We knew it was too good to be true, right?

I’m referring to GPS, a phenomenon so utterly amazing that decades after its invention it still seems more fantasy than reality. After wandering the seas for millennia never quite sure of where in the watery world they were, sailors were given the gift of precise knowledge of their boat’s position on command.

When this gift first arrived, some of the skeptics among us really did say it was too good to be true. Don’t depend on it, they warned. The satellites could go haywire or fall out of the sky.

Well, the satellites are doing just fine and GPS remains reliable and accurate, not to mention cheap and available in all kinds of mundane electronic gizmos, but the prophecy that the gift could be taken away is starting to seem credible.

Thanks to an odd pairing of ruthless capitalism and weak-kneed government regulation, GPS navigation could be rendered untrustworthy and, as an auxiliary disaster, the millions of GPS receivers now in use could be made obsolete.

I wouldn’t blame readers who don’t know about this for thinking I’m writing science fiction. Why would anyone do anything to undermine one of the greatest inventions of the space age and why would the government approve it? Read on.

A company funded by a hedge-fund billionaire proposes to build a broadband cell-phone communications network it calls LightSquared. To do that, the firm needs a waiver from the Federal Communications Commission because its license is limited to low-power satellite communication and its plan calls for high-power land-based signals.

The FCC granted the waiver. That news was received with shock and horror by the makers and users of GPS devices and organizations that represent them, and for good reason. The LightSquared network has the potential to destroy GPS as we know it.

That could happen because the frequencies LightSquared would operate on are next to those used by GPS. Satellites in the GPS system send signals with minuscule amounts of power. LightSquared signals would be much stronger. To use a wind analogy, if GPS signals are a zephyr, LightSquared’s would be a Category 5 hurricane.

The LightSquared signals could in effect blow GPS signals out of the sky.

The FCC acknowledged that possibility in January 2011 when it issued the waiver with a condition—it would only take effect if the LightSquared network did not interfere with GPS.

In a tacit admission that its network would indeed be a threat to disable GPS, LightSquared announced the problem could be solved simply by installing filters on receivers and criticized GPS makers for not figuring this out. In October LightSquared introduced a filter made by a vendor that it said would protect receivers at a cost of $50 to $300 each.

GPS experts doubt the filters will work. And even if they did, how could the millions of GPS devices in use in the United States be retrofitted with the filters? And why should their owners have to pay to make the GPS service they depend on immune to mischief resulting from a company’s plan to profit from irresponsible use of the public’s airwaves?
Here’s a more perplexing question: How did a threat to GPS get this far?

By year’s end, voices opposing LightSquared had grown to a full-throated roar from a disparate army of GPS defenders.

Yet as this is written LightSquared remains undaunted. It confirmed that with a bold move in late December, sending the FCC a petition asking for a declaratory ruling endorsing its right as a radio spectrum licensee to put its system in place. It is making no claim it won’t interfere with GPS; in fact, it’s saying the GPS industry has no right to ask the FCC for protection from LightSquared.

I guess this shouldn’t be surprising. LightSquared is backed by Philip Falcone and his hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners. Falcone is a bold kind of guy.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission is trying to ban him from the securities industry because of misconduct involving subprime mortgages. (It also reported that the chairman of the FCC said the agency would consider such misconduct in deciding on the LightSquared license petition, an encouraging development.)

Naturally, I’m mad as hell about the threat to GPS. But also bewildered. I get it about LightSquared. There’s money to be made in 4G broadband communication. But what is the FCC thinking? How could this protector of the public’s airwaves even consider approving a system that interferes with GPS?

That question is so baffling some are suggesting the answer is political skulduggery. Some of Falcone’s political contributions have gone to Democratic Party causes, leading some Republicans in Congress to say this paved the way for kind treatment from the FCC under the Obama administration.

Falcone told Politico.com he’s a registered Republican and has given more to Republicans than Democrats and did not ask for or receive political favors.

You almost wish crony capitalism were at work here. At least that would make some sense out of the FCC’s eggshell-walking around LightSquared. Otherwise, how can the regulators not understand a conflict so simple it can be expressed in two short sentences:       

We don’t need another cell-phone network. We do need GPS.

