I have a chart in mind. It covers Scotland, Ireland, England, Wales and Cornwall.
I am on the Glasgow-Oban train preparing to sail from Oban on the northwest coast of Scotland to Fowey on the south coast of Cornwall aboard the Westcountry trading ketch ‘Bessie Ellen’. During a ten-day passage, we will see all five countries.
At the No.8 buoy the channel turns South away from the coast. These final eight buoys – (red can buoys even numbered, green conical buoys odd-numbered), lead out to the Exe Approach buoy and the sea. As I raise sail, a yacht passes, running for the channel. We raise hands, exchanging friendly waves. Ahead of me, a distant yacht is tacking along the coast towards Berry Head.
Early this morning, in the calm of the mooring at Turf Lock, I bent on the light genoa. This is now set and drawing well. The wind has got up and blows from a little West of South, the sea is choppy. The wind will increase this afternoon, but I hope not too much in the six short miles I have to cover. It will be a very close haul to Teignmouth, the contrast from this morning complete.
The yacht ahead turns off Teignmouth and heads out to sea to clear Hope’s Nose on the next tack. I watch the coast go by – Dawlish Warren, Langstone Point, Dawlish, the Parson and the Clerk, Teignmouth. The mainline trains hug the coast. The sun dips in and out behind the clouds. ‘Blue Mistress’ rides the waves with an easy motion. I concentrate on steering her towards The Ness and the entrance to the Teign.
When we get there – (in good time, around 1530), the wind has risen another notch and, if we were going further, I would have had to change the genoa for the working jib. Approaching the entrance, I feel the Captains tensing, gathering together, looking over their shoulders at me – (see ‘The Exe – 3/6’ for details of The Captains). The sea is choppier here, affected by wind over the falling tide from the estuary. Turning into the that wind to drop the sails, my usual slick procedure for dropping the genoa neatly onto the foredeck fails and the leach drops into the sea. I go forward to retrieve it, cursing mildly, my routine broken. By now the mainsail should be down. The boat is bouncing up and down in the sea, the mainsail is flapping wildly, I slip over in the cockpit like a rookie. Eventually the tangle is sorted out and the boat settles down.
In the meantime, The Captains have raised their eyebrows and looked away! But, as I say to them, when things go wrong as they will, a good sailor will deal with them quickly and calmly. So, when I get back to the mooring, (under time-pressure to be home), knowing I have to tidy ship and inflate the dinghy before I can go ashore, only to find the mooring lines tangled tightly round the buoy, you will understand my reaction. (Quickly and calmly, I say!)
These two days have been a ‘wandering’ – some might call it a mini adventure but I don’t believe it qualifies for that. I took two days out to experience The Exe Estuary and to reflect on what it might have been like for my forebears when they took their Westcountry trading ketch up to Topsham and Exeter. I am now back in Teignmouth, which they also visited on several occasions.
For example, on 15th September 1888, the ‘Ceres’, Captain Walter Petherick, master, left Saundersoot in South Wales carrying 82 tons of coal for Teignmouth. She arrived in good time and on 29th September, she left Teignmouth for Bristol, carrying 82 tons of clay. Maybe she berthed at New Quay to offload the coal and take on clay, maybe further upstream. One day I shall find out.
I finally get home at 1730. The day is not over. Two hours later, we are sitting in The Pavilions Teignmouth watching a simultaneous broadcast from the National Theatre. In 1966, Tom Stoppard wrote a play around two minor characters in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, namely “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”. Peggy and I first saw it an unbelievable fifty years ago. The word-play is as enjoyable today as it was then.
Still buzzing from my two days on the boat, I wonder how my great grandfather would have thought of this play. Was he in a position to have seen any of Shakespeare’s plays? Would he have wanted to? And what about my great-grandchildren? Will they enjoy some future production with its fast word-play? Times change. Today we are able to share laughter and sighs with audiences across the globe simultaneously, something we never even thought of in the 1960’s. How will they be viewing such plays in future – a hologram in the round perhaps?
