Firstly, every buyer has for want of a more nuanced and descriptive term: ‘a problem’. Secondly, he’s interested in his problem and not your problem. Narcissism is universal among the human species.

The buyer may be consciously aware of ‘his problem’. More likely is the case that ‘the problem’ is a subliminal itch that Mr Buyer has never actualized or become consciously aware of, let alone verbalized.

The point is that as a hopeful boat vendor; when you accurately define ‘the problem’ your buyer will instantly recognize both it and the solution you offer as relating specifically to him/her. Simply by virtue of the headline, you have created the essential pre-condition for a sale.

This is the essence of your task as a headline copywriter.

A UK based boat owner consortium (one of my book readers) recently requested help with their exceptionally tricky marketing problem; one that illustrates the point. They have a boat for sale in a remote location; but not just any boat; rather a highly unusual boat and not just any location. Their tricky for sale offering takes the form of a junk rigged catamaran parked on a marina…in Greece.

How in the name of providence do you uncover a buyer probably located in the UK …for a junk rigged catamaran located in Greece? Firstly consider a conventional headline:

“For Sale – Junk Rigged Catamaran …location: Greece”?

What kind of response would this pull? I would suggest that this headline has a perfect, gold plated, 100% chance of failure.

The fact is; the buyer of this vessel will NOT be looking for a junk rig, NOR will our buyer be searching for a catamaran, NOR INDEED for a boat in Greece.

As a headline copywriter you need to ask yourself: “what then are the ‘needs’ implicitly beneath each of these parameters that might deliver a sale?” When you ask the right questions the answers are not so difficult. We know for example that statistically, over 80% of buyers of sail-boats are novices new to sailing and boat ownership. To a novice, learning to handle a sail boat is apt to be a little intimidating. So what is it about a junk rig that might particularly appeal to a novice owner?

The answer might well be ease of handling. The junk rig is famously easy to handle. Secondly there is the romance of sailing your own boat on the Mediterranean Sea without the bother and danger of the voyage from the UK.

From these two ideas your writer’s febrile mind concocted this headline:

 “For Sale: The Easiest Boat to Sail on the Ionian Sea”

Check the link and you’ll see that the vendors went for the headline. Will it succeed? Time will tell.

Dean my neighbor was bitten by a dog the other day. He walked past the tethered animal outside the chandlery and it went for him; not much of a bite as dog bites go, but it brought to mind another occasion.

It was back in another lifetime. The parents of my then wife owned a property in outback New South Wales. Occasionally my wife our kids and I would visit, although as a confirmed city slicker I had no great affinity for country life or farm animals for that matter.

While my relationship with the parents-in-law was marginal, the old stockman managing the place was a character whom I took to in an instant. He had a classic bushman’s dry sense of humor: like the day the city kid complained that the retired race horse he was trying to ride …”wasn’t doing what he wanted”. The old man grabbed the bridle as the horse began to prance around in the saddling yard. “Yeah”… he said in a slow drawl. “He was just about to show you what HE wanted!”

Anyhow on this day I was invited to accompany the old stockman on an errand to a neighbor’s property. The neighbor it seemed had left the place for a holiday and the old stockman had agreed to feed the dog. What made this experience likely to be a tad out of the ordinary, was the fact that this was no ordinary dog. The animal was legendary throughout the district for its ferocity. This was the famous ‘Donovan’s dog’. It was reportedly insane and why the owner refused to shoot the animal was a mystery to every farmer in the district.

“You’d better stay in the ute (Australian slang for a light truck utility vehicle)” he says to me “…and keep the window up”, as we drive up to the deserted farm house. He winds up the driver’s side window and closing the door, walks around to the rear of the ute; dropping the tail-gate and collecting a sizable bucket of meat and bones. I hear his crunching steps on the gravel driveway.

While this is taking place, out of peripheral vision a steely grey flash of movement appears from underneath the house. The grey flash materializes as a large powerful dog tethered apparently to a wire trace. The dog races along the trace on a vector to interdict.

Dogs you might expect to  respond to being fed, with tail wagging anticipation; the more so in the bush when times can be tough for man and animal. But there was no gratitude in the demeanor of this animal. Ears back, neck muscles bunched in a ball of snarling fury; it raced to the end of the wire trace intent upon slaughter and dismemberment.

Of course country people have a different attitude to animals and working dogs in particular. Every farm has a mob of dogs and the farmer is typically somewhat detached; animal life and death are after all, realities of daily life in the Australian bush. It’s also rare to see a country person in any way bothered by a dog. For the most part working dogs are simply part of the back ground.

