This post is for fellow Folksong owners – knowing you would understand.
On the way to St Ives, we detoured to check on the boat.
Around 1230, it was raining hard – big drops with more to come.
All seemed secure, so we drove on – south west, meeting the heavy weather on the road, half of me wondering how things were on the mooring now.
Following my ‘love of a boat’ post on 25th February, I want to speak up again for a project that I have only recently become aware of but one that so obviously meets the spirit of this series that I cannot believe it has taken me so long to find out about it.
We have spent this weekend in St Ives.
I had hoped to see the Jumbo, a replica of the smallest class of St Ives fishing lugger – (details of the project can be found here).
No chance – but I made up with it in viewing the many old photographs of the original boats available around the town.
Apart for appreciating the boat as a boat, my interest was sparked by a press release dated November 2007.
An extract from it reads:
“Our aim is to establish a racing class of these boats at St.Ives in order to regenerate a waterfront community in decline. How much more effective it would be if, in addition, these boats could be eventually used for the purpose for which they were designed whilst providing a seasonal income for a couple of individuals!
Clearly, there may come a time when, in addition to any green, carbon neutral credentials, a sail-operated fishery could become commercially viable or at least a natural way of conserving resources (as demonstrated by the Falmouth oyster fishery – much celebrated as the last in the world to be worked under sail).
In the meantime the skills required need to be developed. There’s a growing recognition that this approach would at least address some serious issues; the sustainability of fish stocks, the rising cost of fuel, the dependence on imported goods and the lack of employment opportunities in rural areas to name a few.
And if successful, the model could be readily repeated elsewhere.
Only a few months ago such a proposal would have been dismissed as romantic fantasy. So far however, my inquiries have been met with a degree of excitement.”
This is a brave start and I am sure that more than a few eyebrows have been raised.
However the project has powerful backing and a great deal of goodwill, to which I am happy to add my own small cupful.
I invite you to explore their well-managed site and appreciate the enterprise.
For the origins and full set of images in this series, here
Last Saturday, browsing through my favourite second-hand bookshop – Books by the Sea in Bude, I found a book on seamanship by John Russell – The Shell Book of Seamanship, published in 1974.
I already have another book of his – Yachtmaster Offshore, published in 1977 for the RYA Seamanship Foundation and bought around that time.
Note the publishing dates – before a lot of things that have happened since.
I like his attitude.
From the blurb inside the dust cover: ” . . . ‘safety equipment’ is a misnomer. It is emergency or survival equipment. True safety comes from good seamanship which minimises the incidence of accidents and that is what this book is all about. Examples of true safety equipment . . . are the humble electric fuse, the lifeline and the harness . . . and the pound or two of slush that every one of us carries around for life in his skull.”
It is the slush, of course, that is the problem.
~~~
Chapter 3 is entitled ‘The Sea’ and deals with waves.
Coincidentally, my photos of the weekend included waves and I have put some together with John Russell’s text to see how they fit.
The weather was governed by high pressure.
The sky was blue, with occasional light cloud.
Such wind that there was was north westerly as the Cornish flag on Chapel Rock shows.
The sea was flat – you would not expect any waves other than the residual swell from weather far out in the Atlantic.
And this is what we had – the chance to look at individual waves washing ashore.
~~~
“When the wind stops blowing or changes direction, the sea it caused continues to travel on as a swell . . . Without the energy of the wind to sustain them the waves of a swell gradually decrease in height, but their period and length continue to increase, although at a diminishing rate: thus they become less obvious but move faster as they travel away from the original area.”
“. . . When the wave enters water less deep than half the wave length it begins to feel the interference of the sea bed. Its length decreases without alteration in its period, so it goes more slowly, while its height, after an initial slight decrease, begins to increase rapidly with decreasing depth. This causes the swell to become shorter and steeper . . .”
“When the depth of water falls to one-tenth of the deep-water wave length the increase in height becomes very marked, the progressive deceleration causes crowding with steepening and narrowing of the crests, retardation of the troughs steepens the wave fronts more than their backs and the wave is ready to break at the least provocation. At a depth equal to one-twenty-fifth of the deep-water wave length the relationship between length and period disappears, the wave speed becomes dependent on depth alone and it breaks.”
“For a given speed the energy of a breaking wave depends on how much solid water, as opposed to air and water, it contains, but with sea water at a ton a cubic metre even a modest, well-aerated crest produces a clout equivalent to collision with a small car.”
“It seldom happens that the fronts of advancing waves are parallel to the bottom contours, so one side reaches the critical depth and begins to slow down before the rest with a result similar to optical refraction. Refraction causes the swells to swing round and align themselves with the bottom contours.”