Or will more mundane matters concern them – the erosion of tolerance, patience and respect in our political relationships; the effect on our lives of the change in weather patterns? Speak up now, there’s plenty to do.
I found three spare days to spend on The Exe last week.
The navigation from the entrance to The Teign to the entrance to The Exe is only six miles; it is the pilotage on The Exe that makes it an “adventure”. The estuary is wide, the main channel is narrow and tortuous – and the mud sticky. The distance from the entrance to Topsham is just over seven miles. Perhaps twin keels and shallow draft vessels take it in their stride but Blue Mistress’ long keel doesn’t allow for careless mistakes.
This was my first visit. All ports and harbours have their local conditions – experience makes them perfectly manageable, inexperience requires extra care.
I spent the night on board and left Teignmouth at 0700. Dawlish stood out in the early morning sun.
At The Exe entrance buoy, I took off the sails and motored. The tide was with me.
The channel here runs for a mile between Exmouth beach and the sandbanks off Dawlish Warren.
The edge of the channel is obvious at this stage of the tide.
Looking back towards Dawlish, there is an inshore passage; suitable for this trimaran perhaps, but I would hesitate to use it.
At the entrance to Exmouth Dock the channel turns sharp to port, creating gentle eddies today but exciting, swirling currents on a falling spring tide.
I picked up a comfortable visitors’ mooring in The Bight well before high water . . .
. . . and enjoyed a peaceful afternoon watching the traffic on the water and working on the boat.
(to be continued)
“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for. “ Rear-Admiral Grace Murray Hopper.
In my last post, I talked about the boat as a space for writing. Of course, that’s not what ships are built for but it’s now part of how I use her when I’m not sailing or ‘messing about . . .’ It’s an added asset.
For many people, including me, a sailing vessel is an object of sentiment. I cannot look at a boat without the heart lifting to a jumble of special moments – the moment the mooring drops, the lift of the bow to a swell, the mainsail filling to the wind, the slope of the deck, the momentum through the water. However, there is a reason to be cautious, a reason to stand back and ponder.
Deep in this computer is a file with a detailed record of my expenditure for each of the ten years since I bought ‘Blue Mistress’ – all of it . . . The sum is high and it’s still rising! The bottom line overshadows the sentiment. This does not mean I should sell her, but it does mean I should make absolutely the most of her I possibly can.
Plenty of others have thought the same. I have been studying the sailing vessels – the smacks, the ketches and schooners which used to trade into Bude in North Cornwall. I will discuss why I am doing this in a later post but, in comparing then and now, I have been noting attitudes from those days, (highlighted by authors I rate highly), that seem useful for today. Remember, these were trading vessel, nevertheless:
“(A vessel) was not usually an object of sentiment to a degree that influenced the amount of money spent on her. She was a capital asset, used to earn a number of people’s livings and her success and that of the men who operated her and sailed her was judged not in terms of wonderful speed or seaworthiness, skillful seamanship or hard sailing, but in terms of money earned, first and foremost. She was not an object of romance but of everyday utility.”1
I wonder how that fits with our current thinking. The modern racing yacht would certainly fit the ‘utility’ description, whether a Vendee Globe yacht or an America’s Cup yacht. Used briefly for its build-function – then what? Some have a greater future, some a lesser one. The ‘romance’ in the desire to keep them sailing is tempered by hard fact. Some are successful. For example, below, an America’s Cup trial trial yacht earns its keep in Auckland.
However, older vessels may spend time idle, like ‘British Steel’ – a famous yacht of its time, waiting in Dartmouth. Nevertheless, if a reason can be found, then there’s a will to keep them sailing.
A grand example of this is the important and exciting project to bring a much older vessel back to life, ‘Rhoda Mary’. Once again, the success of this will be measured more than in terms of ‘wonderful speed and seaworthiness, skillful seamanship and hard sailing’, which will undoubtedly be there, more than in the romance of the idea, but in careful financial input and the promise of a sound financial future geared towards the young people of Cornwall and youngsters from well beyond its borders.
