Disaster Strikes!

Having at last found a signal for this device, I have to report that all my sailing plans are in tatters because last Tuesday I slipped on the foredeck while picking up a mooring and broke my wrist! Fortunately this happened in Tobermory which is quite a busy place by highland standards. It also has terrific personal service from the NHS. The local clinic sent me to the cottage hospital 10 miles down the road so I now have one arm in plaster for the next six weeks. I can't of course sail my boat with one arm, just getting through the normal daily tasks is difficult enough but, thanks to the kindness of the locals my boat is now in an alongside berth so that I can step ashore and get to the local shops and so on. I have to see the consultant in Oban next Wed, which is an hour on the bus and then an hour on the ferry. After that it is a matter of waiting for friends to organise a rescue expedition. It's 200 plus miles back to Preston and, to manage this passage I need at least one able seaman.
There are many worse place to be stuck than Tobermory. It's quite a famous place now thanks to childrens TV, it's pretty main street facing the sea, with the pastel coloured houses must be nearly as well known as the Piazza San Marco in Venice. It supplies all this sailors modest wants except there is no library although good bookshop and even a proper butcher. It also has a wonderful prospect down the Sound of Mull, an ever changing scene especially in the recent showery weather. It seems to rain in the mornings and then turn into a hot sunny afternoon. The small marina is busy with boats arriving and departing all the time. Yesterday there was much excitement at the appearance of an otter, blithely chewing away at a fish and seemingly unfazed by its audience.
Now that I have found this hotspot I will be bacj perhaps with an appropriate photo.

Sailing? What sailing?

I know I am in Scotland because the boat moored next to me is called "Whigmaleerie"! I have no idea what it means but it is unmistakenly Scottish isn't it? In fact I am in Oban and this is the first time I have been able to find a signal for my wireless modem since I was in Campblelltown. I can't complain about the weather can I? I spent yesterday drifting slowly north up the beautiful Sound of Luing where the main hazard on that day was sunstroke. The occasional seal which stopped to look at me looked as sleepy in the sunshine as I felt myself. I also saw the first dolphins of the trip.
Pilot Books provide all sorts of information for the wandering sailor to supplement the charts and, quite properly, contain lots of warnings about the hazards to be expected. It's true that there are places around here which can be quite dangerous in heavy weather. Around the famous Mull of Kintyre, for instance one is warned of "tremendous seas" which can engulf a small boat. In pleasant summer weather such as we've had for the last month it could be the Mediterranean. I had to motor the whole way around the Mull in flat calm; it was slightly disappointing, but only slightly!
Oban seems to make its living selling the idea of Scotland which we used to get rammed down our throats by the BBC on New Years Eve. Andy Stewart, remember him? I think the original culprit reponsible for creating the whole tartan romance was probably Sir Walter Scott, who was himself a Scottish legal officer a Sheriff I think, and ought to have known better. Sailing slowly up this coast now virtually uninhabited, you can see, if you look carefully through binoculars, the ruins of stone cottages on every island, even the small rocky ones, which reveal that there use to be plenty of people here. The story of what happened to them in the 18th and 19th centuries, betrayed by their former tribal chieftains and shipped off to the colonies is not at all romantic.
However, they do brilliant Fish & Chips in Oban!

The Clyde, not the Caribbean!

When I took this yesterday, I was slathering on the sunscreen and looking for my floppy hat, most unusual around here which is the entrance to the Clyde with the Ayrshire coast very dim in the background. The red object is my faithfull windvane which has steered my boat many thousands of miles including right round the world. I take the wheel myself only very occasionally.

This sunny passage led me to Campbelltown at the tip of the Kintyre peninsula where I again had my haircut by a bloke who claimed to have performed this same service for Sir Paul himself who is of course an occasional local resident. There is just a small pontoon here for yachts, it's basically a fishing port. The small space gets very crowded and therefore quite sociable although I felt this cosiness got a bit too much when I was woken from a peaceful sleep about midnight by a late arrival,crashing alongside and a bloke leaping onto my deck and peering down at me in bed through the open hatch.

