I haven’t forgotten this series
(Click image to enlarge)
'Blue Mistress'
Steeple Point
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.
~~~
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,
~~~
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
Bude, Sunday, cloudy skies, low tide
Beginning of the season, the RNLI out in force
The beach crew were checking their gear
The lifeboat crew were about to launch on exercise.
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.
The Voyage of the Storm Petrel
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.
Preparing for Spring
Sunday: the sun shining, the air warm, just a little wind. A day for airing the boat, clearing out and re-stowing the fore-cabin. I added eye-bolts for extra anchorage. The oars are strapped off the cabin sole; the bin for the anchor rode will now stay put.
The engine turned over and started after a shaky few minutes. Actually, it didn’t start first time. I left it. When I tried again, it started – (why not the first time?). It needed a run and I wanted an excuse to motor down river to the Sound.
There was hardly a boat to be seen – a classic yacht in the distance, too far away to photograph.
Plymouth was looking . . . well, iconic.
The yachts were stacked away.
The identically liveried Bro Gemini and Luhnau – the one empty, the other loaded, lay quietly against the wharf.
Not a lot happening – but great to be alive and on the water.
A Quiet Morning
Saturday Feb 04, 2012 UT/GMT
▲ 02:40 4.6m
▼ 08:50 2.3m
▲ 15:20 4.6m
▼ 21:20 2.1m
0600 UTC Sat 04 Feb – 0600 UTC Sun 05 Feb
Wind Variable, becoming south or southwest, 3 or 4, increasing 5 to 7, veering north later.
Sea state Moderate or rough, but slight for a time in east.
Weather Rain and drizzle for a time.
Visibility Moderate or good, becoming poor for a time.
~~~
On the road to Plymouth, a large neon sign “Heavy Weather Warning. Drive Carefully.”
OK, drive carefully – but ‘Heavy Weather Warning’? Not really. It was going to snow overnight in the east of the UK, but not here.
If we overstate every inkling of every risk, who will ever pay attention to the warning? And if we do pay attention every time to every organisation – organisations whose very existence require that they constantly warn us how much danger we are in, aren’t on a fast track to mediocrity?
~~~
The rain started as I climbed aboard. It set in for the rest of the morning – light rain.
A morning of short jobs.
Both batteries were well down but the engine started first time – not always the case. I refilled the greaser for the stern gland. Grease travels!
The pair of oars I bought aboard needed stowage space. I am looking for a sweep for sculling but these are definitely too short for that.
Also, the chain locker is too small. Feeding the rode back down the narrow hawspipe, I find the chain blocking the pipe and I am left with a length on deck. (Too much chain? Not enough locker). I have to go below and clear it. That works in a flat calm but it’s no fun having chain flaying around the deck in a sea while I struggle below. It also takes time to re-stow the anchor and rode; plus I want to keep the anchor off the deck. So I am trying out plastic bins of varying sizes (including a flexible laundry basket). We’ll see what works best.
I fixed two brass hooks. Everything gets stowed away at sea, but at anchor you need somewhere to hang things.
And then there was time to write.
~~~
A quiet morning – or so I thought . . .
. . . then 60 plus rowers appeared from nowhere.
No wind yesterday . . .
No wind yesterday but a fine day to run the engine.
I removed the sail cover and attached the halyard but left the lazy jacks in place as I didn’t expect to set the sail. As the Sound opened up it, it was almost empty – two vessels in sight, one trying to set a sail. A little later he had given up.
It was also a perfect day to anchor and run out the rode. I dropped anchor around 1300 close to Jennycliff near the Withyhedge beacon.
Then time for lunch, and, as I had bought the dinghy with me, time for some photography.
There were three naval vessels at anchor. The village of Cawsand can be seen in the sunshine on the far side of Plymouth Sound – (just aft of the pulpit).
All the metal work makes Blue Mistress look positively industrial. The depth is 7.7 metres – it had dropped from 8.4 metres in the 3/4 hour I had been at anchor.
The washed-out colours of January.
This simple rig holds the course giving plenty of time to go fetch something from below. It works just as well under sail..
