On warps and batteries

31/12/200631/12/2006 / Bill

At the marina yesterday, I found the No.1 battery (my engine starter) lowish, while the No.2 battery was almost fully charged.
I have no idea why there should be a difference as they were both fully charged when I last looked a week ago.
The engine started easily on the No.2 battery and the other one is now fully charged, but I shall keep a close eye on it.

The current high winds have worked the warps hard and there were early signs of chafe on the aft spring. I changed this to a heavier rope as this takes the full weigh of the boat most often.

Where Blue Mistress is moored, in the corner of the marina, most of the gales seem to deflect from the other side of the river and push her away from the finger. This is good because, as I’ve mentioned before, her deck is level with the pontoon/finger making it difficult to position the fenders. If they are raised to sit between the rubbing strake and the finger, they work themselves out. Placing them so that they are just below the rubbing strake keeps them in place and the hull off the finger in a calm, but with a swell there is a tendency to roll and the possibility of sliding under the edge of the finger. In the very heavy winds before Christmas, there was some slight damage.

As we are in a corner with plenty of room, I have been able to overcome this by running a warp to the far pontoon from midships. Together with the starboard bow warp to the pontoon, this holds her about two feet off and still allows room for a large motor vessel to moor opposite.

Leaking deck

13/12/2006 / Bill / 1 Comment

There’s always a moment when the thinking stops and the action has to start.
You can dream til the cows come home but it doesn’t get the job done.

So, yesterday, having written my piece about Where to Start a few days ago and hitched it to the companionway and engine box, it suddenly dawned on me that this was not the place to start at all. (It’s that old joke of “if you want to go there, you don’t want to start from here.”)

The stark reality is that it has rained so much and so heavily in the last two or three weeks that water has managed to penetrate every vulnerable point in the deck and has flowed to various points via the cabin lining.

Not only that, but the two hatches that were fitted at the aft end of the cockpit, the hatches I thought would be so useful for extra storage, have proved totally unwatertight.

This is an extension of the problem with the cockpit drains in Folksongs that John mentioned. The entrance to the drains is almost at water level so that there is always water visible in them. In a torrential downpour, the cockpit quickly fills and the drains only slowly take the water away. This is less of a problem when sailing but on Blue Mistress on her berth the water has had time to ‘flow’ through the hatches. ‘Flow’ seems to be the right word by the state of the quarter berth cushions and the water level in the lockers there. (Thank goodness for duck tape).

The general feeling of damp was not just due to condensation and the cabin lining, which is similar to the lining they use in wardrobes on the expensive yachts, (imagine), showed damp areas and distinctly wet areas. The leaks are from various deck fittings – including a couple of stanchions which have bent on their bases.

I have to thank Andy for thinking it through with me. it needed an outside eye. I look forward to working with him later.

So I stripped all the lining from both cabins – and reduced the damp areas to a few specific points. Now all I have to do is sit there in the rain and circle the defects!

The results are two lighter, colder, less cosy cabins – but it’s a step in the right direction. I can still sail over the winter (well, not in this wind) and the repair work can be done under cover in the spring.

Designing a new Companionway

08/12/2006 / Bill / 2 Comments

The reason I started this blog was to try and get some input from other Folksong owners on the layout of the companionway/engine box area in their boats.

From the beginning, there have been a number of jobs I need to do, the question has always been “where do I start?”

Now, having spent three months enjoying Blue Mistress – it’s a great sail, I have a simple plan.

The trick will be to turn the plan into reality.

Outline Plan for new Companionway:

1. An inboard engine (Yanmar GM10) was fitted several years ago. It’s below what was the companionway. An engine box was designed later, with a battery box forward of it. Neither the engine box nor the battery box is robust enough to be used as companionway steps into the saloon – especially with a sea running. Entry is currently in the form of a backward shuffle with the left foot hopefully contacting the edge of the navigation area.

