boat design

Book sailing: coincidence

/ Bill / 1 Comment

Furthering my interest in local craft (For love of a boat), I have been researching Greek inshore fishing boats. I contacted the library at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall and Denise Davey, one of the library volunteers, took up my request and was extremely helpful.

She came back with scanned copies of one of the appendices to H.R.Denham’s “The Aegean” – Inshore Craft. Here is one of the illustrations.

You will instantly recognise the hull shape from images in earlier posts to this blog.

This and more arrived earlier this week. I am very grateful to the NMMC. I had not heard of Denham’s book. I wondered when it was written, meaning to look it up on Google.

~~~

This evening I have been reading Hammond Innes’ “Sea and Islands”. published in 1967. Hammond Innes was one of the earliest authors I read – well before James Bond. In retrospect, I found his stories far more exciting, if less fashionable, than Ian Fleming’s.

The book was hidden on a shelf in my favourite used-book shop – Books by the Sea in Bude, Cornwall. Apart from the author and the subject, I was bowled over by the dated dust jacket. A whole different era.

In “Sea and Islands”, Innes describes various voyages in his Robert Clark designed, 42 foot, masthead cruiser-racer ‘Mary Deare’. He describes being dismasted in the RORC’s  North Sea Race; a cruise ‘rockhopping’ in Scandinavia and then taking the boat to the Mediterranean and exploring the Greek Islands.

It is when he starts to describe the islands and the sea between them that the book comes alive. I am only half way through the book but the islands themselves have brought life to it.

That’s not all: “Apart for the Mediterranean Pilot Vol. IV, our Bible throughout was Henry Denham’s “The Aegean”. This sea guide to the coasts and islands of Greece was most conveniently published the previous year (1963), and knowing that I was bound for his previous happy hunting ground, the author has kindly sent me a copy. It is the perfect introduction to island landfalls, for it not only gives the port information necessary before sailing in, but also geographical and historical details in conveniently concise form.”

So now I know. I must get hold of a copy.

On sailing a Folksong – update

/ Bill

Blue Mistress has twenty lockers with removable lids, twelve of them in the bunks. Laid out across a worktop and painted white, the lids looked surreal – bright islands in a dark sea.

There is a new folding lid across the stove as well as one above the portable loo. (Before, both these lids were a little tight to remove. There was a trick to it –  meaning that I could manage them fine because I knew how to do it, but the occasional crew didn’t. Therefore, they found the loo difficult to use . . . and said so.)

The varnished trim around the bunks has been matched along both sides, but is yet to be fitted.

The chart table has been revamped.  The old one was slightly too big to keep shipped all the time, although it was a very good dining table. Unfortunately, it also had a split in it. So it has been shortened, reworked with fiddles and, although still removable, will be fitted securely across-ships.

There is a concern that giving. the main cabin an eggshell white finish makes it look clinical. Well, not with all the gear I put in it it won’t! At the moment it looks stark but the cushions and trim will soften it. It’s a boat with a parlour in it, not a parlour with a boat around it.

But it is a boat of just under 26 foot with less than five foot headroom in the main cabin. We are not talking ‘large yacht’ we are talking ‘making a small space as comfortable as possible in circumstances that can be quite uncomfortable’.

Therefore, the art of stowage is magnified here. I have only a hazy idea how the long distance voyagers manage their stowage in boats of this size. A lot of gear must be piled on spare bunks, every nook and cranny filled. Single-handed, it must be tight; two of you must be very tight.

Stowage is not a static art – hiding things away in the bowels of the boat. It’s a dynamic art. Everything has to be accessible, able to be reached when needed and moved to wherever it’s used – sometimes in a hurry.  It’s about lockers that open easily (but not too easily in a sea). It’s about knowing where everything is, and having an instinctive ability to move around the boat to reach it.

It’s about establishing regular habits to be able to give measured responses to irregular events.

It’s about seamanship – handling yourself, handling the boat, handling the gear.

~~~

This week, I have noticed a sea-change in my thinking.

For the past four years, I have been concerned about the fabric of the boat – “should we do this or that, change this or that, keep this or that the same, or what?”  Each year, I have concentrated on one part of it. Each year I have taken countless images and studied them for this or that reason. I have sometimes followed outside advice, and sometimes followed my own intuition  and, with the help of Richard Banks at DickyB Marine, we have progressed.

There’s plenty still to do – it’s a boat, there’s always plenty to do . . . and even more to learn.

But the major work is over. From now on, “it is what it is – get on with it”.

I am looking to get Blue Mistress  back in the water and go sailing.

On sailing a Folksong – March refit

/ Bill / 1 Comment

When you buy a boat (or a house), you see it as you want it to be  rather than as it is.

It is rare that it is complete at the point of sale – you set out to put a bit (or a lot) of yourself into it.

