Enough of the trumpets

Enough of the trumpets, Jackie said.

It’s been one of those sort of weeks, our very last week at Ford Park where we’ve both toiled  for over ten years. I don’t say worked because it has never been a job in the sense of the word,  it’s been more of a mission. We were both recruited shortly after the trust was set up to save and develop this almost derelict country estate on the edge of town. Back then it was an overgrown gone to seed space, home to teenage drinkers and druggies. With a down at heal boarded up  grade 2 listed country house, an adjoining boarded up coach house, and the remnants of a walled Victorian kitchen garden, oh and the playing fields.

Now it has been transformed into a beautiful open space with a natural playground, the fields planted out with tens of thousands of spring flowers,  an avenue of lime trees, countless new oak, silver birch and beach trees with an Atlantic cedar right in the middle.

The Coach house  is a thriving five star café with new offices, a community room with a roof terrace with stunning views  across Morcambe bay , and behind it the majestic Sir John Barrow monument three hundred feet above us  on top of Hoad hill. Of course we can’t pay claim to Morcambe bay and Hoad hill, they’ve both been there for a million years or more, but we seem to have made a difference to Ford Park.

We didn’t achieve all of this single handed, but I suppose we did become the captain and first mate who, with the help of countless shipmates steered our ship through some mountainous storms, caught the fair winds, and prevailed when we languished in the doldrums.

Many faces of the crew aboard the good ship Fordusparkus have come and gone over the years, some have perished on the voyage, others moved on. I’m talking here of the trustees, the members, or friends, and above all the volunteers.,

All of us have together have transformed this tiny corner of the world and left a lasting legacy for our adopted town of Ulverston, and this week in particular has been filled, for us with a constant stream of verbal accolades from so many acquaintances, some who have become close friends, others we hardly know.

It’s a very humbling experience, to know how much all this toiling away  has touched so many lives, and each and everyone wants to heap praise and tell us how it was all down to us. To my mind it was all down to the skipper,  Jackie, I was simply carrying out orders, but in the eyes of the crew and the supporters we achieved something special, and I suppose we did,

Leaving any port you’ve grown fond of is always going to be an emotional wrench, and so it is a hundred fold with this departure. Our sights are now set on new horizons and we just want to hoist our sails and slip quietly out on the rising tide. The goodbyes are just too overwhelming, as  I suppose is befitting after such a tempestuous voyage of over a decade, but we leave not with a heavy  heart but with the satisfaction of knowing we made a difference.

But enough of the trumpets already.

