Inheritance

A few weeks ago as is my usual habit I messaged Dark Tarns previous owner with yet another small enquiry as to the ins and outs of our boat. At this point it is important to understand that boats are one offs, a never to be repeated collection of fudges fits and fixes. A bit like people in that they are all, with the exception of mass produced AWBs, ( average white boats ) unique. Hence the calls to Chris, he was if you like Dark Tarns second father, responsible for the best part of twenty years of modifications and improvements. The particular enquiry regarded the spinnaker pole up haul arrangement. A not crucial enquiry but really a chance for a chat. My text was not answered.

  Wandering back along the Quays last night I was pondering Chris's lack of a reply and I decided to be very rude and phone him up.

  I was surprised to be speaking to a stranger who happened to be in Chris's house, of course it wasn't a stranger but Chris's brother.

  Chris had become ill around the first of January with a recurrent bout of an up until then dormant chest infection. He had spent the remaining time in hospital and died on Saturday evening, that would be the 1st of February.

   I was speaking to Chris's brother while looking at Dark Tarn, speaking of Dark Tarn, explaining that we were the new owners. He remembered Chris speaking of me, and our delivery trip, he then went on to explain how Chris had put so much of himself into the boat, I could only agree then looking at our boat sitting calmly at rest, I wondered how much of her had died along with Chris. I quickly realised that far from that, Chris lived in every small lined up screw head and the very fabric of her. He would forever be a part of her story.

Chris Hall, a lovely man and a beautiful human being. Chief scientist, wonderful fastidious custodian of Dark Tarn. We will miss you.

A part of you will forever voyage with us.

Boat sitting

The schooner ' Soteria's owner Vicky is visiting friends and family in the canaries so I have been drafted in as boat sitter.

Soteria is on the left, the other boat is Silvery Light. My responsibilities largely involve pumping these elderly ladies bilges and maintaining their batteries. Due to the local councils recent dictates around electrical supplies this involves a degree of swopping supply cables.

   This morning proved to be exceptionally cold, with a freezing mist hanging around most of the day and ice forming in the canal. I fell into conversation ( if you stay still in Ireland for longer than two minutes this is an inevitable consequence) with Gerry, Shining Lights owner. He was explaining his plans to restore the boat by means of a lottery grant. I wish him well, these lovely ladies need to be seen and more importantly used.

   Soterias future is far from clear, I would love to see her once again cruising the Canary Islands under full sail. I suspect Vicky is using her time away to think about possible futures.

   I must admit when I am in Soterias cosy saloon, I wish the wood could speak, I bet it has some great stories to tell!

She is similar to a boat I know well and have sailed aboard for a time, the ' Spirit of Fairbridge' also a boat which is used to mould and influence young people in a positive direction. In Soterias case this is very much a Christian ethic.

   However for a few weeks at least I bestride the decks and imagine myself shipping copra from the outer islands or even dodging pirates in the Sumatra straits.....

Now if I only knew someone with a parrot who needed looking after...............

Here are a few photos that remind me of happy times aboard ' Spirit of Fairbridge'

Spirit at Portavadie in the Clyde.

A Cracking sail!

A peaceful evening at anchor in Loch Fyne. The bosun on anchor watch.

   

Preventers

More thinking of future sailing, up to now Lynne and I have very casually rigged an ad hoc boom preventer to avoid or ' prevent' the boom crashing across the boat when sailing down wind. On one notable occasion this meant Lynne having kittens watching me leap around on deck in horrible waves, suffice to say she wasn't happy with this display of macho bravado!

  Crossing oceans in the trade winds will require a different approach, a bit more considered taking into account that downwind sailing will be the norm rather than hammering upwind in a gale or motoring through flakey headwinds or non existent breezes. A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to be able to sail aboard one of the BT Challenge boats that raced around the world, 72 foot steel racing machines. They had permanently rigged preventers so I thought a bit and adapted and expounded on the original idea.

The basic theory is that it should be possible to rig a boom preventer without having to stand up at full stretch attempting to catch the end of the boom on the 'downhill'  side of the boat, a potential disaster!

A look at my very bad sketch should make some points clear.

  The basic idea is that we will have two permanently rigged lines on the boom, one port the other starboard. We also have a line on deck rigged from a block forward to somewhere adjacent to the mast. This will run back to a third winch on the port side to tension the preventer. From the base of the mast and safely secured It will be possible to attach the deck line with a bowline knot to the boom line, this will be a very strong Dyneema rope with a breaking strain of around three tons, it also being Dyneema doesn't absorb water. This is actually quite important when big swells mean you are dipping the boom in the water. All this should be safely accomplished from a secure position at the base of the mast rather than any ariel gymnastics balanced on the edge of the boat.