But this is different; the old stockman is visibly wary as he walks the bucket towards the point where the wire trace terminates.

It was at that moment that my cardiac rate, already fibrillating, rockets to infinity, as the animal impacts with the end of the wire trace… and something breaks whuup!  I hear the break like a dull thud … at the same instant as the old stockman reacts.

As if in a well rehearsed ballet movement, the old man swings the bucket at the animal’s head, momentarily deflecting its berserk charge. With giant strides he regains the tail-gate, leaping into the back of the vehicle tray and from there onto the cab roof… right over my head; his riding boots noisily ‘oil canning’ the metal in and out. The dog meanwhile follows him up onto the tray in a homicidal frothing rage.

“Hand me the bloody stock whip son”! Hands shaking I retrieve the implement from behind the seat and cautiously wind down enough side-window to poke the whip stock out, hoping that in concentrating upon tearing the stockman to pieces the animal doesn’t notice my exposed hand.

In a cracking sweep of the whip the old man lays a stinging strike upon the dog’s head. Yelping and snarling the it backs off.

The old man deftly slips back into the cab: “a bit exciting there for a moment!”

“Yeah right …a bit exciting!”

If you’re from someplace other than Australia’s Queensland coast and have ever had a hankering to cruise the Great Barrier Reef aboard your own boat or a local charter vessel, get yourself on-line to The Coastal Passage and check out the stories, the special places and fascinating characters.

There is a freely available print version of TCP produced bi-monthly or thereabouts, but print copies are like ‘hen’s teeth’; so quickly do they disappear from the marina’s front desk. Alternatively the e-version downloadable as a PDF document, can be accessed anytime.

I have known TCP’s founding editors: Bob and Kay Norson, since when we were neighbors at Mackay Marina on Queensland’s Whitsunday coast, sometime back in 2005. Bob and Kay at that time owned the steel ketch SV White Bird and many is the time that we discussed the perfidy of the political class over a beer or three.

But via the medium of TCP, Bob’s contribution to the human race has been rather more profound than simply that of providing a sounding board for the Great Barrier Reef cruising community. At a time when so called democratic government in all its forms is oppressing the citizenry to a degree unprecedented in modern times, the cruising community in Australia has felt the heat of oppression like no other special interest group.

The why of this is a mystery. It is hardly that the cruising yachtie genre constitutes a terrorist threat; look at the demographic!

We’re all greybeards who mostly vote conservative. Yet cruising sailors are often subject to jack booted treatment in Australian waters.

Australian Customs, by virtue of their thuggish attitude to cruising yachts visiting our shores or returning home, have single handedly destroyed the prosperous maritime industry that once existed around refurbishment and repair of visiting yachts. I know this because I was once part of the industry. It effectively no longer exists. Foreign yachts cruising the Pacific now by-pass Australia and go to New Zealand.

The ineffable truth is that armed and dangerous, ‘praetorian guard’ organs of so called state security, are in reality the principal and primary source of insecurity in our modern society. They pose an Orwellian threat to individual freedom. Regrettably this is true not only of Australia but of all of the western democracies.

Bob’s contribution to the human race, has been to educate the cruising community to this reality. Reader opinion has shifted in recent years. For this TCP and its brave editorial team deserve the gratitude of every sailor and citizen who values freedom and independence.

The pity is that Australia is a beautiful country with large areas unspoiled and having some of the friendliest people on Earth. Check out TCP and you’ll see what I mean.

The thing that puts me off learning new stuff is …well…learning new stuff. I hate that nail biting period of ‘newby frustration’; some might call it humiliation that precedes getting up to speed on damned near anything.

I’m no great traveler. I remember once upon a time standing with back-pack in a long queue on New Delhi railway station; the only gormless white face amid a sea of brown; all within a vast pavilion seemingly stretching to infinity. All of the station directions were clearly marked … in Hindi. The ticket seller shaking his head in that iconic Indian manner, had had no notion of my question: “How do I get to Agra?” Meanwhile I kind of knew but didn’t want to know; that the next 10 minutes would be a PhD course in: foreign traveler #101: “how not to get fleeced in a foreign land while appearing to be utterly stupid”.

On the Queensland coast of course, the natives at least speak English, but local knowledge is hardly less valuable to anyone not familiar with the geography, the facilities and people of the coast. So having an ear to the ground is vital to your best interests even if your penchant runs to beach houses for sale or lease, boats for sale or charter, islands for sale or simply where to find the best Sunday markets on the coast: Sailors Paradise is the web site that has it all.

