The drip that thought it was a leak.

Sea trials and a proving voyage with the Pathfinder, but proving what exactly ?

Tow, row, motor, sail and anchor

Blog time, July into August 2024. It’s the height of summer here, in fact we are having what could be classed as warm and sunny weather and which no doubt our national broadcast organization will be panicking about and calling global boiling or some other such nonsense. In real terms it’s warm enough to make a trip to the beach without a rain jacket and several layers of thermal undies, which for rainy old England counts as a heatwave.

Here, i’m just back from a week aboard the boat having towed it some distance, launched it with a fair amount of aggro, rowed it, motored it, sailed it and anchored it in some of my favorite places in the south west. Right now the Pathfinder is sitting in the mud alongside a pontoon belonging to the kind of boatyard that is more builders yard than posh marina and tomorrow we will go and retrieve her, get her home and I will start working my way through a long defects and omissions list – a snagging list for those who like it good and short.

In short, iv’e done everything I wanted to do as far as sea trials are concerned (only one found guilty !) and even as far as having done the last 3 days as a proving voyage from the Helford river back to Plymouth sound although a lot of it I had to do under motor in uncomfortably hot conditions : mot much wind but an awkward swell and chop rolling in from the south east.

Principia.

My main idea for this trip was to prove, or at least test, each aspect of the boat’s and my own abilities for my (as I wrote this) planned future trips with the boat. That meant for a start my ability to prepare, tow and launch the boat while at some distance from home and while there to manage the trailer and then ultimately to retrieve the boat and get her home. Of course, the main object of sea trials was to work out what what actually worked and what needed more work back at base ; as is I found out most of the problems and deficiencies within the first 3 days and even more when I chose to voyage home. My main working principle for sea trials is the same as when we bought the Liberty in that we would make a short passage and then stop and fix something that was wrong – there was a lot wrong and working that way I found and corrected most of the simple problems before having her towed back to my local river and only then doing the more difficult work.

In the case of the Liberty I had to start with the absolutely basic stuff such as actually getting the sails up – everything seemed to be tied to everything else with multiple small ineffective tackles and jammers, then only later on did I have to work out why the boat only steered erratically (the rudder blade was back to front and needed edge repairs) but only then starting to alter the layout and upgrade the boat. This time I have come home with long D’s& O’s (defects and omissions) list, some of which are problems that I hadn’t anticipated.

Back to the main thrust of the post then and part of the whole week was in completing a proving voyage – living aboard the boat for a whole week, and proving or at least testing my own ability to go to sea again. I’ll chuck this latter part in at the end because one thing I think I have proved is that i’m not now in a good enough condition either physically or mentally for longer voyages : as I said, I will touch on this at the end and then i’ll most likely write a separate post to explain more fully.

Tow your boat.

Up until very recently, yesterday recent in fact. I thought that one of my major challenges would be in towing the Pathfinder to and from home : yes we have a capable vehicle but even with extensive modification we still have a marginal driveway that is only just big enough and secondly the access through the village is tight and twisty. Add to that that I also dislike driving now and since I had my first stroke my brain doesn’t seem to work in reverse as well as it used to so handling the boat and trailer combination on a slip can be, and was this time a royal PITA – that’s a sailing term by the way. Given that and that some muppet had almost obstructed our access into the lane the drive down to Falmouth went surprisingly well and even the first stages of preparing the boat on the slip that end went well……than it all went horribly wrong of course.

As it happens I don’t think towing is ever going to be a problem again : I will explain later but I think I may have just sailed for the last time.

Row your boat

For a little bit of a history lesson here I originally intended the boat for a sail and row kind of adventure but my early experiences with the boat showed me that I could only row effectively down wind and up tide. Some readers may remember this time almost exactly a year ago when I got wind-bound at the downwind end of my first trip in my local river. This trip showed me just how much strength I have lost with my first stroke and how ineffective my rowing of a quite large, heavy and wide boat. It’s my fault….the Pathfinder really isn’t one of John Welsford’s rowing orientated designs and as iv’e said in this blog that for a rowing based adventure I should have built a different design : Longsteps for example although that would have been even more marginal for the space we have.

Sailing boat as motor boat.