Hearts of Oak sails the bay back home

The days when it's perfect weather for sailing come around far too seldom around here. What with the way the tide rushes out of the bay leaving countless miles of mud flats so that the times of the high tide are crucial. Then you need some wind, not a howling gale, and not a fickle zephyr , and it's a bonus if it's not raining on the days you can go down to the sea again.
Today the sun was shining with high cirrus and a force 3-4 coming in from the NW. High tide was at 1630, and today the crew of six aboard Hearts of Oak were about to attempt to sail her back to her birthplace of 100 years ago. She was the last boat to be built in Ulverston  and today she was going home. We set off from Roa island at 0930 with the plan to arrive on the flood tide at canal foot at about 1600 hrs.
Its about fifteen miles from our starting point to our final destination but fraught with the unknown of the Morcambe bay sands which due to the shifting sands and channels are seldom navigated and impossible to chart.  Our skipper for the day is Tony who lives at canal foot and has figured out that we should have clearance as long as we arrive on the top of the flood at 4pm.
Back when Hearts of Oak was built mariners would regularly do this trip we were about to undertake but today hardly anyone attempts it. It's more than likely you'll end up on a sandbank, stuck waiting for the next high tide to lift you off, and today is not a particularly high tide so the adventure is tinged with more than just a hint of trepidation.
We have to head out into the bay and find the main shipping lane that comes out of Heysham, a busy ferry port on the Lancashire side of the bay which has deep water at all times of the tide.  Then when the tide starts running we will catch the flood and sail it all the way to Canal foot, Ulverston.
It takes about two hours to tack out to lightening knoll before we turn north and ride the tide surging at four knots into the bay. The wind has picked up and is on the beam as we start our approach towards the distant mountains at the head of the bay. We're flying along touching  9 knots with the rising tide and this fresh NW wind and all the time keeping a watchful eye on our newly fitted depth gauge. It reads off erratic changes in depth, sometimes ten feet, the next minute out of range. The sailing is exhilarating, the views stunning, but were running too fast. We need to slow down and wait for the tide otherwise we'll arrive without enough water under our keel at our destination.
Our skipper decides we should drop the main, which we attempt to do but the gaff gets stuck, staysail and jib flap violently, and the gaff refuses to drop. There's a rope flying loose, time to drop all sails.  Eventually after a few moments of panic everything returns to calm as we drop all sails and regroup under engine power. We throw out the anchor and sit waiting for the tide to put another few feet under our keel. The run of the tide is fierce but the big anchor seem to hold in the Morcambe bay mud, we've got four feet under us that soon becomes five. We lunch, Brian washes the sides and Skipper Tony enters the log.
With an hour till high tide we weigh anchor and gingerly cruise past Chapel Island, heading for the quay at Canal foot. The depth gauge reads one foot, then we bump the bottom but glide on. At 1600 hrs we glide into the calm waters of Canal foot and drop anchor. Hearts of oak is home once again and the crew breathe a sigh of relief.
In the olden days they would have done all that under sail. Today we have to exercise a bit more caution. The adventure ends on the beach with Jennifer, the prime mover, but no sailor, in the restoration on Hearts of Oak plying us with strawberry scones and cups of tea ashore
 A splendid voyage, and one that made us appreciate how difficult it must have been for those sailors of long ago navigating these treacherous sands day in and day out with just a man and boy and no engine to turn to.
She'll stay here a week and then next weekend we'll catch the falling tide and take her back to Roa island, now that could be even more fun than todays outing.

The written word

The cottage is packed with books, books collected over years, perhaps. Have they all been read or are they just books bought in antiquarian bookshops that would look good on the shelves. The scary thing is that I have a feeling that they have all been read. Our friends are academics, much more cultured than I could ever hope to be. The books are categorised into their own corners of culture. In the front room there are three separate sets of shelves,  one has a library of books on cricket and above this shelf, poets and poetry, the complete works of Robert Frost.  The only thing I know about Robert Frost is a mention of him in a Simon and Garfunkel song called the “Dangling conversation” on Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme. I remember thinking way back in 67 that I had a lot of catching up to do when it came to American poets, but it wasn’t until now, in 2013 that I’ve ever seen a book of his poems, and even now I’ve only glanced the spline of the collected works on the bookshelf.

On another bookcase there are books about music, books about Wagner and Mozart, and many other composers that I’m sure I should have read, but haven’t.  There is another bookshelf in the same room about wildlife and nature, birds plants, travels in the Gobi  Desert . The next bookshelf has classic literature like Homers Iliad. I took this one off the shelf thinking I should check this out as it’s supposed to be famous. It’s an antique copy from perhaps the 1920’s and browsed the first page, the instructions to the reader. Now the first thing that put me off was that it was printed in a font that was about four point. By the end of the first page I was at a loss to tell you what I had read. I turned to the first verse of     Homers rantings and gave up after the first few lines, and put it back on the shelf. The idea of being cultured was fast retreating from my 21^st century mind. Have our friends actually read all this stuff, is this what you have to plough through to be cultured and informed. To me it was just hard work and so I put it back on the shelf.

Upstairs in the back bedroom is a bookshelf full of science fiction, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke, and a few other authors I should have read. I haven’t. Another bookcase, this one full of stuff about Naval history, or at least novels about Naval histories.  I should read these, there just may be some insights that I can use when we get round to buying our boat and exploring the Caribbean, but I very much doubt I’ll get round to it.

