Now is the winter…

Of our discontent ……if you weren’t sure.

And what is happening with the Pathfinder project ?

In ‘writing time’ (blog time if you want to call it that) I start with it being late October 2023,I have just spent a whole day filming new material for a video post and then also spent a few hours reviewing what I also filmed but didn’t use. One of the maddening parts of that was I knew exactly which video clip I was going to use for the opening sequence except that after several hours of searching through carefully separate video files I didn’t find it and still can’t. Anyway, the video is finished and out although, to be honest, it feels a bit like producing filler content just to keep some level of interest alive. It was also a windy day here, not quite at the level of needing to tether small animals and children but there was some debris flying about and every time I tried to do a voice segment there was either wind noise or someone chose that moment to drive past in a truck.

When I started this piece I had intended to kick off with the finishing part of the line from Shakespear and then neatly segue into a bit of Macbeth (Is this a dagger I see before me)….that due to having lost my favorite boat knife and best torch at the same wet and muddy moment and currently having, as a stand-in for my folding knife, something sharp and fixed…..something that our dear Plod would send the boys around mob handed for.

Now though it is actual winter…..which means mostly dark, mild and wet down here in the south west of the UK although we do get some frosty starts.

Some background story.

Regular visitors and readers will know that I stick with the ‘small genre’ of backyard boats and that something that I never do (usually) is comment on current affairs either in the UK or worldwide but several things are getting stuck in my mind so I’m going to kick off with those and then tell you what’s happening out in the backyard.

It’s been a really strange month as, close to home affairs, we first had the story of the trial of yet another ‘nice’ nurse turned baby killer and the non action taken by yet another hospital. Also in the background we just happened to drive around part of the M25 last month just as the whole ULEZ scam kicked off – that’s just one of several reasons why I am so glad that I don’t live anywhere near there yet at the same time I hear that all of Wales and large chunks of other towns and cities have gone or are trying to also go down the same route. Years back I started to write a story about this kind of thing which I titled ‘The State vs the People’ and that is what it all feels like today in the UK.

The most immediate major event is what happened a few days ago in Israel in the shape of Hamas terrorists raping and murdering Israeli civilians. I won’t say ‘worse than’ but what has truly appalled me has been the celebratory nature of pro-Palestinian demonstrations around the world and the way that certain political and social factions have jumped on board with blatant anti-semitism.

In a very strange way the Israel conflict has made most people forget that we have an actual war going on in europe and even more strangely that the war in europe took the public’s attention away from the lockdown debacle. Right now, almost, there is to be an actual parliamentary debate about the actual excess deaths that have happened and are still happening and meanwhile the world health organization are trying (and succeeding) to railroad through and past all governments a ‘directive’ which would take away more of our liberty.

This month I find that I keep being reminded of two things ; one is the 1969 song by the Rolling Stones (Gimme Shelter) and specifically it’s chorus line “War children….its just a shot away”. The second thing is something I often heard said in medicine ‘Opinions are like arseholes” – right now it seems that everyone has an opinion and is shouting it out loudly….I leave the rest to you.

Against all of those things it seems trivial to be spending so much time talking about the minor triviality of finishing a boat in my backyard but……I guess it’s what you came here for right ?

Meanwhile in boat-y boat land with boat-y Mcboat face.

My main autumn and winter work is to set up the boat to actually sail (as a sloop), to be a little motor boat for when I get wind and tide working against me, to anchor (from the cockpit) and to live aboard with a home designed and made tent : the rest, as they say, is mere detail.

The get out of jail card. While I know that what I should be working on and what I should be buying is fabric and accessories which would allow me to make a tent for the boat what I did instead, with most of two month’s budget, is that we headed into town and I spent the whole lot on an outboard motor…..in fact a brand spanking new one because the various buy/sell sites have let me down on 3.5-4 Hp long shaft 4 stroke outboard motors. There were generally either much larger capacity engines or tiny little 2 Hp short shaft engines but nothing at about the right size and length that wasn’t a total basket case.

So, the engine is a 4 Hp Tohatsu with a long shaft and that’s basically a compromise between power and weight (and cost). A few months back I bought and fitted a new outboard bracket so with the oars set up and rowing basically tested that’s the alternative power package sorted for now. It’s a bit busy at the back of the boat now and I think it will usually be easier to fit the engine and leave it there (while at sea) unless we’re on a long seagoing passage. The great thing about the 4 Hp motor is that it has a jack for an external fuel tank rather than being internal/integral tank only as is the case with the smaller Tohatsu motors. That’s the first, last and only new outboard motor that iv’e ever bought and yes it spanked the budget for the next few months.

