sailing single-handed

Stick at it, Bill

/ Bill

My namesake in his blog Knockabout Sloops says

“One of the things that I have noticed about in writing, and ranting, about my sailing ideals is how pointless it all seems. I seem to be championing an ideal of engineless sailing and beauty that is long gone. Buried in a sea of plastic, diesel and electronics. What I know is that the effort on my part takes time and energy and is seldom well received. So I have decided to stop ranting on Knockabout Sloops.”

I hope he doesn’t stop championing the ideal of engineless sailing and beauty. If he feels he is not well received then so be it – that goes with the territory.

For myself, I read his blog with envy and admiration. The boats he shows us are indeed beautiful. If he, in his conviction, doesn’t present them, who will?

However much I would like to, I could never live up to his ideal. For many reasons, I chose another way. There are plastic and diesel and electronics in my boat. And there is also the beauty that I appreciate. It comes in those moments when I am not using the diesel, or the electronics – the plastic just happens to be the form I choose to cross the water in.

For me, the real beauty is not the shape of the boat or the material it’s made of,  but the motion through the water under sail. And some shapes and some materials do it better than others – form and function matter.

In trying to accommodate the common denominators of comfort, convenience and profitable production lines, the majority has chosen a different path. Maybe they will come back in time – probably not. But that’s no reason to stop championing an ideal.

There are thousands of miles between us, Bill, but we share the same water.

And there are more ways than one to get your message across.  Stick at it.

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 – update

/ Bill

The removal of old trim, the rounding off of wooden edges and a first coat of white paint has transformed Blue Mistress’ main cabin.

So much so that she has become a different boat.

Up to now, I have gone along with the cosily unfinished state below decks. It was always going to need more work but, on the whole it was ok.

Now the work is being done, which means decisions have had to be made.

The first was whether or not to fit a proper sea toilet (Jabasco compact) instead of the portable loo which was boxed-in midships in the entrance to the fore cabin. The traditional bucket would have suited the skipper but he had to fall in with the expectations of those guests who prefer a more conventional approach. It did occur to him that one way of weeding out prospective crew would be to note their response to “By the way, you’ll have to use the bucket . . .” followed by a long pause. On the other hand, he remembered that he rather liked some of those who might turn their noses up at it so the least he could do would be to see whether something more formal was possible.

As there is little head room immediately forward of the bulkhead, the only feasible plan would be to shorten the port-hand bunk – (in effect, remove it), and install the device at the forward end, immediately this side of the bulkhead. He designed a box to contain it which would have a double hinged lid level with the shelf behind. This would be useful as a worktop – (and somewhere to put down a mug of coffee). Painted white with the rest of the cabin, it would only be slightly intrusive – even if we had lost the widest and most comfortable bunk.

At the same time, there is no chart table. The “thunderbox” lid could be used as one but would require the occasional removal of everything on it, whereas if we used the middle part of the bunk space for a regular chart table with chart storage and lockers beneath –  keeping it level with the aforesaid worktop and varnishing it as contrast, then we would add considerably to the facilities aboard.

By leaving space at the aft end for one person to sit facing across the cabin while being able to twist round to use the table –  (there would need to be some space beneath this end of the table to accommodate knees), it would still be possible to enjoy a convivial evening. The design also intended there to be a pull-out table for those sitting on the starboard bunk.

Moving the heads would have opened up the entrance to the fore cabin which had been tricky to enter because of the way the portaloo was boxed in and the lack of headroom just inside the forecabin.

But we’re not doing any of that.

Why? Cost mostly – and time. In doing the planning, I discovered where the limit lay. (This was before the economic crisis had taken hold. I’m even more sure now.)

What we are doing is less complex, and, by the look of the work completed so far, the result will be better for it.

More on this in a later post.

On learning to row

/ Bill / 1 Comment

“Watch carefully, Bill.”

Aged about 12. We were leaning against the rail  looking down at the water.

