Details count. Small details aboard your boat are critical in unexpected ways. Fumbling with an unwhipped line or scrabbling for a usable dockline will cause you trouble—a little or a lot. A boat runs smoothly and safely if details are in place. Without scrabbling and fumbling you can concentrate on navigational foresight beyond the next buoy.
Before you set off on your next voyage, focus on the moving constellation of small items—shackles, blocks, bolts, pins, and the multiplicity of distinct lines—that make up the wholeness of your vessel. Appreciate the web of small things that must cooperate smoothly to draw power from the wind, or to persuade a series of explosions over pistons to propel your hull.
We’re investigating some of the graceful details that contribute to wholeness and become the hallmark of an accomplished skipper.
Make-and-Mend
Traditionally, Sunday afternoon was make-and-mend time in Nelson’s Royal Navy. It was an easy time that allowed “tars” to tend their own infrastructure—sewing worn trousers or stitching up new hot-weather slops (clothing) from light sailcloth. Sailors were experts with a needle of any size, from heavy-weather canvas to embroidering the vessel’s name on a hat ribbon. A skipper does well to keep a notebook to log small jobs to come; reserve a corner of your boat’s schedule to address those jobs. It’s too easy to put small things off. Make-and-mend today is easier than crisis management next Tuesday.