Hockles Suck. Also, I May Have Tied an Air Bowline.

From the backlog:

When we upped anchor in Turtle Bay, we came face to face with a weird looking section of 3-strand that turned out to be a Hockle [cue foreboding music]. Innocuous little word, isn’t it? Rhymes with cockle and is the equivalent of the blue screen of death for your anchor line. Worse, even, because not only does it signal the end of your anchor line’s useful life, but you’ve got to hack the hockled part out and re-splice the remaining 3-strand onto your chain. Knowing the whole time that you’re going to have to keep doing it again, and again, and again, until you you’re so good at splicing, you could splice rope to chain in your sleep. In the dark.

We decided to swap over to the secondary anchor rode and fix the hockled primary one in Bahia Magdalena.

Now, this kind of thing wasn’t really my domain in the Coast Guard. Deck Force–those guys were the ones who sat around playing with their…lines all day, while we Engineers were busy fixing all the stuff they broke ;-) Just kidding! They also scraped a lot of paint. So there we are in Mag Bay, getting ready to leave for Cabo and Steve’s all, “You’ve spliced this stuff before, right?” And I’m all, “Pffttt…Bosun Mates do it, how hard could it be?” Famous. Last. Words.

I break open the Samson splicing manual and it looks pretty straightforward. Should be no problem. Riiiight. None of my attempts look anything like the pictures, so I decide it’s time to haul out our trusty Chapman’s, to see if they’ve got a better set of instructions. Looks like, between the two, we should be golden, but by now I’m so pissed about the whole thing I want to deep-six the entire mess. Steve talks me down from that ledge and decides gives it a try. After a good long while, he’s also in favor of the overboard option. I try one last time and actually get the splice started correctly (awesome!), but completely lose my way after 3 tucks (pure suckage!). As per usual, when one of us has a hard time with something, the other one can usually do it. Steve stepped in and saved the day, finishing out the splice with a nice taper and everything.

So yeah…My bad. All hail the mighty Bosun. You guys rock !

As for the Air Bowline…let me just put things in perspective for a minute. I know, as far as cruising couples go, it’s often the guy who has all the experience and the girl who is the total n00b. It’s the other way around for us. I have the most ocean experience, in the crappiest conditions, and know more about seamanship and navigation than Steve and Eli do. I learned all that stuff in the Coast Guard and as we’ve sailed south from San Francisco, I’ve been training the guys in pretty much the same way that I got trained. For the record, the military’s policy of constant drilling, no hand holding, and definitely no tears when it comes to training? Doesn’t always play well in a family setting. Although it does get great results. The guys are pretty salty by now.

Which is why they were utterly delighted when I grabbed the dinghy painter, made it off to the rail with a bowline, dropped the line when I was done tying the knot and said, “Oh crap,” as we watched the painter fall into the water and the dinghy start to drift away. “Should I just jump in after?” I asked Steve, who was choking to death from laughing so hard. “No, no,” he croaked, “I’ll just get it with the kayak. You want to help me put it in the water?” “Sure.” I say. Eli is laughing so much he’s turned a lovely shade of purple and manages to spit out, “Are you sure she can be trusted not to let it float away?” My guys. Such comedians.

Perfectly tied bowline–just completely failed to tie it around the rail. They will NEVER, EVER let me live this one down.