That first experience of a failed voyage convinced me to buy and fit an outboard motor and that is basically what got me home this time – I came out of the Percuil river (Falmouth/St Mawes) into an uncomfortable south easterly swell and slop but one that came with no wind. I spent all of the first day and most of the second on an uncomfortable motoring delivery voyage. At one point I knew that I needed to go and buy more fuel but when I got to the fuel barge alongside the little Falmouth town marina it was closed, had signs saying ‘No Petrol’ and when I asked where the nearest place I could buy fuel from the lady in the marina said “Fowey’…..that’s some 25 miles further east. What I had to do was a long and tough walk out of town to go and find a filling station – not fun on one of the hottest days of the year.

So, the engine did it’s stuff and it did get me home although I happen to think that the motor is too big and heavy for the boat as evidenced by the poor trim of the boat. One job on my snagging list is to find a smaller and lighter outboard and a second job is to swap sides by moving the external engine bracket from stbd to port…..that is partially to do with what I thought for several hours was a leaky boat but may have just been the engine’s tell-tale port weeing onto the boomkin and the exhaust water just running into the boat. The problem had me worried for a few hours and I had one of those slaphead moments when I worked it out.

Sail and cruise your boat

In Ruan Creek

I may have just had my last sailing/cruising experiences, in fact I may have just had my final time as a cruising sailor : there’s nothing overly dramatic about that except that it may also mark my last days as an outdoorsman. Although I didn’t enjoy my time at Mylor one little bit I did have a couple of very good moments on the water – during one I think that the Pathfinder trolled me a bit in that one evening I exited the Carrick Roads to sail over to the Helford River and I discovered that the boat perfeectly balanced just off the wind but because I was sailing straight into a very full, bright and low sun I couldn’t make out my usual headlands and instead of sailing straight into the entrance to the Helford river, or even where I thought we might have ended up (Gillen Creek) the boat had sailed itself harder on the wind and actually taken me into little Maenporth bay to the north by a couple of miles.

My best experiences of the whole trip were the one beautifully quiet night in lovely Ruan creek, away from all of the anchored yachts that came in and anchored near the entrance : as soon as that happened I upped and left – rowing slowly up the shallow channel on a low tide (neap) that ended with me getting out and walking the Pathfinder into the small and shallow pool almost within the central sand bank. To be honest the giveaway wasn’t so much that the tips of my oars were catching crabs on nerly every pull or that the aft ends of the skegs were occasionally touching bottom – rather it was the swans that gave up on paddling alongside me and all simply stood up and waddled out onto the sand.

Two nights dried out (between trials tests) in the shallow bay off a Place called Place (Percuil river) did it’s usual trick for me although when I left for the Helford river I had to run a long way upriver to get away from rafted up in the usual moorings pool. When I eventually made it to Fowey the next day the whole harbour was rammed solid with yachts – all of whom spent their time buzzing up and down in their tenders. Although i’d chosen to run all the way up the harbor to a pontoon known as ‘Gridiron’ even there the noise and activity was continuous and I eventually gave up and ran up the river towards Golant – in the past one of my secret getaways.

I guess that most readers will want to know how the Pathfinder sailed but I think I will write a second and complementary post to go with this one.

They think it’s all over !

As it happens so do we – i’m now about 12 weeks post stroke although I was left with enough function to go into a heavy few weeks during which I changed the entire rig, fitted the big AGM battery and even painted the top plank in a contrast color.

A couple of nights ago, as I write, I think I had another stroke incident or at least an extension of the previous one. I’m now in a pretty poor state and in no way fit enough,, strong enough and mentally together enough to contemplate going to sea again. At home I can only just get up nd down the stairs and needed considerable assistance from my partner and our one good neighbor to get the boat into our driveway and turned around. I did notice that on the final drive and tow – back from the boatyard, that my left leg felt weak and my left foot a bit numb on the clutch : I haven’t been back into hospital and frankly I don’t think it’s worth wasting more of their time because the treatment I am already on wouldn’t be changed. Obviously i’m not driving now and just resting up for a few days before emptying the boat of loose gear and giving it a washdown.

I will start on the long list of jobs but only slowly and I think that I will have to sell the boat. I have a couple of blog posts to finish and edit but I think it’s the end of that as well

So I think that’s it for me………(“they think it’s all over – it is now ! )