There is a lot of chest-beating going on about the current state of the sailing world. Participation is down 40% since 1997, sailboat builders are folding, regattas are getting smaller and the sailing community seems to be in the doldrums.

There have been a lot of theories advanced on the whys of all this, ranging from the high cost of boating to the growing demands on family time. Nick Hayes, in his book
Saving Sailing, argues many have turned to highly structured activities and away from family-based multi-generational recreation. I’ve railed in these columns about how junior sailing has deteriorated with the advent of $4,000 prams, mommy boats and private coaches, and how the loss of interest by kids has added to the downturn. 
My view is a simple one: sailing stopped being fun.

Near our home is a 900-acre public park that we love because it’s not just beautiful, but free. There are walking trails and pavilions for picnics, exercise paths and ball fields, and a lake for sailing and kayaks. We stopped by on a recent drive, and ended up sitting by the sailing lake just watching people have fun. And I discovered the antidote for the sailing blues.

Near us, a family of three generations was enjoying a couple of boats for a day of sailing and a picnic at the water’s edge. One of the boats, essentially a square box, was ugly in such a charming way that She Who Must be Obeyed asked, “What the heck is that?” And thus I met Patrick Johnson and his wife, Joann. He explained that he was using the day for some practice, because he was heading for the Puddle Duck Racer World Championship in a couple of weeks. Huh?
I’ve been sailing for more than five decades, but I’d never heard of a Puddle Duck Racer (PDRacer to insiders). It is, in essence, a boat so simple that even the tool-challenged can build it in a couple of weekends in their garage. It is designed to be built from three sheets of plywood, and all the low-cost hardware comes from the local building supply store. You can build it for a couple of hundred bucks, including the latex house paint of your choice and the sail, which is a tarp trimmed to size.   
It is basically a box with a curved bottom and, get this, the plans are free! On the PDRacer website (www.pdracer.com), designer Shorty Routh was reminding readers that, with less than a month until the world championships in Oklahoma, there was still time to build a boat to compete.

Six hundred of these little boats have been registered with Routh all over North America since the first three were built in 2004, which is a number that gives me hope for the future of sailing.  And you know why they’re so popular?

Because they are fun!

You can sail them with a boatload of parents and kids, you can row them, you can hang an outboard on them. They fit on the top of even the smallest cars, and you can stand them up in your garage to store them. 

The PDRacer is, in a way, a development class that delights in keeping it simple and fun. Only the lower 10 inches of the hull are restricted, and even that has quarter-inch tolerances because, as Routh says, “Hey, these are being built by families, not professional craftsmen.” You can choose to build your PDRacer with a daggerboard or a leeboard (or even two leeboards). You can rig it with three-sided or four-sided sails, such as lateens, gunters, and sprits, and some have cuddies for stashing jackets.
More important, however, there is a PDRacer mentality that is all about fun. At the three-day world championship, only one day is set aside for actual racing. The rest of the time is, in Routh’s words, “a family festival of sailing.” There are prizes for the best costumes, a pirate beard contest, and youth events like the rain gutter regatta, where kids blow mini-sailboats down water-filled rain gutters. 

You’ve got to love this idea: every entrant has to bring a hand-made trophy and, from this bizarre collection, the first-place winner gets the first choice, second gets second, and so on. Picture that at the Star worlds or even the Optimist worlds.

It’s about fun.

If you aren’t sure you could build a Puddle Duck, the class helps organize “hatchings,” where several families gather over a few weekends to “hatch” a bunch of PDRacers with the help of experienced owners. It’s where parents and kids work together to build something they will enjoy together.

It’s about fun.

Depending upon how sophisticated you get (are you sewing your tarp/sail or using duct tape to hold it together?) you can build a PDRacer for as little as $100, but most are in the $250 range, says Routh. Johnson’s bright red PDRacer cost him exactly $417.60, but he admits that he bought a couple of deck hatches from a marine hardware store, thus driving up his cost, and he invested in a professionally stitched tarp from a sailmaker (PolySail International) that actually specializes in low-cost poly-tarp sails for home-built boats. Who knew such a sailmaker even existed? 