In fact I don’t suppose I’ll get round to reading any of this library before we go. I tried the Woody Guthrie, “Bound for Glory” tonight but I’m finding it hard going. I really think I should know much more about the guy that inspired Bob Dylan but I don’t think I’ll get much further with it. I know I should, but I know I won’t.  But I keep dipping into this archive, this collection of culture that I missed, that I should have paid attention too in my last sixty five years, but I was distracted by rock n roll, cannabis and the Apprentice. Perhaps I would now be a wiser and more rounded individual, had I been exposed to this literature. Or maybe not.

After all, each of these books is simply an adventure that some individual or other has been on, in their time. The truth is that we all have our own adventures. 

Bending on the mains'l on Hearts of oak

Summer has finally arrived in Cumbria, in fact we've had almost one week of glorious weather and we are making the final preparations to leave. We have walked the lanes where the cow parsley is in profusion and the fields are abundant with buttercups. The blackthorn is awash with it's snow-white blossoms and everything is lush in this late rush of spring, a month late. In fact in these glory days as we trip the light fantastic at 7am across the fields, buy eggs from the local farm, and pop £2 in the honesty box we wonder why we should be leaving such a beautiful part of the world.

Of course it's not always this idyllic, bird song, and the lazy cattle, in the early warmth of the morning. More often than not it's grey, or its raining, or its windy and uninspiring, but this week you wonder, just for a moment if Englands such a bad place. Of course it's not, especially on weeks like these but we have charted our course, let go the quay and are ready to sail away.

In fact we're almost done with casting off the trappings of this life, we're almost there with the sifting of the stuff that we will leave behind, give away or take with us and we went sailing.

We went sailing on Hearts of Oak. Well not exactly sailing. There was a job to be done, a shakedown cruise. After a winter, a long winter of refurbishments it was time to bend the mainsail, thats a nautical way of saying putting the sails back on to the old girl. This was carried out with a degree of pondering and hilarity as we wrestled with bits of rope and canvas until finally we had something that resembled a gaff rigged cutter called Hearts of oak.

Luckily there was the barest whisper of a breeze and a flat calm sea to achieve this. Gordon seemed to know more or less how the bits of rope and canvas got tied to the gaff and mast and we just threw in the odd comment to confuse each other but eventually she started to look like the ship we remembered from last season. We then motored out into the bay for an hour or two looking for a vesper and managed to turn the engine off for about ten minutes before we agreed that there was really no wind.

It didn't matter though, it was good to be back on the briney. The sun shone on a beautiful June sunday and we sailed her back to the drying out mooring, picked up the mooring and rowed ashore.

For a few hours we forgot about moving, about work, about anything except sailing. That's why we want to do this, wind or no wind, just being a part of this classic old sailboats crew with the creaks of the rigging as she wallows in the swell is enough, enough to escape the world for a few hours.

Next weekend we move out and take up residence in a cottage in the countryside with views of the mountains and the Duddon estuary. It won't be our home, but if the weather stays like this it's going to be a joy, and just one step away from the plane ride to our  new life in the Caribbean and our sailing adventure. But today on the Hearts of Oak was beautiful, not a sailing day but a reminder of why we are doing what we are doing, sailing is such a meditation, and if we can sail something like this old boat with its old systems of stiff hessian sheets and halyards and then it gives us confidence in our adventures on something a little less old.

So here we go then the last week, it's getting very close now, the next few weeks will surely fly. And then we fly.

Bending on the Mains'l on Hearts of Oak | Novices to Navigators

Bending on the Mains'l on Hearts of Oak | Novices to Navigators

Completo

COMPLETO.

