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Please yourself

John Passmore

This was written a few days ago…

I don’t suppose it would suit everybody but for the first time, I feel I really can say I am Living the Dream. This is what it is like to do exactly as you please…

Samsara is anchored off Stone Point in the Walton Backwaters – that maze of creeks and mud made famous in Swallows and Amazons. In fact it was here, more than sixty years ago that I first went sailing and began to become fanciful about living on a boat.

We are here because I have to paint the decks so I need somewhere quiet not too far away from a water tap (have to wash off the degreasing agent). I arrived a couple of days ago. It’s perfectly sheltered and there is just one other boat here – an old wooden yacht with the bluff bow you see on Dutch classics and a bowsprit almost half as long again. To begin with I thought there was no-one aboard (although there was an ancient dinghy alongside).

Admittedly I had anchored at such a respectful distance that I was looking at her through binoculars – and then today I saw the skipper. A man of about my age – although with more hair. He came out, did something on deck and disappeared without looking my way. But then, why should he. I was watching him through the window.

Today was not a day to go out – bright sunshine but a strong and bitterly cold wind. For the first half hour, I fretted about this. It will probably take me a whole day to clean the decks to standard required by the paint manufacturer… but then, what’s the hurry. My next appointment is for renewing my long-lapsed radio licence on the 29th.  I can please myself until then.

And pleasing yourself is one of the most wonderful – and yet one of the rarest-  opportunities we have in this life.  In fact, looking back, how much of our lives do we spend “pleasing ourselves”. If you live with other people, you have a whole separate agenda to consider – and who wants to be inconsiderate.

But if it’s just you – and nobody knows or cares what you will be doing today – that means you can, for once, please yourself.

I do know that I didn’t get up particularly early – I think it was about eight O’clock. I lingered over breakfast and pulled my one non-navigational book out of the bookcase (it’s all right, the rest are on Kindle but this one has photographs).

I do know that I had several phone conversations with people interested in Network Marketing (more about that on www.networkmarketingblog.org.uk) – a bit of work does have to intrude. There was a text from Tamsin asking whether I would be joining everyone for the annual bucket-and-spade holiday in Southwold but I should be on my way back from the Azores by then. However, it will all have to be paid for (hence the bit of work).

Interestingly, I didn’t resent this at all because it was on my terms. In fact, it was exciting to see that the plan seemed to working – although one conversation lasted for an hour and ten minutes. I’m not sure that’s  a good idea – but we talked about all sorts of things and I was in no hurry to say goodbye…

And so, the day slipped past. Lunch was an occasion. I’m getting a real taste for large mugs of sweet tea with condensed milk. Some time in the afternoon, I became so thrilleod with the way things were working out that I decided that tonight will be movie night. This will be a first: I have a dozen favourite DVDs which I will be quite happy to watch again and again (must have seen It’s a Wonderful Life 20 times already). The computer is charged up from carefully monitoring the solar panel and I’ve got a wire to plug in the little waterproof speaker.

It’s not really that cold but the charcoal stove makes the cabin so cosy that I’ll have that as well. In fact, time for dinner, I think…

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Friday the 13th

John Passmore

This was supposed to be a short stop. If you have been following events, you will know that Samsara and I arrived home in Woodbridge in mid-December. It was supposed to be just for Christmas and repairs to the damaged rail from getting clobbered by a motorboat in Brighton (not to mention my own foolishness on the River Orwell within reach of home). I had planned to be off again by the end of February.

Why do we make these plans? Has any plan actually survived a brush with reality?

First of all, if the boat was going to have to come out of the water for the work, then I might as well touch up the paint. I didn’t sound much to ask: All I needed was a couple of days with the thermometer over 10oC. And what did I get? The longest, coldest winter in living memory.

Then there was the sailmaker whose excuse was: “I’m afraid we took on too much work.”

… and the elderly engineer whose apology goes into my collection of cherished quotes: “Look, it’s going to cost me more to heat my workshop than I’m going to charge you for the work…”

So, one way and another it was Friday 13th of April when I set off.

“What time are you leaving?” said Lottie who seemed to think the correct protocol was to wave a damp hanky from the quayside.

