A New Topmast

When Lobie II, a Laurent Giles 43, lost the top of her mast off Lowestoft, most skippers would have decided to abort the circumnavigation of Britain. Not Neil and Maddy Scobie. Rigging a jury, they continued by France and Ireland, arriving back in Ullapool with the jagged stump and a cut-down sail plan. Intrepid stuff.

This is what I wrote at the time:

John Ridgway – a near neighbour to us, as it happens – may have been the first to row the Atlantic, and Sir Ranulph Fiennes is about to trek to the pole in winter, but no-one to my knowledge has until now sailed around the British Isles with a broken mast, surely an achievement that ranks with the best of them, and more laudable for the fact that it went largely unrecorded, save for a brief note in the (Royal) Loch Broom blog**

This is the stuff of legend; the kind of stiff upper lip in the face of adversity we associate with our great country. What made an empire and won the war. Many a yachtsman with full and detailed preparation has circumnavigated our shores, some of them in astonishing times, others in a variety of craft both suitable and frankly ludicrous. There has probably been a fellow who did it in a bath tub, or  in a Citroen 2cv fitted with sails. Neil and Maddy Scobie with little on no preparation, save a trip to Costcutters for provisions, did it in a classic 43ft yacht designed by the Jack Giles called Lobie II. And for much of the voyage they were lacking a vital part of her, namely the top 10ft of her mast.

It was off Lowestoft that it all came crashing (literally) to the deck. One minute hard on the wind in a lumpy sea; the next a sharp report, more like the cracking of splintered spruce, and a chunk of it landed at Maddy’s feet, narrowly missing her head.

That was when the phone call came. “Hi, it’s Maddy. We’ve broken our mast,” rose a disembodied voice out of the North Sea. “What do you suggest?”

Well, I thought quickly, best get into a safe haven as fast as you can, call the local boatyard, have the rig pulled and Lobie transported home on a trailer. With barely a quarter of the round trip completed there was not much of a case to be made for continuing.

And that is where I left them: joggling about in the North Sea with the top of their mast on deck, no doubt swathed in a welter of sailcoth and stainless steel rigging.

A few days later their daughter called. “How they getting on? Have they pulled the mast yet? How are they planning to get her back home?” The answer was surprising, but typical of the spirit of adventure you would expect from a couple steeped in the old ways of doing things. Typical of a man who wears shorts in mid-winter and once worked with Ridgway. To borrow Henry Paget, 1^st Marquess of Anglesey’s remark to Wellington at Waterloo when a shot took off his leg: “We seem to have lost our mast,” says Neil.

“My goodness,” says Maddy. “So we have...” And soldier (sailor) on.

It was fully in keeping with  Blondie Hasler’s view, who famously suggested that those who sailed alone and got into trouble should be prepared to drown like gentlemen. In this case drowning was not a serious prospect; more like a huge repair bill and a low-loader up the M1.

“Oh they never mentioned the mast,” says the daughter.  “They’ve have found a tree surgeon.They’re in France now up some river having a great time. Apparently I’m to send out a smaller jib. And some Oxford marmalade.”

Next thing, Lobie was back on her mooring with the jagged stump above her top spreaders an unlikely perch for a herring gull. Maddy and Neil were rowing ashore. They had enjoyed a storming sail up the Irish Sea, too fast to stop, they said. And the mast? They had kept the pieces and reckoned it could all be glued back again.

Of course the mast would need pulling, but they would do that alongside the pier and Neil would strap it to an old Massey Ferguson, with no brakes, tax or insurance, and drag it 10 miles up the glen to their lodge in the hills. After all, if you’ve just sailed round Britain without an important section of what drives you then getting the rest of it, all 60ft mind you, up a potholed, single track, unmade road in the Highlands is really no big deal.

**www.lochbroomsailingclub.blogspot.com, for those curious to read the full story.

And here is what's been going on in a barn, 10 miles up the glen over the last few days:

 

Two lumps of flawless Douglas Fir, 10ft x 6in x 7.5in and a hell of a lot of planing later and the new topmast is ready to be epoxied to the stump.

