Whale Strike on a Sailboat -What If you hit a whale while sailing??

It is actually extremely rare that a whale intentionally sinks a sailboat. But an accidental collision with a whale can leave a sailboat damaged and cause the loss of its rudder. It does seem though, that there is an increase in incidences of sailboats hitting whales. Part of that reason could be due to conservation measures and the increased numbers of whales but also, the increased numbers of sailboats passing through whale territory.

So why don’t whales just get out of the way, whether a ship or sailboat. There is speculation that whales, being the biggest thing in the ocean, they grow up never having to change course for anything. They just don’t know to move. Our collision with the young humpback whale, at the beginning of this video, is a very good example of that. That whale could have easily avoided us, but it chose not to. That might have been a very good learning experience for the young whale, that not all large, rounded things in the ocean are as soft and friendly as mother. That learning experience, just might save its life one day.

One would think that a whale should hear the approach of a sailboat. Apparently, it is a very noisy ocean down there and becoming more noisy with the increase of ships, fishing boats and all sorts of surface craft, but also, military submarines. Maybe, in some extremely noisy areas close to civilization, the whale might not hear the vessel coming. However it could be well worth while, for a sailboat in whale territory, to create noise by playing the stereo, which can be heard through the hull, turn on the depth sounder, especially one of the new Raymarine depth sounders that uses a sweep of frequencies, not just the standard 50 or 200kz, or even turn on the engine. A diesel engine is very noisy, underwater.

When in whale territory, it would be good to slow down. In some whale feeding areas, ships are restricted to a speed of no more than 10 knots. Many sailboats would be fortunate to go that fast but the slower the better to give whales, and the sailboat, more opportunity to avoid each other.  

Know before you sail, if your boat will be in a whale traffic area, subscribe to whale alerts for your particular area. Unfortunately these are concentrated in the USA, but a google for something like “Whale Tracking In South Africa” should give you some information to be aware of.

Try to travel during the day, so you can see whales on the surface better. Some whale species spend a lot of time at night, resting on the surface.

Finally, as if all that wasn’t bad enough, in their migrations, and search for food, many whales spend much of their lives in precisely those waters that are the most dangerous for them, often frequenting both commercial shipping lanes and recreational hot spots, taking the same route that migrating cruisers follow.

So keep a good lookout. Make a lot of noise, and try not to hit any whales, OK?

Mozambique Cyclone Sailing Tanzania to South Africa

 

A Shipping Trick for Yacht in Transit….Use Amazon to Ship!

 

Mozambique Cyclone Sailing Tanzania to South Africa

 

http://whereisbrickhouse.com/tag/is-cruising-safe/

Titanium Chainplates on Sailboats…

 

 

 

 

Titanium Chainplates on Sailboats started to be installed on sailboats, before Brick House was dismasted in 2011, because that’s when we replaced our stainless steel chain plates with titanium chainplates, titanium Clevis pins, titanium tangs, and although we were semi early adopters, we were not the first to do this. We were so impressed and the prices of titanium came down so much, 7 years later we replaced our bow roller-Stemplate with titanium too. If we could install titanium rigging, I think we would. Our Titanium components, 8 years later, look like its all brand new. There have been no issues at all with corrosion. They are the shiny jewels on this old sailboat, the part sure to never fail. But there is one problem with thinking that our mast should now stay up forever. One more thing a sailor must think about if sailing around the world, and has replaced he standing rigging, right down to the chainplates.

In a few minutes, we will be posting Another DIY Sailing/sailboat video about something else that affects the integrity of your rig, that could result in a dismasting even if you DO have titanium chainplates, or all new rigging. It will be a 2 part series. So be sure you are subscribed on YouTube to Patrick Childress Sailing to find out all about it, and be notified. It’s not that difficult to guess perhaps, but something many many of us forget to examine on a regular basis.

Patrick wrote an excellent article for Practical Sailor, and it is on the Allied Titanium Website  since this is who we worked with to make the chainplates out of Grade 5 Titanium, the only grade of titanium Patrick can recommend for these high load components.

Click Here for the entire article in PDF format, or if you prefer, here are photos of each page.

Here is most of the article in text, without photos, in case your internet doesn’t allow the photos above, or if the link doesn’t work.

