Novices to Navigators, well almost

Friday, 14th September and its almost 3 years to the day since we bought the full length deck boots, which is where we started with this sailing adventure. Way back then we didn't know a rope can be a sheet, had no idea what a halyard was, and a warp was a very fast speed that the star ship enterprise went into when they wanted to get to the other side of the universe, fast.
Now here we are back in Largs yacht haven, where we used those posh wellies to go on our start yachting weekend all that time ago in 2009, and this time we're here on our first bareboat charter. We've charted a 31ft Moody, called Kiwi from Flamingo yacht hire and we're about to embark on a long weekend sailing in the Firth of Clyde.
We arrive, after a four hour drive, at 6.30pm to find Largs being battered by very strong winds, which have been blowing all day. No boats have been able to sail all day, although now, in the early evening, the winds have died down quite considerably, and tomorrow the forecast looks good.
We meet with the owners of Kiwi and are shown through the bits that we need to know about the boat. Where the flares are, the fire extinguishers, life raft, Nav equipment, sails, engine, etc. etc. We take it all in, hopefully remembering enough to get this sailboat underway in the morning.
We ask about where they think we should explore, given the expected weather over the weekend and they suggest we go around the Isle of Bute, and bid us farwell and happy sailing. As long as we bring her back with the same number of holes in that she has this evening they'll be happy, and that I suppose means the through hulls, a wee Scotish joke there.

It's far too windy, and cold to sit out in the cockpit with a glass of vino and a fag on planning our passage for tomorrow so we decant to an outside smoking area, with tables and chairs that's a sort of posh lean to at the Marina bar. We order a glass of house white, which barely wets the bottom of the glass.  I go back to Kiwi to retrieve one of our own bottles, and sneak our selves an hour of passage planning, cheaply and with the warmth of their patio heater. Well, at £6.50 for two thimbles full what do you think we are, made of money.

Saturday morning at 7am and the wind has died so that the Marina flags barely flutter in the breeze, but out on the sound there's a healthy force four forecast for the day.Poor Kiwi has been trust up with warps and springs and it's now time to untie her and set up some slips. Listen to me, getting all nautical with my rope jargon, but basically we have to keep her moored to the dock, but be able to untie her with us both standing on the vessel. Otherwise the person who unties the boat would have to make a mighty leap aboard as she slips away from the jetty, not recommended, hence the use of one turn around a pontoon cleat and both ends of the rope being on board.
We've been told, by the owner that she has a tendency to want to go to port, going backwards, which is the first manoeuvre we'll undertake. With the engine started, and ready to go we're nervously working our way up to a smooth exit. We don't want to appear like the novices we are, but two people walk passed just prior to our casting off to tell us we're driving hard into the quay with the bows. I've started the engine and put her into forward gear, albeit at the lowest of revs, but  never the less she's grinding the pontoon. Luckily there's no damage and we faultlessly let go slips and move backwards. I go into a mild panic as she moves back quicker than I expect and I throw the lever into forward, push the tiller hard to starboard and around she comes. Again, forward is a bit nifty and by some small miracle we miss the boat moored next to us by inches, and straighten up to glide effortlessly towards the harbour entrance.   A sharp right and were through the entrance and into open water where another five or six boats are raising their sails. So far so good. We give these boats a wide berth before heading her into the wind, raising the mainsail, and then the jib. This goes very smoothly, well with a bit of shouting, and the we turn north, the sails fill, engine off and we're sailing. Sailing all by ourselves, with a passage plan and a fair wind on the beam. Soon we're touching six knots  and were on our way to the Kyles of Bute. The boat feels very safe and stable, we've checked the charts, we know what we're doing, and although the skys are heavy with cloud, and the sea is silky black we're wrapped up well  in our new foul weather gear and we're a couple of very happy sailors,.

