Breaking News - Toberonochy invaded again!

It's difficult to believe that it's a year since the above photo was taken by Mark Robertson as the Bilderglug fleet made its way back home North from the wee bay where we had stopped for lunch. This top secret event, only for highly superior very select people, which is why it has the name, is now taking place for the fifteenth time. Sadly we will miss Hugh Gray this time.

My yellow boat is the only non-resident participant to escape the indignity of arriving by road, but this does involve some careful weather watching. First of course there is a little winter maintenance, which was confined this year to treating the tyres on the trolley to a session with Peter's ancient but very sturdy Dunlop Standard pump. (There's actually a book about them: Vintage British Foot Pumps 1900 - 1950)

Here is the good ship the Kelpie ready to go:

This boat is absolutely ideal for events such as this. She's the Walt Simmons Christmas Wherry which I built in 2006 specifically for Bilderglug. She's an incredibly seaworthy and to my eye lovely little boat that has seen us through an awful lot of tricky weather over the years. There's a lot of reserve stability and if you keep a look out for squalls you can carry quite a bit of sail and have a lot of fun.

My only complaint is with the location of the centreboard on the drawing, which was far too far aft for proper balance and made tacking difficult. I shifted the slot forward and replaced the lifting board with a daggerboard, but may have slightly overdone it. She comes into the wind instantly I drop the tiller, which is of course safe but a bit undignified at times.

Yesterday I set off at six on a frosty morning and had a good, warming row for an hour or so before the wind came in from the North, straight from Iceland. It was a good working breeze and we ran straight onto the sandy shore in the wee harbour at half past eight. I was met by the Grand Controller who took me to his underground Control Room to investigate the mental condition that causes me to return each year.

Update

There's now a video clip showing the flavour of the trip across on Youtube, here, Sailing to Luing

A reformed Rockhopper's Thoughts on Ballast

I have a couple of confessions to make and don't know which of my sins is worse.

In the West coast of Scotland, where I sail, there's a great deal of deep water, but sadly there are also an awful lot of rocks, with a strange capacity to spring up at odd times, usually when you're opening another bottle or storming along on a beam reach without a care in the World or both.

Some of these rocks have special names, after the ancient mariners who found them and maybe foundered on them. Nearby we have Campbell's Rock and Hutchison's Rock to name but two. Others just have generic names, like Sgeir Dubh, the black skerries that you find all over. Anyone who has sailed here for a while will have met one or two of them, otherwise is probably dishonest.

The problem has been recognised by yacht designers over the years and may be a reason for the considerable drag often given to his long keels by Alfred Mylne and contemporaries. The old yachties knew that with luck gravity would help them to slide back into deeper water. Indeed an old lady assured me that Scottish Islanders carried a spinnaker pole for the sole purpose of assisting on those occasions.

Mylne's keels also feature a sloping forward end, which means that when you do strike it's the lead that hits and absorbs the shock rather than the delicate timber structure of the boat. Contrast the extensive damage done to a deep modern fin keel cutting the corner in a race at speed - boatyard's delight!

This brings me to the second confession. I've messed a bit with Iain's design, bringing the ballast keel forward and sloping it, as you will see from this photo showing the pattern for the lead.

The effect of this is to add some lead forward, but I've also deepened the ballast from 125mm to 135mm, an overall increase in weight of about 8% to something a little over 400kg. Factors in this were receiving from Iain at the start of the year an amended construction drawing suggesting a modest increase in draught and a feeling that there's plenty displacement and it won't harm a beamy centre boarder that is not to be trailed about to carry a bit more weight. Also we're experiencing much stronger winds around here in Summer, due to climate change. Time will tell.

I haven't posted here for a while, as having got the hull done in January progress has become slower, building deadwood and the keel pattern. I had a trip to the wonderful town of B'oness, a Victorian jewel surrounded by oil refineries, where Ricky the foreman at Ballantines Foundry declared that my effort should just about serve as a pattern, so the keel will be cast in Scotland at one of our oldest family companies, now in the seventh generation.

I'm now coating the hull and turnover day draws nearer.