“Oh, about 11 O’clock, I should think,” I replied with all the assurance of one who has decided to spend the night before departure on the boat, just to make sure everything would be ready.

And what didn’t I have? Possibly the most important item – and it wasn’t even on the list: Music.

Last time I did this sort of thing, I had a plastic suitcase full of tape cassettes (remember them?) Oh, the pain of trying to decide what to leave behind (Frank Sinatra made it, Fred Astaire didn’t). Now, of course, you can take all the world’s music on Spotify. Except my phone seemed to have forgotten the lot. One way and another, by the time I had downloaded it all again (and walked the dogs since I was home anyway – and taken that cheque to the bank…) I was late leaving.

Now, here’s the thing: If this was a strange port, any competent skipper would check the tides, read up on the pilotage information, have the chart ready…

If it’s your home port, you assume you know everything – at least I do. I’ve sailed a Laser around here every summer Saturday for years. I left (but never returned) with the catamaran Lottie Warren. But Samsara is rather a different prospect. For instance, a Laser has a centreboard. Lottie Warren drew 0.7metres. Samsara draws 1.5metres and her keel is most certainly fixed … as became clear when we reached the shallows off Kyson Point.

The river path down to Kyson is where everyone walks their dogs – it’s where I walk the dogs. This is how I know how fascinating it is to stop and inspect the yachts that misjudge the turn and spend six hours settling comfortably to an angle of 45 degrees on the mud.

By the time I floated again, it was dark with no moon and this is when I made the next  discovery: That the night vision gadget Tamsin gave me for Christmas is not as simple as the instructions would have you believe. In the end, I groped my way down the river with a torch until I found a mooring in what appeared to be deep enough water (it wasn’t, as became evident when things started falling off the chart table at 4.00 a.m.) But by then I was past caring.

 

Now, I don’t care anyway. On Saturday the 14th, I have sailed all the way down the river in beautiful spring sunshine and as I write this, the stove is going, The Frankie is on Spotify and in a minute, I shall get up and cook myself some dinner.

There’s still a long list of things to do and for the first week, I shall be holed up in an Essex creek painting the decks. But for the meantime there is an immense sense of contentment in the fact that at last The Adventure has begun.

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Antifouling

John Passmore

Like an old 60’s comedian coming out of retirement, I have returned to sailing to discover that the world has changed. The Environment has taken over.

I’m sure it’s a good thing. In fact, as we shall see later, I am going to be doing my bit when it comes to putting an end to plastic waste at sea.

But I was not prepared for what has happened to anti-fouling.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that you got a bucket of water and some coarse wet & dry paper… and after half an hour, you hands, your clothes, your hair – not to mention the ground all around the boat was bright red – or blue – or black of whatever was the colour of the stuff you were rubbing off.

Not any more. Now we know about “Ground Water” and the effect of chemicals on micro-organisms.

Quite how it was going to get into the water course through the tarmac of the hard-standing, was never explained. However, one thing was abundantly clear: Samsara’s generous coating of TBT and Micron and every type of organotin constituted an environmental disaster (I have since looked it up and it quite put me off my fish supper).

“So how,” I asked Barry who had just imparted the dire warnings, “am I supposed to get it off”.

The words “Specialist equipment” and “Hazchem suit” featured in the explanation – along with the news that he had everything that was needed, together with a fit young man who would be happy to spend a couple of days crawling around under the boat scraping away while a vacuum cleaner attached to the scraper sucked up all the toxins.

It’s a wonderful system – and do you know what’s wonderful about it? Cooking breakfast to the accompaniment of “scrape-scrape-scrape” coming through the hull, knowing you don’t have to do it yourself.

antifouling

The Gold Line

John Passmore

Here’s a picture of my old Rival 32, Largo, in a lock somewhere on the North coast of Brittany, I should imagine. If you look very carefully, you will see the lovely gold line along the rubbing strake.

I always thought it looked like solid gold – which it was… well not actually solid gold but it wasn’t gold paint. It was gold adhesive tape and it had the look of a chunk of gold that had been hammered into the hull all the way down. It looked particularly good against the dark blue of the strake.

