Han Solo - Wey to go

Part 3 of 3, a guide to being a loser

Going for a personal best - chapter one

Woken a few moments after sunrise by the sound of the Poole harbour mooring buoy rubbing against the bow of the boat I poked my bleary head out of the companionway, not quite ready to face the world. 

This required a hot serving of freshly made pancakes before any colour would venture into my zombie like complexion.

With a face still wearing the pillow crease marks of last nights deep sleep, I faced the first task of the day. On the table sat a small (Standard Horizon) chart plotter.

It started taking on worrying signs of Poltergeist activity the evening before as I waved goodbye to my best friend at Poole town quay.
The fuzzy screen started blinking with furrowed horizontal lines, deep reds and no contrast were a tell tale worrying sign that I might need to call in an expert in the super natural. It was switching itself on and off of its own accord. I wasn't sure if some sort of other worldly portal might open up through which I could throw tennis balls, which might reappear, steaming and covered in goo, elsewhere on the boat. Most likely at the bottom of the companionway knowing my luck, where I'd slip on them and go arse over tit.

They're here

I unplugged it, half expecting the screen to stay on and emanate a sinister possessed voice, at which point I was prepared to drop kick it overboard. Thankfully it fell silent and black. Once stripped down I found the problem straight away. A small pin hole has burned through the display screen ribbon from where water got in and caused a minor short. So it's temporarily bugger'ood until I can replace the ribbon cable. No Poltergeist in sight.

Curses to the electrical water gremlins on this trip.

Shmokin' Gremlin

First the phone which doubles as mini gps and chartplotter was fried in less than an inch of salt water. Now the proper chart plotter with the AIS overlay is pooped.

This leaves me with one android tablet based electronic chart plotter, an emergency handheld gps in the grab bag and my trusty paper charts.

With an audible sigh I pulled out the charts and started laying in proper waypoints, a passage plan with tidal adjustments and everything. I've become lazy in my electronics induced semi-coma.

Gremlin on a post: my work here is done.

This level of concentration would require further pancake based fueling.

"Is seven pancakes greedy? No? How about nine then?" 

(that should hold me for a while)

Passage plan notes with hand bearing points of navigable interest and anything else of note taken from the almanac jotted down on my scrappy looking recycled note pad (complete with rusty staple) and it looked like the tides were right for a mid day kickoff to blast round from Poole to Weymouth.
I've never been to Weymouth before other than by ferry. (once, 19 years ago)
With the timing it looked like I might arrive at dusk. Reality check, plan to arrive in the dark.
The passage went perfectly. Save for nearly being decapitated and slung overboard.

following a gaff rigger called Duet out of Poole

It took them a while to get their sails set, but when they got it sorted,
it took off and pulled away from me in the direction of France

boat under tow under a moody sky

 

The wind built up to 25knots which meant I had to reef (for non-yotties this means to reduce the size of the main sail by pulling it downwards) a wildly swinging loop of loose line hanging from the rapidly oscillating boom decided to tangle around my neck.

I swore at it, it let go. So I thanked it for "not killing me today."

The part that I hadn't factored into my passage plan was the minefield of lobster pots around the Weymouth bay area.
Now that darkness had descended it was impossible to see more than a few short metres ahead of the boat so it's a bit of a lottery whether you hit one or not.
The other thing I hadn't factored in was very large inflatable race markers.

While Barbie was left in charge of steering, I nipped down below to check the chart and pilot book for exactly what leading lights I was looking for to guide me into the narrow entrance of Weymouth as I was still at least two miles off.
It was only when I popped back up into the cockpit I heard a noise, like the noise of the bow wave being reflected off of something. I peered into the gloom while my eyes tried to adjust back to night vision.
Before I could react, a large orange inflatable buoy, suddenly illuminated by my red navigation light skimmed the full length of the boat, just centimeters away.
It was so tall that I could have looked it in the eye from the cockpit. If it had eyes that is.

recreation of the event. possibly not quite to scale.

Soon after, I was lining up the lights on the harbour entrance as I made my way in, in increasingly windy conditions.

artist impression of night approach to Weymouth

unusually no red markers outside of the harbour entrance, only green leading lights
with a white flashing light marking the end of the harbour protection wall

This is the book info, however it doesn't show the MAHOOSIVE tower installed for the 2012 Olympics as my book is from 1995 and a hand me down from my parents. Nothing much changes except marina layouts and the odd buoy here and there. So it's fairly common to use older books, alongside my new paper and electronic charts it's easy to spot changes and amend the book. 