Sign up for the free monthly magazine and take full advantage of Melinda’s vast knowledge of Australia’s cruising paradise in all of its many dimensions by asking questions. From her cruising ketch: “RM Dreamchaser”, the “Branch Office” as she calls it, Melinda will be only too happy to answer any query you may have.

But here’s the thing: when you’ve kicked around the waterfront for a time as I have, it strikes you that there’s something about boats and relationships that definitely doesn’t add up.

The lonely male, cruising solo and chronically unsuccessful in finding a partner, is an icon of the cruising life. Why is it so hard? Live-aboard marinas are often roiling hotbeds of relationship turmoil, sometimes where boats, partners and dreams of the cruising life are all swapped around. Indeed for a couple, the acquisition of a cruising vessel seems to unlock a Pandora’s box of dangers to the relationship: why you might wonder.

It wasn’t until my short and unlamented career in yacht broking that pennies began dropping.

In the business of selling boats you quickly get it that: ‘it ain’t the man who makes the buying decision’. The glib male-centric rejoinder to this might be that we live within a matriarchal society. The woman ‘wearing the pants’ thing; it’s supposed to be funny but the truth is neither funny nor that simple.

Men and women think differently. A man might well enter into the business of purchasing a cruising boat having his vision of the ideal boat firmly in mind. And while his partner may accede to this vision with varying degrees of enthusiasm, her focus is likely to be very different.

In the wash-up about which boat to buy, women often possess a certain instinct for straddling the high moral ground; likely because this is where they are positioned in the relationship. The male party who feels himself condemned to a life struggling up the slippery slope, is probably overlooking the real reason why.

Alternatively it may be that her priorities are simply over-ridden in the transaction. The problem for the hyper-assertive male is that this bakes into the cake the seeds of future conflict in a realm of experience rich with karmic possibilities; the bottom line: don’t do it!

But this schism in male-female thinking extends way beyond boat selection. It’s something that must be accommodated in every aspect of life together and most particularly in reaching a state of harmony in cruising mode.

In the course of our own coastal passages I have observed how my partner embodies truly amazing qualities of stoicism and courage in times of real crisis and how this is overlaid by a dogged determination to do things her own way at all other times.

At sea should I call for help on deck, what actually happens is that a process is put in train relating to personal toilet and suitable dress. Lily will eventually emerge dressed for Cape Horn in the face of a tropical squall, which by then will have passed on in any event.

To promote harmony aboard, I simply adjust to this reality. Nothing short of a looming container ship about to tee-bone the boat is going to de-rail the process. Life as they say is too short to bother sweating the small stuff.

But beyond flippant observations I confess to being an amateur analyst of the issue in hand. Lisa Sasavich ( http://theinvisibleclose.com) on the other hand is a towering figure in the personal development field in the US, particularly in relation to empowering women. In her work Lisa identifies five areas where men comprehensively get it wrong in their dealings with the fair sex. Without belaboring the obvious these oversights extend into every aspect of life where men and women come together for common purpose, not the least of which is the cruising life.

Lisa’s #1 principle….lower the bullshit façade

Women according to Lisa are equipped with a better more effective bullshit antenna than any man on the planet. Unfortunately around boats and women, men are apt to act in ways that are quite unreal. The problem according to Lisa, is that the bullshit facade acts as an impenetrable barrier to influence.

Women want men to ‘get real’; but so rarely is the wish rewarded that a man who unexpectedly comes across as ‘real’ can elicit a surprising (shocking?) reaction.

A little story, strange but true; not so long ago I am driving alone on a lonely stretch of rural road in southern Tasmania. I stop for a hitchhiker. She throws her pack in the back and jumps in. I notice that she has a certain healthy athleticism and an intelligent face. She’s around my daughter’s age… mid thirties or so. After responding to the obvious question: what does she think she’s doing hitchhiking on a lonely road in Tasmania, the conversation extends to matters slightly more personal. My passenger proves to be an entertaining conversationalist as she relates a tale about her life, travels and the odd disappointing relationship.

I listen asking the odd question here and there.

“And you?”… she asks. I tell her that I am now blessed with a partner/wife and make mention of a few unimpressive details pertaining to prior years of relationship wreckage; the detritus from which remains bobbing away in my own wake, ‘all the way to the horizon’ so to speak.

We end up talking about depression; a topic about which I have some personal experience. We converse for about an hour.

In relating this story I simply observe that beyond age forty five; as a man, it’s obligatory to ‘wait until you’re asked’ and by the age of sixty five …it simply doesn’t happen!

