sailing

Bude, Sunday

/ Bill / 1 Comment

Bude, Sunday, cloudy skies, low tide

Beginning of the season, the RNLI out in force

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The beach crew were checking their gear

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The lifeboat crew were about to launch on exercise.

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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Even if the technology is outdated,( and it certainly is in the chapters on electrics and photography), Eric and Susan Hiscock’s books reflect their day-to-day learning from their own experience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.

Two yachts, wind, tide . . . and a garden.

/ Bill

“Kissing will go out of fashion when the gorse ceases to bloom.”

No chance – the gorse is still looking good.

We have worked all morning and need to walk away from it. The coast path is the obvious choice – a stretch between Brixham and Dartmouth the easiest to reach. As we descend to Scabbacombe Head, a cold wind blows from north of west, sunshine intermittent.

We watch a  sloop-rigged yacht working its way up from the south towards Dartmouth. As she closes the shore, the combination of  wind and tide is taking her too far to the east of the Mew Stone – by at least a half mile. She tacks and it is immediately obvious that the strength of the tide and the direction of the wind will make the offshore tack even less beneficial. The genoa is furled, she comes about again, motoring strongly under mainsail alone.

Twenty minutes later she rounds the Mew Stone (on the left of the picture below) and lowers the mainsail in the later afternoon light. At the same time, she is joined by another yacht that completes a fast spinnaker run – with the benefit of a favourable wind and tide. She has sailed from Start Point in the background, keeping to the south of  the Skerries bank, which stretches for three miles this side of Start, parallel with her course across the bay.

Start Point is on one the great south coast headlands that the sailing ships marked as they came up-Channel –  Lizard, Start (Point), Portland (Bill) and (the Isle of) Wight, before heading through the Straights of Dover and on to the Thames Estuary or the North Sea and Baltic ports. Now, thanks to the the Traffic Separation Scheme in the Channel, it is the down-Channel traffic that marks the headlands – but, given modern navigation aids, they do so more often out of interest than necessity.

The yachts head or home, we meet two walkers keen to make the pub in Kingswear before evening, and then we drop down into one of those folds of this coastline that has generated a micro-climate of its own, a complete contrast to the scenery of a few minutes before.

This is the Coleton Fishacre garden – a tiny valley throbbing with pent-up energy – plants ready to burst into spring.

The camellias are coming into flower . . .

. . . and the tree ferns are splendid.

The steep climb takes us level with the house and the stunning rill.

But we have visited before and walk on – intent on a cream tea before the final 3/4 mile climb back to the car. As we drive home, we remember the two yachts that should now be berthed safely in their Dartmouth marina. Only one of us wishes he had been on board!

