Once Upon a Gypsy Moon Read Online Free Page A

get your fanny on a pitching, wet foredeck, pull one sail down, and replace it with the other. Roller furling makes that process harder because it requires the sail to be fully unfurled before it can be lowered. Unfurl a three-hundred-square-foot sail in a thirty-knot squall and you’re not likely to see it again soon. As a result, skippers on boats with roller furling often succumb to laziness in making sail changes too late, too infrequently, or not at all. They usually end up flying too much or too little canvas in high winds, which may explain why so many boats with roller furling that venture offshore are reported to suffer dismastings. And yet the pressures of modern marketing have done so much to make these and other “improvements” standard on new boats that seem more like floating RVs than seagoing vessels.
    Another modification on the Gypsy Moon that went against the grain was the installation of a Monitor Windvane. This is a Rube Goldberg contraption that steers a boat on a constant heading relative to the wind, without benefit of electricity or fuel or human effort. It operates by means of a wind vane mounted on the transom. The vane is attached to a servo-pendulum rudder that pulls one of two lines running to the ship’s wheel. As the boat veers off course, the vane backs against the wind, pushing the servo-pendulum rudder, which pulls the line, which turns the wheel, which alters the course of the boat until the vane is headed dead into the wind again. Monitor Windvanes are expensive to install and difficult to learn to operate correctly, but once mastered they can sail a boat on a straight course indefinitely. First perfected in the 1950s by some British “yotties” who were trying to race each other solo “across the pond,” some form of this device has been a trusted ally on sailing circumnavigations ever since.
    Push-button electronic navigation systems that operate by battery power are more commonly seen, and the Gypsy Moon is fitted with one. They are convenient and simple to operate, but they cannot handle the strain of heavy seas or high winds or constant use over a long span of time. The motors burn out or the gears strip. Simpler is better, most of the time.
    High on the list of improvements was a newly inspected and repacked four-man inflatable life raft, which I nicknamed Lucky Jack after the hero of Patrick O’Brian’s novels. It is stored in a sealed canister and strapped into a steel cradle that is bolted to the deck just ahead of the mast. The raft (I am instructed) deploys automatically when the canister, secured by its tether to a strong fitting on deck, is thrown overboard. The tug of the tether pulls a pin inside the canister that fires a CO 2 cartridge, which inflates the raft. The covered raft is designed for survival in all sea states, until help arrives. Lucky Jack is well named because he has never been needed, and I for one am hoping his luck holds.
    Other doomsday devices that I keep aboard include two Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRBs), which, with the flip of a switch in a moment of need, will transmit an electronic signal embedded with the Gypsy Moon ’s unique data signature and GPS coordinates to satellites in space from any ocean in the world. The satellites relay the SOS signal and the boat’s exact position to the US Coast Guard and international rescue agencies.

Chapter 6
A Time to Go
    So much for preparation and visions of disaster. This is, after all, a sailing voyage and not a moon launch. It is easy to get so carried away with the logistics of planning that we lose sight of what remains, which is simply “to go.” On this subject Joshua Slocum, who in 1898 at the age of fifty-four became the first man to sail alone around the world, had this to say in the closing paragraphs of the book he wrote about his famous voyage:
    To young men contemplating a voyage I would say go. The tales of rough usage are for the most part exaggerations, as also