UPGRADING MY KNOTSYSTEM

As part for my search for safe cruising I now while building the boat take every opportunity to upgrade my knotsystem. I read books and I apply new knowledge when I need to do a knot. In that way I hope to be a better seeman when I start my voyage.
Knots are based on friction. No friction no knots. Fortunately friction increases exponentially. For example if you take a round turn around a pillar it may reduce the load on a rope by 90 %. If there is a 1000 kilo load it will be reduced to 100 kilos. A second round turn reduces it by another 90 % down to 10 kilos, a third turn and there is only 1 kilo left. Thats the explanation for how sailors with the help of pillars and winches can control huge forces.

Below is a hitch a bend and a loop I use. They all take me a few seconds longer to make, but if a knot is worth doing its worth doing well I reason.

When I attach a rope I use backturns or a tug boat hitch. Such a knot can always be undone even if there is a huge load on it. I use one two or three backturns. Not only do the backturns progressly reduce the force, they also spread it out over a bigger surface thereby reducing friction. the pictures below show a hitch with one backturn.





Instead of sheet bend and bowline I now use a zeppelin bend and as every bend can be transformed into a loop I figured out a different way to tie the knot so that I can use it as either loop or bend. The pictures below show the Yrvind way.

AUDIO FILE TRACKS FROM SWEDISH BROADCASTING BY YRVIND

1990 I was given two hours on the Swedish National Radio on a popular program called "Sommar sommar" to talk about what I liked and to play my favorite music. Unfortunately due to copyright reasons the music can not be included here. But my voice is here to listen to. Just click on them and you will here my voice.


Part 1

Part 2

I BECOME A MENTOR

Sunday the 28 of June 2008 I was in Hunnebostrand on the Swedish West Coast to great a young man to his sucesful singlehanded crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. A year earlier he then 19 years old, and a friend of his had visited me to get some advice for a voyage in a Vega a 27 feet production boat. When his friend dropped out I offered to crew for him to get him started. He had not been away from his family for more than a few days and never done any night sailing.
He adapted quickly and when we were half way to the US to visit my friend Matt Layden he asked me if I thought he could do a single handed passage. I said yes and after leaving him in Florida he sailed back by himself becoming the youngest Swedish singlehanded sailor.



Photo Bohusläningen

We had a very short time to prepare the boat.



Here I arrive with a new rudder. I did not mind being a deckhand as long as I had my own rudder.




In the beginning of September we left Norway to cross the North Sea. We had a cold stormy passage with a leaking boat. Everything became wet. We crossed Scotland in the Forth Clyde Canal, then sailed down the Irish Sea to Kinsale.




This was our last stopp before Florida 4000 miles away. The boat was already full with food when I told the Captain that we needed plenty of fruit. He looks worried.



South of the Bay of Biscay the weather turned fine and we did take a swim every day.




Here I am in the water.



This was our route. It took us 56 days from Kinsale Irland to Forth Pierce Florida.



Matt and Karen took good care of us. Here Matt is showing his Enigma with her chinerunner.



I thank Thomas Grahn my Capten and leave for Sweden to build my own boat.

MORE ABOUT MY BRIS SEXTANT

This is a portrait done byMartin Mörck showing me using my sextant.



My sextant is not bigger than a nail and weighs only 3 grams about a tenth of an onze.



Mostly I use three semitransparent glasses. That gives eight images of the sun. Three bright from the dubble reflections and five more not of the same brightnes.
Sometimes I make sextants with four glasses. That gives a lot more images. Sometimes I buy beamspitters from Edmond Scientific, then just two glasses gives plenty of images becouse then there are not only dubble and quadruple reflections but many of even higher order.

There is relations betwen the images. If the angles between the outside glasses and the middle one is A and B, then the angle between the outside glasses is A+B. Those are the bright images.
The five quadruple reflections are 2A, 2B, 2C, A+C, and B+C. Those reflections are less bright. There is a general formula for any number of glasses and reflections.

Some landlubbers dont understand that the Bris sextant can be accurat without an telescop. I have made thousands of observations from small boats with good Plath sextants, usually my position lines gives an triangle about three miles across. If the weather is very calm and if am lucky I can get them to lie within one mile. In stormy weather Im satisfied if I can get my position to within ten miles.
When I was rounding the Horn in June in the middle of the winter in my 19 footer from east to west, I could not get better than thirty miles accuracy, but then the weather was rugh it was cold and if I remember right the the sun did not rise higher than 11 degres at noon. With the Cape Horn current occasionaly running up to four knots navigation was not easy. In fact it was my biggest problem.

On the outher hand standing on the beach with my Bris sextant I am often able to get a position line within a tenth of a mile, on rare occasions I have been able to repeat that three times one after the outher.

Even the best sextants dont have telescopes with higher magnification than three or four times, the reason is even on a big ship its to difficult to hold the instrumenst stedy. The Bris sextant on the outher hand is so light that you can attatch it to your glasses. Than the images becomes dead stedy. Also with both hands free you got one hand for your writing and one for yourself.

MINI SEXTANT BRISSEXTANT THE WORLDS SMALLEST SEXTANT