sailing single-handed

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

Pass it on

/ Bill

In book-sailor mode, I found the following – the first paragraph of the preface to Deep Sea Sailing, by Erroll Bruce:

In 1950 I enjoyed an exciting sailing race across the North Atlantic and was soon afterwards sent for by Lord Fraser of North Cape, then First Sea Lord at the Admiralty. He asked many questions about the handling of the yacht, and finished by saying, “What you have learnt of the sea in small craft is not your private property, so I trust you will pass it on to others.”

I warm to the phrase ‘pass it on to others.’

It stands back from ‘teach’ or ‘tell’ or ‘inform’. It somehow has less of the tinge of intention created by a modern trend that seeks to ‘improve’ everyone.

It says: “I have done such and such. This is what happened and this is what I learnt. You can pick it up and use it or you can leave it alone. Either way, our ideas meet for a short while and then move on.”

The importance is in the communication. The effect is up to the recipient.


Book sailing

/ Bill

We have been watching the rugby this afternoon – England losing to Wales, and the conversation got round to sporting academies and how young people seem to be protected these days and, as a consequence, are expected to survive major tests before they have built the practical experience they need to cope with them – before they know what it’s like in real life. At least the old-fashioned apprenticeship pitted the apprentice against the real world almost from the start.

My mother-in-law who comes from a farming family said that, when she was young,  they used to describe people like that as “book-farmers”. They know everything on paper . . . but not much in reality.

I, like many other people who sail, devour books on sailing and the sea and could be described as a book-sailor by anyone with more experience than me. (I have just added yet another of my many books to the boatblog book shelf).

It has got me thinking: I wonder if people could be described as “blog-sailors” or “DVD-sailors”. I believe there are thousands of “virtual-sailors” currently ‘racing’ in the Vendee Globe. Perhaps they are “laptop-sailors”. or ‘pc-sailors’

Whatever . . . it is good to be interested – but the only real way to learn  is  to be out there on the water.

So, I wish you a favourable tide and a fair wind

Squall over Eddystone 2007

but not too favourable or too fair . . .

because how else will you learn?

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.

For love of a boat – Teignmouth, Devon and Poole, Dorset

/ Bill / 1 Comment

Two boats this time, the second one for comparison.

Teignmouth, Devon, UK 2009

This is one of, I believe, the last four of the original seine boats on the river Teign, net fishing for salmon and also used for the collection of mussels.

The net is cast from the stern, hence no stern thwart. Thole pins are used for the oars, although, by the positioning of the forward fenders, it looks as though they are used less these days.  The pins are set so that the oarsman can row conventionally from the bow thwart or facing forward from the main thwart.

Teignmouth, 2009

Compare the seine boat above with a similarly-sized boat seen at Poole Harbour this week.

There are a number of differences in construction – their functions are not same.

She is broader in the beam, with supported thwarts.

There are positions for three oarsmen, with rowlocks rather than thole pins for the oars.

And there is a hole in the forward thwart. Does anyone know what this is for? Evidently ‘a mast’, but why in this paricular boat?

Poole Harbour, Dorset, UK, 2009

Poole Harbour, 2009