So fast forward...

• Arrive at lift bridge, wait until morning when bridge opens

• Go into marina, find a spot.
• It's tight. Very tight.
• Spend a day in Weymouth. Friend who was supposed to meet, cried off with work. 
• Jayney-no-mates.
• Plan to leave the next morning. 
• Plan the perfect exit maneuver.
• Execute it badly.

• Barbie gave it her best. Note new battle scar. #hardcorebarbie #glasgeekiss

• Accidentally shorten the flag pole. (it was too long anyway)

• Smile nicely and say good morning to the motorboat owner, whose protruding anchor assisted with flag pole shortening. 
• Remark quietly to self how quickly a fat person can move when they think their boat might be damaged. (it wasn't)
• Exit Weymouth entrance. 
• Eyes forward. 

This could be a fast one - chapter two

With one reef left in the main sail and wind "just-so" Boogie Nights was absolutely flying.  

Rarely seeing the speed drop below 9knots the steady 20kt breeze just kept on keeping on.

The boat was going like this.

The wind was a bit like this.

I hadn't said anything to the ships dog, but he knew instinctively that today was a day he might want to tuck himself below in the confines and comfort of the back cabin where he curled up in a deep nest of king-size duvet and pillows. He left me to it. He didn't emerge for another ten hours.

But what a ten hours that would be.

 

I was mostly like this

I was faced with a choice after a while, do I turn up to go through the needles channel or do I go around the back of the island. The tides and wind decided I would go around the back of the island where I would have plenty of sea room and boat speed when it turned sporty later.

A beautiful day to set a new personal best

Once I reached the corner where I needed to turn more northerly, the wind started picking up.
A blanket of cloud descended rapidly over the island and shrouded the anchored ships ahead of me. The wind increased from a steady 24 knots to 30 and started showing 30+ at which point I had to physically tell myself out-loud, to "get that second reef in home girl". While running with the wind behind me, it feels easy. But the moment of turning into the wind suddenly that shit gets real.
Waves I had been surfing down with ease were now breaking over the boat.

"Cascades of water run down the gunnels and fly off the back as spray.
The bow points at the sky then at the bottom of a wave, then back at the sky.
I hang on with my toes as I use both hands to pull and winch as fast as I can whilst gripping the wheel with any other spare part of my body"

It's bouncy alright.
Reefing is essential but also tricky when you're solo. The autopilot on Boogie Nights doesn't have the capacity to adapt while I haul on lines and change the motion of the boat, so it overcompensates or under-compensates. Either way, it doesn't really point the boat particularly well which can slow down the actual job of reefing.
Determined not to get lassoed around the neck again with stray lines I pulled hard and winched fast and everything seemed to go like clockwork. More or less. Though the brief stoppage hit my average speed quite hard and knocked it down to 8knots.

Turning back downwind as the wind was howling around 32knots and gusting more, Mr Gibbins the civilised self tacking jib can't handle being dead downwind so had to be rolled away. This meant the boat would be slightly unbalanced and again, the autopilot wouldn't be able to handle it. With the wind behind me, there was a high risk of crash gybing so I resigned myself to hand steering while Boogie Nights surfed at 13 knots down the waves.

It was at this point my MP3 player decided it was going to play me the entire series of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. 

Unable to leave the helm to run below to kick it back to playing music, I listened to the calm voice of Peter Jones as he narrated his way through three entire episodes.
Understandably initially I was vexed at not having music on while I concentrated on not crash gybing and catching waves to surf down. But then gradually the calm voice became oddly reassuring.
Hearing once again the importance of the humble towel for hitch hikers as well as Marvin's sunny disposition as he casually parks spaceships at the restaurant at the end of the universe was actually pretty good at whiling away the time.
Before I knew it, the sun was shining again and I was pointing toward the Spinnaker Tower of Portsmouth with tunes blasting the cockpit and a huge grin on my face.

The route recorded on Marinetraffic.com You can follow Boogie Nights journey progress on here.

The Spinnaker tower can be seen for miles. It's another reassuring sign that "home" is within sight.