Hemp and the Hearts of Oak

Sailing on a 100 year old boat is not very different to sailing on a modern vessel, your still using the wind to power the sails, but there the similarities cease. There are no winches on Hearts of Oak, and all the lines are rigged with old fashioned hemp. They're stiff and all the same colour. This boat is a gaff rigged cutter, I think. That is it has a big sail at the front a smaller sail between that and the mast then a big mainsail hung on a big wooden spar. This has lines that raise the throat and the peak, that is the bit that closest to the mast being the throat and the bit that's towards the back, aft end, being the peak. Hauling this heavy lump of wood up in the air is not as difficult as at first it would appear as it runs through a series of block and tackle that make  the job  a bit easier. The problem comes when trying to figure out which line to pull on. Forward of the mast is a series of pins where the halyards are secured, there's six pins in all, I think. Two of these are for the main sail,, two for the staysail and jib, and two for the topping lifts. All of these ropes, sorry, lines look exactly the same. The idea is that the halyards will always be in certain positions on our row of pins, this will make it easy for each of the crew, which will be different on every voyage, to haul up or down the sail plan. Unfortunately no-one is exactly sure what this order is. The two outer pins should be the mainsail throat and peak, the next two, the staysail and jib, and the middle two the topping lift. But that is only the concept, in practice it may be different.
One of our members of the crew has worked out that if we have endless lines on the halyarrds the this will enable us to be able to work the sails from inside the boat and never have to go on deck, so ensuring    optium safety for the crew. Unfortunately this has only served to add confusion to the rigging of our beloved Hearts of Oak.
In theory it's a great idea, but in practice it doesn't work.
Anyway, we love sailing in this 100 year old boat but most times we've been out on her it's been in very light airs, and the sailing has been frustrating. Today was different, today we had a force 4 gusting to 6 and here was a good chance to try her out in good sailing conditions. As you can see from the video she can certainly move given the right conditions. Our skipper for the day decided against putting up the jib which made her a bit heavy on the helm. We put in a couple of reefs in the main prior to casting off and found her moving along at a very reasonable pace of maybe 6 knots. This would be the liveliest conditions she had ever been sailed in and although we had moments of panic we did have a glorious few hours sail. I made a discovery about the  topping lifts, there's two of them, where you have to let the leward side out and tension the windward side each time you tack or jibe. Chris our skipper didn't think we should mess with them but I was determined to suss out why we always had a bad sail shape and found that we had two topping lifts that had to be adjusted on each tack or jybe. Once I got this sorted the sails looked much better, without being fouled by the lines for the topping lift and she sailed even better. But we should have put the jib sail up. You see although Chris is a much more experienced sailor than any of todays' crew he's a bit too cautious and for some reason he doesn't like putting up the jib which has to be hauled out along a wooden bow sprit with a very simple bit of rigging, just a hoop of metal that slides along a pole, basically. This means being on the foredeck and with no safety rails on this old boat, this gives Chris the willies. He's also not a big fan of R.I.B.s which is why she's kept on a drying mooring. We have to be on the boat two hours before high tide and back two hours after high tide.
On this daysail I'm afraid Chris just missed the deadline to be back and we grounded the boat about twenty feet from the mooring bouy, it was one of those days. Poor Chris I'm sure he was so embarrassed about this but we just waited for the tide to drop and hooked her back on.
In a couple of weeks we will have to haul her out of the water for her winter layup. There's quite a few jobs to be done, but the season has been so short here in Morcambe bay, and the weather has not been the kindest of summers. But it's been an education getting to sail such a lovely old boat.

Boat shopping in S. of France

By the colour of the sky in this picture you may just guess that this is not an English summer sky of 2012, and you'ld be right. We had travelled to Nimes, well actually Port Napolean, in the South of France to have a look at this boat. It was called Brimstone and at £22,000 sounded like it may just be our boat. She a ferro cement ketch, with a good pedigree and on the internet she quite appealed.

So we flew Ryan Air out of John Lennon airport for the knock down fair of £99 for us both, there and back. We booked into the Marina hotel, courtesy of David, the owner of Brimstone and arrived at about 11am last Friday the 22nd. June. 

Now we would have liked to be in and out of France, perhaps the next day but as luck would have it there were no return flights until Monday, which meant spending a full weekend in the South of France. Oh well things could be worse I suppose, it's just that right now money is, to say the least tight, but here we were in the South of France and we had left England with the prospect of a stormy and cold weekend of weather. So here we were in the 32 degrees of real summer and we were here to look at boats, one in particular, so we set about enjoying our weekend break.

David had driven down from his home near to Geneva and picked us at the airport at Nimes to drive us to see his boat. As head of security for the uk mission to the united nations we were looking for a James Bond look alike at the airport, that bit was a bit of a disappointment, although a telephone call he took on our way to the marina was interesting as he mentioned Gordon Brown and William Hague to the recipient on the other end of the call, we were impressed, lets hope the boat lives up to this, we thought.