The tide was low and the water slack as I passed the Cattewater Wharves.
Flinterlinge, registered out of Groningen, was busy unloading.
Dear George: lazy jacks 3
More on lazy jacks – here and here.
Dear George
I know you are looking forward to getting your new boat – and that amazing experience when you finally hoist the mainsail on your own boat. I had that moment on Blue Mistress in the summer of 2006
Full of excitement and anticipation, we left the mooring on the Tamar and motored a short way downstream to be free of the boats around us. We turned into the wind and I hauled on the halyard and up went the sail . . . and promptly jammed about half way up. Yes – you guessed it, lazy jacks again. The upper sail batten had caught beneath the upper block. So I let the sail down a little, and tried again. It got caught again. Tried again, this time more cunningly – watch . . . wait for the moment . . . up she goes!
What happened next? The engine was killed, the bow fell away, the sail caught the wind and we discovered that blissful, heart-lifting moment when wind and water and boat blend together. Did we think about lazy jacks then. Of course not. As a result, over the next few months, we went through the same circus every time we raised the mainsail – watch . . . wait for the moment . . . up she goes. Until I began to think about how unhandy it was, particularly if I was sailing solo.
When alone, I would release the halyard clutch, bring the boat into the wind, ease off the throttle, go to the fore end of the cockpit and hurriedly haul on the halyard to get the sail aloft before the bow fell away on the wind – inevitably the top batten got caught and, as the bow fell away, we would start to sail with the mainsail half set. Then it was back and forward, juggling between using the engine to bring the boat back into the wind and going forward to lower the sail, release the batten, and raise it before the batten danced yet again behind the lazy jack and we had to start the whole process all over again.
I thought of several possible ways round it:
- A sail without battens would be fine – but that would mean altering the shape of the sail;
- An autopilot to keep the boat motoring gently head to wind would work well – but that had to be rigged specially as I didn’t generally use it otherwise – a clunky solution;
- On one occasion I loosened the lines to see whether the batten would shake itself free – no;
- But loosening the lines did allow the sail to regain its shape when set;
- The problem with this was that the lines were made fast to cleats either side of the mast, so, if I wanted to tighten them before lowering the sail, I had to spend time at the mast uncleating and recleating them;
- So then I decided to lead them back to a pair of spare jamming cleats next to the halyard clutches;
- Then I discovered that the thin line along the deck rolled under my feet – something that never happened with the thicker halyards. I learnt very quickly to avoid standing on it. It was another hazard, but worth it for the extra control from the cockpit, (see the previous post on lazy jacks);
- I experimented with shortening the forward of the three lines on the boom. This pulled the cradle of lines downwards and forwards. It lessened (but not completely abolished) the snagging of the batten, but now the lower battens tended to spill out before the sail was down on the boom;
And then, no less than three years after I bought the boat, it suddenly occurred to me that all I had to do was to stow the lines against the mast when I removed the sail cover and I would never have to worry about raising the sail again, and that’s how it has remained – (and only the once did I forget to re-rig them before lowering the sail!)
I have just read in the February 2012 issue of Sailing Today a letter from a reader, Tony Waldeck, advocating lazy jacks as a good way of containing the bunt of a reefed mainsail. Yes, that’s a good idea, although I have yet to use it. He states. “Lazy jacks are the answer – but not the off-the-shelf kits that incorporate blocks. All-string arrangements will not chafe the mainsail.” (An off-the-shelf kit is rigged on Blue Mistress. You can see the blocks on the sail below).
There, George, you have it – almost everything I know about lazy jacks.
Judging by the amount of time and energy they have cost me, ‘lazy’ is a pretty poor description.
Good luck with your new boat.
Bill
~~~
p.s. This is where I look back and wonder why it took so long to reach such a simple solution. Maybe this is the most useful lesson.
The world’s full of experts and no doubt every one of them could have told me the answer. Solutions are simple, especially in the evening around the bar – it’s getting to them that’s the problem. It has to be the experience of solving problems that makes all solutions worth pursuing.
