Driven mad by noisy halyards, a sailor plans his revenge
Issue 34: Jan/Feb 2004
I’M BAD. I ADMIT IT. I’VE BRAZENLY JUMPED aboard other people’s boats without even asking “permission to come aboard” and made modifications to their rigging.
I must confess to some timidity, however. I’ve only done this when no one was aboard, and it was usually about 2 a.m. when the slap of their halyards against their aluminum masts rivaled Chinese water torture.
You’ve heard the sound — halyards slapping the aluminum mast on a windy day. At night in a marina, this is like someone knocking on the door all night.
My wife, Elsie, and I spend lots of time aboard our schooner, Delphinus, visiting ports along the Eastern seaboard. Some of this time is spent in marinas, and the noise of slapping halyards is our particular nemesis.
Don’t get me wrong; I believe in everyone’s freedom to do his own thing, but when it comes to blatant lack of consideration for your neighbors, I draw the line. And I secure the lines.
I knew a kid once at a yacht club in New Jersey who loved the sound of slapping halyards. He said it was soothing. He kept his sailboat on a trailer next to the house under his bedroom window so the halyard slap could lull him to sleep at night. He later became a psychiatrist. I suspect his next-door neighbor was his first patient.
I’ve tried subterfuge: “Aren’t you afraid that slapping halyard will wear away the anodizing on your mast?” Or: “I’ve heard the Dacron strands weaken when they keep slapping the mast like that.” The response is usually a grunt; he sees through my little scheme, and he’s not buying it.
Planning revenge
I’ve lain in my bunk at night with my good ear buried in the pillow, wishing my bad ear was a little worse than it really is, and planning my revenge: “I’ll go over there with a knife and cut the danged halyard.”
Sometimes when drifting into the twilight zone, or after a general anesthetic such as Mount Gay, I envision climbing aboard with my cable cutters and dropping the mast into the water. Of course I only dream of these things. My mother taught me to respect other people’s property. I’m trapped in middle-class morality.
There are lots of cute little gimmicks on the market designed to keep the halyards from slapping. They work. I’ve tried them all. But they’re actually unnecessary, and I’ve discovered they don’t float. Just tying halyards off to the shrouds or flipping them around the spreaders solves the irritation problem and undoubtedly prolongs the lives of the halyards and the sanity of your neighbors.
It’s not just other people who cause the problems. I can be the culprit too. It usually happens in the middle of the night when the wind picks up from a new direction. I’m in a deep sleep. Claudia Schiffer has invited me for cocktails and has excused herself to change into something more comfortable, when the sound seeps through: slap, slap, slap.
“Nuts! I forgot about the flag halyard. Maybe it will stop.” It doesn’t.
My wife clears her throat. That’s my cue. I crawl out of the bunk in my pajama bottoms, mumbling to myself, and slide the hatch back. Why do the slides only make that awful noise in the middle of the night?
Not alone
I’m just finishing the job of tying off the halyard and am starting to wake up when the light of a cigarette from the cockpit in the next slip tells me I’m not alone, and I see two outlines watching me. I feel like an idiot out there in my pajama bottoms with bare feet on a deck wet with dew, so I affect an air of nonchalance, causing me to trip over the coaming as I enter the cockpit and bump my head on the boom. The hatch squeals like a pig again as I close it, and the form in the forward bunk rolls over.
“I’ve got to fi x those slides one of these days,” I mumble to myself, “Maybe tomorrow.” I slip my cold, wet feet under the covers, hoping I can resume where I left off. All is quiet now. I’ve done my duty in preserving peace and tranquility.
OK, so the sound of halyards slapping doesn’t bother you, and those it does bother are just paranoid. Well, it’s the same as the kids in public places who blare hard rock from their portable radios at levels approaching the threshold of pain. They’re destroying their neighbor’s environment just as certainly as if they were throwing garbage overboard.
So, if you’re in a marina and the schooner Delphinus is in the next slip, please watch those slapping halyards — I don’t want to disappoint Claudia Schiffer twice. That would really try my patience.
Now, where did I put those cable cutters?
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