Maybe slightly over size and certainly over budget but it fits and I may appreciate the extra grunt.

Back to front.

The second thing I should be doing right now is buying a length of alloy tube, a woodturning lathe and some timber with which to make end plugs for what will be the lighter alloy masts and sprit booms for my intended Yawl rig. As I write there are several reasonable looking lathes available on the buy/sell sites and I have done the work at the stern of the boat which would allow me to drop the mizzen mast tube down through the stern deck and cockpit deck and the mizzen mast insert to seat in the laminated mast foot block inside the stern compartment.

Instead of that I took the cheap option and worked on the boat’s primary anchoring system – my cockpit deployed/recovered anchor but bow anchored with a shifting anchor puller line instead of the fixed system I had up until recently. One thing I should point out is that I used my Admiralty pattern anchor on warp only during my ‘fail’ voyage and it never failed to set or to recover quickly – but just occasionally was difficult to handle during recovery because of the problem of getting hold of a bight of line downstream of the bowsprit eye.

With anchors and lines all to hand I did spend some useful time re configuring my entire anchoring system to be more like the final version of the 2 anchor set up that I had aboard the little Liberty. With that boat I used a Manson (supreme) 7 Kg anchor on a short (about 8 M) length of 7mm chain and then 40 M of warp as my primary anchor. The anchor, chain and most of the warp usually lived in the back of the cockpit but the warp ran up and down the boat via a low friction ring at the bow. I could (just) get forward on the boat and usually up-anchored by grabbing a bight of warp , walking it back to the cockpit and retrieving the anchor and chain there – the Liberty also had a large cockpit drain so sluicing the whole area down after I had up-anchored from a mud bottom was an easy job.

2 anchors…..with that boat I had and used 2 anchors quite often – the usual situation being that of running onto a beach of foreshore while deploying the second anchor over the stern, on a long line, as a haul-off line. The second anchor usually lived below with it’s 60 M kermantel warp and short length of chain but was quickly accessible. I originally started with everything being a ‘kit of parts’ thus I was able to quickly swap between anchors and their rodes : I found though that because I anchored at least once a day during my 110 day voyage with that boat that I quickly moved to having the 2 anchors set up permanently as primary (bow) and secondary (stern) anchors so I figured to return to that practice with the slightly smaller Pathfinder.

The Liberty with 2 anchors out. (on the beach at Morgat if memory serves)

(not) slip -sliding away.

It occurred to me recently that a lot of the ergonomic function of a boat is about making systems work quickly and easily ; thus the ability to hoist, reef and hand sail easily. It does also mean not falling off the boat as easily and messily as I did during my fail trip. One area is a problem and that’s the bow/foredeck area just ahead of the cuddy and that’s where I took my fall. I’m doing as much as I can now to make sure that I don’t have to go forward while I am sailing because that means clambering out of the cockpit, up and over the cuddy deck and onto the gloss finished foredeck. That’s a lot to do with having the jib on a furler because the tack is even further away than it was- it also helps to get rid of the sail just by pulling a line – that feature failed me on Inanda when the WM gear trolled me mecilessly.

So far the main system that iv’e had to work on is anchoring and retrieving the anchor – iv’e preferred mid deck/cockpit handled anchors since having to teeter around on the narrow Liberty side decks and with this boat I shouldn’t have to got forward ever to anchor or deal with an anchoring or mooring problem but I can imagine occasions when I might need to stand or kneel on the foredeck so one job I just added, and in fact just done on a sunny Sunday morning, was to mask off, sand and repaint with cream non-slip paint that I had left over from painting the outer sections of the cuddy roof (deck) with.

Ergo sum.

While i’m on the subject of the Pathfinder and it’s ergonomics : I was just looking at the boat while I stripped the masking tape off and at the same time wondering if I should add some sections of toerail up forward and something like hand rail along the edge of the cuddy to do the same job – hopefully stop a foot from skating off a wet and shiny deck as happened to me recently. While I was contemplating that problem I also wondered if I should ‘bomb-proof’ (slip proof) another area of the boat where I have to stand and is currently finished with a satin layer – that’s the small area just behind the cuddy where I do most of my sail handling and anchor work from . In brief today that area may need some attention but aft of that I tend to be working on an already non-slip area or on my knees -more handholds might be an addition.

