The lads

Tell me if I’m being patronising.

The other day, I wrote about the desperate situation for people in The Gambia – the economy on the floor, everyone scrabbling for just the basics of life – and how I felt obliged to take on all manner of guides and interpreters and pay over the odds.

Here’s something else: one evening, I anchored at Kuntaur, 133 miles up the river. This is where you stop to visit the ancient standing stones at Wassu. Inevitably a small canoe appeared alongside with a couple of lads offering their services. By this time, I knew better than to refuse – I’d only get hassled by another pair.

Of course, the following morning, four of them turned up. They were called Badou, Bilali, Del and Ibraima. Together, we set off on the dirt road for Wassu.

It was a fair old walk on a hot day, but they showed me the shortcut and pumped water so I could drink from the village well. We got to talking: they were all between 18 and 20, and not one of them had ever had a job. They just hung about the waterfront, hoping for someone like me to turn up.

To stoke the sympathy a little further, they got Ibraima to take off his scarf. In these days of COVID, it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder why a young man would wear a scarf around his face. The reason was because he had been standing over a petrol generator when it exploded – and no-one at the local hospital had heard about skin grafts. Maybe if I took a picture, someone in England would help…

Believe me, you don’t want to see that picture.

But it did move the conversation on to their situation, and before I had thought it through properly, I said something like this: “Look at it this way: you’re four your men who ought to be working. Working gives you self-respect. Working gives you a reason to get up in the morning. Your problem is that nobody wants to give you a job.

“But that doesn’t prevent you from working. Even if you don’t get paid, having to get up in the morning and go to work – relaxing at the end of the day after a job well done – that’s a good feeling for a young man to have.

“So how about this: Find your own work.”

At this point, they reminded me there was no work – none, nada, niente – or, as they say in Wolof dara.

“But look around you,” I told them. “Everywhere there is rubbish – garbage.”

And it was true. The whole country is one enormous rubbish dump – for a very obvious reason: if your first priority is finding enough to eat and the second is getting a roof over your head before the rains come, the little matter of putting a plastic bottle in a litter bin comes way down the list.

That’s if there are any litter bins…

Rubbish everywhere in a country where clearing up is not the top priority.

So here was a suggestion: “Get up every morning, the four of you, six days a week and clear up the village. Collect the rubbish and take it out into the bush, and burn it. What won’t burn, you can bury.

“Of course, nobody will pay you for doing it. Probably, nobody will thank you for doing it. But I can promise you this: after a while – a month, a year – whatever it may be, somebody will give you their empty plastic bottle instead of throwing it on the ground. They will ask if you wouldn’t mind taking it away and burning it.

Then some more people will do the same and – since you’re still busy clearing up – gradually the streets will start to look better. People will notice this. You will feel a sense of pride. The town will thank you for it – trust me, if you keep on clearing up, people will appreciate living in a place that doesn’t look like a tip.

“And here’s the thing: People in the next village will get to hear about you – and the local town. Heaven’s above, you might even end up on television.

“And one day – it might be a year, it might be five years – along will come an entrepreneur – somebody who owns a business, or maybe many businesses, and they will be looking for four new employees. Will they give those jobs to four young men who have never worked but just hang around the waterfront – or will they give them to the four who decided to make something of themselves and cleaned up their village and earned the respect of their community?

“Then you will get your jobs, and you will get paid.”

It was a difficult concept to take in, walking along a dirt road under the hot sun, heading for a bunch of stones people had put up 1,400 years ago – all in the hope that the old foreigner might give them a handful of grubby notes.

I plunged on: “Here’s something else. You want to be rich, right? Here’s how to get rich. It’s easy – but that doesn’t mean everybody’s going to do it.

“Here’s what you have to do: the first week your boss pays you, take 10% of that money (they understood percentages) and put that 10% in a secret place. Do the same next time you get paid – in fact, every time you have some money coming in after that, 10% goes in the secret place.

“When there’s enough, you put it in the bank – earn a bit of interest. One day you’ll have enough to invest it in something – maybe start your own business. But whatever happens, you keep adding 10% every time you have money coming in.”

“If you do that, one day, the money you’re earning from your investment will be more than the money you’re earning from your job or the income you’re taking out of your business. In other words, the money will be doing the work, not you.

“At that point, you can call yourself rich, and you won’t need to work anymore.

“You can hang around the waterfront.”

All this happened in the week before Christmas. On Christmas day, I was invited to lunch with the crews of two other boats – all of them retired. I told the story of the four lads who took me to the stones and the advice I had given them and asked whether I had been patronising (other people’s feelings not being my strong point).

But, “Oh no,” they said. It was good advice. Besides, I am an old man, and in the Gambia, the old are respected. Maybe it would make all the difference. Maybe this one small germ of an idea would change the course of four young lives. It was a lovely thought.

Of course, it would be better if they had a mentor. Otherwise, how long would they keep at it – that’s if they got started at all.

Who knows?

But, on the other hand, we’re all on WhatsApp.

11 Responses to The lads

  • I wonder. It’s an outsider’s view. Reminds me of when I lived in Johannesburg. Many areas you could park your car and come back to find it washed. Also not broken into. Sometimes really well, others, badly. The washer would come up and ask for a couple of Rand for doing the car. Pretty enterprising, especially as there was a time of year when the mulberries would colour the bird poo and leave wonderful purple stains on your white paint if it wasn’t removed quickly.
    I came back to my car one day, sure enough there was a guy asking for money for cleaning and guarding. I paid up and as I was getting in the driver of the car in front of me arrived. Usual discussion, I thought. But no, this guy wasn’t prepared to pay and told the guard/washer to do something useful…..

  • Not patronising at all – but it’s Africa – the women work hard and the men sit around drinking beer – one wonders if anyone in the Government is working to improve their country or just hoarding money in foreign bank account!

  • I also love this story and the good advice you gave them.

  • John, I still love your blogs, and especially the last two. The ‘lads’ have already displayed the ‘right stuff’ by latching on to you. You are not being patronising at all. It’s what the whole of Africa needs to be told. For too long we have been shovelling money down there without any follow up, mentoring, management etc. Much of the Charity money never reaches the parts where it’s really needed anyway. Those folk will never move forward unless a few locals take the initiative and start with simple, everyday tasks like you suggest. All it takes is a good idea and some effort. Keep on doing your bit. It’s worth a lot more than just handing out money.

  • I have a question – what will they live on while they are clearing rubbish?
    Have you seen them since?

  • It sounds like they are already entrepreneurs. This particular group were already making the effort to be up and about (before rivals) to catch your eye, and some of the contents of your wallet.

  • You are so right, and when they have a beautiful rubbish free village they will attract more tourists and consequently there will be more jobs.

  • Certainly not patronising, but they might see the goal as to far off in the future to directly affect their lives in the here and now. When the culture and way of surviving is food, shelter and trying to keep safe, it’s a tough nut to crack. Also, when you have nothing, saving is a concept that is difficult to conceptualise let alone do. However…, setting up an old ‘pen pal’ type mentoring program from afar might work. I hope it does 🙂

  • I love the story, and what good advice.