2. The navigation area itself needs to be brought up to standard to take a new fuse box, DSC/VHF, chart potter etc.

3. There is no way of laying out a chart unless the saloon table is in place, which is impossible in a sea.

Stage One:

To make new robust engine and battery boxes that will be secure and strong enough to bear the weight of a heavy man in a heavy sea.

The structure has to be secure but it must also allow access to the engine (fuel line, water line, dip-stick – and a view of the stern gland), and batteries, and be as sound-proof as practical.

Also, the top step should be able to act as a seat for someone to sit with his/her head outside the hatch, and the bottom step to be a seat at the aft end on the saloon, (preferably on the same level as the saloon benches) – I have checked it since I wrote this and it will actually have to be slightly lower than this because headroom is restricted by a sill.

Stage Two

At the same time the navigation/electronics area needs some straightforward joinery – book shelf, fascia for fuse box, VHF and so on.

This area is on the starboard side, next to the bottom step/seat of the companionway. On the port side is the stove.

Stage Three

The bottom step/seat should make it feasible to have a removable chart table that will fit transversely across the saloon here – so that I can keep a chart out while we are sailing and access it easily. I have a design in mind to make it secure but will need to look at materials available.

Just an Observation

08/12/200608/12/2006 / Bill

Just an observation:

Last Sunday, winds of over 100 mph caused havoc along the stretch of water that was the subject of my previous entry – (posted three hours before it happened).

A row of yachts, theoretically safely stored on shore for the winter, were blown over, breaking masts, deck equipment etc and causing millions of pounds worth of damage.

At least one boat still on the same moorings we had left at the beginning of the month sank, other yachts were torn from their moorings and blown ashore.

The marina where Blue Mistress is berthed is reasonably sheltered but two fingers were broken from the pontoons with yachts still moored to them.

Blue Mistress is ok where she is – stretched lines which needed readjusting.

There have been two further gales during the week.

Many thanks to Mike and David who have kindly had a look since and reworked the springs.

The long term forecast talks of more stormy weather and blizzards during February and March.

I don’t remember ‘blizzards’ occurring in long range forecasts in this country before.

Short Voyage – Continuing Story

03/12/2006 / Bill / 1 Comment

Blue Mistress is now snug in her winter berth, very different from the exposed swing mooring of the past three months. She looks small among the high-sided yachts around her, like a new student in a strange school.

For me the short trip from mooring to berth, from one river to another, the Tamar to the Plym, held more than an Autumn afternoon jaunt.

The gps reads 3.33 nautical miles, but that’s only distance. It took about an hour, but that’s only time. In terms of maritime history, distance and time, this stretch of water is endless.

It’s full of human stories – modern stories that has been going on for centuries. Stories of people setting out to explore their world using that most adventurous of ways to travel – on water.

Throughout the year, many thousands of holiday-makers, lorry drivers and business people cross the track I was taking. But long before the industrial age and ages of technology and information, people have left from here to explore the world, go to war, leave their home country for a life overseas, circumnavigate, trade and so on. They have lifted their faces to the same weather, smelt the same sea and felt that first lift of swell beneath them.

Many of the names have been with me since I was knee high. I don’t believe they were all paragons of virtue but they sure made an impact on the world.

In 1577, Francis Drake, started his circumnavigation in Golden Hind from Plymouth. Three years later, he moored off Drake’s Island (on the right of the picture) before heading up Channel for a triumphant return.

On 19th July 1588, now Sir Francis Drake, he and the English fleet slipped out of Plymouth to tail the Spanish Armada up the Channel to meet them in battle off Gravelines on 29th July.

On 16th September 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers set off from Plymouth in the Mayflower, Captain Standish, landing in Provincetown, Massachusetts on 11th November (66 days at sea)

In 1768, the Endeavour, under Captain James Cook, left from Plymouth on the first of his three voyages of discovery. In 1772, on his second voyage, he was accompanied by Captain Furneax, who charted the coast of Tasmania and in 1773 was the first Englishman to land there, and Captain William Bligh of the mutiny on the Bounty fame (April 1789), who later became governor of New South Wales from 1806-1809. In 1776, Cook again left from Plymouth on his ill-fated third voyage.

