The Sea

Steeple Point

/ Bill / 1 Comment

It has been well over a year since I last posted here. There are reasons for this and I will talk about them in time.

But now that I am ready to start again, I find that the title  ‘bill’s boatblog’ does not adequately cover what I want to say.  I want to reflect wider horizons. However, I don’t want to start a new blog – life’s too short.  Hence the new title.

I have changed the font but kept the general layout – there is a lot of historical material that I have posted over the past six or seven years that I would like to keep and one or two readers may find  the book references useful.

WordPress has developed into a much more sophisticated software package since my first timid attempts at posting.  This is a good thing – we all like to move forward. My first thoughts were that more sophistication means more complication – the process taking over the content. In fact, the changes have made it easier to post on this site. I look forward to more posts.

~~~

Steeple Point - standard

I have chosen Steeple Point – a place I have mentioned often. It plays an important part in my story and now that I am moving on from my day job, I want to have a physical base with a long personal connection from which to develop the blog.  I could have used a street we have lived in – Belle Vue or Cavendish Road or South Pallant or Martins Lane  or Clonbern Road or Nayland Rd South or Stockbridge Gardens or Paradise Road or others. Yes, there are more but none have the nautical connection I am looking for. Steeple Point stretches into the sea. I knew this place before I was old enough to know I knew it.

And there’s more. If the Earth were flat and your eye a perfect instrument, you could stand on Steeple Point, look due west, and see, first of all, very slightly to the north, Cape Clear Island and Fastnet Rock and then, on the southern tip of Ireland, Mizen Head , followed by no land at all until Quirpon Island with L’Anse aux Meadows beyond on the very northern tip of Newfoundland some 1,900 nautical miles away. All between is sea and ocean, wide horizons swept by wind and weather,

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~~~

I will still talk about the boat, and I still have an eye for Greek fishing boats particularly those in Crete. They will feature, as will the past, especially the trading ketches of North Cornwall and the Bristol Channel. But there will also be occasional notes about what is going on around me as a I age in an increasingly complex world. Like it or not, all our horizons are changing. We need to recognise those changes.

Bude, Sunday

/ Bill / 1 Comment

Bude, Sunday, cloudy skies, low tide

Beginning of the season, the RNLI out in force

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The beach crew were checking their gear

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The lifeboat crew were about to launch on exercise.

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Elsewhere, the surf school was in full swing.

~~~

I had just been to my favourite bookshop, Books by the Sea, which was fatal. I was walking across a beach carrying two books having narrowly avoided buying a third.

The first was a good copy of Eric Hiscock’s Voyaging Under Sail, a 1977 edition of a book originally published in 1959. It is a companion to Cruising Under Sail which I bought many years ago.

Eye-brows are usually raised when I return home with more ‘boat books’. The question has even been asked, “Why buy books when you can get most of the information for free in easily digested packages via Google?” Well, maybe you can, but you don’t get the author.

Even if the technology is outdated,( and it certainly is in the chapters on electrics and photography), Eric and Susan Hiscock’s books reflect their day-to-day learning from their own experience and their continual application of other ideas that they have picked up in their travels. The knowledge, skills and attitudes reflected here are hard won,