  • Well adviced to the young lads. Hope they realise the meaning of it all.

Fixers

 


His name was Ibrahim. He was a Baghdad taxi driver, and he drove an ancient orange Toyota the size of a tank.

He drove it like a tank too.

However, as far as I remember, Saddam Hussein’s Russian-built T54s did not boast detachable dashboards. It was behind the dashboard that Ibrahim kept his international currency exchange.

As a keen young reporter for the Daily Mail in 1980, this was my first big foreign trip – and my first experience of employing a “fixer” – that essential combination of guide, translator, bodyguard and banker.

Over the years, I went on to know a variety of fixers. There was “Pipa” the rock-star (as far as the Czechoslovakia music scene was concerned). “Pipa” is the Czech word for the tap of a beer barrel – although his real talent was a fantastic news sense as he translated the morning papers over room-service breakfast.

“High-Tower” was the Beijing student (so-called because, unusually among the Chinese, he was well over six-feet tall). He made me sound authentic by peppering my copy with Confucius.

There was the taxi driver in Sri Lanka who took me to see the Tamil Tigers with an open can of petrol between my knees. We couldn’t put the cap on it because this was the fuel tank ever since the one at the back got full of bullet holes.

But whatever risks they ran (and whatever risks I ended up sharing with them), there was one cardinal rule: They all got paid an enormous amount.

Partly, this was because the exchange rate into the local currency was heavily weighted in my favour – but mainly, what I needed was loyalty.

Anyway, it wasn’t my money.

Now I think about it; there was also the man with dreadful teeth and a wall-eye in the fly-blown tea house on the Jordanian border who offered to get me a ride into Iraq in a sanctions-busting lorry if I came back at midnight…

This was the era of the hostages John McCarthy and Terry Waite. Midnight found me back in the bar of the Amman Intercontinental drinking brandy and sodas out of half-litre glasses.

All of this comes to mind because I am back in the third world and, once again, I need a fixer. I sailed from the Canaries directly to The Gambia, that tiny country on the west coast of Africa which consists of nothing much more than the river – up which (130 miles up which) I would see hippos and crocodiles and the legendary Baboon Island.

The aspect which seemed to get lost in translation is that The Gambia is now a very, very poor country. The previous president (now in exile in Equatorial Guinea) sought to get a leg up by accepting Beijing’s offer to build roads and bridges. They needed roads and bridges to service the fish meal factory they had slipped into the small print.

To support the factory, a veritable navy of Chinese trawlers moved in hoover up a little fish called the sardinella – which just happened to be the Gambians’ staple food.

No more sardinellas also upset the ocean food chain and killed off the big game fishing industry – which, in turn didn’t do a lot for the tourism (the smell of fish meal drifting over the beaches didn’t help).

So last year, the locals set fire to the factory and 40 Chinese fishing boats – although the only building they managed to destroy completely was their own police station.

One way and another, the country is in a desperate state, and it seems that everyone is looking for a job. Never mind, Passmore arrived looking for a fixer – several, in fact.

The first was Muhammad who navigated me through the byzantine process of checking into the country (Port Authority, Health Department, Immigration, Customs, back to Immigration, back to Port Authority for the river permit… come back on Tuesday to finish with the man in the Health Department, then pick up the river permit..)

Muhammad was brilliant. He knew everyone. It was only later – after we had settled on a price for his services – that I remembered it wouldn’t be coming out of Lord Rothermere’s spectacularly deep pocket but my own rather modest cruising budget. Checking with Facebook friends, it appeared I had promised Muhammad many, many times the going rate.

Too late, he’d already shown me a picture of his baby daughter – they all do this. Ibrahim in Baghdad had a daughter who was diabetic. When I got out to Jordan, Lord Rothermere invested in a year’s supply of insulin (which probably ended up with the wall-eyed man in the fly-blown tea house.)

As I progressed up the river, I toughened up my negotiating skills, but it’s no good, the boat kitty would keep a family for a year – and the children are terribly cute.

But I  did get to see the chimps on Baboon Island (well, one of them) and heard a hippo in the night – they sound like Winston Churchill getting out of the bath. I missed the crocodile, though – despite rowing out at dawn in the little inflatable.

Maybe that was just as well. I’m not sure a little inflatable is recommended for a crocodile hunting.

Now I’m back at Lamin Lodge – the wood and corrugated iron restaurant open on all sides to catch the breeze above the mangroves. Mahmood,, the waiter, keeps me supplied with refreshments, and Bamba the drummer provides a background rhythm. As a temporary office, it beats all the Hiltons and Intercontinentals into a cocked hat.

The office

If you look closely at the picture, you can see Samsara anchored just next door – where Karim turns up every morning on his paddle-board to deliver fresh bread and collect the laundry.

Karim with the bread (and the laundry)

What did  I say about leaving…

Bamba on rhythm

5 Responses to Fixers

  • Very interesting information. Thank you

  • “Lamin Lodge”, what a fantastic venue, back in the 80’s, my wife and I holidayed in The Gambia”, and one of our trips was to Lamin Lodge for breakfast, brilliant. I didn’t receive your book for Christmas, but am working on it. Love your posts, long may they keep dropping in my in-box.

  • Gambia now that’s a bit different, would make a great YouTube story. Please keep us updated. PS i really enjoyed your book.

    • Thank you. May I ask a favour: if you haven’t done so already, would you leave it some Amazon stars (five would be most welcome – I’m trying to get past the 4.75 average so they all light up!)

  • Now that’s cruising! Shades of books written 60 and more years ago – like Millars’ “Isobel and the Sea – and a host of others on my shelves, venturers all beyond the confines of so-called civilisation. And yet you have the internet; such irony.

Invaders

I was going to be a Spitfire pilot. We all were – backs to the wall, fighting to the death against a merciless invader…

This was 1959, an English prep school; War Picture Library with a torch after lights out. For the price of a Mars Bar, you could borrow Boddington’s flying helmet. It had P/O Boddington inked on the inside and smelled of rubber and sweat and excitement.

Ten years later came the film – Battle of Britain. I went to see it every night until the money ran out. Edward Fox with his silk scarf. Susannah York, fetching in her WAAF officer’s cap.

It remained a fantasy, of course – until now.

Admittedly, I’m not in a Spitfire, climbing through Angels Ten. But the fight for survival – the merciless invader. That’s all here.

And just because I’m a hundred miles up the Gambia, not at Biggin Hill – and I’m up against cockroaches instead of the Luftwaffe, it’s still as desperate a struggle as anything Michael Caine, and Douglas Bader and P/O Boddington had to face.

I knew they were coming, of course: the books and Facebook groups are full of warnings about not bringing cardboard packaging aboard (they lay their eggs in cardboard). There is advice about Boric Acid and Nestles Milk – but that’s no good in a dogfight.