The boat was splattered with bird shit, and a sad and deflated rib lay abandoned on the deck. She was not exactly well presented, but we wanted to like Brimstone so we tried to see beyond these cosmetic failings.  Down below the disappointment stated with the Galley which was very restricted by the homemade engine housing that doubled as steps to the cockpit. The heads were very small, no shower, and bit by bit we grew to know this  was not our boat, even at the bargain price she was being offered at. We had really wanted to like her, especially having travelled all this way, but it was not to be.

We arranged to have a look at anther couple of boats on sale by Ancasta the next day, after telling David that we weren't going to buy his boat. 

On browsing the yard our eyes fell upon a lovely looking vessel that turned out to be a 35ft Halsburg Rassy on sale fo 47,000 Euros, a bit outside our budget but worth a look, we could always make an offer. This one turned out to be a beautiful boat with many newly replaced bits of kit on board. Her only odd bit for us was her hydraulic steering from a centre cockpit, but apart from this she was a fine boat and had we had the where with all we may have made an offer there and then.
Next day we met up with Francis, the boss at Ancasta, a very grumpy an unpleasent man, we were told who showed us round a Westerly Riviera. He wasn't too grumpy, maybe because it was early in the morning and he hadn't got into his stride yet. The boat was interesting though, and made us reconsider looking at Westerlys', but this one was over priced. So we left the Port Napoleon marina and headed for Nimes by bus and train for a weekend in the sun, and a little sightseeing.

Still looking for that illusive boat.

Hearts of Oak 100th Birthday

There must be some kinda way out of here said the joker to the thief. Still no offers on our house, or the other one we got on the market and the deadline draws nearer. Come October we'll both be out of our jobs and the plan to leave England for the Dominican republic is getting closer and closer. Without the sale of at least one property we won't be sailing any time soon, at least not on our own boat.

Still in the meantime we get to have fun sailing on a 100 year old boat that was built in our home town of Ulverston. Hearts of Oak is a Morcambe bay shrimper that has been rescued from rotting away in Northern Island by a trust set up by a tenacious woman called Jennifer Snell, who's very into the heritage of our little town here in Northern England. Jennifer has pursued this boat for over ten, maybe 15 years. It was donated to her trust who went about raising funds in excess of £60,000 pounds to bring her back to how she was when launched back in 1912.

We ran into Jennifer one day in our indoor market where she told us that she was short of sailors to sail her newly restored pride and joy.  We offered our services, not that we knew anything about the way you sail a 100 year old boat, all our training has been on modern yachts, but we thought it might be fun, and hey, could it be much different. Yes, and no I suppose is the answer to that one.

So although we had poodled about the docks in her Sunday, her 100th birthday would be our first chance to sail her for real. She had been moved from the docks in Barrow, where they build nuclear subs, to a drying out mooring in Morcambe bay, just off Peil island. She was heeled over and lieing on the sand waiting for the tide to float her when we boarded her in the morning. Slowly over the next few hours the tide crept in and eventually lifted her free of the Rampside mud.

We weighed anchor and motor sailed over to the celebrations on Peil island. After a few snacks and a drink we took her out for a sail by the crowds that had come to see this old girl. The winds were light but once we hoisted the sails, away she went, graciously catching the breeze, tacking backwards and forwards for her photo shoot. A very proud moment for Jennifer who stayed on shore as she hates the sea, and sailing. Curious. We loved it, great to be doing some sailing, and all the better for sailing an antique, classic boat, a real experience.

This weekend were off to Nimes in the south of France to look at a boat. It's a ferro cement boat that was designed by Alan hill who had something to do with Gypsy Moth that took Chichester around the globe. I don't know if this will be our boat, it's cheap, I know that, and it's on this side of the pond.  So if we like what we see we may still fulfil our dream of sailing the Atlantic to our new home in The Dominican republic.

Lets hope this is our boat, but what's more lets hope somebody wants to buy one of these two houses and then we can really get this adventure moving. The Greeks have just voted to stay in the Euro zone so maybe now things will pick up.
Nothing is moving round here, nothing is selling. All we need is for someone to buy one of these properties and we're on our way. Till then we'll continue to go on adventures on Hearts of oak and learn the ways of the saiors of old.

Silver Lining

As I said in my previous blog  we've ditched the idea of buying one of those classic looking old yachts from Taiwan, and the last week we've started looking at more modern conventional boats. This is a complete turn around I know, but we've had a big reality check after last weeks visit to see the CT41.

