The weather is benign – so benign there is no wind and no sun either. The sea is glassy, the colours bluish grey, the sky and seas almost matching, the horizon sometimes clear, sometimes vague.
The engine gives a comfortable 5 knots, the distance is approximately 40 nm, I have six hours of fair tide. Time to reflect, time to look around.
(Click on image to enlarge)
There are gannets, diving, resting, flying.
It has taken a while to get used to people saying “What? By yourself?” as in “I took the boat down to Falmouth and returned to Plymouth via Fowey? It was a quick three-day trip.” “What? By yourself?”
How do you explain it? To the uninitiated it invites the disapproval of
Despite all of them I succeeded – as do many, many others in far more challenging circumstances.
It has taken many years sailing to be able to say with confidence “I do it like this. I know it is possible to do it like that but I have chosen to do it like this. Yes, the most knowledgeable of intellectuals, the most graceful of athletes, the most creative of artists, the grandest of grandees, they all know better than me. But not quite. Individually they know certain areas of my life better than me and combined they know many areas of my life better than me but the whole of my life belongs to me and I choose to live it like this. I will listen to them but I will make up my own mind whether it is useful for me or not. There’s no side to it, no competition, I respect their point of view but I am taking responsibility for me so I can give back what I learn as I go along.”
Time and money – (not enough of either), have meant that it has taken not months but years to bring Blue Mistress to her current standard – a standard that makes me comfortable in taking trips along the South Devon and South Cornwall coastline.
‘Single-handed’ means thinking things through long before they are needed. The layout of the boat, its contents and every maneuver that may or may not be made has been gone through in your head, maybe on paper, certainly on a computer, and books and videos and charts and tables studied, with the intention that all this be absorbed into experience.
Even then mistakes will be made – some of them very memorable with solutions needed in a breath-taking hurry, but mostly things will go right. Very few of the latter are memorable because what is going on outside the boat is as interesting as what is going on inside. Have you ever seen a coastline from the sea? The Devon and Cornish coasts are particularly stunning. (And, yes, there are plenty of other stunning coastlines too).
I like aloneness but enjoy company. A week ago we took my London-based, four-year-old grandson for his first trip. Enthusiasm on all sides. What’s not to like?
And every trip, every voyage is different.
I took few photos on the Falmouth trip but I will make a short storyboard next post. In the meantime, here is Blue Mistress in Fowey on the last day of September 2014 with the morning mist rising. As I say, what’s not to like?
(Image taken by Bill Whateley)
For those who tune into this blog occasionally and are wondering why I am dodging around topics, it’s because I am doing a short course with WordPress – Writing 101. It lasts a little under three weeks and involves participants posting a blog most days. The topics are varied and a little out of my usual line. My intention is to get back to a writing habit that I lost over the past year. Bear with me, something good will come from it.
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For those who are wondering what has happened to Blue Mistress, the refit is nearly complete. A lot has been done in between longish pauses and I see the chance to get back in the water in the next two weeks. The boat is looking good but needs to be afloat!
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And if you are also wondering when I am going to talk about New Zealand, it will come. In the meantime, this is the Bay of Islands where Webb Chiles (see below) is headed.
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If you are not following Webb Chiles, you should be. Aged 72 and circumnavigating in a boat smaller and lighter than Blue Mistress. It is his sixth time round, I believe. He prefers the solitude of single-handed sailing and was reluctant to fit the Yellowbrick – technology impinging on personal space. In the meantime, we have the privilege of sitting back and admiring. He has been sailing at over five knots for most of the voyage. Fair winds to him.
You can follow him here http://my.yb.tl/gannet
(All images taken by Bill Whateley)
Let me ask you a question:
Let us say you have spent most of your life sailing down the same long estuary. Where you started, the head of the estuary was narrow, the product of a meandering stream which had grown into a river. This river joined other rivers, all flowing into the very same estuary. The further you sailed, the wider the estuary became. And as it widened, so you grew. The shoreline contained you but you always had enough sea-room. There were a few navigation problems but no more than on any voyage. Now finally you have reached the open ocean and the opportunity to steer a completely different course. You have a good feeling about this.