Samsara, being the same design, has a rubbing strake too but hers hasn’t been painted. I did think of it but, to be honest, it was a lot of trouble and if I want to paint it in years to come, there’s always the option.

But I did want a gold line. I told Barry Lovell from TLC Marine all about it. I was still enthusing about the solid gold Sellotape when I realised he was shaking his head.

“It comes off,” he said. “Just doesn’t stick.”

“Nonsense,” I told him. “It lasted for years last time I used it. In fact, I think I only replaced it once in more than ten years.”

“Doesn’t last,” he repeated. “Gold paint. That’s what you want. Gold paint and then when it gets a bit dull, you just go over it again.”

There are many things – in fact most things – on which I would take Barry’s advice. But a gold line is not one of them. With all the passion of someone who is particularly attached to gold lines, I remained adamant and went and ordered a roll of the stuff from the chandlery.

For the next few weeks that gold line was admired many times – not only by people who stopped to nod approvingly as they walked their dogs across the boatyard, but also on Facebook and on any occasion when people were too slow to run away before I found an opportunity to point it out.

Then I made the terrible mistake of putting the boat in the water and going sailing – and, on the very first day, I looked admiringly at the creaming wake … and saw a flash of gold. There, twisting and turning like a very ostentatious mackerel line, was 30ft of gold tape trailing behind the boat.

So we sailed all the way round the West Country and the South Coast looking just a little shabby. However, now that the thermometer has finally reached the 10oC required for painting, I’m pleased to say, the gold line is back.

Now all I have to do is touch up the white paint around it…

 

Rival 32

Embarrassing confession

John Passmore

There is really no point in writing this blog if I’m not honest with you. In fact, if you look up the symptoms of ADD, you will find that compulsive honesty is one of them (even though it might not be the best policy sometimes).

And there is something that I have to get off my chest. I’ve been keeping quiet about it for three months because I feel embarrassed and ashamed – but it would be worse if it were to come out and people thought I’d been hiding it.

In November I did something really, really stupid.

You may have been following my rather haphazard account of delivering Samsara from North Wales, via the South Coast to the River Deben in Suffolk. That’s where I live and although I don’t plan to keep her here (or come to that, anywhere in particular), the family did want to see the boat and I needed a destination (you do need a destination).

All had gone very well (bar the incident in Brighton when a motor cruiser hit me and cracked the brand new teak rail, carrying away a stanchion in the process). For 24 hours nobody knew who had done it. I had been ashore at the time but eventually the berthing manager spotted the culprit on the CCTV recording and he was quite happy to take responsibility. He had sent his son to check for damage and the lad reported all was well.

Anyway, the last leg was from Dover to Felixstowe – a wonderful trip because, if you time it right, you can carry the tide all the way for 12 hours. Better than that, on this occasion, I managed to get all the way there on one tack, only dropping the sails off the Landguard Buoy because by then it was pitch dark and the entrance buzzing with big ships pirouetting and pilot boats zipping between them at 24 knots.

The plan was to drop anchor somewhere up the Orwell for the night and then go round to catch the tide into the Deben the next day. Once past the glare of Felixstowe docks, the night was as black as can be – no moon and just the winking red and green lights marking the fairway. I brought my new torch on deck – high-tech and expensive with heaven knows how many lumens. I shone it out onto the water, the beam picking up the buoys as we passed. Meanwhile the plotter, dimmed as far as it would go, showed us progressing safely up the starboard side of the channel.

And this is where things went wrong. The phone rang. I remember the first time the phone rang on a boat. We were going up the Swinge off Alderney in the early 90’s. It was the weirdest sensation. But now people think nothing of the phone ringing in all sorts of place – and, of course, in cars. Now, in a car, you mustn’t touch the phone. But you can press a button on the steering wheel and have the call played through the speakers.

Well, Samsara isn’t geared up for that, but I did take it out of my pocket and start talking – after all, it wasn’t as if I was doing 70 miles an hour on a motorway. From time to time, as I chatted, I checked the plotter, shone the torch ahead, kept an eye on the buoys.

And it was during one of these checks that I was concerned to find I had wandered out of the channel to starboard. In fact, I was inshore of a line of moored boats.

