Towin' and Bailin'

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H2Oz
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Joined: Tue May 12, 2015 2:21 pm

Towin' and Bailin'

Post by H2Oz »

Just a couple of miscellaneous easier-ways-to-move-around-in-the-water tips/riggings:

1.

I see occasional questions on various forums asking about towing single or multiple kayaks behind a mother boat, and one of the main complaints is stern-snaking or skittering (where the stern of the towed boat swings in arcs like a waterskiier). And rudderless kayaks can bow-snake badly with too long a towline. The usual advice is to snug the kayak up near the stern of the boat. (SAY WHAT?? Yeah, stick your plastic bow up in close proximity to a whirling prop that can kick up -- not to mention near-zero collision time with the transom or outboard if the boat suddenly throttles down)?? Well, one of Mother Nature's (often psychotic) multiple personalities (in this case, Miss Hydrodynamics) provides (as always) a couldn't-get-much-simpler solution: if you attach a length of floating rope (about equal to the length of the kayak) to the center of the kayak's stern, and let it trail freely behind the towed craft, all that crap will stop. (But a word of caution: NO knots or loops in the trailing rope, or anything ELSE that could catch on an obstruction. That won't improve on the hydrodynamics, it will actually degrade them, and it could get you in trouble.)

(Bear in mind also that this procedure is only guaranteed to be safe anywhere north of Panama. Anywhere south of there and large schools of sabertoothed Amazonian Roperapers can be a real problem.)

2.

Here's one we used all the time in the old days on Canadian freight canoes, and I've never seen it mentioned anywhere on the intertubes:

For you scupperless folks, you can make an automatic bailer from a SMALL plastic funnel, its nose glued up inside a length of flexible tube (I like tygon). Open end of the tube sits at a low point inside the hull, gets attached (but not pinched shut) over the gunwale, and the funnel gets dragged in the water. There's no backflow, because it arches to gunwale height, but WHENEVER THE BOAT IS IN FORWARD MOTION, it sucks like Dracula. Great for days with spray, rain, etc. No batteries, no moving parts, no pumps, no sponges or buckets, no effort, dirt cheap, build one in two minutes with off-the-shelf junk, set-and-forget.

Jimmy Buffett was right: "It's like the jitterbug. It was so simple it plumb evaded me."

Love,

Ol' Sarge

PS -- For any of you new waterman wannabes out there, "funnel from the gunwale" actually rhymes (and "hoist blue peter" isn't part of an obscene limerick).

(SOURCE: "Ol' Sarge's Big Book of Bowlegged Salty Talk and Genuine Wharf Rat Lingo" by M. E. Jitlee & F. Knot Sooner, page 273.)
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