This truism notwithstanding, when we reach her departure point she says: “You’re a good man; there aren’t many left! I want to kiss you before I go. I’d give you my number but I don’t want to cause any more grief in your life and you’d probably never ring me anyway….?”

Mmmm I wonder … as she lopes off … “is that what lowering the bullshit façade means?”

Lisa’s #2 principle: name the bleeding wildebeest’s head in the room by which she means the topic that no-one wants to talk about. Somehow, by ‘naming the bleeding wildebeest’s head’ it galvanizes the female response.

In my brokerage days I once had a steel sailing vessel on the books; a well built vessel but with an unusual rig, definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. In transporting the interested couple out to the boat moored in an adjacent bay, I couldn’t help but notice the man’s large file of vessel information.

We are motoring the brokerage workboat slowly through the anchorage and I take the opportunity to try and gauge what it is that they are truly seeking. Thinking that maybe the husband is a tad anal ‘analysis to paralysis’ and all that… I say: “so… er …Adrian …how many boats have you seen”.

His answer shocks me and I am difficult to shock.

“So….er… Adrian how well do you remember the first boat you looked at?” His wife raises her eyes to the heavens.

I have unwittingly named ‘the bleeding wildebeest’s head in the room’. They have yet to even lay eyes upon the vessel we’re about to inspect; yet some instinct tells me that the die has been cast. They will buy this boat. She’s had enough!

Lisa’s # 3 principle – overcome male reluctance to share the process

Men are typically less ‘process driven’ in their communications with women. They are less inclined to relate how they learned a particular skill, possibly because the admission of historic ignorance is somehow embarrassing. Yet how a skill is learned and acquired is information that according to Lisa, women particularly appreciate hearing.

A lady skipper once related to me the story of how her first cruising sail-boat was delivered from Brisbane to Sydney.

Knowing nothing about sailing and never before having been to sea, she hires a delivery skipper and his junior assistant on the basis that she will learn from his experience on route. In presenting his credentials the skipper big-notes his experience in a manner that my friend finds vaguely discomforting. Nevertheless in deference to his experience, she agrees to the delivery fee and stumps up half prior to embarkation.

Trouble begins as soon as they cross the Gold Coast seaway. Motoring into a heavy southerly swell the delivery skipper retires to his bunk incapacitated by sea-sickness and from that moment forward, doesn’t set foot on deck until the boat docks in NSW. The good lady is left with a clueless boy; his knowledge of boat handling, sailing and navigation: zero!

The skipper moreover has vomited a stinking slippery mess onto the cabin floor with the result that the vessel’s interior is uninhabitable. Virtually alone, terrified and unable to leave the deck in rough weather, she somehow manages to navigate the boat to Coffs Harbor, whereupon skipper and crew exit the boat without a backward glance.

In reality, sea sickness and competence at sea are not mutually exclusive. The point being that: had our man been a tad more open about his process, he might have retained some credibility with his client.

Lisa’s #4 principle – understand the importance of instilling self confidence

In matters boat-wise I’m no expert teacher but there is one technique that I know works effectively to instill self confidence with my partner.

Because our trips are less frequent these days, she sometimes has to re-learn basic stuff to her embarrassment (I do too… but I don’t tell her). She’ll say: “look you’ve shown me umpteen times how to tie a bowline but dammit I’ve forgotten…will you show me again?”

“OK but look how far you’ve come. Once you’d be sea sick and hanging over the side and now you can sail the boat in thirty knots …look how far you’ve come.”

Lisa’s #5 principle – take the time – women must feel understood

Until I became aware of the problem there were many occasions when in the midst of an argument with my partner, I would realize that she and I are on entirely different tracks like two trains passing on adjacent rail lines and about to roar past one another in opposite directions.

The way around this problem I discovered is to listen to her position as agonizing as it may be; and then to summarize my understanding of her argument back to her. What I’m hearing is that you feel dah dah dah because dah dah dah…is that right?

It’s surprising …no absolutely amazing …how often it isn’t!

By Marian Dolan Guest Author

Life today is becoming busier day by day but the casino cruise has provided a new dimension to holiday entertainment. Casinos are one of the main sources of revenue for cruise lines. A casino boat cruise is one the few spots in the US that you can gamble in a casino outside of Las Vegas or Atlantic City. They attract large revenues by way of providing these services to clients.