The fishdock is directly opposite and is busy all the time. The catch is mainly langoustine, lively creatures about the size of your thumb when topped and tailed. They look very good but you don't see them in Morrison's, I suspect they all get sold for fancy prices in London. The boats unload them straight into the refrigerated trucks which carry them off.

Tomorrow I plan to head around the dreaded Mull, a passage which has to be carefully timed to take advantage of the fair tide. Next stop should be Islay which I think of as the fist of the real western isles.

Frustrations

I am in Ardrossan, Ayrshire, which is an appropriate place to quote Robert Burns "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglay" since that famous bard was born around here and spent his short life not far away. My plans are all up the spout and my ambitious plan of sailing around the UK looks increasingly doubtful. Why? Partly because progress northwards was frustrated by northerly winds but mostly because Christabel and Sheila's two sources of motive power, the sails and the engine have both failed me. This last week when I have sailed up from Northern Ireland to Scotland I have had some sort of problem every passage I have made which is very wearing. It makes me wonder why I don't take up some less stressful activity like crown green bowls.
However, after two days in this hospitable marina I now have two usable sails, thanks to a charming lady called Sally who runs the local sailmakers. I also THINK, after spending a whole day prostrate on top of my oily engine, that I have solved the problems with that. I have to give itanother trial run in the morning to be sure.
This is a delightful place to be stuck though. I suppose most people think of the Clyde as a place of derelict shipyards but it is in fact a huge and beautiful area designed to give endless pleasure to those who take to the water. I know that I will be tempted to stay here for the rest of my summer cruise but I will try to be more adventurous than that after I have had a couple of days to recover from all the effort and stress of the last few days.
My mother was born around here but moved to Glasgow when she was a very little girl. She had an aunt who farmed on Great Cumbrae Island, which is visible from where I sit pecking this keyboard. They used to have summer holidays there, getting to the island via steamer from Glasgow. Going "doon the watter" it was called. There is a survivor of that period, almost 100 years ago in the shape of a beautiful paddle steamer which still plies around these waters in the summer months.
Sorry no photos this time.

Illustrations

"We joined the navy to see the sea/ And what did we see? We saw the sea!" as the song goes plus occasional things like this (on the left) which is a buoy moored a few miles off the Irish coast. These things all have resonant names, this one is called the Skulmartin,are much bigger than they appear until you get close, this one is about 6 metres high. It's round top tells a passing mariner that you can safely leave it either side. They need a fair bit of maintenance which is done by an ancient body called Trinity House who get around in their smart ship which can pluck this thing out of the water, clean it up, repaint it and put it back.

The pretty small marina on the right is at Portaferry in the narrows leading to Strangford Lough, the tides here run up to 7 knots and are now used to generate electricity via an underwater turbine. It was finished quite recently. This marina is under the charge of John Murray , a real gentleman who occasionally swops his jeans and jumper for the more conspicuous orange suit and white helmet as cox'n of the local inshore lifeboat, a big RIB (Rigid Inflatable), a spectacular craft which can zoom around at 25knots plus. It's a very impressive sight at full chat and John and his crew exude that air of invincible competence which is the hallmark of the RNLI everywhere. British yachtsmen have to go abroad to find out how good our lifeboat service is, noticeably better than even our nearest neighbours across the North Sea and the channel. And all entirely financed by voluntary contributions and mostly manned by unpaid volunteers.

I surface at last

At last! I have been able to get a signal on my wireless modem and also manage to down load a photo. I don't want to excite you too much so I will restrict myself this time to this one, which was my lunch some time ago, actually election day I think. This communications revolution which is supposed to put me in instant touch with the world wherever the wind blows me has proved to be not quite up to snuff. However, today I am in Bangor, that's the Irish one not the welsh. It's a busy seaside place about 10 miles from Belfast. It is humming today because it's their summer maritime festival. The crowds around the sea front as always are quite a shock after the solitude of the open ocean.

I stopped herebecause I have the inevitable problems with my old barky and needed a spare part which I knew would be available here. I also needed to consult a doctor because I thought I had broken my neck! Literally I mean. I had a tumble in my dinghy while attaching a line to a mooring buoy and developed a distinct pain in the neck. However the nice nurse with a very attrractive Ulster accent assuredcme that it was merely a muscle sprain. I have an enforced layover until Monday because my spare part has to be delivered from Belfast.

