Hearts of Oak

Round about Christmas we were wandering round our local market when we bumped into an acquaintance, a woman who as part of our towns heritage association who had been instrumental in raising funds to restore the last boat to be built in Ulverston. Long ago in the 1800s Ulverston used to build ships, at workshops on  the Canal. The boat above was called the Hearts of Oak, she had been abandoned and was in disrepair, in fact an almost wreck. The owner heard about the heritage trust and offered her for free to them, which they accepted and set about applying for funds to have her restored. The task took about 5 years and eventually Hearts of oak returned to Ulverston, almost as good as new, or maybe better than new. 

Our conversation in the market turned to ask about the progress with Hearts of Oak. Jennifer told us that she was berthed in Barrow docks but they hadn't been able to sail her as much as they would like because of a lack of people who knew how to sail amongst their trustees.

Well we said how about us, we've just passed our yacht master certificates. "I didn't know  you could sail" said Jennifer. "Well we've only been sailing for a year, but we would love to join your crew". And so we asked where we could find the boat and a few days later we went to take a look at her lying in the Barrow dock.

What a lovely sight she was, and very different to anything we had been learning to sail over the past year, but here was a boat we could perhaps get some more sailing experience on. We got back in touch with Jennifer and arranged to join the trustees on one of their working days getting the boat ready to sail to various boat shows throughout 2011, the first would be sailing to Liverpool to take part in a classic show in April.

We met with about half a dozen others on a bright Sunday a couple of weeks ago, they seem like a nice bunch of people, but there is still much work to do before Hearts of Oak can set sail. Number one is to install a new engine as the old one is too much of a liability, as well as a few cosmetic repairs below.

I don't know if she'll be ready for the trip in April, but it's a very interesting development in our sailing adventure, if we get to sea, something very different to what we had in mind, but watch this space.

Looking at boats in Luperon, Republica Dominicana

January was spent in the Dominican Republic where we have a small condo on the Atlantic coast. Last year, when this sailing stuff was very new we managed to go sailing with a geordie guy called Ray, (see earlier posts) but this year he wasn't too well and on top of that his boat needed some things fixing. We were a little disappointed but we visited Luperon to at least have a look round some boats. We had picked three to view, a Beneteau a Morgan and a Lavranos, built in S. Africa.  


A guy called Ron took us round the harbour and we spent all morning viewing these boats. From the website all these looked like they were ready to cruise the Caribbean but the reality was very different. The Beneteau and the Morgan were project boats, that is they needed a lot of work to get them ship shape. The Lavranos was the best turned out and very well equipped, but a bit too pricey for us and Jackie wasn't too keen on the cream painted interior. Anyway we don't have the funds in place as yet so this was really just an excercise in what you could get in that price range.


A couple of days later we went back to look at a Peterson that had just arrived on the market, not bad but not us. We're really keen to try and view a Tayana, and we thought we spotted on right up at the entrance to Luperon. We hitched a ride with a guy called Dag and went for a cruise around this boat called September song, and sure enough it was a Tayana 36, but nobody knew who owned her, or if it was for sale. It looked like a nice boat though, to us, very traditional sort of craft.


With our holiday almost at an end we found a sailing school that hired out Lazers, but also ran courses on a little 20ft dingy. It was a bit pricey but we decided to have an hour with a Belgium tutor who had been doing this for 23 years. It was a lot of fun, although very different to our experiences on big yachts. He was very complimentary about our sailing skills, which was nice, and we had perfect weather and seas. But we only had an hour in Cabarete bay, next year we'll do more and try to get the hang of dingy sailing.


Hopefully by the time we get back next year we'll have the money to buy the boat, although I don't know if we'll find it in Luperon. Strange thing is, whilst we were there we tried to google that boat September song but drew a blank. Last week Jackie was browsing and lo and behold there it was on boat listings, although it says shes never been in the tropics, maybe there's two Tayanas called September song. I wrote a song  called September song, how weird is that, could this be fate. We mailed the agent but haven't heard back as yet, you never Know she might be waiting just for us, we'll see.

Now in theory we're Yacht-Masters

We've just passed the Yacht-master exams that we've been studying for the last three weekends over in Morcambe with John Parlane and his Bay sea school. This is a course that teaches you the theory of how to use charts, how to have a basic grasp of the weather, and the International regulations on avoiding collisions at sea. You wouldn't believe how difficult this has been, trying to absorb so much diverse information and computations the like of which I haven't done since I was back at school in the sixties.
Mind you I made quite a few glorious mistakes, mostly stupid ones, like taking 1.3 from 5.7 and getting 7. I'm just no good at logic, somehow my brain turns off for a split second and that throws the whole equation and workings out into chaos. But because my workings out were right John marked it as a pass. Although he has suggested that we may be better off buying a steel boat so when we hit the reef that we thought was a mile off we don't sink immediately, he's probably right.