Nobody forgets their first contact with the enemy: I was chopping onions, had discarded the papery outer skin and suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, a movement – a flash of scuttling shiny brown carapace.

Wheeling instinctively onto the attack, I stabbed with the vegetable knife. It went wide, but the enemy banked and ran for cover under the engine casing.

That’s when the training kicked in: Don’t let him get away. He’ll be back with his chums, telling them I’m a pushover – won’t last two weeks, just as Kurt Jurgens told Ralph Richardson.

So, fight like hell! Off with the engine casing. There’s the bastard, running for cover along the ledge above the CAV filter. Gun button to “fire”. Press the tit – but, Oh no! Out of ammunition (I’d put the vegetable knife down).

I grabbed a spoon, but a spoon is not a precision weapon. It wouldn’t fit into the corner.

Bare hands, now: slapping and missing until, with a cold and steely deliberation, I bring out a forefinger and crush him into the woodwork. Still, he won’t die: A mess of legs and whiskers stuck to the skin, waving defiance. The coup de grâce, then: I bring down the thumbnail; grind him in two.

Total war.

Yet this is just the beginning. Over the ensuing days, the raids increase both in size and frequency. I keep a daily tally in the back of the logbook. The Nine o’clock news begins with Alvar Liddell reciting the day’s score as if it were a test match.

For a time, it is touch and go. The blackest day brings eleven incursions, eight kills. The cockroaches don’t give up. They come in numbers. I adapt my tactics: don’t go for two at once. Nobody can catch two rabbits…

Tally-ho! The carpet comes up, then the cabin sole: I burrow into the tins of chickpeas and bottles of mayonnaise until – there he is – backed up against freshwater manifold. Out with the forefinger.

It’s relentless: ten, a dozen sorties a day and no quarter given. After the early clashes, I would flick my victims into the galley waste bin – until I found one of them, mortally wounded, yet still trying to escape. After that, over the side, they went – over the stern, in fact – into the two-knot tide sweeping them away with the river. I wouldn’t trust the buggers not to climb up the anchor chain.

Of course, it couldn’t go on. Not at this level of attrition. There had to come a time when one of us would crack. Remember the scene right at the end, when the pilots are waiting at dispersal, lounging in broken armchairs, sleeping on the grass?

Edward Fox (he survived) folds his newspaper and looks up at the sky.

And the sky is empty.

Cut to the Luftwaffe packing up and heading for Russia.

It has been ten days since a cockroach has shown its face aboard Samsara. The battle is won. I’m not a hero – somebody had to do it – and yet the war grinds on: when I restocked the onions the other day, I sat in the dinghy peeling off the outer skin, dropping the pieces carefully over the side.

Do you think they sell Boric Acid in the market?

*You can read more about Boddington and his flying helmet in Old Man Sailing, the book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Old-Man-Sailing-dreams-lifetime/dp/B08TQ9KV48

9 Responses to Invaders

  • Merry Christmas JP, I was keenly looking forward to reading your update from sailing in the Gambia. Seems like you have been busy with your ‘invaders’. I wish you fair winds and safe passage on your adventure, hopefully without any “Freeloading Cockroaches”. Kind regards Bill

  • I remember in the 70s regularly swimming in the (then) abandoned volcanic Turkish baths on the island of Lesbos where we used to lie around the pool when too hot and were always joined by legions of cockroaches though they never touched us, recognising that we were alive. I rather enjoyed watching them pursue their busy lives… but I didn’t have to live with them!
    Happy Christmas to you all!

  • “We will fight them on the beaches……we will never give up!” Merry Christmas!

  • “Exterminate! Exterminate…!”

  • Nadolig Llawen John from Penmachno Snowdonia… love reading that little ‘espionage’ story ……. How are you and hope you well ?
    You put a smile on my face on Xmas eve especially as I’m just recovering after one hell of a 2 week suffering with chest infection/respiratory illness etc but thankfully the ‘magic pills’ antibiotics has started working and I can smile & laugh without my ribs hurting me… I have survived and feel I feel ready to fight another battle ‘peel the onions’ ready for cooking a Xmas feast maybe…

    Chilli powder is good

    Lorraine

  • Well done John what hero you are. I was far more timid back in December 2015 when Arctic Smoke was attacked between the Canaries and Cape Verde. We simply deployed poisen and traps but didn’t finally get rid of the swine until our return to the UK the following year when they died of the cold!

  • Good luck, John. One of the ships I served on in the Royal Navy was a very happy efficient and clean destroyer without any unwanted creatures onboard – UNTIL we arrived at Gan on our way to the Far East where our Supply Office decided to buy sacks of potatoes because they were cheap, ignoring the protests of our Victualling Petty Officer who had enough to last until we arrived at Singapore. As the spuds were swung onboard, one sack split and lo! and behold! we had spuds everywhere and tropical cockroaches (Bombay Runners) running in all directions. Needless to say we were infested from that moment and the filthy creatures were everywhere – open your clothes locker and they were in residence, leaving messy marks on one’s neatly folded clean tropical whites. UGH! and UGH again.
    It took a while in dockyard for the ship to be de-infested. Cheap spuds! Nothing is cheap in this life – we get what we pay for but nobody had impressed that on our SO’s mind.
    Bon chance with the cockroaches, John. They are the very devil to eradicate.

  • If no boric acid, I hear that activated yeast and sugar are the weapon of choice by those in the know….. . Apparently the little fockers are unable to fart or belch; so the gas builds in their tiny shiny case until they explode…
    typically back at base, where their remains are canabilised by their comrades, thus creating, with careful timing, the potential for several for the price of 1. Good luck, old chap…
    tally ho!

  • Splendid stuff! As one who has spent half his life in the tropics and subtropics and who will on principle go as far as two steps out of my way to stamp on a cockroach, I applaud and commend your approach, which is positively Churchillian. Écrasez le cafard!

    (Be warned that they probably laid eggs).

Oars and outboards

What does an old man, sailing on his own, do for an outboard?

Well, l’ll tell you what a young man does – at least, what I did when I was in my 40’s on Largo: I had a little two-stroke Suzuki and I took it in one hand and climbed into the dinghy with it, swinging it around as if it weighed no more than a can of extra strong lager on a Saturday night.

So, when I started sailing alone again as an old man, I bought another little two-stroke Suzuki (it wasn’t easy – they don’t make them any more because of the emissions).

However, nothing else was the same. Somewhere over the intervening 30 years, my muscles had disappeared. My little stick-thin 72-year-old arms can no more lift an outboard than my head can cope with extra-strong lager. I could see that it would only be a matter of time before both of us ended up in the water – which do no good at all for the outboard (and not much good for me).

All of these changes have come together to contrive what I believe is a very neat solution to the problem of getting ashore, saving the planet and keeping the beer cold (the 3.8% Heineken).