Put glibly, their’s is on-the-job learning. Those of us who spend a lot of time book learning a) should get out more, and b), as importantly, should very carefully pick the authors we learn from. With that in mind, the Hiscock’s books should be compulsory reading for anyone who wishes to put their nose beyond the breakwater.

~~~

I was dubious about the second book, then bought it anyway – The Design of Sailing Yachts, by Pierre Gutelle.

This is technical stuff. “The author first considers the air, wind, water and wave and then goes on to the theory of aero- abnd hydro-dynamics and such topics as friction, form-drag, cavitation and viscosity. There follow chapters on the equilibrium of both transverse and longitudinal stability of sailing yachts . . .”

It is full of diagrams, graphs and formulae, a combination that I would normally run a mile to avoid. However, I made myself comfortable in my mother-in-law’s front room, ignored the football on the television and had a go. A while later, I realised I was absorbed. This was physics at a much higher level than I normally tackle, put in a way that I can understand. Extraordinary!

Sailing Blue Mistress has taken on a new dimension.

Two yachts, wind, tide . . . and a garden.

/ Bill

“Kissing will go out of fashion when the gorse ceases to bloom.”

No chance – the gorse is still looking good.

We have worked all morning and need to walk away from it. The coast path is the obvious choice – a stretch between Brixham and Dartmouth the easiest to reach. As we descend to Scabbacombe Head, a cold wind blows from north of west, sunshine intermittent.

We watch a  sloop-rigged yacht working its way up from the south towards Dartmouth. As she closes the shore, the combination of  wind and tide is taking her too far to the east of the Mew Stone – by at least a half mile. She tacks and it is immediately obvious that the strength of the tide and the direction of the wind will make the offshore tack even less beneficial. The genoa is furled, she comes about again, motoring strongly under mainsail alone.

Twenty minutes later she rounds the Mew Stone (on the left of the picture below) and lowers the mainsail in the later afternoon light. At the same time, she is joined by another yacht that completes a fast spinnaker run – with the benefit of a favourable wind and tide. She has sailed from Start Point in the background, keeping to the south of  the Skerries bank, which stretches for three miles this side of Start, parallel with her course across the bay.

Start Point is on one the great south coast headlands that the sailing ships marked as they came up-Channel –  Lizard, Start (Point), Portland (Bill) and (the Isle of) Wight, before heading through the Straights of Dover and on to the Thames Estuary or the North Sea and Baltic ports. Now, thanks to the the Traffic Separation Scheme in the Channel, it is the down-Channel traffic that marks the headlands – but, given modern navigation aids, they do so more often out of interest than necessity.

The yachts head or home, we meet two walkers keen to make the pub in Kingswear before evening, and then we drop down into one of those folds of this coastline that has generated a micro-climate of its own, a complete contrast to the scenery of a few minutes before.

This is the Coleton Fishacre garden – a tiny valley throbbing with pent-up energy – plants ready to burst into spring.

The camellias are coming into flower . . .

. . . and the tree ferns are splendid.

The steep climb takes us level with the house and the stunning rill.

But we have visited before and walk on – intent on a cream tea before the final 3/4 mile climb back to the car. As we drive home, we remember the two yachts that should now be berthed safely in their Dartmouth marina. Only one of us wishes he had been on board!

The Voyage of the Storm Petrel

/ Bill / 4 Comments
I am writing this on Blue Mistress. It’s 1230 on Saturday. There is a constant flow of traffic across Laire Bridge half a mile upstream, and, earlier, someone decided to try out his hovercraft.These must be the noisiest vessels ever invented.
It’s overcast and slightly cold and I am considering lighting the stove. Today is the top of the spring tides and the tide is going down fast. Low tide is around 1430. The mud along the rivers edge is rapidly increasing. Boats nearby are aground. We should have just enough water to float.
There is little wind for sailing. I have cleaned up below and have some jobs on deck to do later. In the meantime, I prefer to write.
– – – –
Three years ago I had an email from a Clarissa Vincent commenting on the blog site. I was pleased  she had contacted me because she owned a Folkdancer and had noticed the reference to a Folkboat derivative. Well, at the time, I barely knew what a Folksong was, let alone a Folkdancer (which was why I had set up the blog in the first place). So I appreciated the photograph and learnt about Folkdancers . Clarissa’s boat was called Storm Petrel, which I thought was a great name for a boat.