About three pm today I got a call from our solicitors to tell us that they have finally exchanged contracts on the sale of our house in Sun St. We won't be moving this weekend but next, the 17th.
That's the day we hand over the keys to what has been our house for the last 13 years. The tiny Larch that we planted in our back yard of a garden back in 2000, and should have grown to 15ft is now mature and more like forty foot high. The bloke at the garden centre told us a little fib there, but we have loved watching it soar into the sky marking our time here. It's the only tree in the street, except a squat magnolia that is next door. The postage stamp that is our garden is abundant with bluebells, that are just going over now, and the weather has turned to summer at last. The drystone wall that divides our domain from next door with it's collection of mini ferns that are drying out in this dry spell. Our next door neighbors have just recently moved to another part of town, neighbors for the last 13 years, gone, and soon we too will be gone. Everything changes, and it feels good, exciting, and the butterflies are swirling around. Is this the right thing, no turning back now. That plan that we cooked up about five years ago is about to happen and all we can do is hang on to that tigers tale and go with it. Committed,
The last time I did this was when I was thirty years old, but then it was a rented flat in London to go travelling to South America, Equador, Peru, Muchu Pitchu. And when I came back I thought that we would be soon on the road, that open road, where adventures were the only way. No more humdrum life for me.
And thirty five years slipped by. Families, divorce, new life away from London and eventually, meeting Jackie .
We made a great team, we made a difference to our little town that we adopted. We immersed ourselves in the " community" and bit by bit became famous. We didn't set out to be, it just happened that we did what we did and eventually we became the face of our adopted enterprise, the saving of Ford park.
We took over the reigns gifted to us, and turned a derelict nine acre waste land into a beautiful park for Ulverston. A legacy that we will be proud to leave behind. They all say they will miss us, and we will miss them, but adventures beckon. We are about to take that leap of faith, to venture into an unknown future in the Dominican Republic,and a sailboat, me at 65, jackie almost 60. Is that foolish, not at all. Now is our time to grasp the last of the summer wine, to boldly go, to spread our wings and feel the spirit of adventure.

This house is not our home,although it has been,  home is wherever the wind takes us, wherever we drop anchor in the next few years. This is a new chapter, new horizons, dangerous, unknown waters, and uncertain futures.

But one thing is for certain, we are now committed, no turning back, Contracts have been exchanged, we no longer own 45 Sun street and the Caribbean is our next port of call. It's all so scary, but at the same time so liberating.

Looks like August  will see us on our way, after we tie up the loose ends in England.

Can't wait, can't wait.

You can't change your life and be sensible at the same time

Just a quick entry.
This is our penultimate week in our house at 45 Sun Street, we will be leaving on the 7th of June. Looks like we will complete the sale this week or at least early next week. On top of this my brother has almost completed the paper work on buying my half of the bungalow. So after all this time it looks like everything will happen at the same time, that is the sale of our properties, giving us the funds we need to move and to seriously think about boat shopping.
And then we came across a boat we like the look of. She's a Young Sun 35 cutter rigged sloop, 1981 vintage, that is in Grenada. And it's going for a bargain price, well by the looks of it. It's owned by an Englishman who wants a quick sale.
We emailed him for more photos, and yesterday we had the survey through. It needs a little work, but mostly cosmetic. We really like the look of this boat, it's a bit salty, traditional build, a heavy boat that is supposed to be seakindly. We're talking to the owner and are on the verge of saying yes, but of course we will need to see her first, but shes 10 hours flying distance away. That's a long way to go to find out that we don't like her, and a lot of money in fares and hotels.
We could just take the plunge and buy her without stepping on board but that would be very foolish, or would it?
So it looks like all our planning may fall together, fall into that one moment that fate has laid before us. The money, the boat,the shedding of our ties to this old life.
Tomorrow we have booked a Skype call with the owner of Sequin, and tomorrow we could have completed on the sale of two houses. This is very very weird, or is it fate.
The other day whilst clearing out my old journals and song books I came across a saying I thought very apt for the moment we're in.
You can't change your life and be sensible at the same time.