The cruise boat industry has grown fast during the last few years. Did you ever wonder about the daily operations inside a casino? You will be surprised at how they operate. The cruise you decide upon will only limited by your personal preferences and holiday budget. The cruise boat industries have a casino tropez bonus program for people who work the whole season. The accommodation and the employees on the boats are nearly doubled. Also a few other benefits and perks are being thrown in as a casino splendid bonus by the travel agencies dealing with such cruises. Proper planning can allow for the best vacation ever and tourist feedback confirms that the casino cruise vacation is indeed worth the money.

Freddie has an acerbic libertarian irreverence that I kinda like. As survivors of the ’60′s demographic; our sexual proclivities peaked at the zenith of the US empire; for both of our sperm counts and the US empire …it’s been downhill ever since. Of course we didn’t know that in 1964. We didn’t know lots of things in 1964.

Freddie it’s true, has an ‘attitude’ to the rise of the police state in western countries similar to my own. This I’m afraid may one day result in us both ‘doing time’. The way things are headed, opinions antithetical to the interests of ‘the state’ and it’s legions of armed goons, will be plenty enough to earn you a door smashing dawn raid by an armed SWAT squad, followed by extended time in an Australian Lubyanka; never mind habeas corpus and all that.

All that can be said is that it’s worse in the US. Obama has lately arrogated the discretionary right to rain ‘death by drone’ upon such US citizens abroad who dare to criticize US foreign policy; never mind habeas corpus there either.

Anyhow during my relating of a story of a recent diving trip to NZ, Freddy remarked; “hope you locked your bags!”

“No as a matter of fact… I didn’t …why do you say that?”

“Oh”, he said, it’s just that by placing unlocked baggage in the cargo hold of an aircraft in Australia you risk becoming an unwitting ‘drug mule’: another Schapelle Corby”

You mean the convicted drug felon in a Bali jail?

“Well …’convicted drug felon’ is the Australian Government’s ‘propaganda term’ & it really is propaganda”.

“The truth is that the Corby case is the tip of a very big iceberg & a criminal conspiracy to cover up AFP involvement in drug crime at Australian airports”.

“Nothing’s more certain than that: she’s innocent and the political class in this country is guilty of a great crime”

“How so?”

“Watch the video my friend and be afraid!”

On the Australian coast, there are wimpy winters that hardly qualify as winters at all…and then there are the other kind.

But of course cold is everywhere relative. I once encountered a young girl swimming alone at night in the middle of a Sydney winter.

The water I seem to recall was a headache inducing12 degrees at the time. As an antidote to insomnia I used to swim at night in the pool where I lived , but had never before encountered anyone else doing so. I thought that there was some mistake. “Are you OK? I asked, thinking that maybe she’s been drinking. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Cold?…COLD?” she said with a heavy Russian accent that barely masked her scoffing tone. “I’m from Eastern Siberia….there iss cold!”

Relative it may be but if winter @ latitude 43 degrees south has impressed anything upon my frozen brain and chilblained fingers, it’s the need for a decent heating system on the boat. It’s not just the cold which can be bad enough, but a wet winter like this one that we’re now enduring (July 2011) renders every piece of fabric clammy damp to the touch, unless you have a decent heating system aboard. Climbing into a bunk under a doona that feels like it’s been pulled out of a swamp isn’t the nicest experience.

A marina berth is the obvious solution, but you’re going to be slugged good and hard for electricity usage. Power metering now common on marinas has put paid to that free ride, if indeed there was ever such a thing. I recall many years ago wintering at a Sydney marina, the Mephistophelian owner prowling the finger wharves on winters nights, listening for the signature hum of an unauthorized fan heater.

Beyond the range of the 240v power plug there are a range of solutions. The most efficient of these seem to cost an inordinate sum. But even before money constraints kick in, my contrarian mind wanders to the outer boundaries of practicality, which is how I come to be discussing wood stoves one evening, with my artist neighbor.

I remember once visiting a Kiwi yacht that had a domestic cast iron wood stove installed. The size and weight of this thing spoke volumes about the seriousness of the problem in NZ waters: namely how to keep from freezing to death during the hard South Island winter.

Pondering this one evening and noticing the white curl of wood smoke emanating from my neighbor’s cabin chimney, I enquire about its source.

“Jump aboard mate … I’ll show you”. Down below in the timber hued cabin it’s warm and cozy with a faint smell of wood turpentine and Hungarian goulash. Taking in that scene, I’m instantly hooked on the wood stove thing!

The unit central to this warming ambiance and doubling as a cook stove, is of cast iron construction fashioned in the North Sea fisherman tradition. It was he says, imported from Denmark many years ago but sadly no longer manufactured; a verifiable piece of maritime archeology.

It is possible to source cast iron stoves made in Canada but importation into Australia is eye wateringly expensive. “I’d like to install a unit like yours”, I tell him but nothing like it is produced in Australia.