I think this a very important modification, so important I am going to get riggers to do the splices as I have no experience of splicing Dyneema ( this stuff is stronger than steel, as long as the splices are good ).

Apparently there are over twenty casualties a year from being struck on the head from the boom or associated tackle. As we are essentially short handed permanently we need to look after ourselves and make the whole process of rigging a preventer safe and easy. I'll post a picture when it's done!

Prep

One advantage of six months in the same place is time to think, my case this largely involves thinking about safety, or to steal an seventies idiom " stayin alive"

So in no particular order I have installed a 'stealth'  switch in the AIS system, what this does is to interrupt the AIS transponder so it continues to receive but no longer transmits. So to all intents and purposes your vessel disappears off everyone's screen who is AIS enabled . Only to be used in case of pirate attack. Long way down the road but it's an easy modification. Probably a complete waste of time but the components only cost about a fiver so hey ho you never know.

Next on the list was a liferaft, this was a case of run around the house to get back to where you were. We looked into various options in England however costs for shipping to Northern Ireland were looking rather steep, we got one quote for £200 +VAT, needless to say we went back to CH Marine just down the canal from us

We finished up buying a just certified commercial raft which Paul down had just got in , he let us see it before a service ( inflated ) and again we compared it to a "yachty" raft, in this case a Plastimo which Paul was also servicing. Apart from the obvious difference in materials the other major difference was in the freeboard, in comparison the Plastimo was very shallow ( read WET).

Our new raft had also got an easy enter rigid entry slide ( not visible in this shot, it's on the other side) if you have ever had to get into a liferaft wearing usual foulies and wellys etc. you will understand the significance of this. More importantly it was made of heavy duty materials and just serviced. Paul and Joe also gave us some in date flares and other bits and bobs, and so the deal was done. We originally wanted the raft to be up to SOLAS B specification but we soon realised that if all the SOLAS stuff was packed in the raft it would need servicing every year as it would to all intents and purposes be a commercial liferaft, so we went for the ISO 9650 part 1 option which means a service interval of three years and we intend to carry all the SOLAS stuff in a grab bag. We now need to mount the liferaft in its canister on deck and fit some form of cradle and an HRU. ( Hydrostatic release unit, this deploys the raft automatically in the event the boat sinks ) unfortunately this means my least favourite job ever, drilling holes in the boat, best have a few dry runs to get the placement just right and put off the dreadfull day!

An EPIRB ( emergency position indicating radio beacon ) was next on the list, we also obtained this from CH Marine. A Mcmurdo G5 GPS  model.

Of course we needed to update our OFCOM licence and also inform MRCA, but it can all be done online these days, assuming you can get past the as usual, rubbish web presence of the government. It took me six attempts and a password reset to amend our existing licence.

This little thing ( when activated ) will send a distress message via satellite to the rescue co-ordination centre in Falmouth saying that we are in trouble, the beacon has a unique hexadecimal number that will identify it as our beacon, hence family will also be informed and hopefully we will be rescued, the beacon guiding our rescuers to our exact location anywhere in the world, for 48 hours anyway!

   Thinking about all this worst case scenario stuff can all be a bit depressing, of course in reality we hope that we never need any of this equipment.

However, as my very good friend Lenny is very fond of saying " it's better to have and not need, than need and not have". Quite right Len.....

 Apologies for the amount of MLAs ( multi letter acronyms ) 

Climbing Slieve Gullion

We have been having a very lazy time recently, flew home for Christmas and had a great time visiting friends and family. The ongoing list of maintainance jobs has been getting bigger and we spend a few hours snatched between bad weather to make a start on little jobs. So far we have touched up the deck paint and replaced the toe rail guard wires with one encased in plastic tube to isolate it from the steel.

Today however as the day dawned bright and fair, a telephone call from Jean Baptiste ( JB ) held an invitation we couldn't refuse, a walk, well more a climb really, up Slieve Gullion. A local peak we had been dying to get up for a couple of months. The recent snow also added a frisson of appeal so we filled a flask and booted up to accompany the "Soterias"

The plan was to climb to the south summit cairn from the upper car park past the forest park.