She also suggested that I start a Folksong Association. Now, it so happens that the last thing I want to do is to start a formal group in anything, but particularly where my boat is concerned. Call me stand-offish if you like, but organising clubs is no longer my scene. People run away to sea to avoid that sort of thing. So, having appreciated Clarissa’s comments, I felt that, if she was intent on forming clubs, then we were going in different directions. That is how blogs go. Some contacts are single comments, some continue for a while, and others result in genuine appreciation and a long-term relationship. But you are aware of where the contacts come from and why – or you think you are . . .
A couple of weeks ago, Bill’s log – (yes, I know), mentioned a book written by the same Clarissa Vincent – The Voyage of Storm Petrel, Britain to Senegal Alone in a Boat. Bill wrote a good review. You can read his account on the link above. I remembered Clarissa’s comments and enthusiasm about Storm Petrel. I bought the book and have been enjoying it ever since – enjoying it and realising that I owe her an apology. Clubby?? Certainly not. I got it wrong, Clarissa. I’m sorry.
– – –
I’ve lit the stove. We have about .5 metre beneath the keel. The tide is slackening but still dropping.
I want to tell you why I like this book.
Between 2002 and 2004, Storm Petrel made a voyage that began in Bristol to sail far enough south to enjoy a climate warm enough for a gecko. Clarissa found her geckos in Portugal and she eventually reached Dakar taking in Spain, Portugal etc. on the way.  When she contacted me in 2006, this was all behind her. I knew nothing of it and was too ‘slow’ to find out.
Somebody once said that everyone has one novel inside them. We all have one great voyage inside us too. A few – very few, have the ken to carry it out. By ‘voyage’ I don’t mean a shiny cruise, I mean a journey. Some people become hooked on travel and are always on the move, but nine times out of ten, just one journey stands out. It has nothing to do with where they go, it is all about the getting there.
Not surprisingly I leap at books that feature boats similar in size to Blue Mistress because I’m interested in what other people do and whether I can use it on the boat. I learnt some technical stuff from this one, but I learnt even more about the people Clarissa met and the places she visited and her insight from the experience. I particularly sympathise with her contrasting Peniche and Castrais in Portugal. I have been to neither but would recognise the difference between the working town and the tourist resort – and which was the more interesting for the single-hander.
Also, her description of the traditional Portuguese working craft. Her comment: “The expression of diverse and extreme forms was largely eradicated from our over-rational and technologically dominated lives.” (p.155) sounds far more formal here than it does in the book but it chimes perfectly with the ‘For love of a boat’ series in this blog.
More than this, in her candour, she has brought out that aspect of single-handed sailing which should be translated as ‘a journey made single-handed’. Yes, there’s the boat and the sea and all the things that have to be joined up to make them work together – sails and rope and navigation and engines and sleep and weather and ports and so on, but amongst all this is a person growing.
“The gecko hunter must have solitude and a delicate process of organisation and problem solving went on in my thoughts whenever I strolled alone. The winding ways of my gecko hunting and sailing were a carefully trodden path, a solitary fairy path of balance between letting go of and holding on to the world. Selfish? – completely. Content? – deeply.” (p. 167)
Clarissa has written the music of her journey. If you listen to the words, you will learn from her book. Mendelsohn wrote that ‘music cannot be expressed in words, not because it is vague  but because it is more precise for words’. Many try, few succeed. This book gets closer than most. That the author plays both saxophone and guitar is no surprise.
In the years since she has moved on – a neglected yacht rescued and turned into a great houseboat . . . Storm Petrel sold, a different sort of trip hinted at. But my guess is that this voyage will always remain special. I wish her well.
– – –
The tide’s turned, we didn’t touch bottom.
– – –
“. . . sailing away in search of paradise will not make one happy and content if one is not already happy and content.” Clarissa Vincent 2003.

Short Story

/ Bill

Google captured Teignmouth entrance at low spring tide. At high tide the  sand bars are covered. Teignmouth is a working port. Several ships a week safely navigate this channel.

On 30th January, a large wave picked up the Girl Rona, a local trawler and dropped her onto the sandbank to the north of the channel. The fishing boat capsized and the five crewmen took to the water, to be rescued within half an hour by the local lifeboat. The wind was easterly and strong and remained so for the next three or four days.

The picture below was taken on 4th February. The main hatch had been opened and the catch had floated free,  to be consumed by thousands of seagulls – to the relief of the local council

The sand is constantly moving as river meets sea and the channel is continually dredged for shipping to enter and leave the port. The longer the boat lies there, the more the sand will build up around her and fill her hold.