Through the commotion of a 30- knot squall, I heard the chainplate pop. It was not an unusually loud pop. The result was impressive, nonetheless. What once was, just a few moments earlier, the tallest part of the mast on our Valiant 40 Brick House was now the lowest, scraping the tops of waves in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. The dispirited look on my wife Rebecca’s face made the terrible situation even more depressing. I swore, in rebuilding our rig, we would never again be the victim of the weaknesses stainless steel can hide. We would replace our chain plates, toggle pins, and mast tangs with titanium.
In name alone, the word titanium evokes images of superhuman strength. The metal is aptly named after the Titans, the race of powerful Greek gods, descendants from Gaia and Uranus.
Titanium is whitish in color and the fourth most abundant metallic element in the Earth’s crust. Ninety-five percent of mined titanium becomes titanium dioxide. Titanium dioxide is the white pigment added to all types of paints. Titanium dioxide makes paper bright
mined titanium is used to make metal components that must be light, strong, and resistant to heat and corrosion. This five percent, though small, represents a rapidly growing market.
Landing gear of large commercial aircraft, like the 747 and 777, are made of titanium. No other metal has the resiliency to repetitive shock loading and offers the weight savings of titanium. Nearly 80 percent of the structure of the Lockheed SR 71 reconnaissance plane, the highest fly- ing, fastest plane ever built, is made of titanium. From drill bits to eyeglass frames to tennis rackets to artificial heart valves, titanium metal is in our lives every day.
Of particular interest to sailors is titanium’s resistance to galvanic corrosion. Only silver, gold, and graph- ite are more noble than titanium. For titanium to be even slightly affected by sea water, the water must first be heated to over 230 degrees. Cryogenic temperatures will not affect the perfor- mance of titanium. It has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any metal and is non-magnetic. Titanium is up to 20 times more scratch resistant than
The new titanium chainplate shines brilliantly among the stainless steel ones it replaced, including the one that broke.
white and is the white paste that some sailors like to smear on their nose on a sunny day to provide a physical barrier against UV radiation. Our white homes and sailboats are resplendent in white titanium.

stainless steels.

The more one considers the physical
characteristics of titanium, and how perfectly suited it seems for marine ap- plications, the more one might wonder why we don’t see more of it in our boats. Part of the problem is the relative cost of titanium alloys, but a second factor is probably more to blame for titanium’s scarcity in the marine market. Titanium fabrication is a highly specialized field that requires specialized equipment. You can’t just hire your local welder to go out and build you a titanium arch.
Marine-grade titaniuM
The performance characteristics of ti- tanium will change greatly with its al- loying of other metals for customized work. Commercially pure titanium is typically rated from Grade 1 to Grade 4, with each higher grade correspond- ing to increasing strength levels. Some of these grades are used to withstand boiling acids; some are used for heat and corrosion-resistant applications such as heat exchangers and chemical process- ing tanks.
The marine industry standard is Grade 5, Ti-6Al-4V. This alloy is 90 percent titanium, 6 percent aluminum, and 4 percent vanadium. The alloy is so widely used that it represents 75 percent of all titanium alloys produced. Grade 5 has a yield strength over 31⁄2 times greater than 316 stainless steel, yet weighs only 56 percent as much. Yield strength, sometimes called engineering strength, is the amount of pressure or force a material can take before chang- ing shape without returning to its origi- nal shape. But titanium is also nearly twice as resilient as steel, so it will flex and return to its original shape under the same loads that might permanently bend a comparable piece of stainless.
Not only is titanium strong, it is high- ly resistant to chemicals. Being a reactive metal, it spontaneously forms an oxide film whenever there is any amount of water or air in the environment. That oxide film eliminates the possibility of crevice corrosion or stress-corrosion cracking. Titanium is immune to gal- vanic corrosion when immersed in seawater, but like stainless steel, tita-
nium may encourage electrolysis of a less noble metal it is in contact with. Profurl roller-furling uses ti- tanium screws that pass through the alu- minum body of their housings to mini- mize galvanic corro- sion. Still, an isolator like LanoCote (www. lanacote.com) or Tef- Gel (www.tefgel.com) needs to be applied to the threads of the titanium screws, the same as one would do if stainless-steel screws were used. Above the waterline, Titanium in contact with 316 stainless is of no greater concern than where stainless- steel threaded studs screw into bronze turnbuckles. Working sheets of titanium into yacht parts requires the same tools that are used for forming stainless steel. Drilling requires sharp cobalt drill bits turning at similar speeds used for stainless steel and plenty of lubricant (olive oil works) for cooling.