Iv’e written about boat ergonomics before and the last time I did so it was because my mobility changed when it became obvious that I needed both a knee replacement and a different boat. This was when my everyday boat was the little Hunter Liberty and it was becoming a problem because it was light and had limited stability which all made for a boat that threw me around a lot in a brisk sea. I thought that what I needed was a boat of about the same size but more stable and steadier ; what I ended up with was the Deben gaffer Inanda which I look back on now as being far worse ergonomically than the Liberty. My idea was good, perhaps, but the execution of the idea led me to a really bad boat which didn’t do a single thing well and it was the Liberty that got me to France and back in 2019.

Two of the worst problems with the Deben 4 tonner were working forward as it’s foredeck hatch was both slippery and obstructed anchoring and sail handling with the 5 foot bowsprit and it’s non functional ‘WM’ (Wykeham Martin) furling gear and then it’s horribly uncomfortable cockpit. I nicknamed the boat ‘donk’ for the sound that was caused every time my partner’s head bounced off the break in the coachroof.

Now, I have a smaller and more dynamic boat whilst at the same time having worsening mobility and the result so far has been one horribly uncomfortable trip and one dunking.

The main event.

The main work with the boat is, oddly enough, to make it sail and for now at least to make it sail as a sloop – re configuring it as a Yawl may come later depending (mostly) on budget as I would really have to buy a lathe. The main work of the main event is to make both sails do their upsy-downsyness and inny-outyness work properly which, in sailor speak, means hoisting, dropping, reefing and sheeting. My failure with the mainsail for example has been mostly in getting it to hoist and be secured at it’s 4 corners and against the mast : the throat cringle is basically in the wrong position and the only satisfactory way of dealing with that is to move the tack aft by some 70mm which of course changes everything else including where the jib tack has to go…….which is why the boat has a new bowsprit…….however.

What the boat didn’t have until this week was any way of sheeting ‘boom-ing’or reefing the sail. The boom issue thus far resolves itself as being a down angled sprit boom just as I ended up with on the Liberty and that then determines how the sail sheets and reefs. I’m not quite happy with the first iteration of a sprit boom as it’s basically a long length of joinery pine intended to be a handrail – it’s only quite weak joinery pine and not anything nice but it might get me going for now.

This week, as I write the Pathfinder got a temporary mainsheet rigged via a bridle across the back of the cockpit – it works but needs some new (expensive) blocks – as does the snotter tackle which will act as flattener and vang.. Thus, at the moment I say that the boat is 95% complete in terms of jobs but is only 85& complete in terms of expenditure – and I just blew 2 months budget on an engine.

But while you’re here……….

As I write this piece one of the major USA television stations (plus the BBC) just announced , without checking, that it was Israel that launched the missile which damaged a hospital in the Gaza strip and at the same time several other news stations sat on the fence about which ‘team’ was at fault. At pretty much the same time we saw a mass demonstration in London which was both pro Palestine and anti Israel ; despite Hamas being a proscribed (banned) organization in the UK that went ahead with no intervention by our police. Over in Australia the only person to get arrested during a pro Hamas march was some bloke carrying the Israeli flag in counter protest.

In case you’re wondering…..

No, i’m not going to start writing a political commentary blog because I don’t know nearly enough about the subject – in this case Israel, Palestine and Iran. I do however subscribe to the deeply unpopular view that Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself vigorously and if necessary with lethal violence. On that subject I think it was very wrong of the Israeli state to take guns from the populace and happen to think that they need a watertight version of the US 2nd amendment………however.

I just happened to be out with my partner this morning and it seemed to be stupid day out on the roads both from a drivers perspective – mobile phones were very popular today – and from the view of pedestrians just wandering about in the road…..more mobile phones in use. We both agree that everyone seems to be both less competent but more ‘right’ than ever before – especially when they are wrong or simply ignorant (in this sense I use ignorant as not knowing).

I can admit to being outrageously angry because iv’e spent far too long on the internet these last few days and what I think I have seen, time and time again, is an asymmetric application of policing , in fact I would push that further and state that I believe the Metropolitan Police clearly demonstrate bias and are siding with terrorists while continually going after the easy targets mob handed. I think there is a saying, wrongly ascribed to Rousseau that goes something like ‘you know who your bosses are when you can’t condemn or criticize them’. Just to add insult to injury this week it was the turn of the UK parliament to debate the excess deaths issue post Covid…..well it would have been if any of them could be bothered to turn up and take part…..which I thought was their job. Our own MP didn’t attend, naturally, and neither does she wish to say why (I asked)