Emotions

A2: "I wish anger didn't exist as an emotion."

A1 and I have been arguing quite a lot over the past few days. I guess he's been pushing my buttons and I have been explosively reactive. When I ask him to help with something and he responds with, "I'm not in the mood to be helpful right now," the fireworks fly. And A2 ends up in tears.

A2: "I wish we only had two emotions: sadness and happiness."

A1: "Sadness? Why wouldn't you only want happiness?"

A2: "We need sadness because, if a baby were hungry but happy all the time, they wouldn't be able to tell us they need to eat. So they could starve to death."

A1: "I think anger's important too, because it helps us through our fears. Anger always leads to fear. And anger comes from fear."

A2: "And if we didn't have fear, we might just walk up to a cougar and say, 'Here kitty, kitty ...' and then, Gulp! We'd be eaten by the cougar."

Lifeguard in Training

Yesterday, we spent most of the day at the marina pool. There were three families, totalling 7 kids. Aidan hung out with his friend, Brendan (8), Austin was mostly practicing diving to the bottom of the deep end, and trying to swim underwater for as long as possible, and Aaron was in and out of the pool, playing with balls. As you can imagine, it was a busy pool.

The other children were aged 6 and 2. The 2-year-old boy (Miles) spent most of his time playing at the edge of the pool with a Playmobil boat on a string. He's not keen to swim without his mum for now. He wears water wings to keep him safe, poolside.

Miles doesn't like to wear the water wings all the time, and at some point, he wasn't wearing them anymore.

There were three mothers by the pool, all of them trying to get a better internet connection than we've been able to get with the marina.

None of us saw him go in.

I remember hearing Austin's voice, "Whoa! Miles." I was standing at the shallow end, looked up and saw Miles floating on his back and appearing to be gasping for air. It was an awful sight, but Austin was going to Miles and speaking to him calmly. When I got to the deep end, I couldn't reach Miles (he was about 1.5 meters from the edge), Austin was supporting his head and swimming him to me. I picked Miles up under his arms as I was saying, "What a good boy!" (it was all I could think of at the time) and passed him directly to his mum.

Due to Austin's quick and calm response, there was no panic and I didn't see fear in Miles' eyes.

I think we all learned something from this event.

For me, being the mother of a boy who is only 4 months older than Miles, I was really struck by the seriousness of what happened, and how bad it could have been. I'm even more vigilant about watching Aaron near water, and we keep him in his lifejacket most of the time.

Since Aaron wears his lifejacket so much, I've once seen him boldly follow Austin into the sea from the shore, he was submerged, his blonde hair floated up, then he surfaced, sputtering and crying. Fortunately for us, we all saw what happened and Austin was right there. Aaron is so accustomed to being buoyant in the water, that he is less fearful now, and he's not always aware that he's not in his lifejacket. I think Miles may have thought he still was wearing his water wings when he went into the pool to fetch his boat (he told his mum he was trying to get his boat when he went into the pool).

I noticed that Miles was found floating on his back. All my kids were afraid to swim on their backs when they first learned to swim, and Aaron is still terrified of this position. Miles was practicing leaning back into the water earlier in the day, with his mum. His big sister is a very strong swimmer and he's seen her swim on her back a lot. We don't know how long Miles was in the water, but I think he was better off on his back and able to get some air. I want to start helping Aaron to get more comfortable lying back in the water.

Austin's calm response and the absence of fear and panic in his rescuers has left Miles with a positive memory of the event. He told his mummy that he went "swimming under the water." He doesn't think he had an accident and he isn't more fearful of water. I remember a swimming instructor telling me that it can be difficult for parents to teach their children to swim, because the parents are too nervous about letting their little ones put their heads under water. Sometimes the parents, themselves, are nervous about being submerged. I remember that teacher being able to get Austin, at the age of 1, to hold his breath as she glided him underwater for a couple seconds. The technique was to blow air into his nostrils, then immediately bring his whole body, head first, under water. I have to admit that I was always hesitant to do this move. I'd blow into his nostrils, see the look of bewilderment in his face, then take him underwater too late, or I couldn't bring myself to take his face into the water at all. Anyway, I was reminded how much it helps people to learn to swim with teachers who are confident swimmers.

My final observation is that, when there are several adults supervising together, it's easy for us to have a false sense of security and to let down our guard. After this experience, I hope to be even more careful about keeping our kids safe around water.

First fish

Austin caught his first fish. It was a small (15cm) Horse Eye Jack caught while trolling in True Blue Bay Grenada.

We were shopping in St. Georges Grenada at a marine store earlier in the day and decided to buy some fishing gear for use while sailing. Austin was pretty excited about this. He found a book section that contained a few references to salt water fishing. He picked up one of these, a small 35 pager, and read it through. He then picked out some large flashy lures in the hopes that we'll be able to catch a large-ish fish. He really wanted to go after the big marlins but we just don't have the need or skills or equipment for that kind of fish. We also decided to pick up a small rod, reel and lure kit for the boys to share. It was on this rod that he caught his fish.

When we got home that evening I showed him how to tie a lure onto the line and how to cast. He caught on pretty quickly then also did some jigging. After we had dinner the two of us took the dingy out into the bay and trolled for an hour or so.