“Hold on,” I said to my friend. “I’m out of the channel here. Let me get back…”

I slipped the phone into my pocket, shone the torch ahead, adjusted the course. Shone the torch again – no more moored boats – and resumed the call. Pretty straightforward, you might think. Nothing to worry about. I glanced at the plotter.

BANG!

In the glow of the steaming light, I could see a mast. I had hit a moored yacht almost head on. My bow was higher than hers and my anchor had smashed her pulpit and as, I continued down her port side, carried away two stanchions.

I won’t go into what my friend heard over the phone in the next few moments but about ten minutes later, when I went to call him back to explain, I discovered he had been holding on the whole time.

Anyway, I picked up a mooring nearby so I could inspect the damage in the morning. It was not as bad as it might have been if this had been a full T-bone collision. For my part, a weld on the pulpit had given way and there was some damage to the bow roller and anchor fixing. The anchor itself was unscathed.

Over dinner and recriminations, I considered what to write on the note I would leave on the other boat. But in the end, I called the adjacent marina and established that this was one of their moorings. They would pass on my details to the owner.

Pantaenius, who have insured my boats ever since the 1980’s, have been wonderful, of course. The owner of the boat I hit, has been very decent and thanked me for reporting the incident. Repairs are taking longer than I had hoped because of the cold weather (the engineer making a new bow roller has abandoned his workshop because it would cost more than he could make to heat it.)

Meanwhile, I have been berating myself about How Could This Happen?

First of all, there is no doubt – for me especially (see AADD above) – a mobile phone is a distraction. It’s not like talking to a crew in the cockpit. It takes you mind hundreds of miles away from where you are and even if you’re not doing 70 miles an hour on a motorway, that can have catastrophic consequences.

Even so, I knew there were moored boats around. Why didn’t I see this one? My first conclusion was that most boats have white hulls. This one was blue. The coachroof what white but – approaching from the bow – I would not have seen that. Even so, I was shining my new, high-intensity torch…

And it was only last week that I made a discovery about that torch. It has three settings: Very bright, quite bright and not-at-all bright. I would have known this if I was the sort of person who reads instructions – but what instructions do you need to operate a torch?

What I would have understood if I had read them is that the first time you switch it on, it is very bright. If you turn it off and on again, it will be quite bright. But if you are approaching a boat with a blue hull from head on and you switch on your torch when the sequence happens to have reached “Not Very Bright At All”, you might as well be without a torch at all.

This is not an excuse. It might be called a “contributory factor”. But the fault is nobody else’s but mine.

It was a salutary lesson and I promise you I shall learn from it. The main thing is that nobody got hurt and damage can be repaired.

Besides, guess what I got for Christmas: A night vision monocular.

The Old Man

 

 

 

 

 

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Halloween

John Passmore

How’s this for a creepy Halloween:

I had just arrived in Studland Bay after a brisk sail from Weymouth. The sun had gone down and dusk closed in with the speed that always takes me by surprise at this time of year.

Never mind, the anchor was set fast and I was standing in the companionway with a cup of tea, admiring the colours as the last of the light drained out of the western sky.

And then, very quietly, a voice said: “Good evening.”

This is the sort of thing that happens to the single-hander three weeks into an ocean passage. In fact, many report long and detailed conversations with imaginary crew members. However, this spectre offered a very solid appearance. He was standing at the wheel of a RIB off my starboard quarter with the engine ticking over so slowly that only now did I notice it.

“You’re not thinking of leaving, are you? Only we’re about to have a parachute exercise…”

It was at this point that I noticed his beret – and the two other figures in camouflage battledress. The Royal Marines were paying a courtesy call.

I assured them I had no plans to go anywhere until the morning and they thanked me politely and drifted off into the gloaming.

And then, within five minutes, a Hercules transport plane appeared. In fact “appeared” is exactly what it did – maybe “materialised” would be the right word: It was going so slowly there appeared to be no more sound than the marine made with his RIB – and then, just as the light faded to a point where it was almost impossible to see anything at all, four black shapes dropped out and drifted silently down into the water.

Some unlit black shapes cut across the lights of Bournemouth seafront – more RIBs, I imagined, picking them up – and within five minutes the place was deserted.