Over the years, I have read many, many ‘boat books’ and I use a lot of what I have found in them, but the most enjoyable aspects of sailing, and certainly the parts I’m best at, are those I have had to work out for myself.
The first sentence in A C Stock’s introduction to his book ‘Sailing Just For Fun’ reads: “This book is for the man who has read all the ‘How-to’ books and still finds that he cannot.” Well, the more I know, the more I find I cannot. I used to worry about this, but no longer – I’m having too good a time finding out.
. . . End
Dear George: lazy jacks 2
Dear George
Back to lazy jacks. You say you want lots of detail, so this is what I do on Blue Mistress to lower and stow the sails before returning to the mooring where I would restow everything that needed restowing.
On the radio the other day, I heard Colin Dexter, who wrote the Inspector Morse series for television, say that, when writing a book, he definitely knew the beginning and the end of the story but the middle was always a muddle. Manoeuvres on the boat are the same – they have a beginning, a muddle and an end. It’s your job to manage the muddle – and to do that, you need to think your moves through first:
- Put on your life-jacket and/or tether if you aren’t wearing one or the other already. The rule is: if the situation is such that you are beginning to wonder whether you should wear them – put them on. Many people wear them all the time.
- Make sure you are out of the main fairway, and any traffic. Avoid the racing fleets. They appear en masse from nowhere. You need enough sea-room to drift downwind. It takes longer by yourself – (not always true, ed.). Keep an eye out for where the boat is and other boats are nearby.
- Set the self-steering – by the time we get to downing sails, the self-steering gear on Blue Mistress has been stowed. I have a short line with heavy bungee loops at either end. The loops slip easily over the quarter cleats and and three or four coils of the line on the tiller will hold her on course for as long as it takes to go forward and return to the cockpit. The long keel helps.
- Check that the way forward is clear – particularly the step onto the coach roof. One of the reasons for the upright ‘come-in’ on Blue Mistress rather than a wider sprayhood is that it makes it easy to step from the cockpit to the coachroof. Being older and less athletic, I need all the help I can get.
- If the lazy jacks have been stowed against the mast as in the image below, you will have to free them from around the mast cleat and reset them. So, first, you have to free the lazy jack lines from the jamming cleat next to the cockpit clutches.
- Now let go the fore-sheet and free the foresail halyard.
- Attach the tether to the jack-line (if appropriate), and go forward to catch the foresail, securing it against the safety lines. You will already have three lengths of shot-chord attached to the safety line. It takes a moment to secure the sail. (I use the port safety lines – perhaps because I am left-handed). By the way, if I’d known I was going to use this image for a demo, I’d have secured the genoa neatly. Here we have just left the mooring and the lazy jacks are stowed against the mast (see part three)
- Back to the cockpit. As you do so, check the lazy jacks are not caught up on the sail or boom.
- Tighten the port fore-sheet to secure the clew of the foresail.
- Then tighten the topping lift, lifting the boom so that it will clear the sprayhood. This may mean releasing the vang and the mainsheet if close-hauled.
- Tighten the lazy jack lines as far as they will go, slipping them into the appropriate jamming cleats. The lines on the lee side of the sail will tend to flatten it. You may not be able to tighten these perfectly – meaning they will be loose when you drop the sail. This shouldn’t be a problem. They will hold the sail anyway.
- Collect the sail ties from the locker and disentangle them. If you stuff them in your pocket, pulling one out is likely to pull the whole lot out leading to a mad scrabble on the deck to stop them going over the side. And threading them through your belt can result in two or three coming out at once. Work out how you’re going to use them.
- To drop the mainsail on Blue Mistress, the boat has to be headed into the wind. At anything over five degrees or so off the wind the sail slides will jam against the mast and the sail will be caught partly down. As the bow falls further off the wind, so the sail will start to drive the boat forward, jamming the slides even more. There is no choice but to return to the helm to bring it back into the wind.