At the first opportunity, a salvage operation must get under way.

Sunday, 5th February, the gear has been unloaded and fuel pumped out.

Lines were attached . . .

. . . and tested

The strain is taken and the boat begins to upright.

There is much discussion. Several hundred ‘experts’ watching from the shore all know how to do this better.

The afternoon wears on.  The salvage boats are in the channel. It would seem that the sand has built up between them and the trawler.

As the late afternoon sun catches the pier. . .

. . . she begins to move . . . but rolls over again.

By now the tide has ebbed and the operation is finished for the night.

The boat was finally freed the following night, “floating and stable at 0300 and back in harbour at 0430 on Tuesday morning.”.

This afternoon, there were five men on board . . . working hard. For them the story continues.

An exhilarating blow today

/ Bill

Teignmouth (Approaches)
Sunday Jan 15, 2012 UT/GMT
▼  03:40 1.1m
▲  10:10 4.4m
▼  16:00 1.2m
▲  22:40 4.1m
50º33′.0N 3º29′.0W
Strong winds are forecast.
24 hour forecast
0600 UTC Sun 15 Jan – 0600 UTC Mon 16 Jan
Wind  Southeast 5 to 7, occasionally 4 later.
Sea state   Moderate or rough.
Weather     Occasional rain in far west, otherwise fair.
Visibility  Good, occasionally moderate.

10:30  Merle approaching Teignmouth on the top of the tide . . .

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. . . an exhilarating ride through the entrance (missed it) . . .

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. . . ending in a tricky turn and stern-first into her berth.

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Can this be good for a car?

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Exmouth and the entrance to the Exe Estuary in the distance

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No takers for morning coffee

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Dear George: singlehanded

/ Bill

Dear George

I am sorry it has taken so long to reply to your letter. As I mentioned the other day, the day job is proving a handful. You work hard throughout a long career and, at the very end, with the next step beckoning, you find yourself jumping through endless regulatory hoops that appear to have been created by someone in a hurry to finish a school project. One day I’ll tell you about it – ‘nuff said for now.

– – –

You say you want to sail and you are thinking of buying a boat of your own. You have sent me a lot of questions. Of course, I am flattered to be asked, but it would take a master mariner and his mate – the gnarled old yachtsman, a year to answer these – and still give them an excuse for another beer. So, before I wade in . . .

  • I am neither a master mariner – nor an old yachtsman (let alone gnarled);
  • What you get is not an expert’s guidance, more a fellow crew’s comments;
  • All my answers will come from my own experience such that it is – and if I quote someone else I will tell you (whether I can remember who it is or not);
  • You have to decide whether it is useful or not – and if you want to come back at me, that’s OK. We’ll both learn something.

– – –

You bring up the single-handed question.

Here’s my answer: “If you have to ask whether or not you should sail single-handed, the answer is no, don’t – go to sea with a crew and enjoy the company.”

The whole point of being single-handed is to be able to make those decisions for yourself. You do the preparation beforehand, you work out the potential problems, you solve the extra challenges as they come along. You run the boat – every aspect of it. You can seek answers from as many people as you like, but ultimately the responsibility is yours and yours alone.

Among many other things, (and we can talk about these later), you have to enjoy your own company. You have to live with your own mistakes, and your own triumphs. There will be no applause.

I agree with Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s comment, “ The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn’t subdue you and make you abject. It’s a stimulating loneliness.” I might even substitute the word ‘aloneness’ for ‘loneliness’.

A crew is a different matter.

Here is a question for you. Family aside, if you had a choice, who would you have aboard? Someone who can stay focussd, someone who knows one end of a rope from another, someone who can work close to other people without getting their ego in the way – (that’s a misquote from a sixties film by the way).

Do you want a crew that is excitable and can’t sit still? Someone who is always on the move? You might if you are in a twenty-minute America’s Cup race, but perhaps not if you are on a gentle cruise down the coast to Falmouth. It depends how long you intend to stay together, doesn’t it.

Of course, you don’t always get the choice. On s boat, you have to learn to live close with all sorts of people. Now there’s a topic . . .

I hope this is the sort of reply you are after.

I will sleep on your other questions and get back to you later.

Bill

The Eye of the Beholder

/ Bill

Thank you, Max, for your comment. I have taken it on board. This is for you.