I shut the hatch, fired up the stove and opened up Spotify for something lively.

The Old Man

 

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False Starts

John Passmore

A 38ft steel cutter with a purpose-built workshop and a watermaker – and a solid fuel stove… and some means of getting the dinghy out of the way…

We’ve all got the ideal boat. I found mine while going to a family wedding in Australia. The owner had done much of the fit-out himself – and all with loving care. You could see how much of his soul went into this – after all it was his big project … his retirement in the sun.

The trouble was, by the time he finished it, he was too old. His health had taken a turn for the worse and she was up for sale for a fraction of what he’d spent on her.

She was too much for me – both in terms of expense and the sheer weight of the gear. But she did provide a vital lesson: You’re never going to be completely ready. As long as the boat is properly seaworthy, it is more important to get on your way than to have somewhere dry to put the loo paper.

It was this thought that pushed me out of Conwy marina yesterday. In fact it was the same thought that pushed me out the day before. After nearly three months, Samsara went into the water. This was the third booking I had made for the hoist. The first was wildly over-optimistic so we won’t think about that one. The second was after the man with the electric polisher I had hired to smarten up the hull announced: “Hang on. This has been painted.”

And it had too. Nobody had noticed – even the surveyor hadn’t noticed. Of course, once a hull has been pointed, it has to go on being painted. I spent a depressing 24 hours looking up the cost of a respray and then went out and bought a paintbrush. I must say, I’m very pleased with the result: If you don’t get too close, you’d never know the difference.

But of course, that meant the four coats needed a week to harden before she could go in the slings.

So when we reached the third attempt and Dave Worthington, the engineer, came down to oversee his skin fittings getting wet for the first time, we started the engine. The engine was one of the many items excluded from the survey.

It took several attempts at starting. Dave bled the fuel. He listened, head cocked on one side, clearly not happy. Although it ran, it didn’t seem to pick up properly – as if the cylinders were having trouble working out who was going to go first, like a rugby club making for the saloon bar.

“It’ll probably sort itself out when it’s run a bit.” said Dave. “Might not have been started for a couple of years.”

And that was how I found myself half-way through the tortuous passage over Conwy Bar with no engine and no wind. Fortunately, there was no tide either.

I called up the Marina. Did they have a workboat handy to come and rescue me?

Conwy Marina did not offer any service outside the confines of their property (insurance). I was advised to call the coastguard on Channel 67.

Well, I was not calling the coastguard. Do that and they send a lifeboat for you. Instead I stood on the foredeck with a coil or rope in my hand and waited for a passing yacht. They took me to the marina entrance where a workboat ventured just outside (as the man said: “If they discipline me, I’ll resign.”)

And the next morning Dave returned and discovered that the electric “off” switch was sticking. I could have spent a day bleeding the system without discovering that.

The Old Man

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A new suit of clothes

John Passmore

It’s more than three months since I first saw Samsara. I went up North Wales on the train and, after checking into the cheapest B&B (the whole place smelled of stale milk) I walked down to the marina for a preview.

A preview is always a good idea. You don’t want the vendor to witness your first impression…

Actually, in this instance, it might not have been such a bad idea. The first impression was that this had been a wasted journey: While it is one thing for an old boat to show her age – you don’t want an antique to look as though it just came out factory – it is quite another when the words “shabby”, “a sorry state” and “sadly neglected” come to mind.

Wherever you looked there were scuffs and chips and poorly-filled holes. The scuppers were clogged with leaves and filth and there were things growing in the cockpit grating. One glance at the stem showed that the ancient 35lbs CQR had been taking bites out of it for years – to the point where the owner seemed to have given up worrying about it.

But I was looking for a boat to be my pride and joy – a joy for years to come. But I was not looking for “project”. All the same it was a long way to come and not see the whole boat – so the next morning found me returning at the appointed time to find the owner had clearly been there for some while attempting to put an encouraging gloss on things.

He needn’t have bothered because, as I mentioned in the last post, it was at this point that the boat took over. Little by little – without a lot of fuss or ostentation – she revealed herself to be just what I had been looking for all my life.

