Keep on - Keep turning Left

I’m sure many of you will have seen Dylan Winter’s “Keep Turning Left” series of video’s on youtube, which document his circumnavigation of these British Isles in an elderly Mirror Offshore yacht.

I got a really nice email from Dylan the other day and asked him for some more background to his trip.

Episode one started locally, on the Isle of Wight, covering a trip from Bembridge to Chichester Harbour.

Dylan admits that in the early stages of the trip he was just working out how to combine the camera and the sailing. In his own words “Lots of wobble- vision and wind noise in the early vids.”

Does anyone remember Hot Metal the sit com from the 1980’s, editor Russell Spam (Thomas Hardy) introduced a different version of “wobble vision” on page 3 of the fictional newspaper – send me an email if you want more detail!

Dylan has been doing both sailing and working as a cameraman for many years – but not at the same time. He seems to have mastered both disciplines, his later progams are all shot HD.

He reports on the trip.

“When I started out I had intended to do just a series of coastal hops – like most circumnavigators. I thought it might take me two summers. But work commitments meant that I stopped on the Medway for two months. I hired a drying pontoon mooring for £10 a month and had a fantastic time on a river I barely knew existed. I now feel bad about having swept past some great rivers – the Arun looks wonderful from google earth (fantastic resource) and to spend just one night in Chichester harbour was bordering on the criminal.

I then realized that to sail past the mouth of Britain’s splendid rivers was a terrible wasted opportunity – so plans changed and the journey is much more about the rivers than the sea passages. I have resolved to go as far up all the rivers I come across, as my keels, mast and tide will allow – and I am even prepared to drop the mast and venture inland. The upper Medway was beautiful but I hate the sound of the engine. I am working on a viable sculling set up.

I love old boats and birds – and even mud”

Just as a bit of background Dylan is really an east coast sailor and used to race E-Boats and Sonatas, as well as dinghies (Enterprises, Firefly’s, GP14s and Hornets).

“The reason for doing the journey is that I feel it is a bit sad to have lived on an island all my life and never sailed around it.

I know the mirror offshore is probably one of the ugliest boats ever made – but it is the smallest boat I could find with a diesel inboard and a separate heads – mine was built in 1965 in the days before they invented osmosis.

And it’s British.
It sails like a slug compared to the E-Boat and Sonata but it does offer full crouching headroom, two six foot six inch berths.

But it was cheap (£2,200) and sits on the mud or sand or concrete and I intend to keep on abandoning her to return home for work.

I can lower the mast by myself as it is only 17 foot long – I lay it along the cabin top and put a giant tarpaulin over the whole thing. It’s a mobile boat shed.

I have a massive list of jobs to do on it – but decided to set off and do them as I go. You would be amazed to find out how many “essentials” seem unnecessary – although a gear box that allowed me to select fwd or reverse without removing the companionway steps would be nice. The roller reefing is in a pretty dire condition and the boat leaks a little – but I don’t know where from. “

Dylan’s in good company with his choice of a Mirror Offshore, I recall an account in the early 80’s of a trip the length of the Danube in one, when the Danube was still in the eastern block.

You can find his videos

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=DCCD9E425AB79637

The old ones are all here in the right order

http://www.youtube.com/user/KeepTurningLeft

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=9D27C44BBBB3FD10

Finally Dylan would welcome any feedback from sailors about the mix of boats, birds and battles.

I think it’s all great, clearly the more gaffers the better, I also agree with him about the rivers, please leave your comments.

Sailing Vicar

This seemed like an appropriate story for the Easter wekend.

I needed a hand while stepping the mizzen mast the other day, so walked along the pontoon and asked one of the other boats owners if he would would mind helping out, by holding the mast steady, while I attached the shrouds. The mizzen is only the size of a large dingy mast, but a helping hand makes all the difference.


The owner of this little yellow sloop was happy to help out and as boat owners do, we got chatting. Turns out he is the vicar of the local church St Leonards in Bursledon the delightful building (below) in Bursledon dates back to the 12th century.

Back in the Water

One of the good things about living close to the boatyard, is being able to take equipment off the boat and store it safely for the winter. Here's my father-in-law wheeling the main mast back to the boat. It's been in the garage since November, safe and dry. With four new coats of varnish as a "touch up" over winter, the spars are looking really nice (see post Winter Work).

Greta is a Cornish Yawl, built by Cornish Crabbers she was in fact the prototype which was owned and fitted out by the designer Roger Dongray and exhibited at the Earls Court Boat show London in 1988. Over winter she's been ashore at a local boatyard where I replaced the cutlass bearing and repacked the stern gland along with the normal winter work of polishing and anti fouling.

When we arrived with the mast, Greta was already on the slipway, there was a big spring tide and the yard was taking the opportunity to launch as many boats as possible ahead of the upcoming Easter weekend.

Just as I was motoring her down the river to her berth there was an unexpected hailstorm and of course I had forgotten my wet weather gear. I got completely soaked. However the sun eventually came back out once she was safely on her mooring.

This is Greta at the end of last season, one of the really frustrating aspects of a counter stern is the water splashing over the boot line staining her otherwise gleaming topsides. This year I'm going to make much more of an effort to keep her well scrubbed. But then again I might just go sailing!!!

Talk about the weather

Talking about the weather is a very English thing and the past weekend certainly gave us something to talk about.