Johnson spent $109.95 on that sail but, on the other hand, his entire boat still cost $75 less than just the sail alone for an Optimist racer. Hmmmm.

Routh says the motto of the class is “Keep creative and get out on the water!” He adds, “We don’t build boats to impress people, we build boats to get on the water and
have fun.”

By the way, the buoys for the world championship? They’ll be inflatable duck pool toys from a discount store.
It’s all about fun.

 

Hauling out a sailboat at the end of the season is usually a sad event for most of us. It means cold weather is fast approaching and, with the exception of hardcore frostbiting, our chances of getting out on the local waters before next spring are nil.

I’d like to say I had a great sailing season this year, but I would be lying. I’d also be stretching the truth if I claimed to be anything less than ecstatic as my Bristol 27 Wind Dance was lifted by the robotic arms of a submerged boat hauling trailer and trucked 20 yards to its winter resting place.

For the past 16 years, ever since I purchased this classic beauty, the October haul day has been a weeper. I typically sailed twice a week, maybe more, even if it was just for a few hours after work. Having a boat in the water  gave structure to my weekends—beer and wind. But this year was different.

Shortly after the May launch, the aging 150 genoa tore down the middle like a favorite pair of jeans that had been stretched one too many times. Then both batteries decided to give up the ghost, leaving me with no instruments or nav lights.

When the engine started coughing early in the season I sensed what was coming next—carburetor problems, overheating, a bad fuel line and, finally, fuel separation apparently due to too much sweet corn in the tank. Right after that the bilge pump stopped working. So when haul day arrived, I was ready for the hard.

Unfortunately, the boat was not, nor was mother nature. The first of two annual haul dates on my tiny Nahant peninsula just north of Boston had been postponed because of bad weather. Since up to 40 boats come out of the water within a matter of hours, the folks at Jocelyn Marine Services, the boat transportation company, reasoned that pulling six boats on an unscheduled date before the next official haul out might relieve some of the pressure. Wind Dance was one of the six.

When the big trucks pulled into the wharf parking lot, the sun was blazing, the sky a cheerful blue. Lobsterman friend Mark Scaglione gave my wife Christine and I a lift to our mooring. Spray was coming over the gunwales as he angled through waves that were being agitated by 30-knot winds. It was obvious that the wind direction would not leave us in the lee, but would at least help push our boats into the open jaws of the robotic pads on the boat hauling trailers.

Once aboard Wind Dance, the hassles continued. We tried two different fuel lines without success. Christine and I exchanged a few choice words like couples who have been married for years occasionally do. I was in the crosshairs. Why didn’t you go to West Marine yesterday to buy a brand new fuel line? Weren’t you thinking? What’s the matter with you? Is the gas fresh? You know that good sailors are prepared.

Peter Koehler and Rob Tibbo, whose sailboats are moored near mine, called over by cell phone and radio, sensing I was under fire. Koehler’s wife, Paula, who later in the day was dubbed the Queen of Communications, had listened to our radio conversations on Ch. 69 and drove home to get a fresh tank of gas and new fuel line. Patrick Morse and Bob Cusack in the Nahant Dory Club’s Boston Whaler delivered the goods. Minutes later, Wind Dance’s engine started and stalled, started and stalled, but the glimmer of hope was upon us.

Back at the dock, Clayton Crabtree, supervisor of the boat hauling crew, was on the fence about whether I could come out because a working engine is required. I assured him by radio that I’d get the sucker fired up and keep it running long enough to get on the trailer, but he never lifted the VHF to his ear. Instead, Tibbo and the Queen of Communications intervened in my behalf.

Before Crabtree or anyone else could pound a wooden spike through my plans, longtime friend Tom Gutermuth pulled alongside in his Catalina 30. We tossed him bow and stern lines, stuffed some fenders between us, and he towed us to the concrete ramp where the haul was wrapping up.