I won’t go into this now because I intend to have far too much fun writing at leisure about the way each little discoveries came to light. But let’s just say that 30 years ago when I sat drifting on my old Rival 32 Largo and made a list of all the improvements I would like to see, almost all of them had already been incorporated into Samsara. As for the scuffs and chips and holes… well, they were cosmetic. The main thing was that the boat was sound. Best of all, she was another Rival 32 – and surely I could find someone with an electric polisher…

In fact, I did better than that. I found a wonderful man called Barry Lovell and his little company TLC Boat Repair. It was the fact that the celebrated yachting writer Tom Cunliffe had trusted him with his Constance that decided me. After all Tom is a noted perfectionist.

But it wasn’t just that Barry and his team made such a wonderful job of the new locker lids in the cockpit or replacing the dreadful black rubber toe-rail with yards of teak or that they scrabbled around underneath scraping off years of antifouling – or even that he never charged for fixing the leak in the water tank. What made all the difference was that Barry knows everyone. Very early on in our friendship he made it very clear: “John,” he said. “Whatever you need, you come to me. I’ll look after you.”

For there was I, a stranger in town – 300 miles from home – knowing no-one and about to take a leap of faith with my pride and joy – and Barry put me on to all the right people.

There was Richie Williams in a workshop which looked as though it was waiting to be condemned who took the Aries self-steering piece by piece, understood instinctively how it worked – even though he had never seen one before – and put it back together again like a sewing machine.

There was Dave Worthington who worried away at the prop shaft so that I could have a feathering propeller which is as exciting as other men getting a Ferrari. There was Mike Kelly the stainless steel specialist who worked up until midnight because I forgot to tell him I wasn’t going in the water the next day after all.

Dave Evans with his brilliant idea for the new gas locker… Dave Jones who calmly accepted my electronic foibles like getting a regulator from Singapore instead of Milton Keynes.

Over three and a half months they came and they worked and they humoured me and if the launch date was put off and put off again until here we are going in the water in September, none of this matters if we get it right in the end.

And we have. In fact I have decided to add an extra page to the blog – a page of links to the people who have made it all possible.

It’s the least I can do.

The Old Man

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Wizard lore and the singlehanded sailor

John Passmore

Harry Potter’s wand chose Harry Potter. Everyone knows this.

So, is it beyond the reach of imagination to suppose that the boat chooses the skipper? Because to some of us, boats are not like cars or washing machines. Boats are not things. If you don’t believe that a boat enters enter into a partnership with her skipper – particularly the singlehanded skipper – then you have not sailed a long distance singlehanded.

Read Joshua Slocum. Read Bernard Moitessier. Read Ellen MacArthur… These sailors understood that it wasn’t just them sailing the boat. The boat herelf had an input. Indeed, when the skipper was exhausted and unable to make sensible decisions then it would be the boat that would take over and ensure that they both survived.

Of course, this is not something you would want to rely on – like the Winnibago owner of legend who set the cruise control and went to make a sandwich (and then sued the manufacturers when the thing drove off the road). In fact I would suggest it is possible that peculiar instances of a boat appearing to take over might occur two or three times before the more logical type of sailor can bring themselves to talk about it. But in the annals of singlehanding, there are just too many accounts of unexplained good fortune for it to be a coincidence.

There I was sailing across the Grand Banks in not the best of visibility. It was 1988, so radar was a luxury but I did have a gadget which was supposed to detect radar signals from other vessels. It was very expensive and the box made it sound tremendously clever – but I had never known it to work. Meanwhile the Aries windvane steering was in command and I was asleep with the alarm set for 20 minutes.

This had been going on for 12 hours or more and I was heartily sick of the incessant hopping up and down. There was never anything there – all day long, just an opaque grey curtain about a mile away. Now, in pitch darkness, it was like being in another dimension – no stars, nothing to distinguish the sea from the sky. Just a faint glow of phosphorescence in the wake and only the rustle under the bow to show that we were slipping along nicely at three knots.

And now the alarm. The kitchen timer was on the other side of the cabin. It wasn’t going to stop until I got up. Of course, being so well used to this incessant beeping, I experienced a certain satisfaction in lying there and putting up with it.