And just in case you thought the title of this post had nothing to do with Star Wars

Homing Beacon

Part 2 of 3, a guide to being a loser  

Without a flashy sex bombe wide arsed raceboat to distract me this time, I stuck to a revised passage plan and continued west out of Yarmouth Isle of Wight.

The new rendezvous plan for my friends was simply to watch the AIS signal via marine traffic and then home in. 

Without a mobile phone or any other method of verbal communication I left it down to them to come and find me, homing pigeon style.

I headed out of Yarmouth, pointing south west. Full sails, still minus a top batten but with a new sail slide, full speed toward a much closer and quicker to reach Poole harbour.

It was an absolutely fantastic and generally rapid journey out of the needles channel and round to Poole harbour. Only one or two tacks to find myself in the channel heading into the sheltered and generally pretty looking natural harbour for the first time.
Finally out of the clutches of the Solent I gave a small whoop and congratulated the wheel by patting it.

A fast and fun solo trip from Yarmouth to Poole.

Pshhh, we're outta there! I pointed my thumb behind me at the white chalky cliff face of the Isle of Wight. 

Without a phone I couldn't phone ahead to check marina availability so I picked the Town Quay and just went for it. Hoping to get lucky.
I had a little look, circled around and then chose a spot that looked likely to be available, possibly.  On a bank holiday weekend, chances are a lot of places will be pre booked.
On arrival a friendly chap who worked there helped take a line. I only had one rigged as that's all I use single handing (one line to the centre cleat). I sort the other lines out once I've stopped and got myself secured. He seemed confused as I darted backward and forward adding lines once I was securely alongside.
You're on your own? he asked
Yeah, I've got friends, they're coming later I replied, reassuring myelf more than him that I do indeed have friends. Somewhere.

Once we established that I hadn't pre booked, he said it was my lucky day as the spot I had chosen was the only available slot.

Bingo.

Forty one pounds lighter and loaded with a gate code, shower code and a local guide to Poole, I sat and waited for my homing pigeon friends to come and find me courtesy of AIS and marinetraffic.com.

One by one they arrived, and soon there was four of us.
The crew consisted of

my best friend since early school days, Joanne.
A friend who is so severely motion sick that simply sitting on my mooring at Haslar can have her reaching for sea sickness remedies. But her sense of humour and ability to keep me from being a complete twat in front of two lovely chaps is priceless.



Lovely-chap 1) Jerry, who back in France in May during a qualifying passage for the triangle race, came knocking with a spare baguette for breakfast. I knew it was worth staying in touch with him, especially when he said he can cook!

Lovely-chap 2) Mario, a friend of Jerry who introduced him to sailing a while back. On arrival revealed a great taste in cameras and a keen photographic eye.

The dream team had assembled. Now, down to serious business of getting some "fun" in.

After an easy first night on the town quay and after everyone had used the facilities as much as possible to maximise the value for money, we headed off to pop Joannes' cherry.

In all the years I have known her (more than 30),  in all the times we went motor boating together and all the time I had my sailing dinghies, she had never once been sailing. The whole motion sickness thing had really put the brakes on that for many years. So now was the time to have a go.

let the motor take the strain. foot operated winch.

easy sail hoist

Joannes sailing cherry finally popped

A perfect day for mucking about on the water

One thing I've always enjoyed and rarely had the time or opportunity to do, is anchoring off a beach.
I'd made sure I brought the dinghy with me for "just in case" the opportunity presented itself.

I love rowing...

I love anchoring...

I love barbeq...
Ay up Doris, have you seen this sign?

No fun allowed so we broke all the rules.
But, being responsible adults we left nothing but our footprints behind.

Poole harbour

Boogie Nights on the left, one of just two boats anchored at this pretty spot

only one of the dream team dares to brave the water for a swim

Pirate juice

a barbeque on the beach with friends. This is living the dream

 Back at the boat, I attempted to set an anchor alarm. It didn't work. So I woke up several times to check our position as the tide changed (We drifted in the night and by morning we were just a boat length away from our neighbour.)

Before everyone went to bed I had a quick look at the engine to see what had gone wrong yet again, causing diesel to leak. It's been an ongoing issue for the past three years. One day I will get to the bottom of it. In the mean time, the engine has its nappy changed frequently.