On gear:
“When gear grows old, they had always rather make shift than get new, and being seaman, they have usually the handiness to do it. How often one is told, on remarking that a rope, or a strake, or a spar ought to be replaced, ‘Ah, let it bide, let it break. ‘Tis different wi’ the likes o’us from what ‘tis with gentleman’s boats. When they sees summat be wore, or a rope’s lost its nature, they orders a new ‘un, but the likes o’us us lets it bide, till summat carries away, an’ then us knows ‘tis done for, an’ nowt more to say about it.’”2
I don’t tend to wait until gear breaks but I have learned over the years that most gear lasts a lot longer than my previous inexperience suggested.
On longevity:
“. . . schooners on the whole, if they survived the hazards of sea and shore, were very durable products. By the 1920s, the survivors had earned their initial investment many times over. The owners found themselves in possession of obsolete capital equipment which with expert management still had marginal earning potential. The owners, or some of them, profited several times over from the vessels’ continued operation. Shareholders who were chandlers, sail-makers, shipbuilders, provision merchants, brokers, all benefited in two or more ways from their interest and the connection with the vessel it gave them. Moreover, as long as freight rates covered the out-of-pocket expenses of operation, owners of old vessels did better by operating their vessels for what they could bring in rather than by laying-up and scrapping them. Old vessels were scrapped only when the discounted present value they could be reasonably expected to earn minus their out-of-pocket costs from continued operation represented less than the anticipated earnings of the alternative investment of capital acquired by the sale of the vessel at scrap value. Old wooden ships had a very low scrap value.”3
Well, there is little probably even less scrap value in my grp boat. There may be some resale value, but the market is large. So, not a financial asset then – but an asset nevertheless, and on several fronts . . . an asset in which to sail alone, to spend time with family and friends, to experience and to learn about boats and harbours and the sea, to write in and about, and, above all, to enjoy . . . the mooring dropping, the lift of the bow to the swell, the mainsail filling to the wind, the slope of the deck, the momentum through the water . . .
I have been reading ‘A Space to Write’, a series of illustrated interviews with Cornish writers by Amanda Harris, with photography by Steve Tanner and a forward by Michael Morpurgo, (published by KEAP, the Kernow Education Arts Project). Of course, it made me consider the room I am in now, with its books, souvenirs and references to Steeple Point, I thought it would be a good place to restart this blog. However, there is another place. If my space at home is a place where everything is gathered round, then the space on the boat is free for inspiration.
I am concerned that overstating the case may kill the process. How often I have become jammed by too much thought, too much research. The trick has been to get something into written form before ‘killing it with too much love’. So I don’t want to spoil my boat space by talking directly about why it inspires me. Maybe it will become obvious if I describe the space.
To give you a contrast, we recently chartered a yacht in the Southern Ionian. Three couples, three double cabins, a large saloon, and a galley with double sink, two burner hob, oven and a microwave. As far as accommodation was concerned, if this had been on land it would be called a chalet. There was plenty of space to share, the sailing was perfect. We had a great holiday, returned happy – all still speaking to one other.
The space on my boat is very different. For a start, there is no headroom. I am 5ft 8in, I have to bend to stand. There is a trick to putting on trousers and zipping them up, even more so to putting heavy weather gear on.
When I bought the boat, ten years ago, I spent the first six or seven years developing it the way I wanted to sail it – as a single-hander, (left-handed to boot!). There was no question of a ‘writing mode’ in those days. This has evolved.
Below deck, it was important for me to retain a sense on space. I used the quarter berths and lockers under the side berths for stowage, everything packed in named waterproof bags – easy to access. I have built a small bookcase that fits into the entrance of the port quarter berth. This is be secured with a lanyard and can be pulled forward when I want to get behind it. The fore cabin can be closed off with a white canvas ‘curtain’.
