Beware the tides of March.

A Sail, Oar & Canvas project post – perhaps the most important one.

This blog, my new project (Sail, Oar & Canvas) and me personally, all come to a bit of a crux move this month in that I now have to find out whether I can physically handle the boat under sail & oar and then do a short passage in the local river with the intention of having an overnight camp.

If it all works out and goes as planned then all is well and it means that this year at least I can have a season of low grade microadventures (I like the idea but not the word) around the local rivers and creeks. I do have some quite ambitious plans with the boat if, and it’s a large capital IF right now, each of the main components works as they should and there’s no guarantee that they will.

If it doesn’t work out then that’s the end of the road for me as a sailor in which case I won’t need a boat and don’t have much reason to maintain this blog.

Iv’e at least tried to give myself the ideal conditions in which to do a first launch, set the boat up, row it and sail it : at time of writing I don’t yet have a location in mind for my first camp although I know of several spots on the river where I think I can land and at least make a canoeists micro bivvi if not a full camp. I have also been spending a lot of time on Google earth to take another look at my potential landing/bivuoac spots. The forecast is for sunny spells and light winds – with what wind there is supposedly from the west or south west most of the river this end won’t get much of anything – it takes an almost true southerly to blow straight up the river as it did during my disastrous Pathfinder trials. Even the tides look ideal as they are small and heading towards neaps.

The boat is as ready as I can make it at this stage and iv’e been thinking about the camp/bivvi aspect for months so everything that I think I might use is ready to go aboard – in future posts i’ll talk about the camp and bivouac set up – assuming that is that it all works out. What I don’t have, as yet, is a planned launch and recovery site as I haven’t heard back from the estate that manages the ideal slipway – that being the same one as the local Gig club and a canoe outfit use. If that doesn’t work out then with this boat I should be able to access the steeper slip in Calstock village unless the usual BMW owning worthy is using it as his personal parking place that day.

For the record…….

As of the beginning of March 2025 the main stage of the Skerry rebuild is done so I felt that it was best to at least try it out on the water before pushing on with it’s second stage – that of taking the basic sail/row set up to it’s next stage – that of a very Skerry camp cruiser. With a short weather window, more light at the start and finish of the day and importantly an easy cycle of neap tides I set things up to take it to the nearby river and give it (and myself) a tryout in driving & towing, launch and recovery and finally a short session rowing on the river.

We did scout out my originally intended launch site – the one above – which is the public slipway in the local village of Calstock. The problem/s with that slip is that it’s steep and usually slippery although the primary problem was always getting onto it when one of the local worthies parked his car actually on the slip itself. When we went to check it out someone has painted the slip like a no entry junction box on the road and set up dire warning signs about being towed away – cars I assume. The big problem when we left the village that day is that just uphill of the slip there are two large houses, one either side of a narrow lane, being worked on and both sides of the lane were taken up with parked vans – contractors by the look of them.

It took us a long while and lots of back and forward to get past and in village terms it was a bit of a local ‘cluster’ – the idea of taking a car and trailer through there looked like a very bad idea indeed. Instead, we cancelled the first try entirely until I could arrange with the National Trust estate at Cotehele, just downriver, to use their slipway. It’s as difficult driving in and out mainly due to narrow lanes, little visibility and in one case an aggressively driven tractor !. The NT people at Cotehele were as helpful as a helpful thing so one thing I have done is to float the idea of renting space alongside the Gig club in their waterside compound – it would be far better for us to keep the little Skerry right by the river there and then only have myself and some kit to take in and out whenever I want to go out for a sail/row adventure.

Oh the actual launch and row……..well I didn’t fall in, which is a bonus given how cold the water was and the launch itself went well enough given that it was our first time with the boat. My first proper rowing trip was a bit rough and ragged as I had a headwind in both directions…..how does that work ?