Sawing and grinding also require sharp tools with good chip removal. Cutting with waterjet and laser is the most effective. But shears that slice through thick 316 stain- less steel will stop when forced against equally thick plates of titanium.
When bending titanium, the bend area must first be heated to around 800 degrees, as the yield strength drops to about 40 percent at that temperature. If titanium is overheated to the point where it glows, it can react with air and become oxygen embrittled. For this same reason, cutting titanium with oxyacetylene flame is not recommended.

The crew of Brick House waited until morning to begin the tricky process of removing the mainsail after a stainless steel chaiplate failed, causing the mast to snap.
experienced. Air will contaminate the weld causing discoloration and brittle- ness. An inert gas like 99.99 percent pure argon must shield the area on both sides of the weld till the material cools below 800 degrees.
The physical properties of titanium are exactly those that are needed in sail- boat rigging as it pounds through ocean waves. Unlike stainless steel, titanium will not deteriorate, or crack, or rust, or have an unexpected catastrophic failure. Once installed on a sailboat with titanium fasteners, a properly sized titanium chainplate will never need polishing, although welds should be checked.
So why has the leisure marine industry been slow to use titanium?

For years, the high cost of titanium made it an aerospace metal for govern- ment projects and commercial airplane parts where there was no alternative metal to use. That high cost was an unforeseen result of the protectionist Berry Amendment. The 1941 legislation made it mandatory for the U.S. govern- ment to purchase only 100 percent U.S. manufactured goods intended for mili- tary use. Titanium was soon added to the list of specialty metals covered un-
der the Berry Amendment. This gave the few largest U.S. titanium makers a lock on the world’s largest titanium customer, the U.S. military. This elimi- nated competition and kept the price of titanium flying high.
This grip on the U.S. titanium market also eliminated any need to streamline the smelting process. But when the U.S. military shifted from a strategic bomber defense to a missile defense, the use of expensive titanium plummeted and some U.S. producers went out of business. The few that remained could only survive by keeping the price of titanium high for their government customers.
According to Christopher Greimes, chief executive officer of Allied Titanium, with the current economic downturn, the U.S. military would like to remove titanium from the specialty metals list as they need more and cheaper titanium, not just for use in aircraft, but for use in armor plating for ground troops. The U.S. titanium producers are strongly lob- bying to keep titanium on the specialty metals list. President Barack Obama is allowing an unsigned repeal of titanium from that list to collect dust on his desk. Meanwhile, other countries like China, Japan, and Russia have been ramping up their refined smelting technologies and producing less costly titanium for the world market.
As world production and use in the leisure marine market increases, the price of titanium should continue to fall. One day, titanium will replace stainless steels. The savings to insurance compa- nies that will no longer have to pay for expensive boat losses and the increased safety to sailors will be enormous.