I just couldn't get my head round secondary ports where the tidal heights and times are different and we have to extrapolate with graphs and tide tables. And then figure when it's GMT plus an hour or is it two hours in the southern hemisphere. I tried and tried and in the end almost got it. But then when I had to calculate how much water I need to anchor I ended up with half a meter too much. Still as Jackie said at least it was on the right side of wrong.
In the real world we'll only be concentrating on one particular event that we have to do. With exams we're expected to jump from one scenario to another, which messes with your brain to such a degree that the mist comes down and your stuck in a fog which descends, the cogs stop turning and all goes blank. Hopefully in the real world we'll be able to apply all this new knowledge to guide us safely into that turquoise bay without hitting the reef, and break out another G&T and watch the sunset in tranquil seas.

But Hey, Yacht-Masters. Well in theory at least, the real test is out there on the oceans with a real boat to sail. That's the frustration, not having a boat, and that in the end is what we need to do, sail. I mean, we haven't even learned how to put a reef in a sail yet. On the practical side there's still a long way to go, but we're a long way from being Novices, now all we need is to put those new navigational skills to good use.

Red lights, white lights, green lights

The second weekend of our yachtmaster theory course today starts with a drive to Morcambe, and an eight o'clock start. The roads are still a bit snowbound in town and its foggy. In fact although the main roads are clear of snow the fog is pretty bad until we're a couple of miles from Morcambe. So it's a sressful start to the day. Then we're straight into lessons on meteorology which includes a bit on fog,

We're subjected to a test on this just before lunch which I think I got about 60-70%, but we'll have to wait till tomorrow to know for sure.

Then it's time to get bamboozled by the rules of the road and those ever confusing lights that ships display. Ships that can't manoeuvre, ships towing other ships, ones not under control, big ships, little sailing ships, red lights, white lights, yellow lights and green lights. It's worse than christmas out there, and we're supposed to file all this away in a 62 year old brain to pass the exam, cause thisis the bit they want you to know. That along with black balls and cones and diamonds for the same messages in the day time. It then gets compounded with what horn signals we use and recognise in fog, without fog, One long blast, two short blasts one long, two short, and as you can imagine we're now in L a la, la la land.

So back home after fish and chips it's what we've got for home work till we start al over again tomorrow at 8am.

Time for some down time with I'm a celebrity get me out of here and a bottle of chardonay.

Yachtmaster theory

The weather here has plunged straight into Arctic style winter, and we've signed up to do our yachtmaster theory course. It seemed like a good idea to get back to school and brush up on what we learned way back almost 12 months ago.

What I learned that first weekend back was that I had forgotten almost everything. We're back to plotting course over ground, tidal vectors, leeway, deviation, variation etc.etc.

John, our tutor reckons that doing this course is only a small step up from where we were on the day skipper course, but my poor brain has aged and slowed down to the point where nothing is sticking any more. My neurons are failing to make connections, like they've become teflon coated, and I beat myself up at my inability to grasp the questions never mind the answers.

If I thought I knew something about navigation I now realise that I've got a hell of a lot of work to do just to catch up with where I was.
Anyway it's a eight day course spread over 4 weekends and hopefully once I get back into the zone it will all fall into place. In the meantime we just have to grit our teeth and rool with it. At least we're gaining more knowledge and keeping the dream on track, and by the end of this course we'll understand more than we did last year, even if I fail to pass the exams.

By the time we're finished it will be almost Christmas which means it will soon be January, and on the third we're off to Dom Rep, the sunshine and sailing with Ray.

