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)
yacht design
The Transat
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)
Into the swell
Off Teignmouth sea-front, heading towards Exmouth . . .
The Folksong ‘Harrier’
In a recent post, Bill Serjeant has reminded us of his Folksong (Zeta), which he passed on to Julian Mustoe. The latter bought her for a specific voyage, totally rebuilding her coach roof and renaming her Harrier. It’s Bill’s story and I will let him tell it – (link below).
Brush strokes – good enough – sometimes
Blue Mistress is slowly coming together.
Because we won’t be back in the water before Easter, I have had time to tackle the planned jobs and some unplanned ones as well – like painting the floors of the quarter berths.
I now know why I avoided this for so long. It meant forcing my 42 inch chest five feet down two 38 inch holes – cleaning, sanding and then one, two, three coats – shoulders hunched, arms outstretched, pushing an open paint-pot before me, having to work out how to use my right hand accurately and then how to worm my way backwards without touching the fresh paint.
Winter refit 4/4 – new hatch fitted – lifelines rethink
The new hatch (Gebo Houdini replacement hatch) and ventilator (EC Smith Tannoy Ventilite) were fitted yesterday.
Winter refit 2/4 – rubbing strakes and rudder post
Blue Mistress has a grp hull but there is a certain amount of woodwork that needs watching. In retrospect, it has been overlooked more often than not because the amount is small. This is not clever.
Blue Mistress is moored fore and aft on a trot mooring. She is facing west. The sun rises over the stern, travels round the port side and sets over the bow. It means the starboard side of the boat gets less sun and less opportunity to dry out, Water builds-up along the angle where the rubbing strake butts against the hull, the damp persists, algae forms, water soaks in. Continue reading
Nobody told the albatross
I have just got back from London having attended Roger Taylor’s lecture at the home of the Cruising Association at Limehouse Basin in London.
Roger is the self-styled Simple Sailor . He has written three well-received books about his voyages first in his Corribee, Ming Ming, and now in her successor, Ming Ming ll. In 2009, he was awarded the Jester Medal by the Ocean Cruising Club “for an outstanding contribution to the art of singlehanded sailing.” The large number of members present was a fitting testament to his endeavours.
Lifting Blue Mistress
There are a number of reasons why I might not have shown this image – personal embarrassment being high on the list, But then I thought, “Hey, this is what happens if you don’t lift the boat often enough. Not many people have seen this on their vessels, so maybe it will make them feel even better about the refitting work they do.”
I haven’t posted this year. One of the results of a difficult year has been a lack of time afloat. So when, on one of the few times I was able to go to sea, I had engine trouble, I finally decided it was time to lift her and spend some productive refit time over the winter.
And yesterday we did lift the boat, and this is what we saw in the early evening gloom (click on image to enlarge) . . .
. . . not just barnacles but a whole colony of mussels – on the rudder and around the propeller. So this was why the helm was sluggish and the engine was difficult to start.
There were some ripe comments from the lifting crew!
However, Blue Mistress had always cleaned up well and today . . .
She won’t be back in the water until early May. There are a number of jobs I want to do on her, including major work on the engine. And we also have other adventures planned before then.
I will post on the boat again.
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.
Beyond Steeple Point 