Ain't She a Beauty?

As a showcase for Mattis Voss's talents, look no further than the Shetland boat he built (with a little help from me) at Viking Boats in Ullapool, and which is due out of the yard at the end of the month.

She overwintered under a white, canvas, breathable cover - the only kind that should be used on a clinker boat. And emerged unscathed from rain, snow and wind.

This is no more than an excuse for showing some photos of Sula in the sun. And the designer? Iain Oughtred, who should be encouraged, after half a lifetime espousing plywood and epoxy, to draw more traditionally-built boats like Sula and the Woodfish faering, of which I have built two.

Many of Iain's details were changed, the line of the planking, framing and thwart positions for example, but that's the beauty of building traditionally, and we added a daggerboard rather than a pivoting centreboard. The rig is balanced lug.

By the way, can anyone see a single knot in any of the planks?

Ferry Repair

'Tis the season for repairs, as owners realise their boats are in no fit state to go in the water, and time is slipping away.

This is a nice example of a Scottish-built former ferry, retired into private hands no doubt due to issues with maintenance or safety. She had every kind of mastic in the lands to keep out the water, when what she needed was more water between the lands to make them swell and keep her watertight. Clinker is the only boat building method that requires a boat to be leaky in order to float.

That's the theory, and a bit simplistic as a tight clinker boat will not leak and never will, especially those with a thin bead of something brown and rubbery between the lands.

This boat may well need some time to take up. We will see, but after 28 hours of scraping out every inch of her, including the accumulations of paint between timbers and planks, and doubling the worst splits, she bloody well better not leak too much to begin with...

Two Go South

The second of the restored estate boats goes home today. The first, a Frank Knights-built mahogany on oak 16-footer, which needed a complete strip, retimbering and plank repair; the second, an elm-planked 10-footer that had been badly converted from a sailing boat and coated in B&Q shed paint. This, ironically, had probably preserved her until it was time for another strip down and retimbering.

Both are ready to go back in the water and, as a bonus, the owner is arriving today with a few choice cuts of pork from his own pigs. Fair exchange, I would say for all that scraping.

Meanwhile there's another old clinker boat waiting to go in the shed for a pre-season sprucing up.

Maybe it's the time of year, but there have been a number of approaches recently for the restoration of old clinker boats, some feasible, some not. I insist on a few photos beforehand and they can be very revealing, and save the expense of a wasted visit. For example, what would you do with a boat like this?

Or this?

Both owners suggested that it might not be impossible to bring them back to life. To which I replied, honestly that "anything is possible, if you are prepared to pay for it". But better by far to take off the lines and build afresh. I fear it is unlikely to happen.

Maybe there are boats worth restoring and others that should be allowed to revert gently to nature, as we all will one day.

Anyone for Sjektes?

Anyone in the market for an 18ft open boat, based on a Norwegian sjekte design called Jan from the 1930s, either with a gunter or bermudan rig, is spoiled for choice. Both Felicity John and Florence Oliver, the boats I built a few years back are on the market for around £4,500 and £6,500 respectively.

I know this as a potential client, with whom I had been discussing a cabin version, decided to see Felicity John for himself, and after I contacted the owner to arrange a meeting, found her for sale. That could be a bit of a bummer for me, as I suggested in my last post, as it may scupper the chance of building a nice new, purpose-built boat. Hy ho.

While popping a lid on Karsten Ausland's Jan does look quite attractive, modifying Felicity John could be fraught with "issues" of strength and space. It could be done though, at the risk of making a dog's breakfast of a beautifully, pure open boat, as both I and my client are well aware.

The cost of modification might be a few thousand quid on top of the purchase price; the cost of a new boat perhaps a third more, so I will just keep my fingers crossed with the look of a man who has "done the right thing". Whatever happens, the important thing is that the right boat gets into the hands of the right owner.