At the end of last season, I was going home for Christmas and had everything loaded into the dinghy ready for the two-mile trip up the river to Waldringfield.

You will probably remember last Christmas and the prospect of it being cancelled with another lockdown: If I had the boat hauled out as I usually did, it might be moths before I got back into the water. Instead, I borrowed a friend’s mooring at Ramsholt.

When I say I had everything in the dinghy, I mean the bicycle and everything I could get on it for the five-mile ride from Waldringfield to Woodbridge. That is to say, I had my rucksack and the carry-on bag which just about fits on the front.

The dinghy, with its pump, outboard and oars etc. could stay on the beach. I would come back for them later in the car.

You can see, I had thought this through.

The only thing I had not considered was the outboard failing to start.

Which was why I was a day late home for the holidays – having had to wait for the following day’s flood tide (you don’t row a tiny inflatable for two miles against the River Deben’s three-knot ebb.)

It was pretty much the final straw for me and the outboard. Over the years, I had spent hours with it in pieces in the cockpit. I had pored over YouTube videos on how to service a carburettor. I had spent enough on repairs,  practically, to buy a new one…

There had to be an alternative. Well, of course there was. I could have an electric outboard. They come to pieces. You can load them into the dinghy one bit at a time. They don’t break down. They need no maintenance. They’re kind to the environment. You don’t have to find somewhere safe to store the petrol (or buy it, come to that). What I needed was an electric outboard.

The only problem was that the ones made for the yacht market cost the predictable arm and leg.

But there was an alternative. It was called a “trolling motor” – designed for little boats on lakes. Top speed is about three knots and you need a 12-volt battery to power them. But you could get a brand new one for less than £150. Best of all, they weighed only 7kg – I really would be able to swing it around in one hand.

I’ve had it for a year now. It’s called a Haswing  Osapian 40 and I have an 80ah “marine and leisure” battery which plugs into the ships’ batteries to recharge (and when it’s not running the outboard, it pushes the little electric beer-cooler.)

The battery does weigh 17kg and has to be lifted in an out of the dinghy but it’s compact and has a proper handle and somehow that makes it manageable.

Obviously, you have to learn to think like a WW2 submarine captain – you can go further if you go slowly – about three miles, I reckon. But in emergency top gear, it has pushed me across Falmouth Harbour against a 20knot headwind.

So why does that picture at the top show me rowing?

It was taken in the enormous anchorage at Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, where it’s the best part of a mile into the marina and all the way down to the other end to the dinghy dock – or five minutes in a RIB with a 10hp four-stroke which two people had to hoist aboard with a purpose-built derrick.

Although, I did notice that in between the criss-crossing wakes, there would be the occasional little old man rowing a tiny cockleshell dinghy. It would take him twenty minutes – but old men are seldom in a hurry.

I’m an old man – and my little electric trolling motor in low gear would take me all of twenty minutes.

So why wasn’t I rowing?

The upshot is that now I have new, longer oars and stainless steel rowlocks in place of the broken plastic ones. Admittedly, I still can’t punch into a 20knot headwind like a rigid dinghy – or even a collapsible one – so, when there’s the prospect of a strong headwind, I take the motor just in case. Then I can clamp it amidships and set it to half-speed and row with a little help. It’s like pedalling uphill on an electric bicycle.

My biceps are coming along splendidly…

11 Responses to Oars and outboards

  • Very good to see you happy

  • It’s a lie John – you like whisky!. Happy memories of the evening at Titchmarsh. Safe passage and keep updating us on your ramblings marine and cerebral.

  • Wonderful stuff John keep it coming so many of us can relate to this…
    I remember my father with his Seagull outboard, you could hear it coming for miles !

  • As always very entertaining. I guess the minerals are helping those biceps come along nicely.

    • I think they must be helping – after all I can row (and winch) five months after the dislocated shoulder and the NHS website says recovery can take a year. Still need to do the exercise, though…

  • Love reading about your adventures – I’m in bed with really bad bronchitis – wish I had half your energy!

  • I’m not a boating person but your comments in this post resonate John.
    I too have moved onto low alcohol beers and my legs are not what they were, I enjoy ‘electrically assisted’ cycling these days.
    I really enjoy your postings John, keep them coming.

  • I cannot agree more with using an elderly – but well maintained – 2 stroke outboard, in my case a Mariner 2hp which has lasted since 1988 and several inversions. When I first tried lifting a new 4 stroke I thought ‘ OK, what joker has bolted this to the floor ? ‘

  • I love reading your blogs. Please keep them coming.

  • Old men and their electric toys eh JP – Onwards n Upwards John 🙂

Yachting Monthly review

This is nice: Yachting Monthly has reviewed Old Man Sailing and called it a “word-of-mouth bestseller”.

And there’s some evidence for that: the daily sales from Amazon tend to be higher than they were a couple of months ago – with a higher proportion coming from overseas. Now a Dutch sailing magazine has asked for a review copy.

It’s all very gratifying – particularly meeting someone new and finding they’ve read it already.

This would never have happened if had been picked up by a mainstream publisher.

The latest news is that the Audible edition is nearing completion – that is to say, the narrator has recorded it and is now dealing with the inevitable glitches and corrections. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.

… at least I will if I have a mobile signal. On Ed Sheeran’s Desert Island Discs recommendation, I’m now headed for The Gambia.

13 Responses to Yachting Monthly review

  • Excellent book, pressie for Xmas, couldn’t put it down, finished over 3 days, good for me. I’m about the same age as John and lots of words in the book ring very true with me. A refreshing change from the usual sailing books I read. Well done, excellent, look forward to the next one. Regards Chris (UK)

  • Hi John. You’ll maybe recall long agos at YM, and other places, after which we lost touch. You may even remember my name! Great to know you are back doing what you do best: sailing and writing. Holed up in the Highlands in front of a wood burner. Not as warm as your volcano but safer.

  • John, I have just read your book, it’s brilliant. I retired at the tender age of 66 in August 2019,and had planned to explore the Greek islands with my wife, but then instead we spent 18 months in lockdown. So congratulations on your escape, and on producing a jolly good enjoyable book. I particularly enjoyed your Laser sailing experiences, because I too suffered the injustice of always being last. My wife bought be my first Laser, which was quite old, so a couple of years later I persuaded her to let me buy a brand new Laser, as this would definitely improve my placings in races. It didn’t, and in the end I had to admit that my then 17 stone body mass was the root cause.

  • Good morning John, we crossed paths in Lerwick and I’d no idea I was chatting with such a famous well travelled man. I’d just like to say thanks for your time and the advice you gave me regarding my Aries wind vane. I had it working perfectly for the rest of the season all due to you. Many thanks. Really enjoying your book and enjoying the blog. I’m jealous your season is still ongoing. Fair winds. Greg

  • I love this guy’s book.I read old man sailing in 2 days. Wish he would post more often.