A small,  elderly man was descending the wooden steps from the quay next door. He was dressed in a blue fisherman’s jersey, baggy grey trousers and canvas shoes.

Half way down, he nodded a good morning to us, untied the end of the frape and gently hauled his dinghy to the tiny landing stage beneath him.

It must have been about half-tide to have exposed this platform. Along this side of the harbour, dinghies were moored on frapes to allow the boat to ride the considerable tides and also to prevent them going aground at low water –  (in all but the lowest of low spring tides), so that they were always ready for use.

He untied the boat from the frape, remoored it to the ladder and stepped neatly into the middle of the boat. It barely moved.

The thwarts were wet from the previous night’s rain. He found a cloth and dried them.

Then he raised a bottom board and bailed the small amount of water collected there. He sponged it dry.

Facing aft, he sat down on the middle thwart, shipped both rowlocks and then the outside oar.

Twisting round, he untied the painter, coiled it into the bow and gave the boat a gentle push. Now he had room to ship the other oar.

As the boat drifted further away from the ladder, he was able to pull on the port oar turning the boat towards its destination.

With barely a glance over his shoulder, he took the weight on both oars and glided effortlessly away to the quay across the water.

The oars dipped with barely a splash – an economy of movement that gave the sense of a single unit – man and boat.

Even I could see the natural focus, the self-possession and the strength of someone doing what they have been doing for decades – a master in his element.

This was Randolph Johns. He was probably in his late sixties. That seemed ancient then – I no longer think so.

Over the next two or three summers, there would be the occasional lesson in our pram dinghy or a few words on shore.

From watching and listening to him, I learnt how to row and how to handle a small dinghy.

There was never any formality in his teaching – just the passing on of knowledge and the acquiring of some skill by doing.

I will never forget Randolph Johns. I learnt from him what it meant to master an activity – to have reached a point where the movement itself ceases to be an aspiration and becomes part of your being. He wasn’t a man who went out for a row – rowing was part of how he lived. He didn’t think about it much.

Had I rowed every day since, I doubt if I would ever have been as capable of doing this deceptively simple task as well as him. Even in those days, outboard engines had taken the necessity out of rowing and were turning it into a leisure activity. There was now choice – the attitude behind it had changed. Most of the masters of rowing nowadays will have mastered a sport, not a means of transport.

At 12, of course I didn’t understand this. But I did begin to look at how other people did those things I wanted to do – and I did learn a little from doing this . . .  and then a little more  . . .

“Watch carefully, Bill.”

Fowey, circa 1959. I took the picture. See the number of moorings compared with today. The tug on the right is St Canute which later went to the Exeter Maritime Museum.

Book sailing – “Only So Many Tides”

/ Bill

I have been reading and enjoying Jon Wainwright’s book. He spent nearly four decades sailing a traditional wooden boat – locally referred to as a nobby (although he wasn’t totally convinced) from the north west, which he brought through the canals across England to the east coast and down to Felixstowe and the south east.

Aged forty he found himself getting excessively tired and discovered he had a heart condition. This had the prospect of slowing him up considerably. Nevertheless he kept sailing – both cruising and racing with the Old Gaffers.

A particular passage resonated:

“Obviously, time was not on my side, and it made me realise that there were only so many tides that Deva and I were going to catch. That is the problem of having a real concept of mortality. I see so many people who embark bravely on big rebuilds of smacks and other larger vessels, reckoning to take five years and often taking ten or more. I could not conceive of that possibility. Even if I survived the effort of rebuilding a boat, how fit would I be to sail for much longer afterwards? Some of the rebuilders who are fit when they start probably are not so when they finish; the broker’s advertisements feature vessels from such situations. But they do not see it in that way. They laugh about being knocked down by a bus, but do not believe it will happen to them.

So my situation meant that work on Deva is not a cabinet-maker’s standard. It is fit for purpose, not built for posterity. The decks are painted, not laid teak. Some jobs are neglected . . .”

I know how he felt.

Time and tide . . .