Which made me think: maybe I should become a boat broker and give up the business of building them. Are there not quite enough boats to go round already? Do we need any more boats, especially of the sort that sit in garages and slipways year in, year out without so much as a sniff of water?

Why not call a moratorium on new boats until all the ones we have are in good hands and being used. Just a thought, albeit not the kind of idea likely to appeal to boat builders.

Boat Builder's Dilemma: Florence Oliver For Sale

Florence Oliver, the 18ft sjekte I built some years back, is for sale. She is a favourite of mine, and I vividly remember how she came about.

It was during the Caledonian Raid and I had entered Felicity John, the first sjekte I built after leaving Ullapool Boat Builders. I was pretty knackered as she was my first commission on going alone, and the prospect of building another one so soon seemed a little daunting, so I did my best to dissuade Ted.

These days I would have bitten his leg off, but maybe my reluctance helped fuel his enthusiasm. Anyway, he proved more persuasive than my efforts at evasion and I eventually agreed to build what was to become Florence Oliver.

And very proud I was of her too. With spars by Collars, sails from Steve Hall at North Sea Sails, and nicely finished by Ted, no mean craftsman himself, she made her debut at Beale Park in 2007.

Recently I was asked to quote for a similar sized boat, but with a simple cabin, and although modifying FO would have been nigh impossible, I felt duty bound to mention that she was for sale. I confess, however, that I hesitated before handing on the news. What if my putative client fell in love with her, and my commission evaporated? And yet I owed it to Ted to try and find a buyer for his boat. Matching owner to boat is, after all, what it's all about.

Ted, on his part, bless him, was equally concerned that I might be losing work by putting him in touch. Keen as he was to find a buyer for her, he would feel awkward if her sale meant my losing the chance to build another boat. What should I have done?

Fortunately (or unfortunately) Florence Oliver is probably not going to be suitable and at least my new client, if that turns out to be the case, will get a chance to talk to Ted about my skills or otherwise. It may mean Ted has to wait to sell his boat, and it may not lead to a new commission for me, but my conscience will be clear, and that is worth more than any boat's worth.

Meanwhile, anyone looking for a clinker-built 18-footer, one careful owner...? 

It's Amazing What You Find...

...underneath a thick layer of red fence paint. At least it helped preserve a little dinghy that was on her last legs, and destined as a flowerbed, if the present owner hadn't spotted her on eBay.

Before...

I have to say that she is the prettiest little dinghy I have seen for a long time, and most exquisitely put together, although the thwart knees do look a little heavier than strictly necessary.

One of the intriguing things about her was that she was orginally a sailing dinghy. You can see where I have glued in an oak filler in the slot. The trouble was that, in stripping out the centreboard case a lot of the keel's strength went with it, such that there was a horrible hump in the centre. This disappeared with a bit of gentle persuasion over a weekend, and with the slot well and truly filled, the keel is as straight as a die again. And the new timbers could then be taken over the keel to help add stiffness.

... and after.

The wood used is elm, and flawless, with no splits after what must be 30 or more years. She must have been well looked after in her youth, as the lands are not worn or scuffed, and the rubbing strip is intact. But all the steamed timbers were cracked, and had to be replaced with slightly heftier ones. Which is probably when her owner decided to put her on the market. A common thing now that the ordinary skills of retimbering a clinker dinghy reside in the hands of a handful of traditional boat builders, where once it was a routine job for an owner to steam in a new timber every so often.

So, after a great deal of scraping of red paint, and sanding and varnishing, she's ready for another 30 years. And just look at how the thwarts came up. Again, under the red Cuprinol lay some lovely Honduras mahogany to set off the elm and oak nicely.

I just wish I knew what she was. Anyone out there with a class or type? Length around 11ft, with a rig originally and centreboard. No idea what rig, but probably a little lugsail. And the builder? Almost too good to be professionally built, if you know what I mean. Just such a sweet boat. I almost wish she were mine...

PS I left the rubbing strakes in red fence paint as a reminder, and I think they look fine against the planking.