I quickly dropped an anchor and let the boat settle into the stiff breeze. Morse and Cusack stood by in the Whaler, ready to yank us away from the unforgiving stone wall if the engine crapped out at the last second. Others like Jim Connolly gathered on the seawall, prepared to catch the extra-long bow and stern lines coiled on our deck. Cusack had already told the boat haulers that I would be coming in hot with one chance to get it right.
Finally, I got the hand signal to come on in. Christine brought up the anchor by hand. It was heavy with eel grass. I kept the engine running, made a half circle and steamed for the submerged trailer.

The 25-knot wind was gusting to 35 on the stern as I pushed the throttle, knowing that idling down would only stall the engine. I’d like to say my concentration resembled Luke Skywalker steering his X-Wing fighter into the Death Star, but I’m afraid it was more akin to Hollywood’s version of JFK taking out a wooden dock while learning to drive PT 109.

Crabtree expertly grabbed Wind Dance’s white hull with the trailer’s padded arms. The engine screamed and whined, the best it had run all season. When Crabtree ran his hand sideways across this throat, I cut the engine and everyone cheered.

Calantha Sears, the town’s First Lady who has witnessed nearly every launch and haul day for decades, later told me she was keeping her fingers crossed. “We were all pulling for you,” she said.

With the boat on the trailer, I made the sign of the cross, though I’m not particularly religious. It had been way too much drama, especially since I pride myself on coming in quietly and efficiently. Cusack compared my approach to a carrier pilot about to make a landing on a wing and a prayer.

“You snagged the hook on the third wire,” he chuckled.

The other five boats had come out seamlessly and I was happy for those skippers. I would have preferred their day, but sometimes it takes a whole village to haul a boat.

Even with the best of intentions I am not the most prolific blogger on the ocean. Somehow several months and nearly 5,000 miles of pretty amazing sailing have slipped by with nary a blog entry.  Sorry about that, lets catch up, at least a little bit.

I last left you blathering on about waypoints while Quetzal was lying to a mooring in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Now I am back in Fort Lauderdale. Since then we’ve sailed from Lunenberug to Bermuda and on to St. Martin.  We survived a gale that another boat did not, and that was sobering. We endured calms that tested our resolve and rang up $2,000 in satellite phone bills changing flights as the Atlantic wind machine went on strike. And now we’ve circled the Caribbean in three legs, visiting some of the nicest islands all the while reaching, for the most part, before very civilized trade winds. The ocean gives and takes away and always keeps you guessing.

The so-called weather window opened on November 7 and Quetzal cleared Lunenburg bound south. It was a crisp, cold, classic northern day, with a light but dense wind escorting us toward Bermuda on the rhumbline. I had a great and geographically diverse crew: Rolf and Mike from Minnesota, Pete from Alabama, Kristi from southern Georgia and John from Jacksonville, Florida. The southerners were bundled up like arctic explorers while the Minnesota boys thought it was balmy. Soon we’d all be decked in full foul weather gear racing before a northeast gale. But first we had to cross the Gulf Stream. 

A sinister loop in the current arched north and then northeast, and despite having the latest satellite imagery in hand and a weather router back home, I managed to steer right into it. That takes a real navigator! We spent 24 frustrating hours sailing at 7 knots through the water but making less than 4 knots toward Bermuda. We were wasting precious hours of perfect weather, something you know will come back to haunt you at those latitudes in November.  Luckily we managed to clear the wayward current just before the gale fully developed. 

Sadly the same can’t be said for Canadian solo sailor Herbert Marcoux. He left Lunenburg two days after we did in his 46-foot steel boat. He was an experienced mariner, having spent 18 years circumnavigating, and while his boat was a bit funky looking, it was stout. Unfortunately, a deep low that we hoped would track north of us reached south and strong northeast winds collided with the feisty Gulf Stream. South of the main body of the current we had winds steady at 40 knots, gusting to 50, and seas between 20 and 30 feet high.  It was exhilarating sailing. We reefed once, and then twice, then finally tied in the third reef.  The headsail was furled and the staysail was hanked on. Dressed down to storm canvass, Quetzal rode out the blow without missing a beat. Indeed, the 180 miles we logged during the blow was our best 24-hour run of the passage. 

