Is there a future for my sailing project ?
Hi Everyone, it’s a quiet day here today so this morning I was starting work on the script for a new video piece about what’s going on with the Pathfinder build, my thoughts about what I might do next spring and also to cover some questions that I have received through the blog and which I have not noticed or failed to deal with at the time. With regards to my blog (this one) I took a necessary break because the tank seemed empty and only started writing again slowly so as to put out one post a month, since then iv’e slowly built it back up and i’m aiming for a post a week plus one video per month – my problem right now being that I on’t have much actual work going on so there isn’t much to film – sorry but even with the best enthusiasm I can’t make unpacking some blocks and setting up a snotter tackle that interesting !
On the bench/on the door.
Last week, in my efforts to find something to do that day, I had a look at the list of jobs written up and added to over several weeks, on the inside of the shed door. For the first time I didn’t add anything new (I left that until this week) but I did strike through a whole load of small jobs that I had completed and several things off the shopping list too. Without much else to do I spent most of the day heaving the boat and trailer up the yard a ways and then manhandling it into it’s new position outside of and alongside the shelter. It means that the boat is in the open but it’s heavily covered up and it also leaves the dry building space empty for the bench to go back under there for its next use and my next project – that of making new roof beams for the actual shed.
The shed (workshop) needs a new roof, large sections of new floor, new benches and new electrics because the inside of the metal skinned roof weeps with condensation after a frost – as I write we’ve just had the first 2 nights of frost this winter – and that plays merry hell with my tools. It may seem odd to be planning the rebuild of the workshop only after the boat building project is over but to be honest I hardly ever used the building to work in – it being better and more spacious outside.
I note that this week iv’e obviously been using the boatbuilding bench for cutting and splitting firweood for the house….. I note that it was also a good time to have a thorough sweep-through of the space as that’s where much of the leaf fall ends up.
My work plan is to fabricate the 5 new roof beams – a bit like making the cross beams for a dodgy Wharram catamaran – out of plywood (for the cheeks) and plain square edged timber top and bottom, during February (after pension payday). The job of stripping off the old roof and building a new one will have to wait until we get better (dryer) weather next spring because we will also be using the boatbuilding space as temporary workshop storage space and temporary site office.
Shiny toys time.
This month I could claim that the boat is finished – at least to a first stage (sailaway standard) of completion which is basically that it is ready for sea trials and whatever new defects I find. It isn’t ‘finished’ in that it’s only a simple sloop (not a Yawl yet) and doesn’t have any of the costly additions it will need for me to consider it as being at ‘expedition’ standard. Notably, it doesn’t have a complete shelter to sleep under, it doesn’t have an electrical system and it doesn’t even have it’s stowage finished due to not having the battery and center dry stowage finished yet.
Last month it did get an outboard motor and a new bowsprit , this month it got an external tank so it could go in the water as a little motorboat and needs just a few hours work to turn it into a fully functional sailing boat – this month I was able to buy some of the blocks and cordage that job needs and by the time this post and video goes live that might all be done. Of note the boat now has a fully functional cockpit deployed anchoring system and I am mainly just waiting for the right anchor (5 Kg Manson) to come back into stock to complete that whole side of things.
Battery compartment and center dry stowage area being finished
Ok but……what comes next ?
I started to write this post with the aim in mind of answering some questions that have come through the blog and also to deal with the more personal question of what happens next with the boat and even whether or not I carry on as a sailor. I feel that it’s only fair to deal with that question first so here goes – sorry but it also comes with a bit of an explanation so………
A few months back I was in a pretty bad place having just had a highly unpleasant first trip out with the boat in which I was largely defeated by fairly moderate conditions combined with some actual boat problems and a lack of preparation on my part. Nearly everything I have been doing on the boat for the last few months is correcting some of those problems and taking the boat to a better state of completion – my aim being to prepare it for what comes next – which is proper sea trials and by that it’s capability under sail, oars, engine and anchor and it’s comfort and function as an overnight ‘home’.
Well, work done, aside from the tent/shelter so the boat could go back in the water for sea trials even now except that we are experiencing cold and wet weather and i’m not quite ready to go ahead with making a basic tent let alone the more complex ‘expedition’ style shelter. Mainly, what that needs on my part is two new skillsets ; the first an ability to bend up a center hoop in stainless steel tube and the second is to build the actual structure of the shelter accurately in fabric.
Lets just say though that in a few weeks time I have done successful sea trials and that the boat sails, rows, motors and keeps me warm and dry overnight, what then ?
