Cold Return to Normality

Today the weather is absolutely dire, low visibility, constant rain, strong wind. Although I’m glad the boat is ashore I’m reminded that such conditions have resulted in some of the most memorable trips.

This is the first time this Century when a group of small boat lunatics hasn’t assembled at Toberonochy on the Isle of Luing, thanks to the Johnson Plague. That weekend is incredibly special, with overtones of return to childhood, challenging trips in small open boats, most of which we have built ourselves, and most of all an extraordinary bunch of people from incredibly diverse backgrounds united by an interest in traditional boat types.

My yellow boat, the Kelpie, was built by me in 2006 specifically for the muster. I wanted something primarily seaworthy that could carry up to four but also be easy to single hand, with an interesting, safe rig and lots of bits of string to keep the crew busy. She’s an open boat, fifteen feet long, with a lot of displacement which makes her stable but a hard pull if you have to row her.

The design is based on an old New England salmon wherry, drawn by Walt Simmonds of Duck Trap Boatworks in Maine. I’ve changed quite a lot, including the rig, which is a sprit sail cut for me in 1988 by the late Gayle Heard of Tollesbury, one of very few with the ability to do it. He’d made it for another New England boat I’d built before, a Swampscott racing dory that had proved to be just too racy. Here's a photo of her under her original rig; the sprit sail tamed her but when the boat went to Angus, seen here, I kept the sail.

Decades later it still sets perfectly. At first the wherry wouldn’t sail properly to windward, something my designer friend Richard Pierce sorted by advising me to move the centreboard forward. Perhaps New Englanders usually sail in reaching winds. Richard also donated a jib, which helps greatly going into the wind.

At the end of the event in 2012 my crew had to go home promptly, leaving me with a single handed trip. The forecast on the previous evening was dire, offering a strong cold North-easterly building up during the day with rain arriving from mid-day. I decided to set off, because if things became impossible that wind would blow me back to where I’d started from and I’d be no worse off. With an escape route available you should always go.

My friend Brice took some photos of my departure, see below. I got the jib up at the start, but it soon had to come back down as the wind freshened. As a result progress was slow, with the Kelpie slamming a lot in the nasty short chop, then the waves gradually got bigger and she really got into her groove, charging along with her rail a couple of inches clear, luffing in the puffs and eating up the distance to windward. In the squalls bathfuls of water would come in over the side and it was tricky pumping it out, a bit like wrestling with an eel while still steering and keeping control of the sail.

After a couple of hours Kelpie and I were well into Loch Melfort when the rig fell down. The sail is tensioned by a long, bendy spar, the sprit, held in place by a line curiously, for Glaswegians anyway, termed the snotter. This had parted during a squall, leaving the rig accidentally scandalised and flapping like mad, quite useless for further windward progress. It would be easy to fix, provided I could make it safely to land to do so.

There was no possibility of rowing up to windward to the safe, North side of Loch Melfort. The South side was quite close, but a dangerous lee shore with waves breaking on the rocks. The exception was one little inlet with a bit of shelter, but I saw at once that it was inaccessible, being barred by the lines of black buoys of the mussel farm, fastened with steel wires along the surface stretching for several hundred metres.

Mussels have never been successfully cultivated there, due to the prevalence of seasquirts, but the Swiss company who “own” this bit of Scotland’s seabed keep the floats there in order to preserve the value of their planning permission. This is exactly the sort of problem some of us have tried time and again to bring to the attention of the authorities who license these things, to absolutely no avail. The general public have the inalienable right to use the surface of the sea for the purposes inter alia of navigation and recreation, but the Crown Estate, who hold the seabed in trust for us, ignore these rights and make money by granting leases of the seabed. Surely the Swiss, with no seas of their own, should stick to tax dodging, cuckoo clocks and occasional sorties into the America's Cup?

Downwind from the mussel farm was another nasty lee shore with waves breaking on sharp boulders. The only course was to run downwind to the shelter of the point at Arduaine, losing over a mile of hard won distance to windward, passing close inshore inside the reef, where there's a deep narrow passage before beaching on a nice sheltered sandy bay, completely out of the wind. There I had something to eat, fixed the problem and tied in a reef to reduce the sail for the return to the fray.

I relaunched and there now followed a hard beat of about three hours into a really cold North-easterly with occasional squalls of sleet, each tack bringing us closer to home and a hot shower.

Hugh Gray's Viking Funeral

Hugh Gray 1947 to 2016

"He loved nothing more than filling his boat with friends and going for a sail.

Hugh was kind, generous, self-effacing and deeply intelligent.

And a good friend to very many of us.

He will be missed." 

Brice Avery

It was very appropriate for Hugh to be given a Viking Funeral and it seems that most of the island were in attendance at Atlantic Centre a week or so ago.