The Voyage of the Storm Petrel

/ Bill / 4 Comments
I am writing this on Blue Mistress. It’s 1230 on Saturday. There is a constant flow of traffic across Laire Bridge half a mile upstream, and, earlier, someone decided to try out his hovercraft.These must be the noisiest vessels ever invented.
It’s overcast and slightly cold and I am considering lighting the stove. Today is the top of the spring tides and the tide is going down fast. Low tide is around 1430. The mud along the rivers edge is rapidly increasing. Boats nearby are aground. We should have just enough water to float.
There is little wind for sailing. I have cleaned up below and have some jobs on deck to do later. In the meantime, I prefer to write.
– – – –
Three years ago I had an email from a Clarissa Vincent commenting on the blog site. I was pleased  she had contacted me because she owned a Folkdancer and had noticed the reference to a Folkboat derivative. Well, at the time, I barely knew what a Folksong was, let alone a Folkdancer (which was why I had set up the blog in the first place). So I appreciated the photograph and learnt about Folkdancers . Clarissa’s boat was called Storm Petrel, which I thought was a great name for a boat.
She also suggested that I start a Folksong Association. Now, it so happens that the last thing I want to do is to start a formal group in anything, but particularly where my boat is concerned. Call me stand-offish if you like, but organising clubs is no longer my scene. People run away to sea to avoid that sort of thing. So, having appreciated Clarissa’s comments, I felt that, if she was intent on forming clubs, then we were going in different directions. That is how blogs go. Some contacts are single comments, some continue for a while, and others result in genuine appreciation and a long-term relationship. But you are aware of where the contacts come from and why – or you think you are . . .
A couple of weeks ago, Bill’s log – (yes, I know), mentioned a book written by the same Clarissa Vincent – The Voyage of Storm Petrel, Britain to Senegal Alone in a Boat. Bill wrote a good review. You can read his account on the link above. I remembered Clarissa’s comments and enthusiasm about Storm Petrel. I bought the book and have been enjoying it ever since – enjoying it and realising that I owe her an apology. Clubby?? Certainly not. I got it wrong, Clarissa. I’m sorry.
– – –
I’ve lit the stove. We have about .5 metre beneath the keel. The tide is slackening but still dropping.
I want to tell you why I like this book.
Between 2002 and 2004, Storm Petrel made a voyage that began in Bristol to sail far enough south to enjoy a climate warm enough for a gecko. Clarissa found her geckos in Portugal and she eventually reached Dakar taking in Spain, Portugal etc. on the way.  When she contacted me in 2006, this was all behind her. I knew nothing of it and was too ‘slow’ to find out.
Somebody once said that everyone has one novel inside them. We all have one great voyage inside us too. A few – very few, have the ken to carry it out. By ‘voyage’ I don’t mean a shiny cruise, I mean a journey. Some people become hooked on travel and are always on the move, but nine times out of ten, just one journey stands out. It has nothing to do with where they go, it is all about the getting there.
Not surprisingly I leap at books that feature boats similar in size to Blue Mistress because I’m interested in what other people do and whether I can use it on the boat. I learnt some technical stuff from this one, but I learnt even more about the people Clarissa met and the places she visited and her insight from the experience. I particularly sympathise with her contrasting Peniche and Castrais in Portugal. I have been to neither but would recognise the difference between the working town and the tourist resort – and which was the more interesting for the single-hander.
Also, her description of the traditional Portuguese working craft. Her comment: “The expression of diverse and extreme forms was largely eradicated from our over-rational and technologically dominated lives.” (p.155) sounds far more formal here than it does in the book but it chimes perfectly with the ‘For love of a boat’ series in this blog.
More than this, in her candour, she has brought out that aspect of single-handed sailing which should be translated as ‘a journey made single-handed’. Yes, there’s the boat and the sea and all the things that have to be joined up to make them work together – sails and rope and navigation and engines and sleep and weather and ports and so on, but amongst all this is a person growing.
“The gecko hunter must have solitude and a delicate process of organisation and problem solving went on in my thoughts whenever I strolled alone. The winding ways of my gecko hunting and sailing were a carefully trodden path, a solitary fairy path of balance between letting go of and holding on to the world. Selfish? – completely. Content? – deeply.” (p. 167)
Clarissa has written the music of her journey. If you listen to the words, you will learn from her book. Mendelsohn wrote that ‘music cannot be expressed in words, not because it is vague  but because it is more precise for words’. Many try, few succeed. This book gets closer than most. That the author plays both saxophone and guitar is no surprise.
In the years since she has moved on – a neglected yacht rescued and turned into a great houseboat . . . Storm Petrel sold, a different sort of trip hinted at. But my guess is that this voyage will always remain special. I wish her well.
– – –
The tide’s turned, we didn’t touch bottom.
– – –
“. . . sailing away in search of paradise will not make one happy and content if one is not already happy and content.” Clarissa Vincent 2003.

Dear George: lazy jacks 3

/ Bill / 2 Comments

More on lazy jacks – here and here.

Dear George

I know you are looking forward to getting your new boat – and that amazing experience when you finally hoist the mainsail on your own boat. I had that moment on Blue Mistress in the summer of 2006

Full of excitement and anticipation, we left the mooring on the Tamar and motored a short way downstream to be free of the boats around us. We turned into the wind and I hauled on the halyard and up went the sail . . . and promptly jammed about half way up. Yes – you guessed it, lazy jacks again. The upper sail batten had caught beneath the upper block. So I let the sail down a little, and tried again. It got caught again. Tried again, this time more cunningly – watch . . . wait for the moment . . . up she goes!

What happened next? The engine was killed, the bow fell away, the sail caught the wind and we discovered that blissful, heart-lifting moment when wind and water and boat blend together. Did we think about lazy jacks then. Of course not. As a result, over the next few months, we went through the same circus every time we raised the mainsail – watch . . . wait for the moment . . . up she goes. Until I began to think about how unhandy it was, particularly if I was sailing solo.

When alone, I would release the halyard clutch, bring the boat into the wind, ease off the throttle, go to the fore end of the cockpit and hurriedly haul on the halyard to get the sail aloft before the bow fell away on the wind – inevitably the top batten got caught and, as the bow fell away, we would start to sail with the mainsail half set. Then it was back and forward, juggling between using the engine to bring the boat back into the wind and going forward to lower the sail, release the batten, and raise it before the batten danced yet again behind the lazy jack and we had to start the whole process all over again.

