front line, at sea problems aren\u2019t self-manufactured, they\u2019re real. The watermaker breaking and the risk of running out of water is real. Big winds, ferocious seas, broken sails and a broken boat are risks that require real management every day. And, as we were reminded by the tragic news from this year\u2019s ARC, going overboard and being lost at sea is a real possibility too. That realness pulls us into the present. The lack of convenience, security and comfort and the focus this \u2018real\u2019 life requires, the less time we have to spend worrying about all the things we normally worry about. Being caught up in being \u2018busy\u2019, social expectations, how we look, what car we drive… Once we\u2019re separated from all of that we cannot help but ask ourselves: what is actually important to me? What I\u2019ve seen during my career is that we all basically have the same answer. Strip away all the luxuries and \u2013 beyond food, water, and a dry bed \u2013 the most important thing in all our lives is love. People, pets, special places, and perhaps a few meaningful trinkets; when you are out here, you realise who and what you miss. It\u2019s who we cannot stop thinking about. Survival and …Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4389,"featured_media":138745,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[969],"tags":[1633],"review_manufacturer":[],"acf":[],"introduction":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156736"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156736"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156770,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156736\/revisions\/156770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156736"},{"taxonomy":"review_manufacturer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review_manufacturer?post=156736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}