Two days behind us, Marcoux was in a different universe. According the Canadian Coast Guard the winds were 60 knots and seas well over 10 meters high.  Like us, Marcoux was bound for Bermuda but he never turned up. We reached the island oasis in a slow seven days. When I called my Lunenburg friend, Alan Creaser, he was relieved to hear from us. He asked if we’d seen or heard from Marcoux. We hadn’t. A few days later the Canadian Coast Guard began searching for him.  By the time we finally reached St. Martin after a maddening passage of nine days, we learned that the Coast Guard had called off the search and pronounced the 68-year-old sailor as “lost at sea.”

With a willing and capable crew, well-found boat and a storm strategy, it would have been easy to feel like we’d survived and Marcoux didn’t because we were somehow better prepared, maybe even better sailors. But none of us felt that way. We were lucky, we had a two-day head start. Hebert Marcoux was terribly unlucky.  One window opened, another slammed shut.

I keep thinking about him and wonder why he foundered. Did a hatch give way and flood the boat? Was the boat rolled over, or even pitchpoled? Was he washed overboard? Did the boat sink slowly or was he overwhelmed by a monster wave.  We will never know. As sailors, the pact we make with Neptune, with nature, is as serious as it gets, deep ocean sailing is not a casual enterprise. 

Reaching before a soft Caribbean trade wind was a world away from, as my friend Christian Pshorr calls it, “the wilderness that is the ocean.” My new crew assembled at Captain Oliver’s Marina in Oyster Pond, St. Martin.   We were bound for Trinidad. Many islands littered our route. We ended up calling at Antigua, Guadeloupe, the Saints, Dominica, St. Lucia and Bequia during the 11-day passage. We had Dan and Deb from Oregon; my dear friend and longtime shipmate Eric from the island of Roatan; Abe, a potato farmer from New Jersey with a natural feel for the sea; David from New York City, who at age 71 was as spry as anyone else aboard; and Robert, an Illinois doctor by day, filmmaker by night and a man passionate about sailing. 

Say what you will about the French, but I love them and their subsidies. You can buy a fine bottle of Bordeaux in Guadeloupe, the Saints or Martinique for 6 or 7 euros.   In Antigua we explored Nelson’s Dockyard. In the Saints we drank a lot of wine. In Dominica my friend and guide Edison took us up the Indian River. In St. Lucia we relaxed and drank more wine. In Bequia we watched the Canadians beat the U.S. for the gold medal in the best hockey game I have ever seen. Then things got interesting. 

Sailing south from St. Lucia we had a great reach on the windward side of St. Vincent. There was no reason to fire up the engine. However, as we eased into Admiralty Bay, Bequia’s storied anchorage, I went to crank the diesel. Nothing, nada. We dropped the hook under sail, and while most of the crew went ashore, Abe and I worked on the engine. Abe’s a farmer and has conned old diesel tractors back to life for years, and I am a Kentucky mechanic in my soul, and always get the engine running one more time. This time we were stymied. Alas, we’d sail to Trinidad. And we did—we had a great sail, again staying upwind of the Grenadines and Grenada to avoid wind shadows. We clipped along all day and night and in the morning we were just 10 miles from Bocas del Drago, the mouth of the dragon that guards the harbor at Chaguaramos. Then the wind died. We drifted, and drifted and drifted some more. It was utterly breathless. We drifted back toward Grenada. There was not a wisp of wind. The crew had flights to catch. Swallowing my pride I called for a tow. Soon a small skiff emerged on the horizon. As they eased along side it seemed doubtful that the small outboard would have the oomph to pull us home. But it did, and a few hours later we were tied to the dock at Coral Cove Marina. It was an ignominious ending to a nice passage to be sure and another clear reminder that Neptune’s in charge out there. The next blog, which I promise will turn up sooner than later, will cover legs two and three of Quetzal’s Caribbean odyssey.  Stay tuned.