Practical Matters

The problem for an individual boat owner is that the local welding shops do not carry a stock of titanium sheets and to order small lots and fabricate a few parts can be time consuming and ultimately not the price one would hope to pay. There are large outlets for titanium um fabrication that solve the problem. A company such as Allied Titanium has fabricating outlets in Europe, U.S., and China. A boat owner can log onto the Allied website to view thousands of items such as nuts, bolts and chain- plates. If a particular boat part is not listed, it can be fabricated.
We needed 10 new chainplates, all of the same design, and a combination bow roller/chainplate assembly. Since there had been no previous purchase for these items for a Valiant 40, we had options on how to enter the information into the Allied database.
First we logged in and became a customer, creating a user name, and pass- word. We could trace the chainplate outline and bolthole placement onto stiff paper, noting the thickness of the original plate and the desired finish such as sandblasted or polished. However,
we thought sending an actual chainplate would be better. Allied then hand drafted our chainplate into its 3D system. We could watch online as the chainplate was received at Allied and made its way through the design process. If a customer supplies design in a 3D CAD file in SolidWorks, Rhino, or 3D Auto CAD, there is no drafting charge at all. If the customer supplies a two-dimensional drawing that is properly dimensioned, with tolerances, finish, etc. and they al- low Allied to add their part to the Unique Product Database (UPD), then there is no charge for conversion to a SolidWorks 3D CAD file.
At Allied, the part name, tolerances, finish, titanium grade, etc., are entered into the UPD, creating both an item number and a temporary UPD number. The customer then approves the drawings. When the design process is completed and the customer approves the price, the part design is then transmitted to one of Allied Titanium’s factories, some of which are in China.
The immediate hesitation of many boat owners is the idea of having anything made in China. Japan produced a lot of junk after World War II, then learned to do it right and has equaled or outdistanced America in many manufacturing fields. So too, China is refining the quality of its products.
As Practical Sailor pointed out in the August 2011 look at mainsails, sails made in China are often rebranded and sold by the top sailmakers in America. Nearly all stainless steel wire rigging used on yachts now comes from China or Taiwan. When it comes to Chinese titanium, that metal has been strategic in the past, requiring strict quality control by the Chinese military. This means that Chinese factories and workers know how to make titanium products properly. The Chinese are now cashing in on the world demand for titanium faster than Obama can sign his name.
According to Allied, “Each time titanium is smelted, resmelted, or milled, it must have mechanical and chemical tests done on the lot. When a customer requests a ‘certs,’ the results from the last certification is pro- vided. In most cases, this is the mill
certification.” However, some U.S. customers of Allied send a sample of their purchase to an independent lab for backup testing. “In all cases, our 6-4 titanium parts have tested above 128,000 psi yield strength. If a customer has an issue with a certain country, we can manufacture their parts in another country (at a different price, of course),” Greimes said.
When the part is complete, it is sent directly from the manufacturing plant
to the Allied Titanium Quality Assur- ance Department in the United States via Fedex, UPS, or DHL. After passing quality assurance, it is shipped directly to the customer The street price for one of our chain- plates was $260 at the time of this writing. We saved considerably by negotiat- ing a price for all ten to be made at the same time. From the day we mailed our old chainplate to Allied Titanium to the day 10 titanium chainplates arrived in our hands, took 65 days.
We installed all new chainplates,
bolts and nuts, clevis pins, mast tangs, and bow roller assembly made of tita- nium. One immediate problem was the brilliant shine of the chainplates sticking up from the deck. They sud- denly made the paint job on our boat look terrible. A sandblasted finish for the chainplates is available, and this might be a good option for the owner of an older boat. Over the past 6 years,
the money we have not paid to insurance companies has been reinvested in continually upgrading electronics and safety equipment on our floating home. A new rig with a foundation in titanium will certainly keep us safer and stronger than ever before. I only wish we were wiser and made the titanium upgrades before our rig came down.
Patrick Childress completed his first circumnavigation in 1982 in a souped-up 27-foot Catalina. He and his wife, Rebecca Childress are currently sailing in the Pacific, continuing on their west-about circumnavigation contact Allied Titanium, 800/725-8143, http://www.alliedtitanium.com

 

Maggi Chain USA, New Electronic Charts, AMT Composites for Fiberglass

 

Indian Ocean Crossing, The Preparation

 

 

Paintball Guns:Alternative Self Defense Weapon on a Sailboat Against Un-Armed Thieves and Intruders: Tips and Tricks

Tips from one of our Viewers: Paintballs Guns as Self Defense on a sailboat…Loaded with Pepperballs…

We recently did a controversial YouTube Video entitled “Unarmed Pirates, Thieves and Intruders: Self Defense on Sailboats”

One idea from the video which has been particularly controversial has been the use of CO2 powered paintball guns, using pepperballs in a paintball gun, as a form of self defense, instead of actual paintballs, the legality and effectiveness of them in different kinds of piracy, theft and potential boarding of a sailboat, by both “innocent”, perhaps “opportunist”, fisherman, or criminals looking to steel your money or electronics.

We received a comment from one of our viewers, Travis Allen, which was particularly interesting in regards to the use of paintball guns on a sailboat, as Self Defense, that we think you should know about; About the actual accuracy of paintball guns, the types of gas in a paintball gun, the effects of UV on a paintball gun, the adjustments you can make to a paintball marker, and the care and maintenance of paintball guns and the paintballs or pepperballs, to be sure they are there when needed. Tips and tricks of a paintball gun, if you will.