On 13th March 1787, following heavy gales, (this was before the Breakwater was built, remember), the transport ships ‘Charlotte’ and ‘Friendship carrying men and women convicts left for Australia. On 28th January 1788, they landed with nine other ships at Port Jackson, later to be Sydney, New South Wales

In 1831, Charles Darwin on board the Beagle was delayed in Plymouth by bad weather

On 12th May 1839, the Tory sets sail for New Zealand with settlers.

Between the 19th November 1840 and the 3rd September 1842, six ships left Plymouth with settlers bound for New Plymouth, New Zealand – the William Bryant, the Amelia Thompson, Oriental, Timandra, Blenheim and Essex.

A plaque near the Mayflower Steps remembers the thousands of Cornish men and women who sailed from Plymouth, miners and farmers to settling in South Australia. Not only Australia. In 1973, near Russell, in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, we came across a small cemetery with many graves of Cornish miners.

Between 1812 and 1841, Plymouth Breakwater was built to create one of the largest sheltered harbours in Europe. So , the Pilgrim Fathers, James Cook and the early transport ships would have set out into a bay into which a strong southerly swell could keep ships in port for days on end.

We passed Plymouth Hoe, with the prominent landmark of Smeaton’s Tower. This was the light on the Eddystone Rocks from 1756 to 1882 and would have been welcomed by the ships of the time, but the rocks were unlit in Drake and the Pilgrim Fathers’ time, a troubling navigational hazard some 14 miles off Plymouth.

1st May 1919, the American seaplane NC4 landed in Plymouth Sound after the hazardous first Transatlantic Flight

The Naval Dockyard at the beginning of our short voyage was started in 1651. Before this, it was based in Cattewater, which was where we were headed. During every war since, and the peacetimes between, including the First and Second World Wars, sailors, (and soldiers on the troop carriers), have journeyed through this water to unknown fates – many outstanding heroes among them, and many who were never to return. Only last week, in Iraq, we sadly lost a young marine who would have known this stretch intimately.

In the late sixties both Francis Chichester and then Alec Rose refitted on the Cremyll bank of the Tamar at Mashfords.

For some reason, Chichester’s feat shrank the world far more than air travel. For generations, the sea had been a route to adventure and the unknown. Sailors had gone to sea not knowing whether they would return. They had used the best of modern technology (bigger ships, better sails, different rigs) and that technology had evolved to meet the needs of exploration, trade and war. Now it was possible for men to race round the world solo in small boats. Setting sail for exploration, battle and trade had been joined by challenges of a more personal, leisurely kind.

This was hugely innovative and, as with all innovation, the next stage is organisation, and so OSTAR – the Observer Single-Handed Trans Atlantic Race, which had started in the Royal Western Yacht Club in 1960, developed and grew.

Single-handed sailing has come a long way since Hasler and Chichester’s initial race across the Atlantic. As I write, eight purpose-built yachts are competing in the Velux 5 Oceans race around the world and no less than 74 started in the Route du Rhum across the Atlantic. Phil Sharp, a Brit from Jersey has just won the Classe 40. These boats are filled with equipment that Chichester and Rose could only dream about.

And we can now garner news of these yachtsman more or less instantly. Video links put us in the yachts in the Southern Ocean – we live through their crises as they happen.

Near Mount Batten, we passed through a small fleet of youngsters dinghy racing (actually they shot round me). Perhaps the same youngsters were in the picture I took the following Sunday morning, looking for wind in the calm November sunshine. No time for romantic illusion here, they have the technology, winning is what counts and the wind is for the taking.

These are the inheritors of the legacy that the generations above have left – plus some. This is the generation that will face global warming head on.

Maybe its effects will not be as dramatic as some forecast, it certainly won’t be as miniscule as others hope. The reality will be somewhere in between, and the effect will be seen on the sea and in weather patterns before its effect on land.