I stopped writing the blog for a while because the rest of life took over. Now I’m looking back again and wondering where the cumulative experience lies – what am I learning? Hence the following:

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I slipped the mooring and motored the mile down to the Citadel. There was no wind, and very few boats out this early. I had Plymouth Sound more or less to myself.

With sails set – mainsail and genoa, we barely made headway, the tide doing most of the work. I poured a coffee from the flask and found a biscuit. Time to enjoy the moment. Time to reflect.

Two or three fishing boats emerged from Sutton Harbour, hustling their separate ways past me and out to the open sea.

This one caught my eye.

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They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Well, there is beauty here but not necessarily the beauty of lines and colour, not in the magazine-image sense anyway. The beauty here comes from all that has gone before and all that is to come from this boat. It’s not so very different from the Ceres that I have posted on a number of times. We do like her lines but, in reality, she was a Westcountry trading ketch – it was the work she did that made her. (Tugster will understand this).

Passing in front of me now was someone’s livelihood – with all the political, economic, environmental, maritime safety, health and safety, technology and science issues that surround it. Those same issues that are increasingly pressing on you and me.

But, even in the face of all that, there were still elegant lines. For this one moment, for me only, this slightly ungainly metal workshop had created an almost perfect wave in an otherwise table-flat sea. And it was beautiful.

It’s those moments that I go to sea for – not to forget all the other stuff, (how can we?), but to add to the total experience of life.

Living the dream

/ Bill

People talk about  “living the dream”.

But, as good as that might sound, there is another view – for some people, achieving the dream only creates the need for a new dream. For them, the gap between reality and the dream is the key. As the circus artist said, “Living is walking that tightrope. Everything else is waiting.”

The boat, of course, is my dream and every time I go aboard I am living it.

I have never ever had a ‘bad’ sail – plenty of challenges, plenty of problems to solve, exciting times, but never a day when I have haven’t come ashore lifted in spirit.

But I have been fighting to find any time for it lately. The day-job has taken over.

I enjoy the day job too – much more people-oriented, more intense challenges, plenty of problems to solve, and, lately, a lot more of everything.

But, in the background, the boat still holds me – the tension between reality and the dream  becomes stronger than ever.

It carries me when I am at work.

It’s a good tension.

Seb and Maya

/ Bill / 2 Comments

Back in the fifties, my dad bought an LP. He played it a lot – Uffa Sings.

As a young boy, I remember being fascinated by Uffa’s introduction to one of the sea shanties:

“‘A Roving’ – that’s a rollicking song but you can only sing about the first three verses of that because this is a song the sailors sung at sea and they weren’t always virtuous in their words.”

How I longed to hear the fourth verse!

I was reminded of this while watching Seb’s clips on You Tube.

Earlier in the year, Seb and I met at Newbury train station. He bought Blue Mistress’ old spray hood which is now attached to Maya somewhere in the Mediterranean.

I mentioned Seb at the start of his voyage. He is on a great adventure that he should one day look back on with pride. The lessons learnt will be there for ever.

He is sharing those lessons with us via short video clips from his phone. Perhaps, one of those lessons should be that because he is ‘less than virtuous in his words’, what works at sea doesn’t necessarily work for those us on land, sitting on our comfortable chairs gazing at glasses screens. (To be fair he has toned it down as time has gone on).

Here is the dilemma in the use of language. Is he recording events for himself and a small group of friends, in which case he has the right to say what he likes – (always remembering it’s difficult to put anything on media without someone misunderstanding you –  it’s totally unrealistic to think that no one else will see it – and better your friends see it first), or for a wider group – us.

I am sure we can all handle the language individually, but I would have avoided watching the clips with my mother if she were still with us – and I am certain my children would prefer to watch with me out of the room.

All the above because I, for one, am fascinated by these clips, firstly because Seb is sailing a boat like mine, secondly because he is doing something I’ve always wanted to do, and thirdly because he has found a way of recording the voyage with an intense immediacy. If he takes care in putting it all together it will be a valuable resource to him in future.

Here is Maya rounding Cabo Vincente:

You can find the rest of his clips by searching Sebinasia on You Tube.

Be(a)ware and enjoy

When all is said and done,  I’m home here talking about it, Seb’s out there doing it.

Wherever they go, I wish him and Maya fair winds  – (whenever they blow).