 

Here is Travis’ email, reprinted, with his written permission, that you may find interesting: The video is located at the end, in case you haven’t already seen it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Written by Travis Allen, September , 2019

 

I grew up as an only child in a remote area of the desert off of Highway 58.  My nearest grade school friends lived 3 miles away.  My father worked graveyard shift at Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex which was about an hour commute one way.  This left mom and me home alone at night.  It can be a dangerous world and some of my earliest childhood memories are of hiding in a dark hallway with my terrified mother because someone was trying to break into our house.  Hitchhikers, illegal immigrants, and sometimes even truck drivers were the culprits trying to gain access to our home.  This part of the desert is in San Bernardino County which had (or perhaps still has) the distinction of being the largest county in the United States.  The problem with this is there has just never been enough sheriff deputies to effectively patrol that much area.  So it’s imperative to learn to defend yourself because by the time the authorities arrive everything has already happened.  After the first of these incidents my parents decided that we needed something more than the fireplace poker as home defense.  As such, I grew up learning how to maintain and handle firearms.  From the various articles I’ve read and videos I’ve watched (and the rest of the world’s general viewpoint on guns), I can see how having a firearm onboard your vessel for self-defense can cause ridiculous hassle and, I’m sure, would simply prevent you from even visiting certain parts of the world.

 

All that being said, I stumbled across your YouTube video titled “Un-Armed PIRATES & INTRUDERS – Self Defense against theft on Sailboats (Patrick Childress Sailing 42)” and found it very interesting.  I actually have some experience that I can draw from and would like to pass that along to you.  Whether or not you decided to purchase a paintball gun as a means of non-lethal defense is up to you and none of my business.  Personally, I think it’s a great idea to have as one of many means to protect yourself and, honestly, one I had not until now considered.  I’m going to continue this from the assumed viewpoint that you did indeed purchase one for use.  You see, I used to play paintball on an official field (sometimes not on an official field) in my hometown with my friends.  This was back in the early ‘90’s and technology has changed since I stopped playing the sport but some of the principles haven’t.  When I began playing, the most common (and my first) paintball guns were pump action.  Slowly semi-automatic paintball guns entered the market and were comparatively expensive.  I drifted away from the sport shortly before the full-auto paintball guns were introduced.  Following are some things (in no particular order) that one learns when playing paintball that are not necessarily common knowledge to the average person out there. 

 

A common misconception is that paintballs and paintball guns behave like a normal firearms and ammunition.  Paintballs are not as accurate as the ammunition used in a firearm and there are a few things that factor into this.

 

1.       The barrel on a paintball gun is typically not rifled.  It’s a smooth bore and imparts no spin to the projectile.  Now, to be accurate, I had seen rifled barrels on the market back when I played but I don’t recall that I ever actually knew anyone that actually used one.

 

2.       The paintball itself does not have ballistics like the ammunition used in a firearm because it’s not a solid piece of metal.  The ballistics of a paintball are a little more like that of a water balloon.  The regulation muzzle velocity limit when I played was 300 feet per second.  (Most official paintball fields would lower that to about 285fps to have a bit more of a safety buffer.)  When the paintball is fired at these speeds it meets the resistance of the air inside the barrel.  This causes the paintball to compress to a degree and at this point the paintball is no longer a sphere.  This will decrease accuracy.  Also, the paintball is not entirely filled with paint.  The paint has a tendency to settle at the bottom of the ball.  This will cause the ball to be out of balance and will affect its flight.  Especially if the paintballs have been stored for a very long time.  And that’s another thing.  They do kind of have a shelf life.  Old paintballs can get brittle and are more prone to breaking when they’re not supposed to.  Such as in the chamber when the paintball gun is fired.  Paintballs also have a tendency to be sensitive to weather conditions.   The paintballs can swell and/or “sweat” depending on heat and humidity.  Swelling can cause accuracy issues and “sweating” can cause them to stick together which can cause issues feeding into the chamber.  This sticking, however, can be minimized and/or eliminated by hoppers that have a battery powered vibrator or agitator that allows for a consistent gravity feed into the chamber.

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3.       The air that is pushed out of the barrel ahead of the paintball causes turbulence outside of the muzzle.  Now your no longer spherical paintball has to pass through that turbulence.  This decreases accuracy even further.  There is some good news on this point however.  You may have seen that some barrels have ports machined down the length of the barrel.  Usually closer to the muzzle.  This allows the air to be pushed out of the ports prior to the paintball exiting the barrel thus reducing the amount of turbulence that the paintball must travel through at the muzzle.  Additionally, if you have a barrel that does not have ports machined into it, a muzzle brake can be added to a barrel and will have the same/similar effect.  Most, if not all, of these are easily attached with a set screw.