Sea trials with ‘extras’
Proper sea trials I regard as essential and not just trying to ‘wing it’ as I did in the Tamar. Sea trials though could include going somewhere and doing something a bit different ; something I haven’t done before but have written a post about but since deleted from the post schedule. During my ‘bad trip’ one thing that would have got me out of trouble and prevented me from going into the dock head first was that I could have recognized a difficult night to come and de-camped ashore to one of several potential places immediately around Cotehele quay. As it happens, once I recovered and changed clothes I took some of my kit ashore and briefly bivvied out under the arches at the quay ; had I thought earlier and carried the requisite kit I could have made a temporary bushcraft style camp just downriver of Cotehele, where I have seen canoeists hang out or just as easily out in the Cotehele woodlands in a kind of stealth camp.
The first and obvious lesson is that I should go through all of my old (but still usable) camping and bushcraft equipment and create a simple survival/bushcraft pack for the boat and perma-stow that aboard – I kick myself for failing to do that but as my good friend and blogger Steve Parke says “lesson learned’. The other thing that I was already thinking about at the time was buying a much smaller and simpler boat – something like a retired one man racing dinghy- doing my sailing as locally based trips with a bushcraft element of camping at the destination ; sleeping on the boat is something I don’t find mandatory.
For several weeks iv’e been playing around with the idea of what I could do with a minimum boat and a very small budget in that kind of approach. At this stage where I have failed is to find the right kind of boat , with a trailer, at a decent (ie low) cost and not to have to drive all the way across the country just to see it. If you’re wondering just how serious I am with that idea then I should say that I spent several sessions searching through as many online boat selling sites as I could and found one boat and trailer (I thk it was a Solo) at a just about do-able price, the problem being that it was over on the north Norfolk coast and which would be 2 days driving just to get it home.
For those whom are interested in the whole idea of bushcraft style sailing I wrote about it here : https://dirtywetdog.co.uk/2023/09/18/stripped-down-boating/
The boat that inspired the idea…..also in Norfolk
Given how close I am to finishing this boat and that I also have a lot of the kit in place for the other side of the project it seems at least a reasonable idea to combine both boat plans and do some local ‘camp cruising’ with the Pathfinder as stealthily as I can. Perhaps it’s worth reminding everyone that my original vision for this boat was a long voyage in stages around the UK coastline under sail and oar which is a lot of the reason I intended to finish the boat to what I think of is ‘expedition’ standard – the ability to be alone and self sufficient for long periods. That idea is still slightly based on Dylan Winter’s voyaging around the UK in the ‘crap boat’ and then the excellent little Minstrel (we won’t discuss the Westerly Caravan here !)
That whole idea lost a load of impetus recently when my first trip out in the Pathfinder turned into an epic damp squib : in fact I went as far as to consider in my own thoughts that this was long past the time to give up sailing – but even further that maybe I should have finished my Brittany trip back in 2019 – finishing on a high note if you like and getting on with different things then.
As far as this post is concerned I said that I would take the time to answer readers questions that have come via the blog and mail – my main reason for not having done so being that I write and therefore keep watch on the blog only infrequently and with the views slowly declining I seem to get a bit more traction with short video clips.
Best wishes Y’awl
Final thoughts. (for now). However I think about it I am coming to the natural end of my sailing life and I have most likely already had the best experiences one can have in the game – I have, for example, been around the Horn three times and spent more time than I care to remember sailing fast through the Southern ocean – where few sailors now get to go. Probably my best times have been much nearer to home, 110 days and nights cruising around Brittany in a small boat comes to mind.
What comes next as a sailor doesn’t bother me that much and there’s a strong chance that it won’t be the ‘challenging’ around Britain voyage that I once envisioned although it might be parts of it : I quite like the idea of taking a look around the ‘far west’ of the UK under sail and oar because I generally avoided going west of the Lizard peninsular with the little Liberty – it’s always a bit rougher to the west of the Lizard and often a sigh of relief coming back across a lumpy English channel to pass the Lizard and putting into the Helford river or Falmouth for shelter.
So there’s that to do, what I also fancy is a kind of sailing homage to the late Maurice Griffiths and his first wife (Dulcie Kennnard), that being a Griffiths inspired sailing tour of the Thames estuary and of the rivers thereabouts. Apart from the one trip bringing the Deben (Inanda) around from Ipswich it’s a part of the world I hardly know – even having been brought up near that coast.
What I don’t feel any great enthusiasm for are the places like the Solent and most of the South East coast – places west of Chichester harbor for example where there is very little to say about the sailing that is interesting and not much in the way of shelter. I thought about taking the boat to the east coast directly and launching say on the south side of the Thames – one of the downsides of that being that it would mean launching in Ramsgate, Margate or Rochester say. Each of those would involve a long driving journey and I suspect a tussle with mayor Khan’s ULEZ cameras so that’s a no. For some reason Margate also reminds me of the character Alfie Solomons from Peaky Blinders and his lines “If this is hell it looks a lot like Margate”. The answer perhaps is to make the long road trip from here to Chichester and launch the boat in Emsworth and only then deal with the pain of sailing east for a few days before getting around the corner and heading north for the Thames.
Dirty Wet Dog, the great adventure. 