“No problem!” he says: “if you want a real wood stove I’ll weld one up for you…no worries mate”.

That part of me: the ‘Oh yea of little faith’ part that raises its ugly head at times like this is thinking: “welded steel plate…how can that ever be fashioned to resemble a sexy, curvy, cast iron unit?”

My shaky faith aside; a deal is done. What I soon realize , is that my neighbor is a natural artist in all things but metal is his specialty. What he can’t produce from a few bits of steel plate and scrap metal isn’t worth talking about.

The next problem is: how to install the unit without burning the bloody boat down?

This propensity for a proper wood stove when cranked up to produce a tremendous amount of heat; is something that has to be thought through. Although most of the time a wood stove will be tamped down in slow combustion mode, high heat is necessary during the start phase to get the draft happening and a coal base established. Once this settles down, provided the wood is dry, it’ll burn correctly and produce very little smoke. In fact with minimal  attention in slow combustion mode, it’ll burn for days.

I learned how to manage the process, via the usual medium of mistakes; filling the cabin on several occasions with choking smoke.

Control is maintained via the air inlet. This means that the door needs to have an effective seal and a means of controlling the air intake. For this I use a bronze marine ventilation vent, riveted onto the door. This allows fine adjustment of air intake all the way from a full throttle roaring Chernobyl blaze… down to zero. If a wood stove doesn’t have a proper seal there’s no means of controlling combustion and on a boat this is essential.

But …back to the matter of heat insulation; it’s an issue for two reasons. Firstly the only place the wood stove can be ‘shoed in’, is where the redundant ice box is located. All that’s necessary is to rip out the old ice box, cut the hole and shorten a cupboard door, but this meant that the unit will be enclosed on three sides. How is it possible to fire-proof three sides?

Secondly, insulation has to shield the hull. With a furnace in the middle of the boat, you don’t want direct heat transmission to hull planking.

To ensure that I neither burn the boat to the water-line nor induce some other form of collateral catastrophe, a 20mm air gap is created between the tiled Victor-board lining and the plywood fireplace structure. In this way I figure air will circulate up from the cold bilge and around the tiling. The air gap will insulate the unit like double glazed windows.

For once, theory translates into practice. The vents work brilliantly. It’s amazing to feel the strength of the natural draft. With no fan in place, hot air powers out of the vents when the stove is hot and pumping. The hull meanwhile is completely insulated as are  bulkheads.

The second problem is the cabin roof. A great deal of heat inevitably exits through the roof and the area is apt to get quite hot. This problem is solved by reducing the 70mm outer flue with a 50mm internal flue for the section of pipe that passes through the cabin roof. The section has a double set of air vents in addition to the small air gap between the external flue and the wooden cabin roof.  This cools the flue a lot but I’ll probably improve this arrangement some more in the future.

From ancient times men have known that there’s  nothing quite like a fire, particularly when it’s cold enough outside to produce ice on the ground and snow on the surrounding hills.

The human brain is wired to respond to heat and flame in a visceral way. Fire; even of itself induces a multitude of pleasant associations: warmth, security, good food and good company.

On a boat in winter it’s a wonderful thing to come from the cold into the unique ambience of muted light and a wood stove. The next experiment is bread. I figure that I can do bread making in the coal base; but of course it’s just a theory.

In coastal cruising mode, there’s now an added reason to go ashore with axe and manual chain saw: fire-wood. Following an initiation into wood selection 101, it’s possible to distinguish the bleached dry drift wood that burns hard and bright with little smoke, while avoiding the other stuff. There’s never any shortage.

In an hour there’s enough cut drift wood in the dingy for two to three days. A few barbecue heat beads in the first instance work wonders to establish a coal base; a squirt of diesel and away she goes!

And as my ineffable friend says: “it don’t cost nuthin neither”

Arguably there is no more brutal field of contest than in the midst of this vituperative affray; mixing it with that most disappointing segment of the human species: the semi-super rich.

They are as Henry often said; ‘different’ and not just in the Ernest Hemmingway sense: “yeah… they’ve got more money!” His clients lived in enclaves characterised by the highest rates of property litigation per square mile in the southern hemisphere.

My friend; who ought to know, had an emotional carapace from which negative emotion bounced off, like small arms ordinance from the hull of a Tiger Tank. Along with his polished urbanity, Henry was possessed of a physical demeanor that suggested: if push came to shove, he wouldn’t be averse to a bit of biff; male or female… it wouldn’t matter and he’d probably enjoy it.