As sea levels rise, it is not just the volume of water but the weight of water that we need to be concerned about. The tides will continue to rise and fall, but there will be more water flowing and if when the weather patterns dictate low pressure the water height will rise further and the weightand speed of tidal flow, combined with intermittent storm surges, will try our sea defenses.

We will need those who can read the sea and make best use of the weather. On this stretch of water, as on other stretches of water around the globe, this is where it starts, this is the training ground. These young people will be the heroes of the future, working with new technologies but dealing with the same elements with the same respect as those who went before them.

Every generation leaves unfinished business for those who follow. When the philosopher wrote, ‘whatever, you want, oh, discontented man, stand up, pay the price and take it!’ he meant us not only to have the courage to take up the challenge but also to take notice of the price to be paid for doing so.

Naturally, we have taken, but unfortunately (and perhaps inevitably) we have paid little heed to the price. Man has stepped out to reach as high as he can. Amazing feats have been accomplished, and wonderful innovations created. As the momentum of that taking has steadily increased, we have built a powerful head of steam. Now it is imperative we pay attention to the price and deal with it. That price is high.

Technology carries a large part of the answer but not all of it. Unfortunately, the very success of technology, (some would say it’s glamour), has blinkered us, causing us to rely on it and to think of progress as a headlong technological rush forward. Nowadays, we seem to discount even the recent past.

It’s as if the past has become a foreign country. We have forgotten that it was inhabited by exactly the same people as us – also facing the unknown, also having to find solutions to overwhelming problems. Yes, we have to face the challenges ahead ourselves, but we would do well to look back and learn from the experience of those previous generations.

Every problem carries it’s own solution, but, in this case, technology alone is not the answer. We need to look further.

A Change in Direction

29/11/2006 / Bill

This blog is timed to finish after three months – on 4th January.

When I started I was purely interested in finding owners of Folksong 25s, wherever they may be.
I had no idea whether anyone would respond.
What would be the likelihood of anyone a) searching on Folksong 25, and b) finding my blog?
Have you ever tried Googling ‘Folksong’?
In the event, I have been pleased that there is at least one owner – on the East coast. Thanks, John.

However, something else has happened in the meantime.
I have discovered how easy it is for blogging to take over from journal-keeping.
It’s a very public form of journaling and needs far more discipline than I imagined
It can lead in all sorts of unexpected directions.

I set out to talk about Blue Mistress – (don’t try Googling Blue Mistress!!).
I wanted to keep it light and merely create a link for other owners.

What emerged in the beginning was my enthusiasm for my boat – (looking back, a rather unqualified enthusiasm).
I found it has led to thoughts on the sea and on maritime history – both of which have threaded through my life.
And now I am about to add an even more thoughtful entry, which
a) started as plain description of a short voyage along a stretch of well-traveled water
b) became full of links which can lead the reader in all sorts of directions
c) ended up as a comment on the people involved with the sea and their value to a future that involves global warming.

This entry confirms my belief that writing things down helps you move forward, and I commend journaling to you.
In navigation terms, it is the equivalent of being in the middle of an ocean with nothing but the sea, the weather and the currents.
Where you head is entirely up to you, based on your own skills and present wishes.
I hope the entry itself, ‘A Short Voyage – An Unfinished Story’, works.

The spray hood needs repairing

18/11/200618/11/2006 / Bill

The cold/flu, or whatever it was, is finally leaving me and I am beginning to think clearly again.

Spent a very pleasant few hours on board this morning “messing about”. Bright sunshine and enough wind to dry the boat out with both hatches open.

I removed the spray hood and have taken it to the sailmakers for repairs.

There are two problems with this spray hood. Firstly, I am pretty sure it wasn’t designed for Blue Mistress. Particularly irksome is the fact that the retaining straps are in the wrong place, especially the starboard one – (see below. In the image the forepart is unhooked). Guess where it has ripped.

Secondly, the main sheet track stretches the full width of the forepart of the cockpit. This means that when the sheet is pulled in tight, it can chafe the after edge of the spray hood. I don’t normally sail with the hood up, but did need it on a couple of memorable occasions. That’s when I discovered the chafing.