“Waves frequently cross and even when they travel in the same direction their different characteristics blend to give results that do not appear in either system alone. When the difference in length is pronounced, as commonly occurs when a sea is meeting or being overtaken by an old swell, the two component waves retain their identities. But when waves of only slightly different period and length combine they produce groups of noticeably higher waves interspersed at intervals with groups of remarkably lower ones as the component waves move in and out of phase,”
~~~
It is worth concentrating on the extracts above. Even if not written in customary blog language, they are a very good description of an often ill-described phenomenon.
You might ask why a book on seamanship should include a section on waves. Well . . . that’s where the ‘slush’ comes in.
“
I have added Francois Vivier’s site to the “For love of a boat” links.
His small boat designs are an answer to the questions behind these posts.
Yes, there are people still designing and building ‘traditional’ boats .
In fact, there are a growing number of them finding ways and means to continue the evolutionary process and put traditional designs into a modern setting.
My thanks to Sjogin’s owner for pointing to Monsieur Vivier.
For the origins and full set of images in this series, here.
I went aboard during the slack tide to do a few jobs – strengthen the mooring lines, make it easier to drop the pick-up line and also the anti-chafe plastic piping on the stern lines had slipped and need re-securing. I ran the engine and remembered how much it needs a service. And there was very little water in the boat – one pull on the hand-pump was enough.
~~~
When I bought Blue Mistress, I inherited a spinnaker that had seen better days and, having written it off, I have been content to sail without one. However, I have recently acquired a nearly-new spinnaker from a Folkboat – (North Sails), so am now looking at ways of setting it.
The idea is to prepare the ground for doing it single-handed and then, for the first few times have a crew, to test out the the theory.
By sewing tags onto the spinnaker bag at the forward ‘angles’, I can tie it to either side of the pushpit forward of the stanchions. It will be held open by the line to the forestay and fixed at the base to the bow roller. The bungee cord can be tightened or loosened to control the size of the opening and keep the sail in the bag until needed.
Having worked that out and found the halyard was not long enough to feed back to the cockpit, which could be a problem – (and dropped the bag back into the dinghy to bring home for sewing), I looked at the pole.
I wanted to decide on lengths – length of sheet/guy and downhaul.
By shackling a block forward, and feeding the downhaul back to the cockpit, I can control it from there.
The sheet/guy can be fed to the second track aft of the main sheet track and brought round the winch to the usual cleat, (Blue Mistress does not have self-tailing winches – doesn’t seem to need them).
I know it’s possible to do this single-handed because it happens on Fram.
In theory, given a good day and light winds, I could probably manage this sail – but, hey, that’s theory and I have a way to go yet. (All suggestions gratefully received).
~~~
By the time I came to leave, the flood tide was well under way and it carried the dinghy back to the slipway.
Just the two of us on this trot at the end of February – Blue Mistress and Charisma.
Following on from yesterday’s post . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . For the origins and full set of images in this series, here
“There’s not much sail in that collection” – Ed.
No, there’s not. There’s something else I’m . . .
“A revival of working boats, locally-built, local materials, ‘close-to-the-sea’, preferably under sail? – Sounds pretty specialist, limitist, elitist to me.” – Ed.
No, listen, I’ve been trying to . . .
“And some of those boats look pretty badly kept. If their owners don’t look after them, why should we care?” – Ed
Listen, will you? Just listen!
I have been recording the boats for lots of reasons – (not the least being that I enjoy doing it).
For me, they reflect two things – the people who built them and the places where they were built.
When I was young, there was a song we used to sing along to. It had a verse:
“And they were all built out of ticky-tacky and they were all built just the same.”
Well, there’s plenty of ticky-tacky still around, and not only are things being built the same we are now being ‘encouraged’ to think the same.
It’s not so much about tradition, or being tied to certain materials, or blessed with certain skills (although that all comes into it).
It’s about people who set out to build boats that achieve beauty through a combination of their function, their structure and the knowledge, attitudes and skills that went into their construction.
No, they are not necessarily classical, nor tidy, nor showy, they merely reflect the lives of those immediately around them – about as far from ticky-tackiness and sameness as you can get.
That’s my take on it, anyway.
“Oh, really. What’s for tea?” – Ed.
I have added a link to the St Ives Jumbo Association.
How I missed the Boats in the Bay events I don’t know – (head down – working I should think).
Anyway, this must satisfy just about every aspect of boats that the “Love of a boat” column represents:
Fair winds to them.
(Sit back and enjoy Alban Roinard’s video)
We shall be in St Ives next month for a weekend. I hope to follow this up with a photo at least.
For the origins and full set of images in this series, here
There are a few occasions in the year when my journey to work coincides with sunrise.
from Labrador Bay, 1st December 2009
These are the ships I mentioned in a post from Southwold last September – still there, still waiting for trade.
I have learnt more about them since, in particular the concern they have created in some quarters – here.
~~~
Fifteen minutes later, five miles further on, the sun higher, the perspective lower, the same ships . . .
from Meadfoot Beach, 1st December 2009
Beyond Steeple Point 