He was in other words, perfectly adapted to his calling.

But above all, Henry was effective. His mantra was: “you’ve got to ‘do the business’ mate”: meaning be quick, absolutely across the details and seriously effective.

Indeed it was from Henry that I learned about the need for speed. His style was to get contracts under the signatories noses once agreement had been reached, before second thoughts intruded. He had his well oiled support team organized to achieve this; no waiting for Lawyers and stuffing around for days and weeks after agreement is reached. And if he had to bang a head or two, this is the time that it would be done.

I learned a great deal by watching Henry. With an emotionally charged transaction, like the sale of a boat, there’s always a pull back or reaction as emotional factors flood back to cloud the thinking of one or other of the parties to a transaction. Delay and hesitation at that this point, usually spells the death of the deal.

Sometimes like a nervous groom at the alter, it’s the boat Buyer who falters. This is understandable. Othertimes, believe it or not it’s the Vendor who backs out of a golden deal, clouded by his emotional attachments.

So being effective means getting the contracts signed and the survey and sea trail organized very quickly. I used to strive to achieve this in one day.

In the pursuit of speed, I sometimes didn’t bother with the contract and holding deposit, but I’d give the Buyer my ‘hand on heart’ assurance that the boat wouldn’t be sold out from under him and go straight to survey; with the object of exchanging bank cheques and contracts immediately after the sea trial, normally within a day or so. It worked!

Yet as mentor to Buyers; a role that I occasionally find myself filling, it’s truly amazing how many industry professionals don’t get it about the need for speed; even in this market which is beyond any shadow of doubt, the worst since the great depression.

Recently I was advising a Buyer who wished to proceed on the purchase of a vessel. Because the vessel was local to me and the Buyer located interstate, I submitted the verbal offer on the Buyer’s behalf.  We were presented with a contract which we were advised had to be signed before matters could proceed and the deposit lodged in the Broker’s account; fair enough.

The first problem however, was that the contract contained a rediculous penalty clause, obviously drafted by a Lawyer with no idea how boat transactions proceed. But the penalty clause posed the real threat of loss of Buyer’s deposit. I have seen this happen and it’s not pretty. So what proceeds is an argument about penalty clauses; ‘re-arranging the deck chairs’ as it were, while the Buyer fumes and his offer is sidelined.

When finally our deposit is lodged and our signed contract minus the penalty clause is presented to the Vendor, nothing happens. Inexplicably, for three days there’s no response…nothing. My Buyer is furious. “What are these clowns (meaning: the brokers) doing, if not obstructing the transaction they’re supposed to be facilitating?”

The offer that we put forward I should say is as good as the Vendor is ever going to receive in this market. By day four we know that something has gone wrong, but of course we know not what. Eventually we receive a call from the Broker advising that the Vendor has recanted his verbal agreement and the deal is off.

That was months ago and the boat is still for sale and eating it’s head off, with maintenance and holding charges. Prices meanwhile are going down and this Vendor is on a hiding to no-where. For our part, we straight away switched our buying attention to another boat which we settled on rather quickly. There’s no shortage of exceptional boats for sale.

So what did these Brokers do wrong?

Of course they don’t get it about speed being ‘of the essence’, even though selling boats is ostensibly their business. Penalty clauses are designed to bring the reluctant Buyer to consumation of his commitment. In reality they are no more than a ‘red herring’ distraction. If the Buyer can’t be brought to the table…he isn’t sold; there’s no deal, end of story.

Equally important; there comes a time in every transaction where as a Broker or Agent, you have to ‘bang heads’. By this I mean that the Broker has to cut through the emotional garbage clouding the Vendor’s thinking and pose the question: “do you want to sell the boat?” The implication of the question, if the answer is anything but an unqualified “yes”: is that the Vendor is wasting everybody’s time.

To the Vendor’s cost, the Broker didn’t do it. I can just hear Henry’s brutally truthful summation of the abortive transaction: “no guts & no deal…a shortage of ‘bottle’ mate!”

Bass Strait is one of a number of uniquely dangerous localities for a small boat in the open ocean. Here ugly sea states are monstered by an ocean of ’40′s lattitude’ fetch, weird bottom contours (including the biggest underwater canyon on the planet), shallow water and strong currents. In short: a bit of a blow in the open ocean which might easily be ridden out hove- to, would likely preciptate a far more freightening scenario in Bass Strait.

Following this experience which prompted a decision (good for a month) to sell the boat get a dog and move to a rural location, I would never attempt to heave-to in a small sail-boat in Bass Strait. I’m no expert, but it’s my humble opinion that resort to this tactic in this place, is likely to deliver up a broken rudder, a 360 degree roll and loss of the rig if conditions are conducive.