Most of the damage was done on the mooring during rough weather. The main sheet came adrift allowing the boom to swing. My fault, I should have double-checked before going ashore.

I have now attached the main sheet on the end boom ring, and am watching the track to be sure that it takes the different angle.

The hood will need to be reinforced, with an extra ‘gusset’ on the starboard side, and we’re considering a pvc strip which will allow the sheet to slide more easily if the same situation arises again.

The End of the Honeymoon

06/11/200607/11/2006 / Bill / 1 Comment

Blue Mistress is in her winter berth following a short voyage – (short story to come later), and the honeymoon is over.

Bought in May, put on the water in July, this is the boat I have always wanted.

The excitement has been in discovering the pluses I knew would be there. Speed wasn’t the issue. I wanted her to sail well in a sea, to hold a course, to sail consistently under a reefed mainsail, to be easy to sail myself and so enjoy different crews of different experience, although she would be too small to live aboard, to have sufficient accommodation to spend several days cruising along the coast.

Many family and friends, (but not all yet), have spent time on board. We have been to Fowey (in a blow) and back, and I have been out to the Eddystone solo, (no Katie Miller but good enough for me). In the past three months, we have hoisted every sail in most conditions (no full gales), and motored in flat calm across a breathless sea.

I have revised old navigation skills, looked to my seamanship, obtained a Short Range Certificate and have come to realise that I have seriously underestimated the advance of technology in sailing. I have picked up a mooring solo in a fast spring tide, (as well as failing to do so and having to come round again). And I have found myself wanting in many areas.

After the honeymoon, comes the reality:

1. The details that don’t live up to expectations – Why does the depth sounder consistently fail to register depth? Why is the starboard lower shroud anchored with a different bottle screw to the other shrouds? Where is the leak in the deck coming from?(if it’s not sea, it’s rain I worry about!) The spray hood needs repairing. And the main sheet track needs rethinking.There’s a long list.

2. And I didn’t buy a boat to spend time sailing aimlessly, however good that can sometimes be. There are modifications to the accommodation that would be allow me to write on board and practice my photography – perhaps more chart space. And a sturdier engine box/step to the main hatch. And a whole range of technology to research.

3. And as much as I enjoy sailing in Plymouth, would we be better based further east along the coast, nearer home? Just a thought.

We will be in the water for most of the winter and there’s more sailing to come. So Phase Two looks to be full of interest, ups and downs, and a lot of fun.

Whatever the future holds, for sheer rush, it will be hard to beat that moment when Blue Mistress’ keel first touched the water.

The Skipper and his/her Technology

28/10/200628/10/2006 / Bill

I’ve been looking at the skippers and their boats in La Route du Rhum which starts later today, and thinking about what being single-handed must mean to them in the light of the PR and media circus that constantly crowds them.

Most of the boats are marvels of modern technology. But it seems to me that, in many cases, the technology has taken charge.

I want to believe that the skippers are greater than the technology that drives their boats. Surely, for each one of them, there is a human element of self-reliance that reaches beyond it.

It’s not that technology itself that is the problem. Indeed technology is responsible for pushing back all sorts of boundaries. And certainly the idea is long outdated that all the technology you need is Robin Knox Johnson’s barometer, borrowed from the pub on his first voyage.

No, it’s something else. It’s the attitude that got him to the finish that is surely still vital, and the determination to get there using all the tools at his disposal.

What concerns me, in my rather naive way, is that, because all this technology exists, plus the constant pressure to get there faster than anyone else, it has become imperative to have it, together with the technological expertise, teamwork and huge expense needed to make it happen.

In modern single-handed racing, it is now very much the case of the skipper and his/her technology and his/her team. Each has to rely on the other.

I admire these racing skippers immensely and am following them daily with envy. I can’t begin to emulate the skills they are showing.

However, I can’t be the only one who took his hat off to Knox-Johnson starting the Velux5 Ocean Race with a reefed mainsail. That can’t have been in the television script which required corporate logos in full sail! But, given what came later, it was a good decision.

