An all too likely event can be controlled with the right knowledge and gear

Hugh Horton, Contributing Editor, Harrison Township, Michigan

My narrow background guides my decisions. Carefully consider your circumstances.

After I gybed back to the swamped sailing canoe at the Killbear Canoe Rendezvous in September ‘05, I thought of Roger Taylor’s series about seamanship. The swimming sailor’s tube style pump wasn’t getting it done. Wavelets instantly refilled what dozens of pump strokes had squirted out.

I sailed up, held her against my boat, Walela, and used Walela’s bailer. In two dozen scoopfuls, she was left with a quart or so under the floorboards, along her ribs and lapstrake planking. Wind was offshore, and I drifted a couple boat lengths away. Her canoeist, a young man, tried again to climb in over the stern. But the boat was still too unstable, so I came back and steadied her. Just the afternoon before he’d gone over in a lighter, onshore breeze. But Lake Huron was warm, and he swam her in.

The canoe was Iain Oughtred’s popular MacGregor, thirteen feet eight inches by thirty one inches. John Hupfield built her and added bulkheads fore and aft. While I was happy to see the MacGregor’s air chambers at each end, we don’t use them in our decked canoes, preferring access to the whole inside.

Back home, I got out WoodenBoat issue #40, May/June 1981. Taylor had been a duty officer on a moored submarine. In the morning, the captain returning wanted to see, “his submarine still on the surface.” Taylor wrote, “Keeping the water out is not only the first and most important element of seamanship, but also it is the only necessary element of seamanship.” 

Naval vessels’ main method is airtight “compartmentation.” The MacGregor’s bulkheaded off ends were its compartments. Air bags and dry gear bags are ours.

I’d been wondering how much bailing Walela would need if swamped with just air bags. In early October Michigan’s weather forecast was one more day of sunny 80s. So, I shoved seven flotation bags into Walela, four ahead of her mast and three abaft the cockpit, and took her to a beach. I was startled how readily Walela swamped as she went over. Puffin’s narrower cockpit lets her lie on her side, the cockpit rim well above the water---assuming I get out fast. 

With no flotation in her beam ends, it didn’t take much water in Walela to push her down enough to breach the rim. She floated low on her side, stems only six inches clear of the water. When I rolled her up, she held enough lake to swim in. Climbing over Walela’s stern proved her swamped instability. Water surged inside the thirty four inch wide boat, rolling her and me like an otter. She couldn’t sink or turtle due to her foam filled mast, but her centered buoyancy made an axis she wanted to roll around. 

When cruising, I carry more flotation in four big, dry bags. Usually two are abaft the mast and bow air bags, and two are forward of the stern bags. But I was chagrined. I thought of lucky daysails when the dry bags weren’t in there. Clearly, for day use, she wants a long, thick bubble each side, under her amidships’ decks.   

I quit at eighty scoopfuls from outside the boat. I climbed back up her stern using the rudder yoke as a boarding platform, hauling myself forward by the steering rods. I raised my mass two inches higher yet, over the aft spray deck for a foot and a half of deck length, then folded myself into the thirty nine inch long opening between the spray decks. Twenty spongefuls---about a quart each---left her smooth bottom barely damp. 

A swamped boat should be stable, float high, and be quick and easy to bail. This time, Walela’s flotation wasn’t placed well. When I rolled her up, her cockpit was high enough---amidships freeboard to the sheer was about three inches, with the cockpit rim four inches above that---but she was too unstable.