  • Hi john.wonderful, damp and dull here, quite envious really. Beats a bar meal at the wiffler after training eh.?
    Keep safe Pete

    • Ah, remember The Wiffler – and those Mercure Hotel trainings with Kevin and Auntie Nellie…

    • …but yes, the sun is shining, the thermometer said 27C at lunchtime and 330ml of supermarket Estrella 4.3% is 16p.
      (Rum’s not much more than £4 a litre either. This could all go downhill and I haven’t even got to the Caribbean yet…)

  • A couple of young lads from near here/Bath bought a Contessa 26 and scrounged some RYA Day Skipper Course Notes…. then headed south from L’pool, I think. Before long, they were wintering in The Gambia and had a whale of a time, by all accounts. Of source, they stayed well clear of local politics and ‘organised business’. “The locals were great”, they recounted.

    Then, another ocean or two….

    Fair winds and fishes!

  • I’m taking Will’s copy of your book home for safe keeping as we both enjoyed it. ( had hoped to ask you to sign it when at pasito blanco, but I did not see you ) at home also a friend tried to pass on to me his copy of your book I had to say I’d all ready got it !

  • Hi John,
    The Gambia !!? Is it ? So no Xmas in UK ! I don’t blame you at all !! Bit jealous really !
    Crossing after that ? Or more south like Ascension ,St Helena ,Tristan da Cunha ?
    Anyway enjoy your time . God speed .
    With my warmest regards
    Lannigdu

The cost of waiting

The marina and the anchorage at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Drone photo by Emmie and Tim of Shadowfax (www.chasing-contours.com)

 

Everybody’s waiting.

That’s what you do in the Canary Islands at this time of year. The boats have to get across the Bay of Biscay by the middle of September to avoid the equinoctial gales – but they mustn’t reach the Caribbean until the end of the hurricane season, and that means not setting off until the middle of November. So, for two months, they wait.

A lot of them are just parked in marinas – their crews flown back to the office. The rest exist in a peculiar sub-tropical limbo of cold beer under awnings.

The first week I was here, I stopped in a different place every night. That’s what you do when you’re cruising. Now I haven’t moved for two weeks. It took a while to realise the Canaries are not like Essex.

Well, of course not: The temperature is in the 30s. From twelve until four, nothing moves. I’ve given up soap – instead, I dive over the side before breakfast…

But, there’s more to it than that. Essex is full of rivers, so you can creep in around the mudbanks and find a sheltered spot whatever the weather.

The Canaries are extinct volcanoes (actually not so extinct – the one on La Palma is blowing off at the moment). Anyway, it means there are no estuaries. The only places to stop are open bays where the Atlantic swell rolls the onions off the chopping board or marinas where the man behind the counter shrugs sympathetically and tells you it’s high season. Not only does this mean high prices, but you might have to move on tomorrow because he’s got someone else booked in.

So there’s a great tendency for everyone to stay put – particularly the ARC boats.

The ARC is the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers – a massive event in which 200 boats with 1,200 crew sail across the Atlantic from Las Palmas to St Lucia all at the same time. It is one of the great mysteries of the sea that they don’t all bump into each other like a regatta of seven-year-old in Optimists. The event is massively social and hugely expensive, which means that most of the boats are seriously posh. This year, some of the catamarans have three decks, like wedding cakes.

It does seem rather a waste that they leave from Las Palmas, because – for some reason that nobody seems able to explain – the capital of these islands boasts the cheapest marina in Europe. They quoted me €55 for eight days. It’s like being in Southampton’s Port Solent – but the only time I stopped there for a night, it cost me £40. I could have stayed in a hotel.

Ah, but wait: In Las Palmas, this municipal generosity extends not just to the marina but also to the anchorage next to it. So that must make it the cheapest anchorage in the world!

Well, obviously, most anchorages are free. But it is one of the cruising yachtsman’s perennial moans that over the past 20 years, harbour authorities have sought to cash in on their local topography. For instance, halfway up the Truro River in Cornwall, where seafarers have sheltered for nothing ever since the first caveman stopped to fish from his coracle, the harbourmaster now turns up in his launch to relieve you of £7. There is no landing stage, no water tap. Nothing has changed in a thousand years – except for the introduction of “Harbour Dues”.

Yet here I am, securely anchored just off the popular Playa de las Alcaravaneras – high season and all that – and paying €1.42 a night. That doesn’t even cover the cost of the paperwork (there’s plenty of that). Also, they let me leave my dinghy in the marina and fill up the water can while I’m at it.

For a small additional charge, I could queue for the showers with all the ARC people. But if the sea is free and about the temperature of bathwater anyway…

13 Responses to The cost of waiting

  • As an even older man (78) I loved your book and blogs which I have just discovered. As a late covert to sailing after crewing for Frank Mulville in 1995 I have sailed a 22ft Catch22 across the channel for 20 years but have now been encouraged to venture further afield.

  • Great wordsmithing: “The rest exist in a peculiar sub-tropical limbo of cold beer under awnings.” I can see and hear it all.

  • I just discovered your blog and thank you very much. I am sixty two years old, I am a little French Auvergne who has exactly the same dream. I am preparing my departure for Mangata, my Cheoy Lee offshore 38 from 1979 based in La Rochelle. Sorry for my bad english.I use Google traduct . Is your Book tra’slated in french?

    • Bonjour Jean Claude, Non, j’ai bien peur que le livre ne soit disponible qu’en anglais. (J’espère que vous pouvez comprendre cela. Moi aussi, j’utilise Google Translate !) Cordialement, John

  • Hi John, just a suggestion, why don’t you post your stories on instagram with one of those lovely pictures you take? Thanks, take care, love your blogs even though I don’t usually comment, I read them all 🙂

  • Thank you for the latest ( the cost of waiting) it’s dull and very still here in Alresford Hampshire. and the leaves are turning golden. Take care. Ursula j Weller

  • I’ve been watching the developments at La Palma for a month. Quakes have been building steadily over this time from daily average of 2.5 to current average 3.5 with a couple of >4.0 thrown in. The possibility of a big quake with ensuing landslide leading to tsunami from La Palma has been written about for decades as you might already know. I use an iPhone app called Earthquake to monitor the developments. It is unlikely the UK would be unaffected by such a tsunami, which could impact the whole Atlantic. Take care.

    • I can see Earthquake Alert and Earthquake Checker etc. But nothing just called Earthquake. Also, I seem to remember from the Christmas Day Tsunami that boats anchored in deep water hardly noticed anything. The trouble only started when the surge hit the beach.
      I am 370metres from the low tide mark and anchored in 11metres (at low tide). Does this mean I can stop worrying – before I start…

  • Now, here is some useful information!

Antifouling

The Swan Inn at Noss Mayo on the River Yealm – the perfect place to dry out for a scrub.

Like most of the world’s great discoveries, the perfect solution to the antifouling problem turned up when I was looking for something else. I could tell you what it is right now – in a few words, as it happens.