A growing number of experienced sailors have come to the conclusion that  a powerful drogue is the ultimate tool that every cruising yacht should have ready for deployment in the bottom locker. As powerful droges go, the Jordan Series Drogue (JSD) is the ultimate.

The JSD was the brainchild of Don Jordan, in response to the fatalities that were the result of the 1979 Fastnet disaster.

Don Jordan was an aeronautical engineer, who worked for Pratt and Whitney, eventually retiring from his position as chief engineer. He was also a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for many years. He was a pilot and a life-long sailor. Back in 2004 when researching the matter, I wrote to Don and he graciously replied at length.  Don intentionally did not patent the device and he passed away in 2006. He was a Prince among men.

The JSD consists of a long line with a series of small drag cones attached along its length. My own JSD which I made myself consists of two sections of double braid line which together contain 120 small cones attached to it. It has 15′ of 5/16″ chain on the terminal end as a weight. It is connected to the boat by a bridle.

How the JSD works is best explained by Don Jordan himself, on a website that he helped develop about the Jordan Series Drogue. Visit the Jordan Series Drogue website if you’re interested to discover more about this ingenious device.

There is a school of thought that advocates the use of a parachute sea anchor deployed from the bow of the vessel in preference to a drogue device deployed from the stern. Although I have many times hove to, I have never used a sea anchor either in conjunction with this tactic or as a stand alone response to extreme weather. So my opinions must be qualified.

Nevertheless there several reasons to consider using a JSD off the stern in preference to a parachute sea anchor deployed from the bow.

First, the JSD was developed and tested in conjunction with the US Coast Guard, and was specifically designed for helping small sail-boats survive in storm conditions, like those found during the 1979 Fastnet disaster. This event was Jordan’s primary motivation for developing the series drogue. It has been proven to work very successfully and protect boats using it from storm damage during its deployment. None of the ’98 Hobart fleet carried JSDs.

Second, due to the cutaway forefoot aspect of sail-boat design, most sail-boats are far more stable when using a drogue than when using a sea anchor. Don Jordan has an interesting post about this on the Jordan Series Drogue site, and there is no reason to think that the forces that apply to a sail-boat at anchor would not also apply to a sailboat lying to a sea anchor.

Third, the overall forces that are generated by a JSD are lower and the peak shock loading forces that the boat is subjected to is far lower by design. The design of the JSD allows it to gradually increase the resistance applied to the boat as the drogue line becomes more heavily loaded—and doesn’t have the issues with collapsing and suddenly re-deploying a parachute sea anchor does.

Fourth, Don Jordan had no financial interest in selling or making the JSD, as he put the idea and patents for it into the public domain after developing it.

One issue with the JSD is the point of attachment. The JSD is so powerful that potentially the attachment points need to be capable of carrying the full weight of the vessel. Years before the event described here, I had read somewhere where a seaman of the old school advocated running before a drogue in serious bad weather but he stressed the importance of fastening the drogue line at the stern quarter rather than at the counter. This allows the counter to lift in a following sea. I have experimented with this idea and it seems to work.

This is why on my boat these attachment plates are 8mm 316 stainless plates bolted externally onto the hull with bolts extending through the planking and top stringer/beam-shelf at each stern quarter. These fittings need to be tied into the structure of the boat as securely as the chain-plates for the rigging.

The bridle should be about three times as long as the transom width. If the transom is 6′ wide, the bridle for the JSD should be about 18′. This should give you sufficient length for the splices and to terminate the bridle lines properly. Ideally, one end of the bridle should be an eye-splice that is connected to the eye-splice at the end of the drogue by running the bridle line through the drogue’s eye-splice and then through its own eye-splice so the bridle line forms a ‘larkshead’ knot around the drogue line.

The other end should be spliced around a thimble and connected to the plate via a heavy shackle. Ideally, the bridle legs should be run through tubular polyester webbing to protect them from UV damage and chafe. These lines can be left permanently connected while on any blue water passage.

The JSD should be flaked into a bag or container, starting with the bridle end. This should leave the terminal end, with the weight, on top of the drogue line, and allow the drogue to be deployed by simple dropping the drogue’s terminal end into the water.

Since I’ve had the JSD I’ve never had occasion to deploy it… thanks be to providence. But it’s reassuring nevertheless…a bit like I imagine: walking through the worst street in the worst neighorhood… on a dark night with a loaded Glock in your coat pocket.