So it was with Blue Mistress.

This is the third stage of the work that I thought we would need to do when I first saw her in 2006.

I’m not such a visionary that I could have said then ‘right, we’re going to do this in three stages’, but I could see where we would need to go and, now that I’ve learnt a few ropes, this is how it has worked out.

Broadly speaking, in stage one, we worked on the deck – reseating fittings, sorting out leaks, recoating it in to a finish that is hard and durable.

Stage two, involved a new engine housing, installing  a new fuel tank and moving the batteries to a locker of their own, as well as upgrading the electrics and installing a new VHF/DSC unit.

Now, in stage three, the top sides are getting repainted (five layers of epoxy primer so far),and the rudder rehung, to include a new upper pintle.

Down below, the main cabin is being upgraded, detail seen to, edges rounded off, surfaces smoothed and repainted, a couple of locker lids reworked  and so on.

So is this a totally rebuilt boat? No, all good boats have a character that can be encouraged and brought out.

A little bit here a little bit there transforms them. In keeping them up to scratch, they gain a new lease of life.

On sailing a Folksong – for fellow Folksong owners

/ Bill

Blue Mistress was lifted out of the water last Wednesday. While waiting for the lift, she was stripped of everything aboard (except for the cqr and anchor rode).

The boom was also unshipped.

Although that was not the  intention, it meant I got a picture of her motoring light.

So, we’ve got the much-talked-about ‘heavy’ rudder, two large riggers, and a Yanmar engine placed fairly far towards the stern – (the front of it stretches approximately 6 inches into the main cabin).

In the event, she is only slightly down at the stern. Normally, there is heavy gear (inc. spare water containers) in the fore cabin lockers to counteract this.

They removed the mast and rigging – the boom and spinnaker pole are lashed on deck.

The deck has grown green patches over the past few months thanks to the weather. The lines of the halyards over the cabin top are clearly visible. I will remember to clean here more often.

The bottom was fairly clean. Weed is on the anode, propeller (not enough use his winter), and the edges of the keel and rudder.

The Raymarine log has not been working this winter. There was a small colony of barnacles around the ‘propeller’ housing in the bow which was stopping it turning.

The strop is only just on the keel, showing how difficult it is to judge the rake of the stern from above.

A last look at the cheeks on the rudder and the hull shape from the stern.

There is more growth on the starboard waterline. Moored fore and aft, this is the part of the hull that faces away from the sun for most of the time. Earlier in the year, I spent some time in the water trying to clean this off – with little success.

On sailing a Folksong – freeboard

/ Bill

Talking of freeboard, the following is from Jon Wainwright’s ‘Only So Many Tides’:

“We compared the two craft. Deva was less than a foot of freeboard astern, fine lined and low in superstructure. The cabin cruiser with twice the power, three times the freeboard and four times the superstructure appeared to her owners to be far safer; they couldn’t believe that freeboard at sea is like a chin held up to a punch.”

You better believe it.

For love of a boat – Carrick Roads, Cornwall

/ Bill / 1 Comment

Carrick Roads, Cornwall 2009

We have spent the weekend in and around Falmouth.

Falmouth is one of the great natural harbours of the world, with its vast deepwater expanse of Carrick Roads protected from the sea.

From the water’s edge north of Mylor, we watched Falmouth Working Boats dredging for oysters on the opposite shore. These boats are one of the few in the western world still working solely under sail

Three workboats under reduced sail, a sloop passing up the roads and a working boat moored on the foreground.

I suspect the latter is one of the racing fleet of Falmouth Working Boats, like the one below . . .

Falmouth Working Boat, 2009

On sailing a Folksong – rudder 4

/ Bill / 1 Comment

Further to my previous posts, here, here and here, the following is taken from “Singlehanded Sailing”, by Richard Henderson.

He is talking about the Folkboat – (the Folksong is a Folkboat derivative):

“She (the Folkboat) has considerable aft rake to her rudder, which results in less lateral plane and less wetted surface. There was a time when some sailors thought this feature was detrimental to self-steering, but this thinking is not so much in evidence today.

. . . a considerable rake aft often causes the rudder to operate more efficiently when the boat is heeled or rolling, at which time the resultant of force components working on the rudder is acting in a more lateral and thus more effective direction. It is also true that gravity tends to keep such a rudder amidships when the boat is unheeled*. The really important concern with regard to self-steering is the directional stability of the hull, which is generally achieved through a reasonably symmetrical shape with somewhat balanced ends and an ample, but not necessarily extreme, length of keel.”

* And presumably the heavier rudder will be more effective in maintaining this.

On Blue Mistress, I am able to leave the tiller and go forward to adjust lines at the mast – (usually to loosen the lazy jacks which interfere with the mainsail shape if left too tight). She holds her course for the time it takes.