I thought of several possible ways round it:

  • A sail without battens would be fine – but that would mean altering the shape of the sail;
  • An autopilot to keep the boat motoring gently head to wind would work well – but that had to be rigged specially as I didn’t generally use it otherwise – a clunky solution;
  • On one occasion I loosened the lines to see whether the batten would shake itself free – no;
  • But loosening the lines did allow the sail to regain its shape when set;
  • The problem with this was that the lines were made fast to cleats either side of the mast, so, if I wanted to tighten them before lowering the sail, I had to spend time at the mast uncleating and recleating them;
  • So then I decided to lead them back to a pair of spare jamming cleats next to the halyard clutches;
  • Then I discovered that the thin line along the deck rolled under my feet – something that never happened with the thicker halyards. I learnt very quickly to avoid standing on it. It was another hazard, but worth it for the extra control from the cockpit, (see the previous post on lazy jacks);
  • I experimented with shortening the forward of the three lines on the boom. This pulled the cradle of lines downwards and forwards. It lessened (but not completely abolished) the snagging of the batten, but now the lower battens tended to spill out before the sail was down on the boom;

And then, no less than three years after I bought the boat, it suddenly occurred to me that all I had to do was to stow the lines against the mast when I removed the sail cover and I would never have to worry about raising the sail again, and that’s how it has remained – (and only the once did I forget to re-rig them before lowering the sail!)

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I have just read in the February 2012 issue of Sailing Today a letter from a reader, Tony Waldeck, advocating lazy jacks as a good way of containing the bunt of a reefed mainsail. Yes, that’s a good idea, although I have yet to use it. He states. “Lazy jacks are the answer – but not the off-the-shelf kits that incorporate blocks. All-string arrangements will not chafe the mainsail.” (An off-the-shelf kit is rigged on Blue Mistress. You can see the blocks on the sail below).

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There, George, you have it – almost everything I know about lazy jacks.

Judging by the amount of time and energy they have cost me, ‘lazy’ is a pretty poor description.

Good luck with your new boat.