Apart from the diesel leak the engine has been a dream.
That's an Asda own brand nappy in the engine tray.
Works a treat.

the ships dog, lit by disco lighting, kept Mario's knee warm

An English breakfast was the starter for Sunday, so before anyone was hoisting an anchor to move the boat away from our now very close neighbour, we made sure our bellies were full.

Mario doesn't do baked beans. They cause him a "problem with his tummy" he said.
Mega farts is what that translates as.

Whilst I have no such worries about beans. The egg is a rare thing on my plate.
Only because I'd been up in the night on anchor watch.

Always be yourself. Unless you can be a pirate. Then always be a pirate
Thanks to Garry Ashton-Coulton for the photoshoppery

Jerry tries to hide his excitement with the false look of worry as he is ordained as a pirate

It was discussed previously what it takes to be a pirate. Drinking rum for breakfast, or indeed at anytime before mid day will form a defining factor of pirateness.

And while Joanne and I sorted the boat out upstairs, Joanne on helm (ooh arrrrg) with me hauling up the anchor (ooh arrrrg), the lovely-chaps did galley slave duties and made Boogie Nights shipshape and Colombian fashion downstairs.

I could make some sort of joke about having two Colombians
sort my downstairs out.
But I wont.

Jerry can't seem to get enough of my galley.

Joanne steers us through the twin sails bridge as we head into Cobbs Quay

Tight fit. And a faded old facade.

One last effort to clean the salt water from the dead phone. It's dead.
Just accept it Jayne. It has ceased to be. It is an ex-phone.

And so after three splendid days of drinking, barbequeing, drinking, eating, walking and eating some more, I was left alone as my friends departed. Joanne helped cast me off from Town Quay and I trundled off into Poole harbour to pick up a mooring buoy for the night with the aim of heading to Weymouth solo the next day.

back to being solo again.
just me and the ships dog

Ah Solo Mio

Part 1 of 3, a guide to being a loser 

It would appear on this blog that I am never short of crew or company on my sailing or other bullshitting adventures.

This is actually not the reality.

I am very much alone for most of the time.

This leads to two fairly defining things, or if not defining, at least a little bit curious.

One of the results of being alone with only the ships dog for company, leads one to talk out loud and express thoughts OUT LOUD. Often aimed in the direction of any inanimate object around the boat. That could be a winch, a line, a tangle of lines, a hatch, my boots, the toilet, my lifejacket…. Etc

Often in a Scottish or Irish accent or in French. I have no idea why.

Alright? whatchoo lookin' at bawjaws?

The furling line block, often referred to initially as: c'mon ya bastard

You (dear reader) should also be aware by now that Boogie Nights is an inanimate gender free object. It is neither a he or she, it’s an it. In the same way my car is an it and my laptop is an it.

This doesn’t stop me talking to it though. Just because it doesn’t possess a cock ‘n’ balls (le batteau, il est magnifique! Regard, le mat, c'est enorm!), or a pair of tits and a vagina (how fast will she go? Ooh she's spacious down below), doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some life in it. After all, those resins, plastics, metals and various materials it’s made from were all hewn in some form or another from the planet which was made by stars exploding billions of years ago, so it’s made from the same materials as all other life forms on the planet, including you, me and the ships dog. Just presented in a different form. 

Right on? Are you with me here?

You can see I’ve spent some time thinking about this.That's too much time spent alone with my cocktail cabinet that is and some special chocolate.

Anyway, I digress,

The second important, defining thing is, that a person alone on a boat is a certain type of person. That type of person is self sufficient.

In all manners of the meaning of the words, self, and, sufficient.

They are capable of coping with their own company.

And capable of dancing alone in a cockpit in the middle of a storm.

Capable of a whole variety of things that keep them alive and thriving in a hostile environment.

(not counting Horse & Hound magazine, that was on a different level of hostile, Ex-editor, that's EX as in, has been, but is no longer, if you ever read this, yes you, hostile, divisional, class divided, prejudiced -  even Sir Robin Knox-Johnston solo round the world extraordinaire would have struggled with that)

Mechanic, seamstress, cook, helms person, sail trimmer, meteorologist, navigator, electrician and so on.

Boogie Nights, for at least this part of its life has a custodian (yes that's me) that attempts to be all of the above to varying degrees of success.

And so the August 2014 bank holiday was all systems go. 