We started the walk from the lower car park as the road to the upper car park was closed due to the inclement weather ( read ICE ) so it was a couple of miles to walk through the pine forest to begin. We calculated we just had enough time to complete the ascent before dark with this added distance.

As we left the pine forest we could see the sea on the coast a dozen miles away. The visibility was perfect.

As we gained the top car park where the path leaves to climb to the summit JB and Besum caught us up having had to stash the car ( car park closed at 5 o'clock )

We began the rather steep and slippery climb up the heather covered hillside leaving the road behind.

The snow began to build up along with ice.

In places the path was surprisingly steep.

 As we approached the summit plateau, there were some lovely ice formations formed by the wind.

The view from the summit was spectacular however it became apparent that there was some weather approaching.

 Vicky, Soterias owner and Lynne, Dark Tarns owner at the summit trig point.

Lynne on the summit with ice formations and Mourne mountains in background.

Below the summit trig point is a cave where we retired to shelter and have a well earned " brew"

JB and Besum had carried up some wood and were determined to build a fire! It was very cold in the cave but also quite sheltered from the deteriorating weather.

The entrance tunnel would appear to be aligned with sunset.

As the time crept towards 4 pm it was decided that we should descend in order to get back to the road at least before dark, just then a snowstorm began and visibility got very much worse. We identified the descent path and everyone helped the girls down the slippery path, or held on to the girls to stop slipping, take your pick!

After an hour or so we had dropped down to the level of the road again and we stopped to admire the last rays of the sun as it set. Perfect timing!

So the crews of Soteria and Dark Tarn trudged back to the car in encroaching darkness and so ended a really nice day.

Weather Bombs

Interesting weather conditions just up on the north coast, We have been watching pictures on TV from there and the west coast of Scotland, mainly places we have visited recently like Largs and also the coast of Antrim Portrush etc.

The winds have been over 100 mph at times and waves of 50ft have ben recorded. We however have got away very lightly. Today the winds were only gusting to 28-30 mph but were strangely gusting around the compass swinging through 360 degrees. The majority of the time wind speeds were in the force 2-3 bracket.

The conditions up North have been caused by a slow moving and very deep low that has been deepened even further by a dip in the jet stream (bit like a child's toy, the whip and spinning top for those old enough to remember one) The now fashionable term for a depression that is deepened by some other phenomena is a `Weather Bomb` in the case of the famous Fastnet storm it was a secondary low. In this case it is dry air from the stratosphere deepening the low pressure by a process known as explosive cyclogenesis. All pretty scary stuff.

And another storm due tomorrow, fingers crossed.

Waves and waving at Port Stewart north coast of Antrim

Waves at Whitehaven Cumbria. I once asked Gregg Norris a Whitbread round the world sailor, where did you see the roughest seas Greg, Cape Horn, The Southern Ocean, cape of Good Hope?

he thought for a while then said “St Bees Cumbria”……… “Bloody awful place”

current affairs

for the last week or two there has been a furious exchange of e-mails between the Newry and Mourne district council and several boat owners berthed at the Albert Basin in Newry. Obviously this includes yours truly. The basic problem being that very few people on the council appear to know anything about boats. There is a generally held opinion that it isn't only boats that the council know very little about!

The power supply for yachts at the quays run from some rather elaborate cast iron boxes, quite Victorian and very functional in a rather old fashioned way however in another wholly inadequate as they only hold two connection points each. In consequence many connections up to now have been supplied by splitting the supply cables so at least two boats could share a supply. As there are only 5 boxes that means 10 power points. There are presently 23 yachts berthed at the Quays!

Enter the electrician, unfortunately the large training boat Soteria has been tripping the circuit breakers having a total of five leads coming out of one box. The electrician they sent down pointed out that this was 1/ probably unsafe 2/ exceeding the supply amp age 3/ illegal as it contravened regulations for supply to boats. The crew of Soteria reacted poorly and the electrician reported back to the council who correctly then informed us all that what we were doing was, …well see above.

The threat was that we would all be disconnected however in a flurry of cooperation and chaotic rushing around we managed to get the supplys back down to ten boats being supplied from ten power points, the council representatives agreed to consider adding additional powerpoints and we as berth holders agreed to disconnect one boat before connecting another so that only ten boats were connected at any one time.

Lynne and I were also photographed for the local paper the Newry Reporter.

First time as a page three girl for Lynne!

So all's well with the world again……….and we have got to know a lot more of our neighbours here at the Quays.