Bill

~~~

p.s. This is where I look back and wonder why it took so long to reach such a simple solution. Maybe this is the most useful lesson.

The world’s full of experts and no doubt every one of them could have told me the answer. Solutions are simple, especially in the evening around the bar – it’s getting to them that’s the problem. It has to be the experience of solving problems that makes all solutions worth pursuing.

Over the years, I have read many, many ‘boat books’ and I use a lot of what I have found in them, but the most enjoyable aspects of sailing, and certainly the parts I’m best at, are those I have had to work out for myself.

The first sentence in A C Stock’s introduction to his book ‘Sailing Just For Fun’ reads: “This book is for the man who has read all the ‘How-to’ books and still finds that he cannot.” Well, the more I know, the more I find I cannot. I used to worry about this, but no longer – I’m having too good a time finding out.

. . . End

Dear George: lazy jacks 2

/ Bill / 2 Comments

Dear George

Back to lazy jacks. You say you want lots of detail, so this is what I do on Blue Mistress to lower and stow the sails before returning to the mooring where I would restow everything that needed restowing.

On the radio the other day, I heard Colin Dexter, who wrote the Inspector Morse series for television, say that, when writing a book, he definitely knew the beginning and the end of the story but the middle was always a muddle. Manoeuvres on the boat are the same – they have a beginning, a muddle and an end. It’s your job to manage the muddle – and to do that, you need to think your moves through first:

    • Put on your life-jacket and/or tether if you aren’t wearing one or the other already. The rule is: if the situation is such that you are beginning to wonder whether you should wear them – put them on. Many people wear them all the time.
    • Make sure you are out of the main fairway, and any traffic. Avoid the racing fleets. They appear en masse from nowhere. You need enough sea-room to drift downwind. It takes longer by yourself – (not always true, ed.). Keep an eye out for where the boat is and other boats are nearby.
    • Set the self-steering – by the time we get to downing sails, the self-steering gear on Blue Mistress has been stowed. I have a short line with heavy bungee loops at either end. The loops slip easily over the quarter cleats and and three or four coils of the line on the tiller will hold her on course for as long as it takes to go forward and return to the cockpit. The long keel helps.
    • Check that the way forward is clear – particularly the step onto the coach roof. One of the reasons for the upright ‘come-in’ on Blue Mistress rather than a wider sprayhood is that it makes it easy to step from the cockpit to the coachroof. Being older and less athletic, I need all the help I can get.
    • Image
    • If the lazy jacks have been stowed against the mast as in the image below, you will have to free them from around the mast cleat and reset them. So, first, you have to free the lazy jack lines from the jamming cleat next to the cockpit clutches.
    • Now let go the fore-sheet and free the foresail halyard.
    • Attach the tether to the jack-line (if appropriate), and go forward to catch the foresail, securing it against the safety lines. You will already have three lengths of shot-chord attached to the safety line. It takes a moment to secure the sail. (I use the port safety lines – perhaps because I am left-handed). By the way, if I’d known I was going to use this image for a demo, I’d have secured the genoa neatly. Here we have just left the mooring and the lazy jacks are stowed against the mast (see part three)
    • Image
    • Back to the cockpit. As you do so, check the lazy jacks are not caught up on the sail or boom.
    • Tighten the port fore-sheet to secure the clew of the foresail.
    • Then tighten the topping lift, lifting the boom so that it will clear the sprayhood. This may mean releasing the vang and the mainsheet if close-hauled.
    • Tighten the lazy jack lines as far as they will go, slipping them into the appropriate jamming cleats. The lines on the lee side of the sail will tend to flatten it. You may not be able to tighten these perfectly – meaning they will be loose when you drop the sail. This shouldn’t be a problem. They will hold the sail anyway.
    • Image
    • Collect the sail ties from the locker and disentangle them. If you stuff them in your pocket, pulling one out is likely to pull the whole lot out leading to a mad scrabble on the deck to stop them going over the side. And threading them through your belt can result in two or three coming out at once. Work out how you’re going to use them.
    • To drop the mainsail on Blue Mistress, the boat has to be headed into the wind. At anything over five degrees or so off the wind the sail slides will jam against the mast and the sail will be caught partly down. As the bow falls further off the wind, so the sail will start to drive the boat forward, jamming the slides even more. There is no choice but to return to the helm to bring it back into the wind.
    • At this stage, I let the traveller out as far as it will go. This allows more space on the coachroof to furl the sail. (I hadn’t thought about until now, but I tend to come up into the wind on a port tack, which leaves the boom out to starboard. I find it easier to stow the sail from this side of the boom – perhaps because I’m left-handed. I don’t know what other people do.)
    • When the boat has been turned into the wind, leave the helm and tighten the mainsheet to prevent the boom swinging uncontrollably while on the coach-roof. The boat will come up into the wind and the sail will start to flap. (If you assume that you will be on the windward side of the boom and that it will not try to sweep you overboard, then eight times out of ten you will be right . . .)
    • Move to the forward end of the cockpit, release the clutch holding the main halyard and let the sail start to drop.
    • Attach the tether to the jack line, step onto the coach roof and go forward to the mast. This reduces the chance of the boom knocking you over but also, as mentioned above, the sail needs to be pulled down the mast in a hurry before the slides jam. You will feel the bow begin to fall away as the boat slows to a stop and the wind catches it. The trick is to get the sail down and under control before the bow starts to fall away.
    • The lazy jacks are there to hold the bulk of the sail close to the boom. Without them the folds of sail will tend to blow over the side and, in a blow, it can be difficult for one person to bring it back under control. It’s not impossible, it’s just easier and safer with the lazy jacks when single-handed. (By the way, the sail battens will not necessarily fall evenly and they will need to be aligned with the boom fairly swiftly).