But that would be a waste of a good story – and it is a good story…

When I bought Samsara, I had a lot of money left over and thoroughly enjoyed spending it – there was the fancy feathering propellor, the new solar panel, upgraded electrics – all the things that usually spend years on the wish list.

And there was Coppercoat antifouling. If you look it up in the search box, you will see I have written about this elsewhere. It has not been a great success (which is the fault of my hull,  not the stuff itself). Anyway, I’m stuck with it now. I’m certainly not going to pay all over again to have it taken off. Instead, a couple of times a year, I lean the boat up against a wall somewhere and spend three hours underneath with a bucket of water and a packet of scouring pads cleaning off the weed  while green slime drips in my eye.

It’s not something I look forward to. Never mind, at least I can choose a nice place to do it. The River Yealm is a nice place, and if you’ve got a little boat, you can dry out in front of the Swan Inn which does a very nice pint when you’ve finished.

Except that I couldn’t get started. Do you think I could find the scouring pads? I knew exactly where I kept them (stuffed down behind the seacock under the galley sink). But this time, they weren’t there.

That was how I found myself pedalling all the way up to the bridge and then down the other side of the creek to the Co-Op at Newton Ferrers. You would think a Co-Op would have a pack of scouring pads. Not in Newton Ferrers.

Instead, they suggested the garage at Yealmpton. Seeing how far that was, I phoned ahead. They didn’t have any either.

Having gone to all this trouble, I asked in the craft shop (what do you think they said) and the deli…

Eventually, since I had tried everywhere else, I tried the chemist. Oddly enough, they had some of those half-sponge things. Apparently, they used them for cleaning the chemistry set. They were only £1, so I bought them – not that I thought they would be much good for cleaning the bottom of a boat.

By now I was so obsessed by the whole nonsense that I explained it to the man behind the counter.

It was a moment as significant as Moses getting to the top of the mountain and saying: “Actually, I was looking for some tablets of stone. I don’t suppose you’ve got any…”

Because then the man behind the counter divulged the best-kept secret in the history of boat maintenance. He did it with all the sense of occasion that he would employ in taking a tube of hemorrhoid ointment off the shelf and sliding it across the counter.

Here is what he said: “Why don’t you do what the fishermen do?”

  • Why, what do the fishermen do?

And here it is. This is what the fishermen do: They put half a bottle of bleach in half a bucket of water and get a garden spray – the sort of thing you use for greenfly – and they spray the bottom of the boat with bleach. That kills the weed. Then, over the next few weeks, it falls off. Fishermen don’t want to pay for expensive antifouling. Bleach is cheap.

I didn’t believe it. I mean, who would? If it was that simple, why didn’t everyone know about it?

All the same, if there was a chance of avoiding three hours scrabbling around under the boat with the green slime…

I didn’t have a garden spray in the cockpit locker, so I used the brush that goes with the dustpan. It turned out to be ideal for slapping on the bleach. Instead of three hours with the scouring pad , it took me just 30 minutes – although I suppose, I should also count the other two-and-a-half hours watching it dry from the pub terrace.

Well, of course, it didn’t work. A week later, there was still a fringe of weed a couple of inches long all around the waterline. I’d gone to all that trouble for nothing. Serves me right for being so gullible. I expect the chemist dined out on that one for the rest of the summer.

But wait. It is now fully two months later. I am in the Canary Islands. The water is warm. I have been swimming off the boat and, as you do, I dived underneath to see what was going on down there.

Would you believe it? There was not a scrap of weed to be found anywhere – not the fine green beard that grows on the waterline. Not the barnacles around the prop and the rudder – just a light dusting of algae that came off in clouds when I brushed it with my hand.

Of course, I do have to quieten my conscience about adding half a bottle of bleach to the world’s oceans a couple of times a year.

On the other hand, my saucepans have never been so clean.

3 Responses to Antifouling

  • You’ll be sorry, John if Carrie hears about your escapades – Boris will probably ban all sales of bleach…

  • Genius! Thank you so much for this eye-opener. Who could have thought of such an elegant solution to a major pain in the ass problem? Turns out the local fishermen could! No more spending tons of money on various concoctions. No more spending hours on various sailing forums arguing which antifouling stuff works well in a particular location, but does bugger all in another place with different water salinity. It’s all about bleach! That stuff has been around for ages, it is cheap, widely available and it works. And most importantly it is so easy to apply!

  • Always good to hear from you! What type of boat would you recommend for us? We would love to sail to the Caribbean. I have been looking at Hallbergs, Cape Dory, and Alberg.

Adjusting

Sunset over the anchorage at Playa Blanca – and it’s still 26°C in the cabin

Every year up until now, October has been the turning point. Time to start making my way home for Christmas – three months holed up in the Walton Backwaters with the seals and the geese, slowly poisoning myself with carbon monoxide as the charcoal heater leaked more and more smoke into the cabin.

Out would come the long underwear, the winter-weight sleeping bag – until, sometime around January, I would put the winter one inside the summer one … and still not take off the long underwear.

Maybe you don’t wish to know this. Anyway, this October, I am anchored off Playa Blanca in Lanzarote. The temperature in the cabin is 30°C, but with the breeze blowing through the open hatches, it’s cooler than the cockpit. Anyway, you can’t read a laptop screen in that kind of sunlight. Also, there’s enough sun and wind to keep the cheap little fridge going 24hours a day. Before lunch, I had a beer that was every bit as cold as it would have been ashore in the Sailors’ Bar.

Of course, things didn’t start out like this. My first attempt at leaving Falmouth lasted just 90 minutes. That was how long it took to realise that all the freshwater had leaked into the bilges where the automatic pump dumped it with the utmost efficiency straight over the side.

I considered carrying on, reasoning that I had enough water in bottles, beer in cans and the liquid content of tinned food to keep me going for three weeks. All the same, it wasn’t sensible. Also, it was easy to go back.

Anyway, one of the gas burners had packed up – not a disaster, but if I needed a gas engineer, Falmouth was the place to find one, not the Bay of Biscay.

As it happened, no sooner had I dropped the sails than the engine overheated. Abandoning this trip was turning out to be an excellent decision. So I sailed to within ten metres of the Falmouth Haven Marina pontoon and then motored for the ten seconds it took to reach the berth – and still the alarm went off.

Falmouth Marine Services came out that very afternoon and left me overnight with a heat exchanger full of neat descaler – whenever I had used this powerful acid, I diluted it as per the instructions. But then instructions are written for wimps. The next morning, the water flowed where it should.

The gas problem turned out to be a simple matter too. I managed to fix that myself (oh, alright then, the Facebook community told me what to do).

The water was another matter. Over the next three days, I made five excursions to the out-of-town trading estate at Penryn, home of Screwfix and B&Q. According to Google Maps, it is 2.5 miles on a bicycle. But I wasn’t on a bicycle. Half the time, I was pushing the bicycle uphill. The trip took 50 minutes (only 20 coming back, though).

