20090721: noises

i am inspired to do a series on "things that go bump in the night." it is funny how on a boat such as cricket, not all that big, say, compared to your house, that there can be so many noises that are very dificult to figure out where they are coming from! especially when all is "quiet" at night time while you're laying cozy in your bunk. many times the wind will cause a hailyard (a line used to raise the sails) to bump against the mast and make a sound to keep even the heaviest of sleepers from dozing too heavily. when you are moored in a slip (a spot for a single boat on a dock), and there are hundreds of other boats in slips all around you, and the wind picks up it is amazing how loud all the haiiyards banging away on all those boats can be! it sounds like a bell choir gone crazy! it is common courtesy to keep this from happening on your boat, especcially around other boats, but it's amazing how many people allow their boats to clang away. when kell (the previous owner of cricket) was with us, he would get up and go over to some of the worst hailyard banger offenders, board their boats and fix the ringing of the bells himself! i admit, i did do this once myself... so that pam could sleep better,  of course. anyway, when there is a strange noise coming from somewhere on the boat, lines are one of the first things to check, but those strange noises aren't always so easily traced...
last night while pam and i were playing a rousing game of backgammon in the cabin we heard what sounded like rain outside. i went to go close some hatches, but no rain falling. hummm. went outside. no rain. there were even a pile of stars shining above. i looked all around the deck of the boat to see if i could find the source of the noise. i could find no clues. couldn't even hear the sound at all. i went back below and there was that sound again. strange, but oh well. we went to sleep to the sound of the ghost rainfall.
this morning when we woke, it was still "raining." the sun was shining hotter n blazes. hardly a cloud in the sky. i poked my head into the head, into the galley, into the stern berth, and the noise seemed equally loud in each area. i started putting my ear against this and that and did find that it sounded loudest against the hull of the boat.
later today met a guy, whose name happens to be jimmy carter. nice guy. a fellow sailor. he'd been sailing the bay and the bahamas for many years. he gave us a ride (you may read the interesting details of this saga from pam's blog today). while we were riding along i told him about this peculiar sound. he laughed, and said that many a sailboat owner had heard that sound, and layed awake worrying that some electrical wires were frying beneith the surface of where they could not reach. he said the answer is much simpler and less worrysome than that. the noise is produced by little sea critters, such as shrimp, eating away at the vegetation growing on the underside of the boat! sweet! i don't want vegetation growing on the hull of cricket, so i welcome those shrimpies to dine away! now that sound will be as welcome as rain on the roof while i'm sleeping!