4.       Gas.  There are two options.  CO2 and Nitrogen/Compressed Air.  When I first started playing the sport everything was CO2.  Whether you were using the 12g cartridges or the 7oz. bottles (some people even used as large as a 20oz. bottle carried on their belt or harness and attached to the paintball gun via braided line.) it was all CO2.  CO2 is relatively cheap and more easily available but the drawback is it’s much more sensitive to changes in temperature.  Hot day, higher velocity.  Cold day, lower velocity.  Something as simple as leaving the CO2 bottle in direct sunlight on a hot day can cause the muzzle velocity to increase beyond safety limits.  Additionally, the CO2 will get colder with rapid trigger use.  A rapid-fire situation can quickly cool down your system and cause your muzzle velocity to fall off.  This will reduce your accurate range.  This can be somewhat mitigated by using an attachment called an Expansion Chamber.  As a matter of fact, it looked like the first “bottle-fed” paintball gun (it looked to be a Tippman which, btw, was a pretty solid manufacturer back when I played) that Zain showed you at about 15:53 in your video was equipped with an Expansion Chamber.  Notice there is a gas line running from the bottom of the primary grip to the bottom of the fore-grip.  That fore-grip appears to be an Expansion Chamber.  The Expansion Chamber allows for a more consistent pressure supplied to the system.  It is also worth noting that the CO2 getting cold can and does damage the O-rings in the internal works of the paintball gun.  (Side note: Always read and abide by the manufacturer instructions of course, but we used to put a thin coat of silicon grease on our O-rings.  This seemed to increase the lifespan of the O-rings and minimize catastrophic failure during use.)  These issues probably wouldn’t be experienced with a system that uses the 12g CO2 cartridges as the cartridge will be depleted before anything gets that cold.  But it can and does happen with the systems that use the higher capacity bottles.  The alternative is nitrogen.  Nitrogen is much more stable, is not nearly as sensitive to fluctuations in temperature, does not cool with rapid-fire, and is not or not as harmful to the O-rings.  The downside to Nitrogen is the cost relative to CO2.  The Nitrogen/Compressed Air tanks for paintball guns are much more expensive than their CO2 counterparts.  I cannot speak to the costs of refilling the Nitrogen tanks as I never personally used them.  I was drifting away from the sport as they were being introduced but had I continued playing I would have definitely switched to Nitrogen.

5.       Velocity adjustment.  Every paintball gun I’ve ever used has had adjustable velocity and I don’t see any reason that would have changed.  Some people might think to increase the velocity if they’re only planning to use the paintball gun as a non-lethal method of self-defense and not really for sport.  And, on the surface of it, this makes sense.  Higher velocity, more range.  And let’s face it, in a self-defense situation you do want to inflict pain to deter the assailant.  However, I would advise against doing this.  Or at least doing this too much.  Again, it comes back to the composition of the paintball.  I have seen people increase the velocity in their paintball gun too high and the end result was the paintball rupturing in the chamber.  Not something you would want to happen if when you’re using the pepper balls.  This, of course, wouldn’t be an issue with the solid riot control balls.

Final thoughts… Try to balance price, quality, and ease of use/maintenance.  Get a spare parts kit and an O-ring kit.  Airgun Designs has always made a top of the line product but they can be a bit expensive.  Tipmann (at least back when I used to play) was affordable and solidly built.  The “Spectre” in Zain’s shop… I remember associating that name with cheap and unreliable but, to be fair, it’s been a long time.  And, whatever you choose, get to know it.  Practice with it.  Become comfortable with it.  Know its strengths and weaknesses, its accurate range, how it behaves with high fire rate.  Know what you can and cannot expect from it.  And I sincerely hope you never have to use it.  But, if you do… as the saying goes “It’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.”  I still find it amazing how much that applies to so many things in life.

 

As much as the sailing community such as yourselves, Sailing La Vagabonde, Sailing Nahoa, Sailing Uma, and Emerald Steel have given me by sharing your stories, knowledge, and advice through articles, podcasts, and videos…  Well, consider this my small way of giving back at least a little bit by sharing what I have learned through my own personal experience.  And, who knows, maybe my luck will change and I’ll see you out there someday.  Until then, safe travels.

 

Kindest Regards and Thank You,

 

Travis Allen

 

Here is that video:

Self Defense on Sailboats, against Pirates, Intruders, Thieves…