Each time I made it, panting, to the top of the hill, I thought this would be the last. But, after the new components didn’t fit or weren’t compatible with the old ones or just dripped for no apparent reason, I had to cheer myself up by going out for dinner – something that should be a reward for getting it right.

By the time I had two water tanks that didn’t leak separated by an isolation valve that didn’t leak either, I was so pleased with myself, I went out to dinner again – to celebrate.

Finally, on the Friday (I’ve given up being superstitious), I completed the new Brexit paperwork a second time and headed out past Black Rock feeling that, at last, the adventure had begun.

I was a bit premature with this. After four days, here is a list of what didn’t work:

  1. The heat exchanger: Although it had been fine after its dose of descaler, evidently another little crab had crawled out of its home in a corner of the water jacket to block another tiny channel.
  2. The water-driven generator. Despite its new bearings, this refused to turn until the boat was doing five knots and, even then, didn’t charge.

Of course, that might have had something to do with…

  1. The solar panel failed to charge the battery. This goes through a regulator which also deals with the water-driven generator. The panel was certainly generating electricity – yet, even when I connected it to the wind generator’s completely separate regulator, nothing reached the batteries.

The worst of it was that all of these things exacerbated each other to produce an electrical crisis: My sole means of charging was now the wind generator which, of course, is least efficient when sailing downwind – which is what I hoped to be doing for the next thousand miles.

I went round the boat switching things off. I didn’t need the VHF – there would be no fishing boats out here. That was 0.2 amps. The instruments could go too – another 0.2 amps. I could always switch them on when I needed to look at them.

I discovered that the autopilot on standby still consumed 0.1amps – what a waste! I could turn off the AIS and the GPS because I was the best part of 200 miles from land, and so pilotage was hardly a concern – and as for being run over by a supertanker; well, I could keep a lookout – I should be doing that anyway.

I did switch on the masthead tricolour when it got really dark. This uses 0.2amps. Was it really necessary? I was well out of the shipping lanes since I was heading for an arbitrary point in the ocean 150 miles west of Finisterre, and I couldn’t think why anyone else would want to go there. Besides, a ship ought to pick me up on radar. The tricolour would be just to confirm I was a sailing boat – and I have noticed that ships in the open sea avoid me by at least a mile.

The switch panel looked very strange with only one clothes peg on it.

You may think that clothes pegs on a switch panel would look odd anyway, but I use them to show me what I need to turn off sometime.

At this point, I felt some sympathy for Tom Hanks and his crew in Apollo 13 when they’re trying to get back to earth on battery power that wouldn’t run a coffee percolator.

Anyway, I only needed to spend one night stumping around the boat saying: “Failure is Not an Option”. After breakfast, when the neat descaler had had its 24 hours in the heat exchanger, I started the engine and delighted in the sight of water pouring out of the exhaust. Also, now the batteries had drained all night, the solar panel found the oomph to charge them – so I wouldn’t need the water-driven gizmo anyway.

And finally, after a week of what I had calculated to be a two-week passage, the Portuguese Trades kicked in. These are supposed to blow north to south down the Iberian peninsular. Sometimes they do. This time, they did.

It was my first experience of trade wind sailing – albeit without the flying fish (although I did pass a turtle going the wrong way). For seven days, I ran under twin headsails, the main furled on the boom. In all that time, I only touched the sheets once – and that was to reef. A couple of times a day, the course would need adjusting but apart from that, Samsara ploughed along in a welter of foam reeling off, on one occasion, my best day’s run ever – 155miles distance made good.

I read, I ate, I listened to my 47hours of Spotify playlist – which, thanks to the fancy new phone, would actually play for 47 hours instead of stopping inexplicably in the middle of every third chorus.

And every day, it got warmer. By the time I had reached the latitude of Casablanca, I had stopped worrying. I was starting to enjoy myself.

***Track the old man at: https://www.noforeignland.com/boat/5260073720872960

6 Responses to Adjusting

Cats and the cost of insurance

This is a story about the eighth wonder of the world – and , in the process, a lesson on how to get afloat on a budget.

Years ago, when the children were small, we gave a home to two kittens – a black one and a ginger one. We called them Treacle and Custard (what else?)

Being responsible pet owners, we had them vaccinated and microchipped. Next, we looked at pet insurance. It would cost £15 a month for the two of them – and that was only up to a certain age. Once they reached the stage of “old cat” ailments, the premiums would shoot up.

Instead, we opened a building society account and set up a standing order for £15 a month. They were never ill, and we never had to call on the “Cat Account”. In due course, Treacle was run over, and Custard simply disappeared. They were old. It was sad. But the children were teenagers, and by now, we had a dog. We got another pair of cats, too – and a hamster and two bearded dragons called Norbert and Kreetcha… and the rest….

It must have been ten years later when Lottie’s rabbit fell ill, as rabbits tend to. It was a weekend which meant the vet was on emergency rates. The bill, when it arrived, was something like £350, and the Thumper died anyway. The cats, of course, had never had a day’s illness in their lives, so it was decided they should bequeath some of their fortune to the cost of the dead rabbit’s treatment.

I had not paid much attention to the Cat Account over the years. Certainly, I had no idea how much was in it until I went into the Building Society with the passbook. This was the first indication of how long this story had taken to play out: The girl behind the counter had never seen a passbook. It was all cards now.

Never mind, the manager showed her how to print the transactions into the little book – and then, when it was full, to issue a new one – and then another when that one got filled up… and then a third…

The total, after something like 16 years years of £15 a month and the magic of compound interest, was somewhere north of £3,500. The cats had never seen a penny of it.

And that, as any financier will tell you, is the eighth wonder of the world – compound interest.

So what has all this to do with OldManSailing?

I am writing this from Lanzarote, the most northerly of the Canary Islands. If I go any further south, I shall be below 28°N – which means I needed to call the insurance company  to increase my insured cruising area. I called to tell them I was heading further south – The other Canary Islands, the Cape Verdes, Caribbean – all that.

They came back with a package that stretched from the Dardanelles to the Gulf of St Lawrence.

“And how many crew?” asked the sales associate.

“No crew.” I told her. “Just me.”

“Ah, but we can’t insure you for singlehanded…”

This did not come as a surprise. I had heard that new customers were being limited to 24-hour passages if they were on their own – even in UK waters . After more than 30 years, they seemed to accept me as a special case.  But even so, the premiums were going up and up.

All over Facebook, singlehanders were grumbling. How were they supposed to get anywhere if they had to keep stopping every 24 hours? Anyone would think they were driving heavy goods vehicles…

I can understand an insurer wanting to see a survey (despite my very low opinion of yacht surveyors) but look where the trend is leading: In the USA, insurance companies have started refusing cover for any boat more than 25 years old.

Think about it: They are assuming that a heavily-built and well-maintained yacht from the 1960s, cruised extensively by an experienced couple is somehow a greater risk than something mass-produced in a factory miles from the sea and then bought and sold through a succession of indifferent owners who kept it in marinas, unused, while running a maintenance schedule limited to not much more than antifouling every year.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Insuring the boat – what they call “hull insurance” – or, as the motor trade would put it: “Comprehensive insurance.”

