- Date: March 19, 1987
- Location: Cairns, Australia
- Subject: Kookaburra Calls and Safety On Sacha-B
Dear Diary, AKA Water Fairy:
I decided to name you Water Fairy. Hi, Water Fairy.
We started today, as we start most of our days, with Capt doing his kookaburra call. A kookaburra is a funny looking bird found all over Australia and they make a crazy loud screaming call, almost like a laugh that goes like this:
Kooooo kooooo Caaaaah Kooo Cahhh Cahhh Cahhh Kooooooo kooo…… and on and on.
I am not sure how or why Capt made this his “signature” call, but he did and he does this call every morning. Mom hates it, mostly because Capt used to do the call before the sun came up. Capt is an early riser and believes the ENTIRE world should also be early risers. Both Mom and I like to sleep-in, so hearing the kookaburra call three hours BEFORE we are ready to wake up, causes some problems on the good ship Sacha-B.
I guess the grown-ups came to a compromise because Capt continues with his daily kookaburra call, but now it is always AFTER nine in the morning. Mom and I just have to grin and bear it, and roll our eyes at each other when the kookaburra call starts. Mom is usually more tolerant once she has had at least one cup of coffee, but poor me, I never get to have a cup of coffee, so the kookaburra calls are pretty much always annoying to me.
OK, today, I am going to write about all the things we have on board to make sailing safe. Because “safety first” is the motto on Sacha-B.
First, the lifelines run all around the outside perimeter of the boat, like a fence. Its main job is to keep you from falling overboard and gives you something to grab onto if you need to steady yourself. The lifelines are vinyl coated wire, and are held up by stanchions (which are like posts of the fence). Sacha-B has two life lines, running parallel to each other. The top one is about waist high and the other one is about 18 inches from the deck. Some boats have a also have a netting hanging from the lifeline to keep little kids and dogs from slipping in between the lifelines and landing in the water.
Another way the lifelines are used as a safety device when a sailor is out sailing way off-shore, they usually wear a special vest that has a safety harness sewn in. Our safety harnesses have a ring in the front, right in the middle of the chest, which we can clip a tether (leash) and at the other end of the tether is another clip that goes on the lifelines. I guess if you go overboard, you can’t float away if you are tied to the boat, but you will be dragged along until someone rescues you.
We also have a special whistle attached to the safety harness so if someone does fall off the boat, and is being dragged along by the boat, they can blow the whistle so the people on board knows someone is overboard. Hummmmm, kind of scary to me, so when we are sailing, I am extra careful on deck and never leave the cockpit unless Mom or Capt are around and can keep an eye on me.
We also have a life raft kit, which is lashed (tied) to the front of the deck, before the mast. It looks like a large white suitcase. Inside the case is an inflatable raft that holds 6 people, with a tent or cover. Also in the kit is: a bunch of flares, first aid kit, drinking water, food, compass, some rope, some fishing line and hooks, flashlight and other stuff you would want if you had to abandon ship. I have never seen the stuff inside the life raft kit, because it is sealed in a special way and you can only open it once-and that would be in a real emergency. No thanks!!!
Mom has been reading a bunch of true sailing books that involve people who had to abandon ship. I think she is a bit paranoid about it happening to us, so she made an extra “ditch bucket” that she keeps lashed to the aft deck railing. It is a 5 gallon paint bucket with a waterproof lid, so it will float in the water and act as a flotation device. She put the same kind of stuff in it as the life raft kit but added a sewing kit, waterproof matches, a couple of little sharp knives, a little water maker pump, a bottle of sunscreen, tins of food, can opener, small bottle of vodka, some hats….. And the list goes on and on. Every time she reads a book about a sailing disaster, she adds a few more items that she read about. Capt teases Mom a bit about the “ditch bucket” but Mom just says, “I would rather be over prepared than under prepared.”
On board Sacha-B is a flare gun, so if something dramatic happens, we can shoot the gun in the air and it releases a flare, sort of like a fireworks, so ships or other people can see the flare in the sky and know someone needs help. We have this mounted just inside the main hatchway, on the starboard side.
Sacha-B also has an EPIRB, which stands for Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. The EPIRB is about the size of a coffee can with an 8 inch antenna. When it hits the water, it automatically sends a signal to the satellite orbiting overhead, which is then sent to the closest Coast Guard Station. Hopefully, the word gets out to a rescue crew and they go looking in the area of the floating EPIRB. The EPIRB also has a little strobe light on it, so you can find it in the dark. We also have 2 horseshoe life rings, which are bright orange and they float in the water. They also have reflective tape on them and a long rope attached. The other end of the rope can be tied to the boat.
The deck of Sacha-B is textured, so that means it is rough on your feet, but that keeps you from slipping and sliding on the deck when it is wet. Capt said, a few years ago he painted the deck with special paint that had tiny grains of sand in it, and it was actually the grains of sand in the paint that make the deck rough. The few parts of the deck that aren’t painted with the sand paint are REALLY slippery and slidy.
Capt also has two radios on board, a single side band marine radio and a VHF. I don’t really know that much about them, YET, but I know we can talk to other boats and the Coast Guard if we run into any trouble. So, that is it for today’s journal entry about safety on our boat. Remember SAFETY FIRST! One hand for the you one hand for the boat.
Tonight’s dinner included spaghetti and homemade sauce. I helped Mom make the sauce from all the tomatoes we got at the vegetable market. She got a whole bunch, cheap, because they were just past their prime, which according to Mom, makes the best sauce. We also put in sauteed onions and garlic, shredded zucchini and chunks of Italian sausage. We made extra so we can have cold spaghetti for breakfast in the morning.