- At this stage, I let the traveller out as far as it will go. This allows more space on the coachroof to furl the sail. (I hadn’t thought about until now, but I tend to come up into the wind on a port tack, which leaves the boom out to starboard. I find it easier to stow the sail from this side of the boom – perhaps because I’m left-handed. I don’t know what other people do.)
- When the boat has been turned into the wind, leave the helm and tighten the mainsheet to prevent the boom swinging uncontrollably while on the coach-roof. The boat will come up into the wind and the sail will start to flap. (If you assume that you will be on the windward side of the boom and that it will not try to sweep you overboard, then eight times out of ten you will be right . . .)
- Move to the forward end of the cockpit, release the clutch holding the main halyard and let the sail start to drop.
- Attach the tether to the jack line, step onto the coach roof and go forward to the mast. This reduces the chance of the boom knocking you over but also, as mentioned above, the sail needs to be pulled down the mast in a hurry before the slides jam. You will feel the bow begin to fall away as the boat slows to a stop and the wind catches it. The trick is to get the sail down and under control before the bow starts to fall away.
- The lazy jacks are there to hold the bulk of the sail close to the boom. Without them the folds of sail will tend to blow over the side and, in a blow, it can be difficult for one person to bring it back under control. It’s not impossible, it’s just easier and safer with the lazy jacks when single-handed. (By the way, the sail battens will not necessarily fall evenly and they will need to be aligned with the boom fairly swiftly).
At this stage, the boat should be lying quietly and the sail can be carefully furled. Make sure the sail folds of the sail formed by the slides are all on the same side, then, working from the mast along the length of the boom, take a two foot wide section of the foot of the sail – (hammock-like), and fold it over the bulk of the sail, aligning the battens and tucking the reefing lines into the folds as you go. The sail ties are turned round the bundle with the loose-end tucked under the turn so that they can be easily released if the engine fails and you need to sail again before you get to the mooring. It also leaves them ready for the next time you sail.
And all the above assumes that you know the engine is going to start so that you can motor back to the mooring. The one time I didn’t check before stowing the sails, the engine refused to start . . . that’s another story.
That’s all there is to it, George. If your eyes have glazed over, I’m sorry, but you did ask for detail. Have I got images of each stage? You’ve got to be joking!
I’ll tell you the few problems I have had next time.
Dear George: lazy Jacks 1
Dear George
Now you’re asking about lazy jacks and wanting detail, detail, detail. OK, you asked for it.
As you know, lazy jacks stretch from two or three anchor points along either side of the boom up to a high point on the sides of the mast to form a cradle for the mainsail when it is dropped. They keep the lowered sail from flapping in the wind and spilling over the side.
They have their good points and their bad.
When I first saw Blue Mistress, I was pleased they were fitted because I too wanted to sail single-handed and this was among the gear I thought I would need. (Like everyone else who has never owned a boat before, I dreamt of all sorts of gear I would need and all sorts of ways I would sail in her. Some happened – most didn’t).
Firstly, in a boat this size (or bigger boats like the one below), lazy jacks are unnecessary if you have a crew aboard. With someone on the tiller to bring the boat into the wind, control the boom and let the halyard go, a crew of one or two can easily drop the sail, control it and furl it – and you can all be ashore in time for tea.
But single-handing is different. That period between your boat gracefully sailing with sails neatly trimmed and everything under control, and your boat peacefully lying-to with sails neatly furled and everything under control needs some thought. There are a series of moves that need to be made in the right order, or, and I speak from experience, a series of foul-ups, each foul-up leading to a bigger foul-up and so on. It helps to see the whole process before you start – that way you know where you are and where you’re going.
So, ‘single-handed’ means forethought. There will always be moments of chaos – pitching boat, flapping sails, swinging boom. Better that it’s organised chaos. The well-crewed boat manages all this with ease, the rest of us have to work at it.
As I say, lazy jacks have their good and their bad points. The good points are when they are being used for what they were designed for – a manoeuvre that lasts just a few minutes. The bad points are their potential for getting in the way the rest of the time.
I’ll tell you about their usefulness and how they work on Blue Mistress next time. After that, we’ll have a look at their nuisance-value.
Beyond Steeple Point 