Almost ready to launch. Update later.
small craft
Stick at it, 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
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
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.
For love of a boat – Agia Kiriaki, Pelion, Greece
Agia Kiriaki, Pelion, Greece 2004
This is a variation from my usual image of a single vessel.
It is my thank you to AA who has taken the time to send me details of wooden boat-building in Greece.
I find myself drawn deeper and deeper into the subject – and more and more intrigued.
For the origins of this image series, here
For love of a boat – Port Vendres, Roussillon, France 2008
Port Vendres, Roussillon, France 2008
For historic images of Les Barques Catalan taken in Banyul, the port a few miles south of Port Vendres – here
For the origins of this image series, here
On learning to row
“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.
On sailing a Folksong – for fellow Folksong owners
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
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
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
Beyond Steeple Point 