Now it's all Beneteau clones, as lots of modern boats look very much the same, a bit like modern cars,  I suppose. The silly thing is that before now we've passed over these ads, looking for that something a bit different, something with character, lots of wood to polish and varnish, wooden grabrails, bowsprits, some even with figureheads, a traditional wooden helm, the list goes on. What we couldn't find on all these boats though was a fair sized head, ample galley and a large cockpit, and so when we started to swallow our pride and have a look at more practical options, like the plastic tubs with a stick what did we find.

On the whole that's exactly what these newer boats have, a spacious heads, bigger galleys and large cockpits. The only thing is they're mostly fin and skeg, not your heavy displacement, long keel jobs, the ones that we've been steered towards from all the heavy weather sailing books, your first ocean crossing, secure at sea books etc, we've devoured in our quest to become navigators.

Surfing the net on this new tack, we found a boat in our back yard, at Roa Island just eight miles away. This was a Janneau sunrise, and at 34'6" just about our size. We made contact with the owner Paul and arranged to see her on Saturday morning. We chose the morning because Jackie, who had an eye on the weather reckoned it was likely to snow in the afternoon, so we arranged to meet at 11am. At 10am it started snowing.
Oh well, not the best day to see a boat that may be bound for the Caribbean. Luckily the boat, Silver Lining, was on the hard standing, but the northwesterly's were blowing in freezing rain and snow flurrys. We clambered up the ladder propped against the stern and gave the decks a miss as the boat was caked in ice. Below was cozy though, Paul had had the heaters on. First impressions were that we quite liked her, not love at first sight, but not a no no. She's a 1987 model so not too ostentatious like these production boats can be and the layout would definitely suit our list of requirements, nice heads, ok galley, largish  cockpit. And then my smart phone sounded an alarm, telling me we had to be back in Ulverston in 30 minutes, clever things these smart phones, which is why they called smart phones, I suppose.

We said to Paul we would like to see her on a better day and scurried off back to our appointment. On the way home we mulled over the pros and cons of Silver Lining and agreed that we needed another visit in more pleasant weather. By the time we reached Ulverston the snow was thick on the ground. This was not the day to view boats bound for the tropics but it lightened our hearts on a very cold and miserable winters day. Maybe our boat lay in our own backyard, just maybe. Surfing the net over lunch we found a similar boat, but a thirty eight footer just south of Glasgow about 5000 pounds cheaper. We'll arrange to check that out I'm sure, but today Silver Lining was the name of the game, an apt name for a winters day.

That rules out the Taiwanese boats then

We had a call yesterday lunch time from a guy called Richard who owns a CT 41 that's in Whitehaven. We had spotted this boat standing in the boat yard a couple of weeks ago. The boat wasn't for sale and it looked decidedly like a project boat, which it was. Being new to this boat buying game, and being romantics, we had always been drawn to the photos of these, and other Taiwanese models, the Cheoy Lee, Formosas etc. They just have that look about them, that look that turns heads as you sail into harbour, such pretty lines, they just seem to fit our ideas of what we wanted, and quite often they were cheap, within our budget.

We had asked Richard to call us whenever he was going to be visiting his boat so we could come and have a peep inside one of these, as there seem to be few, if any for sale in the UK. Although we knew this one was not for sale and that he had already begun to take her apart it was still a great opportunity to get on board and find out if this was the sort of boat we wanted to buy.

Now Richards emails had been, shall we say a little less than chatty, he seemed to communicate in lists, so I was prepared for a bit of a character, I suppose. When he rang it was a very last minute call, he was going to be there this afternoon if we wanted to come see. We were watching the Australian open final and it had just gone into the 5th set, so at first I said thanks but we may give today a miss. Anyway we were an hour and a half away and he sounded like he was only making a quick visit. Call you back, I said if we're coming. When I rang back he informed me that they would be there at 14.28. Now that was a bit weird, I thought, why not half two, mmm Richard was going to be different.

We arrived at 3.15. Richard was in his early 60s, I would say, and a bit of a live wire. From the off he told us how this boat was not the sort of boat we should even think about buying. He piled the negatives on top of negatives and then finally invited us to climb the ladder and come see the pain that we would inherit should we be foolish enough to buy a boat like this. Jackie, declined the offer to come a board and chose to stay on terra firm and chat to his girlfriend. She had already decided that  this was not our boat, much to big, much problemo.