Clean bottom, raring to go. Friends booked to come and join me somewhere down the coast to make it look like I'm not a complete loner and to reset the sanity levels back to socially acceptable.

The plan, more or less, was to leave Gosport and head to Plymouth. Should be there in a day and a half. So I thought.

It was westerly or south westerly winds forecast. I was heading west. Sure it would be a bit of a slog, but I’m used to it. No Fucking worries, I thought.

I’m fairly well known for my dislike of the use of an engine, at any time. (most people I know would have said, "let's engine out of here, it'll be faster and easier" )

But because I'm like I am, I never even considered using the engine. I had looked at the possibility of avoiding tacking down the Solent where the channel is fairly restricting and full of marine traffic and instead, heading off around the back of the island where there would be more scope to put bigger tacks in.

(for the non-sailing folks reading this, a tack or tacking – is when you have to zig zag the boat to go in the direction you want to go in because yachts cant sail directly into the wind but at varying angles off it.)

I had put Mr Gibbins the self tacking maestro on the front to add a bit of gentile civility into tacking westward. Jenny-go-lighty was tucked away in a sail bag and stashed in the back cabin. (just because they’re objects doesn’t stop me naming them. It’s much easier to identify sails when they have a name)

Well, my first mistake was being a wanker. 

The kind of wanker that hoists a main sail (purely co-incidentally mind) alongside a flashy Hugo Boss 99 boat in the calm windless pool next to the marina we both share and then thinks, I’ll go where they’re going.

Fucking right on. Forget all that passage planning, let’s follow that professional racing boat.

So Hugo Boss 99 trundled off ahead of me, carrying a cockpit full of most likely, corporate cocks and cock-esses who needed lubricating to keep the money flowing to that giant organ of PR majesty. 

They then unfurled their massive genoa and fekked off up the Solent into the wind like Frankle with his ears pinned back, leaving me behind like an ill-bred knock knee donkey.

I’m not bitter.

Not at all, I smiled to myself as I passed them at anchor, three hours later.

I ran down below to fetch my phone to take a picture and gloat about my wonderful life on facebook. But no, the phone had been propelled during a particularly enthusiastic tack, off a non-slip mat, straight onto the floor. Into a puddle of salt water.

First of all, shit. My phone is dead. But secondly and more importantly, SHIT, THAT’S SALT WATER!

With each tack I had a glance down below to see which side the water was coming in from. Just a trickle and it appeared to be coming in from the back locker.

There’s a through hull fitting in there and an engine exhaust pipe. Those are the only two possibilities other than a ruddy gre’t ‘ol’ punched through by a partially submerged shipping container. Which it wasn’t.

Now another lesson for the non sailing. Rules of the road here determine who gives way to whom. Because the watery road way is way more complex than the high street in Kensington in the sense that those in small hatchbacks give way to those in big 4x4’s and 4x4's give way to cars with flags on the bonnet, we have rules for who does what and when on the water.

So each time the sails on my boat are aligned down the right side, that’s called port tack, because the wind is blowing on the port side, the left side of the boat.

When we are on port tack, then we have to give way to pretty much every fucker out there in the Solent. Ships, tankers and ferries, always. Yachts, mostly all of them out that day. BUT, when the sails are the other side, that’s starboard tack, that means for a little while, during that tack, most yachts have to give way to me. And they're the cheeky bastards I'm looking out for.

So it was during these starboard tacks where I did my investigating and ran around pulling the boat apart to find the source of the water.

So convinced was I that it was the seacock valve in the back locker, that I emptied the locker and climbed in headfirst to reach it to check if it was wet.

The problem is the restricted access. It’s just, just beyond finger tips. So I have to wriggle ever further than is safe or comfortable into the cupboard, head first. Diagonally.

With just my legs sticking out of the cupboard I eventually reached the valve. It was dry. But I closed it anyway.

Then the reverse maneuver out of the cupboard was the source of amusement for: no one. 

No one was there to see it, or pull my legs to assist with the reversing.

Thankfully I’d removed my lifejacket for this otherwise things could have gone from faintly ridiculous (3) to highly ridiculous (5.5) on a scale of ridiculous where paying people a fair living wage is right there on 1 and Boris Johnson being prime minister is a 10.