At this stage, the boat should be lying quietly and the sail can be carefully furled. Make sure the sail folds of the sail formed by the slides are all on the same side, then, working from the mast along the length of the boom, take a two foot wide section of the foot of the sail – (hammock-like), and fold it over the bulk of the sail, aligning the battens and tucking the reefing lines into the folds as you go. The sail ties are turned round the bundle with the loose-end tucked under the turn so that they can be easily released if the engine fails and you need to sail again before you get to the mooring. It also leaves them ready for the next time you sail.

And all the above assumes that you know the engine is going to start so that you can motor back to the mooring. The one time I didn’t check before stowing the sails, the engine refused to start . . . that’s another story.

That’s all there is to it, George. If your eyes have glazed over, I’m sorry, but you did ask for detail. Have I got images of each stage? You’ve got to be joking!

I’ll tell you the few problems I have had next time.

To be continued . . .

After the race

/ Bill

I used this first picture on a ‘Dear George’ post the other day. I had forgotten the series I took of the Fastnet boats after they finished in Plymouth back in August.

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I like the images. They say something about this race – the yachts involved, the numbers of crew,  the conditions.

Dear George: singlehanded

/ Bill

Dear George

I am sorry it has taken so long to reply to your letter. As I mentioned the other day, the day job is proving a handful. You work hard throughout a long career and, at the very end, with the next step beckoning, you find yourself jumping through endless regulatory hoops that appear to have been created by someone in a hurry to finish a school project. One day I’ll tell you about it – ‘nuff said for now.

– – –

You say you want to sail and you are thinking of buying a boat of your own. You have sent me a lot of questions. Of course, I am flattered to be asked, but it would take a master mariner and his mate – the gnarled old yachtsman, a year to answer these – and still give them an excuse for another beer. So, before I wade in . . .

  • I am neither a master mariner – nor an old yachtsman (let alone gnarled);
  • What you get is not an expert’s guidance, more a fellow crew’s comments;
  • All my answers will come from my own experience such that it is – and if I quote someone else I will tell you (whether I can remember who it is or not);
  • You have to decide whether it is useful or not – and if you want to come back at me, that’s OK. We’ll both learn something.

– – –

You bring up the single-handed question.

Here’s my answer: “If you have to ask whether or not you should sail single-handed, the answer is no, don’t – go to sea with a crew and enjoy the company.”

The whole point of being single-handed is to be able to make those decisions for yourself. You do the preparation beforehand, you work out the potential problems, you solve the extra challenges as they come along. You run the boat – every aspect of it. You can seek answers from as many people as you like, but ultimately the responsibility is yours and yours alone.

Among many other things, (and we can talk about these later), you have to enjoy your own company. You have to live with your own mistakes, and your own triumphs. There will be no applause.

I agree with Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s comment, “ The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn’t subdue you and make you abject. It’s a stimulating loneliness.” I might even substitute the word ‘aloneness’ for ‘loneliness’.

A crew is a different matter.

Here is a question for you. Family aside, if you had a choice, who would you have aboard? Someone who can stay focussd, someone who knows one end of a rope from another, someone who can work close to other people without getting their ego in the way – (that’s a misquote from a sixties film by the way).

Do you want a crew that is excitable and can’t sit still? Someone who is always on the move? You might if you are in a twenty-minute America’s Cup race, but perhaps not if you are on a gentle cruise down the coast to Falmouth. It depends how long you intend to stay together, doesn’t it.

Of course, you don’t always get the choice. On s boat, you have to learn to live close with all sorts of people. Now there’s a topic . . .

I hope this is the sort of reply you are after.

I will sleep on your other questions and get back to you later.

Bill

Single-handed

/ Bill / 1 Comment

I want to write about sailing single-handed. But now I wonder how self-indulgent that might be.

By definition, if I sail single-handed, it’s just me. All other sailing is team-work – (or crew-work).

So who on earth but me would be interested in my version of single-handed? Surely, it’s irrelevant to everyone else.

Writing about it is me imposing my version on the reader. Plenty of other people sail single-handed and enjoy it in their own way. When you enjoy something so personal, to be faced with another person’s assertions invites a defensive stance:

“Thanks very much, but I am confident in my own competence, I don’t need you to tell me this or that is a better way of doing it. Yes, of course, I am always interested, but I want to find out in my own way, in my own time. So write it down if you want, but don’t expect me to want to read it – and certainly don’t expect me to agree with you.”

OK, so be it.

On sailing a Folksong – Ossian

/ Bill / 2 Comments

Ossian

Ossian

Eddie writes:

“Only had the boat 7 months, previous owner had her based at Loch Melford near Oban, spent the first three months of the year traveling backwards and forwards every weekend getting her ready for the water.

Once launched we sailed around to the Loch Crinan then through the canal to Ardnishaig  then 54 NM dash down the Clyde to our home port of Irvine.”

As you know, I’m biased – but what a good-looking boat.

I’m particularly interested in the furling headsail – difficult to get my head round the ease of use against having a choice of sails.

As I get older, the prospect of the plunge forward becomes less appealing – on the other hand . . .

From Steeple Point – coincidence

/ Bill

This afternoon I finished reading John Howlett’s book – ‘ Mostly About Boats’.

In the last chapter, acknowledging the experience at his disposal – (a lifetime sailing and having designed a number of his own boats), he describes the boat that he would now build for himself. One that he could sail single-handed if need be.

Remember, he was writing in 1956, when he was in his sixties.

He gives a sail plan:

I looked at the plan and thought, *Surely, I’ve seen a boat with a sail plan like that recently. . .”