So maybe he showed that I am wrong. In a small way, he demonstrated that, with everything else that was going on, the boat and everything in it really was in the hands of the skipper, and it’s just unfortunate that this fact sometimes gets lost in the hullabaloo of PR.

The Ceres

23/10/200622/06/2007 / Bill / 1 Comment

On Saturday, I was at Bude Museum to leave some old photographs of the town. These came from a time when the photographer would make a postcard out of his/her photographs in order to sell them. So he/she would produce sets around a particular subject, e.g. a building or an event or whatever.

I am ashamed to say that it is over twenty years since I was last in the museum. The subjects are, of course, familiar (as Bude is the place I was born) and they brought back good memories.

Specifically, there is a display based around the Ceres.

The Ceres was originally an Azores smack, built in Salcombe in 1811. She was bought by the Pethericks in 1856 and was in our family for five generations. In 1868, she was lengthened to 64ft and converted into a ketch, registered as 52 tons. She traded in the Bristol Channel and beyond.

On 24th November, 1937, she sprang a leak and went down off Baggy Point in Bideford Bay. At the time, she was the oldest boat on Lloyds Register.

Now, imagine this. I am talking about a boat that began life during the Peninsular War -(she carried arms supplies to the troops in Spain); sailed while the Battle of Waterloo was being fought, was over twenty five years old when Victoria came to the throne; was trading through the Crimean War, the American Civil War, the First World War, the discovery of electricity, the first motor car, the first aeroplane, the first film.

When I was a small boy, my grandfather, who sailed in her as owner and skipper whenever he could , would speak of the Ceres with unquenchable enthusiasm. I didn’t know what was happening at the time, but I learnt ‘enthusiasm’ from him.

It was the sailing, and the ports they entered under sail alone that made it for him.

Bude is one such case. On the North Cornish coast, facing west towards Newfoundland, the Atlantic rollers piling onto its beaches, Bude has a difficult entrance in most weathers.

There is a painting by John Chancellor of the Ceres “Taking Bude After A Blow”. He has depicted her passing close to Barrel Rock, with a large wave passing under her, her bowsprit in the air. As in the image above, she is carrying main and mizzen sails and two foresails. The wind is from the South West, meaning she is on a broad reach, but it also means the surf is breaking on the rocks beside her. The sky is overcast. Her small crew are completely concentrated on every shift in movement of wind, boat and sea.

She is about to ’round the barrel’ and come under the shelter of Chapel Rock and the Breakwater, where the crew will downsails and her lines will be taken by men in rowing boats – the hobblers -who will lead her to a mooring in the river or to the sea lock at the entrance to Bude Canal.

If she stays on the mooring, the tide will drop and leave her high and dry. Horse-drawn carts will come onto the beach, and the crew will crane her cargo onto the carts using the main boom as a crane. She may load a small cargo on this tide as well.

The tide will come in and, the weather being favourable and the sea reasonably flat, she will, with the help of the hobblers and her own sails, go back to sea and make up the Bristol Channel towards Swansea or perhaps down Channel towards Trevose Head and beyond.

Nowadays, we sail for pleasure and use our engines at will; and we avoid the conditions that, less than a hundred years ago, those who made an engineless living from the sea took on daily. They had no chart plotters, gps, weather forecasts – faxed, texted or otherwise, no DSC/VHF.

As I write this, I find that I have no nostalgia for their difficulties, or wish to repeat them, but I do have an unquenchable enthusiasm for the attitudes that drove them to take those challenges on in the first place.

This is one of a number of posts on the Ketch “Ceres”. They have been presented in a random order as and when I have found, or been given, new material. They represent steps in a personal quest to find out more about one branch of my family.

If you are interested in maritime history or would like to read more, please use the Search facility at the top right hand side of this page (‘Ceres’). If this is not available on your current screen, then click on ‘Bill’s Boat Blog’ – (or the title of this entry, then ‘Bill’s Boat Blog’), to be taken to the correct page.

Beyond Steeple Point

"Not all who wander are lost"