How do anchors work

An intense squall blew up last night. The wind was around 25 knots, gusting to 30 (a little over 55 kph). Not a biggie as far as these things go but was one of the strongest we've experienced. At this velocity the boat is very actively swinging back and forth on its anchor chain, it's hard to hear someone speak 20 feet away and is strong enough to knock you off your feet if you are unsteady (e.g. due to waves). After our initial surprise at the sudden increase in wind, we quickly took down anything that could blow away then let out more anchor chain and waited for the squall to blow itself out, watching other boats take similar cautionary actions. An hour later and everything was back to normal.

However, one question remained. Why did we let out more anchor chain? The boys were curious, so the next day we had a little discussion of the physics of anchors and a little demonstration.

old style

Anchors use two forces to hold boats in place. Friction and gravity. When most people think of anchors they picture a big metal fish-hook-like object attached to the end of a chain or rope. While those types of anchors are still in use, most these days look like some kind of plough or claw. However, your anchor is actually the secondary thing holding the boat in place. Most of the time (in settled conditions) you arrange things so that there is no or very little stress on the anchor itself. The primary thing holding your boat in place is the chain.  This is achieved through a bit of friction, gravity and angles.

modern plough

A boat at anchor creates a right angle triangle between the anchor on the bottom, the sea floor right under the boat and the boat's bow. Anchors hold best when the chain pulls along the sea floor in a horizontal direction, dragging the anchor and with the best designs, digging them in deeper and deeper. Anchors usually break free with little effort if the pulling force is approaching vertical. This means a smaller angle at the anchor is better. This is the friction part of the equation (anchor is using friction to stick to the bottom and dig in). In addition, the anchor chain is heavy and wants to lie on the bottom. This creates even more friction as the chain drags on the sea floor. Increasing the amount of chain that we had out last night made a smaller (better) angle where the anchor meets the sea floor which increased the amount of force (wind) required to move the anchor or break us free.

However, letting out more chain has another positive effect that isn't always obvious and this is where the demonstration came in. What I wanted to show is that the weight of the anchor chain alone significantly improves the holding and in calmer conditions is almost the only force that is needed to hold our boat in place. The anchor chain makes the top side of the triangle and is quite heavy. As the angle decreases, the force (wind) required to keep the chain (top of the triangle) straight increases (it's a non-linear increase in effort but I don't know what the factor is).

To demonstrate this we took one of our long, heavy dock lines, attached it to a cleat at the bow then ran it back along the boat deck to the cockpit. First I had the boys try to lift the line and hold it straight from 10 feet from the bow. They did this with ease. Then they stepped back 5 feet and tried again. This time it was more difficult. Then they stepped back another 5 feet. At this point Aidan couldn't get the line to stay straight except when he yanked on it (this simulates a boat surging on its anchor in the wind). They stepped back another 5 feet and now Aidan couldn't straighten the line at all and Austin could only do it by yanking. Back another 5 feet and neither of them could straighten it.

We discussed that each time they stepped back they needed to lift and keep raised more line, which increased the total weight they needed to lift. Each time they stepped back they were also making the line more horizontal, which has a similar effect to moving farther from the fulcrum of a lever (only it has the inverse effect of increasing the amount of force required rather than reducing it).

Singing songs

Austin has been learning to sing several Raffi songs from our song book. This was inspired a few days ago while we were sailing from Bequia to Mayreau. To pass the time my mother (who is visiting) and Austin started to sing Baby Beluga. They couldn't remember all the words so Austin pulled out our Raffi song book and they sang the whole album. Austin has been singing several of these songs each day and has learned day-o, Baby Beluga and Kumbaya. He sings other songs from the book to Aaron each night.

Corrosion

At dinner we all chatted about corrosion and two different way corrosion affect boats (my grandfather was a corrosion engineer which is how we got onto the topic).  The first type is your everyday rust. This is where the corrosion happens simply by exposing the metal to moisture in the air. The second type we talked about is galvanic corrosion where a metal higher in the galvanic series steals electrons from a metal lower in the series. The farther apart the metals are the faster the reaction.


We then talked about various ways we could protect against corrosion.


 - paint over metal to reduce the amount of moisture contacting the metal
 - isolating metals that are far apart in the galvanic series 
 - installing sacrificial anodes to prevent important metals like a stainless steel propeller shaft from corroding when in sea water

School for hermit crabs

When we were visiting the little sandy island of Petit Tabac (scenes from Pirates of the Caribbean were filmed here) Austin and several of the other kids at the beach (two families from Norway and one from Australia/England) decided to build a "school" for the hermit crabs that they found crawling through the sand. The school was built of sand with high walls, tunnels and archways. They fortified the outer wall against the surf using large blocks of white sand stone.

There were a couple places where roots from some of the shore plants created a natural bridge from inside the school to the outside. The kids decided that if a crab was good enough to find this escape route and be able to navigate it then they wouldn't be re-captured and put back. Kind of like a graduation!

Austin noticed that most of the crabs preferred a specific, swirly shell type. The crabs didn't fight or eat each other but seemed to be helping each other escape by building pyramids of crabs where the last one would be able to climb high enough to escape over the wall.