And then the boat lurched. After a while you get to recognise a lurch. It can be from the sudden shallow water. It can be a whale surfacing alongside (although it’s more the fishy smell that gets you with that.)

It can also be the wake of a passing ship.

Very close.

Suddenly, framed in the companionway – filling it with a blaze of light – was a Grand Banks trawler, the stern filled with men in filthy oilskins staring out into the darkness.

And then, as they watched, the boat swung back onto her course. I looked at the compass. Good Lord, we had been off course. That was why we passed across the fisherman’s stern, not his bow. In fact, we must have been off course by as much as 30 degrees just when it made the difference between being rammed and being an object of curiosity for the crew during a long night gutting cod.

And how was that possible? On a calm night with a steady breeze, for the windvane suddenly to bear away by that much – and, more to the point, resume the course once the danger was past? On a scale of weirdness, this was right up there with abominable snowmen and Morris Dancing.

I reckon I know because the same sort of thing happened once in the Chenal du Four when the fog came down in the middle of tricky bit – and on the way to the Azores when it would have been just as easy to sail into the enormous, rusty structure floating just beneath the surface instead of so close past it that I could see the little crabs scuttling about on the long fronds of seaweed.

I know what the cynics will say – that there are just as many examples of singlehanded sailors who perish with their boats. The cynic might argue that all of this is just the Law of Averages mixed up with an unhealthy dose of Wishful Thinking.

But I believe it happens.

And I believe it’s happening again.

Singlehanded

1 Responses to Wizard lore and the singlehanded sailor

  • Maurice Everson

    I like the way you write. It flows nicely and I get to feel the essential feel of the sea. Thankyou.

Choosing an anchor

John Passmore

If you buy an old boat, the chances are you are going to buy an old anchor.

I happen to think it’s something to get excited about – the fact that my “new” boat, Samsara, is 44 years old. At that age, a boat is ageing gracefully and improving in those important ways that people so often ignore – steadfastness, dependability…

Since I have been telling people that I have bought a Rival 32 again, I have been overwhelmed with comments such as “lovely boats” and “she’ll look after you…”

And she comes with an antique anchor: A venerable 35 lbs CQR which has served her well through all her adventures on both sides of the Atlantic.

After all, in 1973, the CQR was the anchor of choice for the cruising yachtsman – actually, there wasn’t much choice. That and a Danforth kedge seemed to see most people through most situations. But times have moved on. We now have the New Generation Anchors – and in any comparison test you care to look at, the dear old CQR comes out very poorly. The main problem is that you have to drag it around the anchorage before it will set  – which may have been fine when anchorages were less crowded but try that in the Newtown River on a Saturday night and you’ll be very unpopular.

These days there are anchor manufacturers who claim their product will set in less than a metre.

Besides, the hinge on the old CQR had experienced 35 years of wear and – while there was still plenty of “drop-forged steel” to hold it together – I suspect that the geometry has gone to pot, making setting even more of a problem.

So I did my research and I’ve gone for a New Zealand-designed Rocna.

The next choice was the size. According to the company’s chart, the 15kg would be ample – that’s 33lb. The trouble was, my eye kept sliding across to the next column, the 20kg (44lb). For a 32ft boat, that would be considered a storm anchor.

It is argued that boats heading for extended cruising should carry a storm anchor. It is also argued that by the time you realise you should have set the storm anchor, it will not be a very good moment to try and do so. You will sleep a lot better if you know it’s down there already.

So it was back onto Google for more research. This was when I stumbled on advice from the Rocna people saying they discourage going up a size. They had already factored in everything the prudent yachtsman would need for peace of mind.

So I called up Pirates Cave to order the 15kg.

“There’s been a run on them,” said Nathan. “In fact, our supplier – the only supplier in the UK – won’t be getting any until September.”

That was no good. I needed to get the new bow roller measured – and the piece of stainless steel to protect the hull where the tip will rest…

“I can do the 20kg,” said the voice on the other end. “I can get that out to you today…”

In end it doesn’t look out of place on the bow – and best of all, it might have been made for its passage-making stowage in the fo’c’sle.

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