I followed Richard up onto the rotting deck to be shown the horrors that lay buried beneath the bowels of this project. It was dark and dingy inside and all over the place were lifted boards that revealed a couple of years of restoration that Richard was embarking upon. It was not a pretty site, although I could sense that he was committed to bringing this craft back from the brink. But as he pointed out the herculean task that he was undertaking I could see that this was not the way I wanted to go. The dream of romantic sailing craft ebbed away as fast as the falling tides of Morcombe Bay. Sure, the teak interior was lovely but the mass of rotting pipe work and fraying wires exposed soon put paid to my ambitions to own this type of vessel. Richard talked it down, and down some more. Even though for him it was going to be a labour of love he made a great job of quashing my enthusiasm, and I thank him for this. We had be seduced by the lines, the superficial shimmer of the woodwork and space that we had seen in the photos of boats like this on the web. But no longer, we came away with a reality check, and Richards wise words.

We have been barking up the wrong tree, we want to sail, not too inherit a project.

So the trip was well worth it, we have struck another set of boats off our list, and although we don't have a clue what we want now, at least we know it's not going to be some romantic notion, we will choose more wisely, and may even go for a plastic bath tub with a stick that we can sail tomorrow, not spend our time doing something up that could take years to get to be seaworthy.

No it's not a Gibsea 38

Another trip out to view another boat today, this time it's a Gib'sea 38 in Whitehaven, which is about an hour and a half up the coast from us. For a change the weather has been more like winter with clear skys and frosty mornings. It was a fine day to take a drive, a drive that took us along the coast with clear views into the mountains of the lake district as a backdrop to our mission. Lenticular clouds hung motionless over the landscape like giant almonds in a clear blue sky.

The last time we were in Whitehaven it was also a cold day, in fact so cold that the water in the marina was frozen solid. That was a couple of years ago, today it's cold but the waters are ice free. We stop the car in the car park overlooking the harbour, light a fag and watch a couple of swans perform a symmetrical dance of pre mating foreplay on the water in front of us.Then, just as it all seems to be getting serious one of them, the girl I suppose, decides it's all to public on the waterfront and glides away, followed by her suitor, later maybe he'll have more luck.

We're here to have a look at this Gibsea but we've been unable to get anyone from the brokers to come and open her up so we can get the full picture. Never the less we have decided that a look around the outside will be enough for today, and it's a good excuse to get out in this beautiful day. The yacht we are going to view is called Grumpy, not the best name for a boat. Why would you call your yacht Grumpy? We find her lying at the end of jetty QB bobbing on the slight breeze. She's a ketch with in mast furling and looking a little forlorn, in need of a little TLC but at first glance she looks in reasonable shape for her age. My mobile rings and its the broker asking if we've found her yet. Yes, we've just arrived, I say. What do you think, he asks, I say we haven't had chance to look yet but one of the stantions is a bit loose, I'll give you a call when we've had a proper look round.

After about 15 mins of crawling round her deck and peering through the windows we decide that it's probably not the boat for us. Sliding windows don't feel right, the route from the cockpit to the companion way is awkward. The jammers are too far from the helm and we don't need a separate entrance to the captains cabin. It's OK but it's not our boat. That's fine at least it's another one to tick off our list. We saunter off along the jetty and cast an eye over all the rest of the boats, although not for sale it's good to be in among lots of different craft and make mental notes of the ones we should look up on the net next time we're surfing. It's a needle and haystack business finding the boat that's just for you, unfortunately our haystack is not even a sheaf, and  today we drew another blank, but the more we see the more we eliminate. It's a long game we thinks.

After soup and a cuppa in the harbour side cafe we take a detour to the repair yard where we go looking for the boat we came to see last time we were here. There's a couple working on their boat who we discover have just returned from a two year cruise around the Caribbean and the East coast of the States. They're stripping her ready for a new paint job and we chat for a bit, about boats, what else. A few pearls of wisdom are dispensed in our direction, always a plus to talk to those who have been there, done that, got the T shirt. They're sailing a 43ft Onvi, which is way outside our league, but this chat reaffirms our idea that we need a long keel boat, an old long keel boat, and that still points to the Tayana type of thing, or perhaps an Island Packet 31, both are about within or just outside our budget of £30,000.

Home, and we drive into a sunset of baby pink clouds and misty mountains. We chat boats, and chew over our conversation with the Onvi crew. It's been a fruitful day and another step closer to finding our boat. The thing is that we don't even have the funds, as yet, until we manage to sell the bungalow, we can't buy anything anyway. It's going to be much harder to make the decision when we have the money I suspect, but for now we just have to keep on looking  because you never know when your going to stumble upon the one.