Hugh had been one of the Bilderglug people since the first muster on Toberonochy in 2001. For the uninitiated the muster is similar to Bilderberg because of its total secrecy, which I am breaking with this post, and the fact that it happens in a lovely place, but also rather different, because the people who go are unfailingly nice, decent, interesting members of the human race who value the company of our fellows and the natural environment. At least that's our story.

It was quite emotional to say farewell to the first of our stalwarts to die. Will the muster end up as a sort of Hebridean tontine with sometime around the year 2090 some poor ancient sitting on the shore pondering a fleet of lovely wee boats hauled up on the shingle, that he or she is too old to sail?

Here are some images from the event.

Across from the bigger island on the Belnahua

The ship, with the ghosts of former islanders looking on

The ghosts arriving on their puffer

A brisk onshore wind made things look doubtful

Farewell messages all written and stowed.

Getting an offing.

Ready to launch

Ignition

Hugh on his journey.

Well alight and still afloat.

The good ship Hede, the man himself at the helm.

Bilderglug again

Secret messages passing, of course now overheard by GCHQ and others, suggest that Bilderglug may be about to happen again, perhaps for the twelfth time.

A forecast of a light Easterly proved accurate and it was too good a morning to miss, but on Easter Sunday no buses or ferry and Vice-Admiral Sir B**** A****, Bart (applied for) doesn't have his modified Ninigret afloat yet to supply a run home. Solution - the venerable Nutshell, now nearly twenty eight and the best little tender in the world.

I got the Kelpie underway at 0800 with the Nutshell in tow and we ran down to Toberonochy before a gentle breeze with a falling tide, grounding on the slatey sand at 0945. A good cup of strong coffee, some chocolate and chat, then off under oar at 1045.

There followed a pull of 45 minutes against the tide in Shuna Sound to the North of Shuna island, about one and a quarter miles, then a half hour hike across to Right Island for a break of fifteen minutes for bananas and a drink of water.

There was then a long stretch of four and a half miles home, with a little land breeze, which sadly faded and became a fresh little Easterly just when port was in sight.

Altogether a good day was had, about seven miles rowed in two and a quarter hours in a boat under eight feet long.

Evening Sun in Argyll

It's been great weather for varnishing and the wherry Kelpie now has a fresh look to her spars.

Also a Portugese theme to her rails.

The sprit rig is great, once properly set up, which has admittedly taken some fiddling about. I've added a little jib on a bowsprit too, as we need some extra sail in the light airs that seem to be promised for this weekend.

When we run ashore for our lunch we disconnect the mainsheet and haul the sail to the mast with the brailing line. Reversing this gets us underway again in seconds.

In the evening, or if it really blows when we're out, we can lift out the whole rig, an advantage of an unstayed mast. Altogether a great system.



It's all looking good this year for that top secret event that may be happening soon.

The Toberonochy Lemon Shop

 

Each year an event takes place in conditions of secrecy only rivalled by the Bilderberg Conference, but less damaging by far to global peace and prosperity, consuming no oil whatever and attended by a much nicer bunch of people, on a small island off the West coast of Scotland.

It takes place in the open air, but participants are untroubled by the vagaries of the weather, viewing extremes of rain, strong wind and temperature as stimuli to, rather than distractions from, their water-borne adventures. In all conditions they congregate. Strong winds and adverse tides present challenges to ever-longer turns to windward; in fact one year the weather obliged with a 180 degree wind shift while the crews were lunching after tacking half a dozen nautical miles South, coinciding with high water which gave a return journey of equal unpleasantness against a cold wet Northerly and a strong ebb tide. Despite, or maybe because of, such things participants, who like those at Bilderberg are all personal invitees, return year after year.

In 2004 there was little wind and on the morning in question the fleet was becalmed under a dreich grey sky, the drizzly rain trickling down their necks. I have no photograph of that morning, as the scene was too grim for anyone to bother recording and the image above comes from a cheerier day. To add to the miserable atmosphere the Brother had brought along the Great Highland Bagpipe, with which to regale the little ships as they drifted along on the tide. 

Through the Sound came a commodious plastic-hulled vessel, which dropped anchor in Kilchattan Bay and sent a lady crew member ashore on a mission, to acquire some lemons for the gin and tonic. Asking a local resident where such a purchase could be made she got the reply "I regret, Madam, that there are no lemon shops in Toberonochy, in fact there are no shops here at all."

At that moment out on the water the Brother filled the bagpipe with blaw and started on a tragic lament, in keeping with the mood of the morning. On hearing this the lady said, obviously stunned at thinking she had gate-crashed an aquatic wake, "I'm terribly sorry to intrude on your small community in this time of grief," and made her way back embarrassed to her yacht.