I have been pondering about the importance of tides to seafarers who choose to rely on the wind for power. Modern sailors in powerful motor driven vessels don't worry about them much, but to a slow old boat like mine, two knots of tide can make a big difefrence. If it's with you, your speed might be 7 knots, if it's against you 3 knots, less than half! Of course every schoolboy knows that the tide is influenced by the moon and rises to high water twice a day. If you ever had a seaside holiday you could hardly escape that observation. But it's a lot more complex than that in fact. Although the rhythm is fairly fixed, the height of the tide varies every day, every week, every month and every year. This vast mass of water flows in and out of the Irish Sea, through its northern and southern entrances in a complicated patterm determined by the geography and the nature of the sea bed. Fortunately, generations of hard working surveyors have spent wholeworking lives charting this complex patterm so that the modern sailor has access to all the secrets for a few quid spent on a tidal atlas. Observing these ever changing movements of the waters a romantic like me can see it all as the breathing of some underwater giant. now shallow, now deep.

Northern Ireland is a delightful place, a well kept secret for most English people, but it's not Scotland and my arrival here is not getting me around the UK. My chances of being in Orkney by midsummer are fading, but someone said somewhere that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive. I am not sure that I agree with that principal but I am still travelling hopefully and, perhaps more important, happily!

Election Fever

The fully illustrated version of this blog will, I am afraid, have to be postponed. I am having difficulty in downloading the photos I have taken. However I spent election day becalmed in the middle of the Irish Sea, a wierd experience, a sort of limbo. I entertained myself with George Elliot and bit of fishing, catching two fat mackerel which were filleted, fried and on my lunch plate within 30 minutes of swimming happily about. Hopefully they had no hint of their fate. When the wind did stir, it was a mere zephyr from the north which pushed me very slowly towards Ireland so that I arrived of this village of Ardglass at about midnight. As always in these situations when trying to make sense of the various lights which mark the dog leg channel, I remembered that my colour vision is not very good. "Is that really a green?" I ask myself "or perhaps a white?" Reds usually stand out pretty clearly. When at last I could see an empty berth in the marina in the pale moonlight it was a considerable relief. Parking my old barky is a bit like getting a 40 ton artic into your back garden, I really needed a helping hand on the dock, not to be expected at 1am. Finally tied up safely I felt that I had earned a dram.

My neice Pauline said that this blog needs more pictures, so here's two of "Christabel & Sheila" still languishing in her winter berth (with my bike in the background). Hopefully this will be her last night of repose. We leave at 0630 tomorrow, the wind is fair for Scotland, if this high pressure persists for another day or two the next stop might be Islay. Morrison's shelves are bare and I will not be looking for a grocery store for at least two weeks. It will take almost three hours to get through the lock and down the river to the sea and, for me, that's when the holiday starts. I will breathe a huge sigh of relief when I pass the outer buoy.

Dreams

"Six days shalt thou labour and do all that thou art able/And on the seventh day holystone the decks and overhaul the cable" is typical black humour of the old sailing navy. Both the tasks are seriously hard work and provide no sabbath leisure. "The cable" then was a huge rope 6 inches in diameter and 200 yards long to which the anchor was attached. Overhauling was to inspect, clean and repair it. My boat "Christabel & Sheila", like most modern vessels has her anchor attached to a length of chain, in my case 50 metres of it. Like any metal object on a boat it tends to quietly rust away in its damp locker. Today I hauled it out on deck, chipped off the rusty bits painted it with linseed oil and restowed it. As I sat on deck engaged in this mucky job, I day dreamed of gliding into the calm water of a remote uninhabited Scottish loch and dropping anchor and chain into the glass clear water and relaxing in the cockpit with a wee dram. Bring it on!

Great timing!

Amazing that BBC2 should choose this week to show a group of irresistably charming kids reciting the cruising sailors anthem by John Masefield "I must go down to the sea again, the lonely sea and the sky" just at the time when I am getting ready to go down to the sea. If you didn't catch it, watch it on iPlayer, it's worth a years licence fee on its own even if you are no sailor.