The galley stows beneath a hinge locker lid. I inherited a gimballed paraffin stove but removed it to make more space – first in favour of a JetBoil stove which I liked very much. Unfortunately, I irreparably damaged it one fateful day, dismantling it in a lumpy sea. I currently use a standard ‘picnic’ gas stove which works well, can be used instantly, the kettle boils quickly – (very important. I drink a lot of coffee and tea), and is small enough to have all the ingredients stowed with it (coffee, tea, dare I say “biscuits”) in the galley locker.
To create the impression of space, the bulkheads and exposed surfaces were painted white, the floor a light grey. Varnish was left where varnish does. Because there had been a lot of leakage through deck fittings over the years, the ceiling was in a terrible state and we lined it with fabric which both insulates and reduces condensation – cosy’s not the word but it’s comfortable!
A removable chart table was fitted crossways over the starboard berth. Charts are slung below the table. There is enough space between it and the port berth to move around. It can be dismantled and stowed forward when the starboard berth is in use.
Initially, when writing at the table, I sat askew. The cushions are relatively thick – I am told the material is used in the Princess yachts – (I can be sold almost anything). One day I was worrying about working with tools on deck and wondered whether I could run to some sort of separate worktop that could take scrapes and knocks. In my shed at home was an old shelf which might do, and could it do more?
Sanded, varnished, with pads either end (for stability and to protect various surfaces), and two eyes for lanyards when used on deck, I now have:
Facing aft, the view is out through the companion way, I can look port and starboard through the windows.
So, head just clearing the ceiling, iPad, paper and pencil, coffee to hand . . .
The view varying with wind and tide . . .
The music of a vessel on the water . . .
On Saturday, the wind was still heading me, although a direct tack out to sea allowed a long tack back into, and west along, the coast. An approaching front appeared as forecast as the long tack took me into Beer Roads.
(Click on image for short slideshow)
I tacked close to the beach and headed out to sea again. The next tack would have taken Blue Mistress all the way to Teignmouth had the wind not veered when we were off Straight Point, between Exmouth and Budleigh Salterton. I lost interest in photography at this stage and concentrated on the beat along the final 10 miles.
. . . end
Images by Bill Whateley
The windvane on Blue Mistress was damaged at the end of last year. A small yacht misjudged leaving the visitors’ pontoon in Dartmouth and ran onto it – “altering the shape” of it. This year I have been watching it closely in different conditions to check there has been no lasting damage. I took these short clips off Teignmouth earlier this month.
The wind was gusting strongly – (note the untidy lines), and I thought I’d record the effect of the gusts on the self-steering gear. In the second clip, the boat is heading higher than I wanted. In the third clip, I have adjusted the windvane to correct direction. A stronger gust then brings the boat up into the wind. In the fourth clip, I have adjusted the sails slightly. This works.
Video clips by Bill Whateley
I have been getting used to new surroundings – new for Blue Mistress that is. No longer the city of Plymouth, but the town of Teignmouth – two ports, different aspects.
We too have wharves . . .
and buildings along the water’s edge . . .
and good pubs.
The entrance is interesting with shifting sandbanks meaning work for the dredger . . .
The sailing is less crowded . . .
Teignmouth is not only a holiday resort but a working port . . .
Vessels negotiate an awkward entrance.
Once in, their presence “alters the shape” of the town.
They continue the long tradition with this as with every other port – looking outwards, trading with other ports, both home, as with Celtic Ambassador, and abroad . . .
I am going to enjoy sailing from here.
(Images by Bill Whateley)
The old . . .
The new . . .
The very new . . .
Note the bystanders on the pontoon.
These vessels will sail for New York on Monday, 2nd May 2016 – no passengers.
(Images by Bill Whateley)
A quiet morning before the pre-start jazz . . .
Well, quiet forward, with time to please the sponsors . . . but not so quiet aft . . .
They leave Plymouth for New York on Monday
(Images by Bill Whateley)
Beyond Steeple Point 