It took what felt like half an hour to free myself, it was probably just 30 seconds. I was half expecting to have a trail of boats diverting course behind me to avoid the runaway yacht without a helmsperson. I finally re-emerged the right way up, with a very red face, looking guiltily around for signs of annoyance to other Solent users.

But no. Only some Cant calling starboard on me, spouting a technicality of the double starboard rule and pointing at his sail and then my sail, as if to incite any amount of giving a shit from me.  

A quick glance at the depth gauge said it was time to tack though.

On the next starboard tack I ran down below to send out a message via the downstairs chartplotter to friends to say my phone was dead and then a message came through from Hazel of Triangle Race fame.

You’re not sailing tonight are you? Suggest you look at the weather again.

to which I replied something like: Meh, bloody solent, has me still in its grip. I just want to get out of here. It'll be fine

Port tack… Wait.

Starboard tack… download more wind files and look at met office weather. (again)

Port tack… Wait.

Starboard tack… have a look at the tide times.

Port tack… Wait.

Starboard tack… think. 

Port tack… It’s been 11 hours of this tacking bollocks. Shall we go and hide in Yarmouth? I asked the main sheet. It was silent in its reply, but it seemed to just ease out on its own.

I know no shame. Here is the proof of my days exploits.

180 degrees about turn and head for Yarmouth, Isle of Wight.

It was a wise move.

The top slider on the main sail had just snapped again and the mainsail top batten had vanished.

Time to lick my wounded ego and do a new passage plan for tomorrow and find that salt water ingress.

Soon after mooring up and having tidied the snake pit, I went to flush the toilet and realised, salt water had seeped from the flush handle nut which had vibrated loose. It had seeped along a part of the hull and into the shower tray. 

Tit.

Scrubber

 I did have a nice little blog post written telling you all about my scrubbing experience. but then it was lost in one deft stroke of pure unluck as my phone containing all of said nuggets of pixel based joy landed nose down in a very small puddle of salt water. They do say it only takes an inch to drown in, well it would seem that my Samsung Galaxy S3 needed only 15mm to kill it.

My previous wrestle with a wetsuit for water line scrubbing revealed to me that I really needed to get the boat out of the water for a proper bottom scrub. There's several options for this,
 

A full lift out with a crane, scrub and then put back in, £250

A sealift, which is this marvellous floating submersible hoist thingy based in Haslar marina £140 on a summer special offer

If I had the choice, I would have chosen sealift, it would have all been done in just 2 hours.

or scrubbing posts at a local sailing club called Hardway, £10 plus jet wash power tokens and most of a day.

Given my current "strappedforcash" status, I'm on a very tight budget. So scrubbing posts it was.

Malcolm, the handiest man around Haslar Marina furnished me with roller handles, a third of a tin of hard wearing antifoul and even drove over to the local sailing club to give me a hand getting onto the posts.

I needed a few other things in my favour

• Big tides :  check
• light winds :  check
• warm weather : check
• no rain :  mostly check

The tide times were just right to pull alongside the posts mid day on the last bit of the rising tide, get the boat positioned and then tweak and adjust as the tide fell. The small amount of breeze was blowing me on to the posts and it was all incredibly easy and civilised. 

As the tide dropped and revealed my keel for the first time since mid May when I was out for the steering seizure I was quite surprised how little weed there was. 

But on closer inspection with a high pressure jetwash nozzle, it was apparent that the barnacles had made a decent sized housing estate on my keel. 

It was then a race against time, jet washing and scrubbing to a point where I could put a quick coat of antifoul on before the tide came rushing back to float us away again. 

I was extremely lucky to have the help of Hardway club member and all round thoroughly nice chap Chris Waters. Without his help I doubt if I would have managed to get all the antifoul on before the tide came back.

I didn't have time to stand back and admire our joint efforts, I was whisked away to the club house where a lively evening of post race socialising was going on and the put on a fantastic menu of really good club food.
No one minded my black paint splattered face or hands. Nor did they mind the ships dog dining with us.

Hardway sailing club seems to be a very sociable club indeed.

After a little post meal nap, I was up at mid night to await the last bit of tidal height to lift me off the bottom.
Chris came back to help again and even jumped onboard Boogie Nights for the short motor back down Portsmouth harbour to Haslar and helped with mooring.

 Now I'm eager to see what difference that clean bottom will have to the boats performance.