But at the last moment the weather turned. Instead of being free to ease the sheets and sail gently away as originally planned, you found yourself sailing into the wind – tacking back and forth across the estuary entrance, hanging on to each tack till the very last moment in the hope of making headway in one direction or another. This was immensely frustrating, each tack seeming longer than the previous one, pushing you ever closer to the shore. There was the temptation to give up and head for the nearest port. However, as the man said, “ships are safe in port, but that’s not what ships are built for,” (Grace Hopper). There is more you want to do, so you kept going – one last tack should do it!
Finally, with one eye on the closing shore, you push the tiller away from you and bring your boat into wind for the last time – the sails flap and the boat slows as it plunges into the waves. You watch the bow, mind the sheets and feel the wind on your cheeks. In a short while you will come round and set off in a new direction – your other hand on the tiller, the wind on the other cheek. In slowing into the tack, there is a very brief pause, a watchful moment to reflect, to look around and see what you see.
Here is my question:
Do you keep what you see to yourself and merely enjoy the moment? Or do you record a note or two? This is a unique moment for you, Should you say something? But this is 2014. Even if you do speak out, you know that last year there were over thirteen and a half million new WordPress blogs on top of the ten million the year before. Isn’t your note going to be lost in the ocean of words you are sailing into? Your few square yards of sea are unique but the wind and the waves will sweep the ripples away the moment you sail on.
Perhaps you should make a record. Others may judge of they want to.
Surely the significant point is that you still have the freedom to say anything at all.
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Although it can be read as a single post, the above is part of a series that illustrates one of the author’s current interests, taken from a locker full of interests, at a major waypoint in his life. The series sets out as a comment on retirement before focusing around language. He wonders whether he himself has the language to cope as he steps out into the wider world popularly known as ‘retirement’ – an irreversible step into a world that he has previously only glimpsed out of the corner of his eye, a world in which he thinks the word ‘retirement’ to be a misnomer. He has used the medium of the blog to paint the picture. The irony is that, whereas writing about it does allow him to reflect, sitting alone at a computer actually distances him from the face-to-face interaction he is describing.
No wind yesterday but a fine day to run the engine.
I removed the sail cover and attached the halyard but left the lazy jacks in place as I didn’t expect to set the sail. As the Sound opened up it, it was almost empty – two vessels in sight, one trying to set a sail. A little later he had given up.
It was also a perfect day to anchor and run out the rode. I dropped anchor around 1300 close to Jennycliff near the Withyhedge beacon.
Then time for lunch, and, as I had bought the dinghy with me, time for some photography.
There were three naval vessels at anchor. The village of Cawsand can be seen in the sunshine on the far side of Plymouth Sound – (just aft of the pulpit).
All the metal work makes Blue Mistress look positively industrial. The depth is 7.7 metres – it had dropped from 8.4 metres in the 3/4 hour I had been at anchor.
The washed-out colours of January.
This simple rig holds the course giving plenty of time to go fetch something from below. It works just as well under sail..
The tide was low and the water slack as I passed the Cattewater Wharves.
Flinterlinge, registered out of Groningen, was busy unloading.
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:
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!)
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).
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
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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
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:
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.
This is the first time I’ve been able to get to the boat since Christmas. There have been at least three ferocious storms and I was anxious to see how Blue Mistress had fared – particularly the port stern line which chafed badly against the Windpilot during the Autumn.
Strong winds are forecast again, but this morning all was calm.
Blue Mistress is just over the stern of the red-sailed Cornish Shrimper.
The extra tubing on the stern line worked. All is slack on the incoming neap tide.
The boat cleans up well. The hand pump sucked dry – great. The no.2 battery was almost flat – not so great. But the engine started on the no 1 battery and I ran it for over an hour. We shall see how far it runs down next time.
Beyond Steeple Point 