If you go for just third party and wreck removal, everything gets much simpler and a whole lot cheaper.

That was why, last year, I took the plunge and cancelled the hull insurance. It was a big decision – like not wearing a harness all the time. If I lost the boat, nobody would give me a cheque to buy another. If I was dismasted or struck by lightning, I would have to bear the cost of repair myself.

How much I will be able to afford depends on how soon this happens. You see, instead of hull insurance, I now have a “Cat Account”. If it happens this year, I will be looking for a very cheap boat indeed and a very short wish list for her. But don’t forget that Shane Acton went round the world in an 18ft Caprice…

On the other hand, if I get away with it for 16 years like Treacle and Custard, then maybe I won’t have to paint the deck anymore.

But then, I was lucky. If instead of falling in love with a £14,000 boat, I had set my heart on a ten-year-old 40ft steel cutter, costing £80,000, I wouldn’t be able risk this option.

One other thing: Just as not wearing a harness makes the singlehander very careful on the foredeck, so “cat insurance” concentrates the mind on setting the anchor properly and giving a decent berth to that lee shore…

3 Responses to Cats and the cost of insurance

  • I reconise what you say. I had been with a liverpool based ins co 30 years no survey needed then last year they want a full survey. I had to shop around.
    I actually got insurance fully comp for half the price i paid with …jm insurance but with restriction like no more sailing than 24 hrs single handed and any claim made single handed 25% off the value of the claim on top of excess.
    Third party was half the price of fully comp about 60% .
    My motto is its better to have insurance than not having it as long as it does not have too many restrictions and not too costly.
    Insurance companies can vary but i think many small yacht owners are becoming more concerned about the risks involved of an insurance company not paying out! than they are concerned with the risks of actually sailing.

  • Makes sense. As Treacle and Custard had nine lives I trust you will too. Safe passage and keep writing.

  • There’s more than a smidgen of sense here. ‘Tis pity thee and me are both a tad ‘old curmudgeons’, otherwise I’d be tempted to go share a beer or three with ‘e….

Lightning

The one thing that really frightens me – more than the prospect of hitting the container; worse than having the Orcas take a bit out of my rudder, more pressing than being attacked by pirates – is lightning.

You can avoid Gibraltar and the Red Sea – and as for finding that container some dark night … well, if you’re going to worry about that, you’d better not go offshore at all.

But to be in the middle of an ocean with bolts of lightning cracking and spitting and smacking the sea all around you – is to discover in the most powerful terms just how small and insignificant you really are.

And it scares the living daylights out of me.

Consequently, rather like the obsessive who immerses himself in conspiracy theories, I have been spending hours trawling the internet, trying to find a way of avoiding this.

The research has not been encouraging. For instance, did you know that in Florida, the insurance industry calculates the risk of a sailing boat being struck by lightning is 3.3 in 1,000?

Never mind, I have decided Florida is off-limits too.

Meanwhile, it was time to look into lightning protection devices – particularly those wire brush affairs people stick on the tops of their masts. They cost around £200, and nobody seems to know whether they work – certainly, the manufacturers make no such claims, preferring instead to waffle about the “point discharge principle”.

I did find one company that would fit their gadget “at least two metres” above the highest point of my vessel and then connect it to a web of copper bonded to the bottom – all of which was going to cost more than the boat.

Another search came up with the statistic that I am more likely to be struck by lightning on a golf course. Still, if there is nothing I can do to prevent it, maybe I had better get ready for when it does happen.

Apart from the little matter of blowing out all the seacocks (I bought a large foam plug),  the main concern seemed to be melted electrics: Once the batteries and the alternator are gone, it doesn’t much matter what’s happened to the VHF, AIS, GPS  and so on.

However, boats today are rattling with portable devices. It seems like boasting, but aboard Samsara, I have two old mobile phones still loaded with Navionics charts, quite apart from the new one with the super camera – and that’s without counting the tablet.

All of which could survive in a Faraday Cage.

You need to know about this. This is wonderful. Apparently, in between inventing electrolysis and electro-magnetism, Michael Faraday discovered that a container made from wire mesh or metal plates will shield its contents from electromagnetic forces.

At the first sign of a thunderstorm, I could put all my portable devices inside a Faraday cage. Then, even if everything else had melted, I would still have rechargeable lights, my hand-held vhf and – most importantly – four devices running Navionics.

OK, so the purists will say I should have paper charts and a sextant. But consider the cost of paper charts for a cruising area that is getting bigger every year. Then there are the tables to stow – and the book on how to work out the sights, since it is nearly forty years since I last had to do it.

Compare that to five portable devices giving my position to three decimal places and enough charts to take me a quarter of the way round the world.

Of course, none of them will be any good once the batteries are flat, so the next item on the emergency list had to be a folding solar panel.

As for the cage itself, traditionally this is the oven but mine has a glass door, so doesn’t count. I looked up “Faraday Cage” on Amazon and discovered that they sell them (of course they do), but it is only big enough for car keys. Apparently up-to-date car thieves scan the electronic codes through your front door and then take the BMW off the drive.

So mine is a steel biscuit tin; big enough for everything – and maybe, even a packet of digestives to go with the cup of tea when all the fuss is over.

Of course, there may be another world war and somebody might shoot down all the GPS satellites, so I have a book called “Emergency Navigation” tucked away behind “Caribbean Pssagemaking”. This is full of advice about floating an iron rod in a bowl of water to find North and how to make a shadow board to measure solar time. I haven’t opened it.

I don’t suppose I’ll ever open it – because, right at the end of all this research – almost as an after-thought, I discovered there is, after all, a proven protection against lightning strikes.

It’s true. No yacht, anywhere in the world, has ever been struck by lightning if she had a Lego man stuck to the top of the mast.

Really, it has never happened. It must be true because I read it on the internet.

Ergo, as Mr Faraday would have said, if I were to stick a Lego man on the top of my mast, I would be on the right side of the statistics.

I went to some trouble over this. Whilst I could find no definitive answer to the question of which figure was best (a fireman, perhaps or a superhero?) I opted for a pirate with the boat’s name on his jumper.

Also, I did make sure he was facing to starboard – that is most important. How foolish would it be to become a statistic because the Lego man was looking the wrong way?

3 Responses to Lightning

  • I’ve just read your book – fantastic. I find myself in a similar boat both figuratively and literally although about 8 years behind you. Please forward the info on your supplement.

  • Thank goodness you found the solution John and thank you for sharing it with us. I’ll install one next time I’m up the mast.

    Given your publication, I assume you have arrived somewhere. Well done. Where?;Hope the passage went well.

    • Thank you. Lovely trip – twin headsails for the second week and only touched the sheets once. Best ever day’s run of 155 miles made good. Real Trade Wind sailing.