Boats have masts primarily to hang the sails on but there is a tendency to put other things up there too, like wind vanes and lights. When something goes wrong aloft someone has to go up and fix it. In a crewed boat there is a tendency, at this stage, for people to hang back waiting for someone else to volunteer a bit like the opening of an episode of "The Apprentice". In fact the ascent is not difficult when there is some muscle available to do the hoisting. Singlehanded sailors have to find some way to get up there under their own steam and adopt various ploys. Dame Ellen McArthur's boat is so big that she is apparently able to climb up the sliding shackles which connect the mainsail to the mast. I know she took a photo from up there looking down on her boat, but then she is not like ordinary mortal sailors, especially ones like me with rather too much mileage on the clock.

Being still in boating civilisation, I was able to delegate the job today by manouvring the boat under the yard crane which then hoisted Steve in a bosun's chair to unsort a tangle. I think he got the job because he is the youngest, he is certainly the lightest. The photo is from last year on another boat. The victim this time was also chosen for his youth (I think).

Preparations

It's paradoxical that the part which causes most grief on a sailing boat is the engine. You have to have one nowadays. Harbours are designed on the assumption that you arrive and leave under power. These unregarded lumps of metal suffer more from disuse than anything else. They moulder away in their damp salty cupboards week after a week until one day they are needed urgently, a desperate skipper twists the key and nothing happens.
Mine is an ancient BMC thornycroft 4 cylinder diesel and forunately is of a vintage when durability was more important than power output. Nevertheless I always say a little prayer when I twist the key. It never has failed to start and I remind myself of that each time. The trouble is of course that there is no AA service at sea. If something goes wrong, you can't pull comfortably onto the hard shoulder and wait for that helpful mechanic. You have either to rediscover the skills of sailing into harbours which the old sailormen considered normal or declare an emergency and call the RNLI.
All this is why I spent the morning giving some TLC to my mill. Before I venture the 15 miles down the river to the sea. Another day I will run it for 2 or 3 hours to be sure there are no problems.
I am a terrible worrier. I wonder if all singlehanded sailors are? I imagine vividly all the things which can go wrong and wake in the night sweating over them. So today I spent another £70 odd on some new flares and smoke canisters. When I got the old ones out, I found they were dated 1994. (They are normally expired after 3 years). I have only ever used one once. What do you do with the old ones? They are quite dangerous. The parachute flares go off with a hell of a bang. You used to be able to dispose of them via the coastguard, but they have stopped that now. There was a time when sailing clubs let them off on bonfire night. That doesn't seem a very good idea now either. I have a large carrier bag full. Perhaps I could hand them over to the Fire Service?

I am sort of committed to setting off to sail on me tod around mainland Britain on 1st June and am, as usual already feeling apprehensive about it. I wonder why I do this sailing lark. I know I will be stressed and scared at times, will miss my sleep, miss friends and family, even miss driving my car. Why can't I stay well within my comfort zone like most old codgers do? That TV programme "Coast" is partly to blame with it's seductive cinematography. I watch it and think "I want to be there!"
Today I should be doing an engine service but am disabled by lassitude. I have a meeting at 2pm anyway so it's too late now to get all oily.
Assuming my old barky is in reasonable nick, the first problem in getting this voyage under way is that my berth in sunny Preston is 15 miles from the sea. To reach the restless ocean means negotiating the exit lock at high water and because the channel is not lit there is only one chance each day to do this. Once in the river it is then a sweaty nervous rush to get past Lytham and across the bar before the tide falls too far.The river dries completely at low water. The bar is not marked and the deep water channel has a dog leg in it which used to be marked by two tiny buoys about the size of yoghourt cartons, virtually invisible. Even these are gone now and I have to rely entirely on GPS waypoints. The river entrance lies between Blackpool and Southport and is a wide and featureless, in thick weather when visibility is poor there are no visual clues at all to help the trembling navigator.
Why am I posting this? Two reasons: I like reliving my experiences in print and a few people have expressed interest in how I get on in sailing around our beautiful islands. The plan is to head north first. If I am not in Orkney by midsummer, the project will be in jeopardy and I may have to admit defeat and return via the Caledonian Canal. I need some moderate winds from the south for the first two weeks of June. I live in hope!