Any port in a storm

Over the VHF we hear that lots of our flotilla have had difficulty making Paxos and a change of plan has sent them all to Sivota which is about six miles from where we're heading. We make a quick calculation that we could also make this port putting an extra hour onto our proposed plan. By the time we're approaching Sivota it's getting dark and before we enter the calmer waters on the approach to Sivota we are night sailing. Now we've done this on the Clyde and down the Menia straights but with a qualified yachtmaster aboard, but here we are in foreign waters with just me and Jackie aboard. We check the chart which tells us there's a light house right on the point ahead. This is easy to spot, but the chart also has a red flashing light every five seconds near the harbour. So far we can't see that so we motor on towards the lighthouse until the lights of Sivota are away to our port side. Well is it Sivota as we still can't see a red flash every 5 seconds. Our lead skipper is on the VHF asking if we can see the red light in the port, but amongst all the street lights it's impossible to tell. Never the less we head towards the twinkling lights straining our eyes to pick out this illusive light. In the gloom we can barely see the shape of land, we check the pilot book and discover that there's a sea wall around the harbour and we're aimed straight for it, we turn quickly starboard and there in the distance is this red light. It's not flashing at all and there was nothing on the end of the sea wall to indicate that this also may be a hazard. Now within sight of the masts of our flotilla we cut the engine revs and glide slowly in the dark towards the red light that's next to where our leader wants me to dock. Just turn around now and come in stern first. WHAT! This is going to be rather tricky as I've never done this manoeuvre ever. He wants me to squeeze between two other yachts. Just point the tiller the way you want the boat to go, oh right and do the throttle at the same time, why not. Actually at this point some inappropriate air of confidence sprang out of nowhere and before you could say bobs your uncle, or some more appropriate nautical term we were throwing our lines to the crew on the dockside. After two hours of night sailing we were safely tied up and ready for a well earned G&T.
We didn't expect to be using our night sailing training here but so glad to have done it as we felt on top of the situation all of the time.


Ten yards from our boat is a bar and we order a series of G&Ts whilst we recant our adventure to Pat and Dave whilst we get nicely drunk before falling into our berths aboard Othina for a good nights sleep.

Incidents and accidents

Sciroco scuttles off and we set about raising the sails again which I had hurriedly taken down when Tom came to check our leak. I had dropped it in some what of a hurry and although I took little notice, I did clock that some of the plastic bits that hold the main sail to the mast had slipped out as the sail came down. By now the wind had freshened, as us nautical types say, and the sea had become decidedly lumpy. Raising the sail on a Jaguar has to be carried out stood by the mast, on top of the coach house. This is a job for Cpt Col as Jackie tries to hold the boat heading into the wind.

It's a rolly polly ride and now I discover what the problem is with these bits that keep the sail hooked into the mast. Somehow we've lost a stopper and it turns out that about half of these "cars" have slipped out. Hanging on tightly with one hand around the mast I feed each of these "cars" back into the mast with the other, whilst hauling the halyard to the main sail with the other hand. Hang on that makes three arms, but that's what I needed. The sail went up a foot at a time and beat about wildly, whipping one way and the other on this bucking bronco of a boat. After a real struggle the main sail reached the top of the mast, I cleated it off and returned exhausted to the safety of the cockpit.

We unfurled the jib and once more we are underway and heading for Paxos which is still some 20 miles away. In about 2 hours we've covered about two miles. We spend the next four hours tacking, but we're getting nowhere fast. I check the GPS but it keeps giving me the same reading. I turn it off and back on again thinking it's maybe hanging like computers do, but no, it comes back on with the same position. Looking back at where we've come from we seem to have hardly moved. A quick calculation on the chart tells us that at this rate we'll be lucky to make Paxos by tomorrow never mind today.

We decide to switch from sailing to motoring, at least that way we can head straight towards our destination. Unfortunately the waves and the wind are pounding the bows of Othoni and try as we may we can't make more than 2 or three knots. At this rate we wil not be in Paxoe for another ten hours.
Sciroco Sciroco this is Othoni, over, Go ahead Othoni, we have decided to head for our home port of Patricas as we won't make Laka with our present speed before midnight, over, OK keep in touch Othoni, will do Sciroco, out.

It's a hard slog through very choppy seas and we're still six hours from Platarias. We've put away the jib but the mainsail is still up and is perhaps slowing us down. We need to lower it but if we do we're concerned that it will fall out of the mast and end up in the sea. So time for an improvised repair.

I find a harness, as it's very rough, and clamber up to the mast, one hand for the boat and one for me. At the mast I use a spare halyard to wind around the mast to act as a temporary stop for the sail when we drop it. Once that's done I drop the main and the fix works, I get back to the cockpit and we gain an extra knot.

We're still bouncing along when we hear a loud mechanical noise behind us. We whirl round to see the kedge anchor chain, which was sitting in a plastic bucket on the back of the boat paying itself out behind us and threatening to snag the propellor. This could spell disaster and I make a grab for it. Slowly and carefully I haul it back into the boat with no prop wrap problems, talk about incidents and accidents.