Saturday morning, fine and warm hinted at a nice day in prospect. I was busy with other things, so by the time I got down to the boatyard in mid afternoon it had turned cloudy and cold, a chilly wind had set in.

I walked home past the hard just as the members of the Dinghy Cruising Association were recovering their boats.

The small party consisted of a couple of Wayfarer's, two smaller boats which looked like Wanderer's (the smaller 14 boat also designed by Ian Proctor) and a Mirror dinghy.

DCA members had travelled from Guildford, Farnham and Bordon. Launching at Swanwick Hard up by Bursledon Bridge. They sailed, down the Hamble River and across Southampton Water to Calshot , returning a couple of hours after low water to recover their boats.

Gem the dog waited patiently while the boats were loaded onto the trailers.

We woke in the middle of Saturday night to hear rain lashing at the windows and the wind whistling down the chimney as the forecast gale swept through. Then Sunday morning dawned with clear skies and bright sunshine, so I took the opportunity for an early morning row down the Hamble.

The river was deserted apart from a few Sunday morning race crews getting their boats ready to race in the aptly named RSYC Frostbite Series.

Some of the local wildlife were making the best of the day; a group of crows had found a comfortable spot perched on top of the masts of a few boats in the river. These boats were all moored where a bend in the river gave them shelter from the wind. The crows were perched at the mast heads, high enough to catch the first rays of the low winter sunshine as the sun rose over the nearby woods. I counted 14, one or two per boat, of these clever crows.

With the rowing boat put away, I’d worked up something of an appetite so we went down to Stokes Bay to one of my favourite cafe's for a very late breakfast. On the water the local Laser fleet from Stokes Bay sailing club were out in force and enjoying the brisk conditions as the clouds which signalled the next depression swept in.

The local forecast was rain by 13.00 as the tail end of a depression whipped up from the channel, sure enough at one fifteen it started raining, by then we were sitting comfortably indoors.

If our weather was mixed, have a look at thye posting on South West Sea Kayaking just down the coast in Dorset.

Whats in a name?

Well actually quite a lot.

I was recently in discussion about a prize that is to be offered for the first “Yawl” to finish a race for traditional and working boats.

Sounds pretty simple, because most sailors know what a yawl is, right? Well maybe not.

The yacht club bore piped up "what's the problem, a yawl has the mizzen aft the rudder stock, a ketch has it forward !"

Well that may be a widely accepted definition, but if we agree that premise, then no boat with a stern hung rudder could be said to be yawl rigged – where would the mizzen go?

Since the prize was offered by the family of someone who famously sailed (well famous in local circles) a yawl rigged working boat of precisely this type, that couldn’t be correct.

Perhaps one of the most famous of this type of working boats is the Falmouth Quay Punt - stern hung rudder, therefore the mizzen must be forward of the rudder post - sorry can't be a Yawl - hmmm.

More curious still, take the Salcombe Yawl – oops that too has the mizzen forward of the rudder – what a dilemma, maybe they need to rename it the Salcombe Ketch!!

Given that so many English working boats had both a stern hung rudder and a small mizzen, maybe the position of the mizzen relative to the rudder isn't the whole story. This seems to be confirmed by some further research.

yawl / yôl/ • n. a two-masted fore-and-aft-rigged sailboat with the mizzen boom overhanging the stern.

Well that's a possibility which offers more flexibility and accommodates the many traditional working boats with the rudder fitted to a transom stern. But, while this description relieves the problem of mizzen location relative to the rudder, I’ve seen plenty of ketches where the mizzen overhangs the stern, so this can’t be correct.

The famous American Naval Architech Francis Herreshoff appears to support the view that relationship between rudder and mizzen are not critical when he states: “"Yawl had nothing to do with rudder placement relative to the mizzen - a yawl rig is the sail and mast configuration that suits a Yawl boat". A helpful if a somewhat circular argument, but you have to take Mr H seriously.

One of the problems seems to be that the accepted use of "Yawl" comes from the yachting fraternity, where the counter stern has been common place since the beginning of the 20th century. Stepping the mizzen on the counter stern, behind the rudder made sense and avoided all the complicated and un-yacht like contrivances such as a cranked tiller, which is necessary if the mizzen is stepped immediately ahead of the rudder.

This influence from “yachtsmen” was also very strong in America, where Yawls came into prominence under the CCA rating rule in the 1950s. The CCA rule did not measure the sail area carried between the main and the mizzen. This meant that the added sail area of the mizzen staysails or mizzen spinnakers was free of any rating penalty. These designs were most definitely yachts with counter sterns and the mizzen stepped behind the rudder. Memorable examples are Ondine, Figaro, Maruffa, Escapade, Dorade, Sabre and Carina II. All clearly Yawls by any definition.


Not surprisingly some designers took things to extremes, Bill Luders created a yawl that had no mainsail and sailed under genoas and mizzen flying sails. It was called Storm, and without a mainsail, it had a very low rating and won everything in sight. This upset the rule makers so they changed the rule to require a mainsail. Next season Luders showed up with Storm — at 44 feet LOA — sporting a mainsail the size of a Laser's. He won again.

Going further back to the early part of the 20th Century, Henry Coleman Folkard, in his book Sailing Boats from Around the World; says of the yawl rigged boat, “the mizzen is stepped further aft (than the ketch) near the stern post - and is much smaller in proportion to the mainsail (in comparison with a ketch mizzen)”.

This seems a most useful definition for our purpose, which applies to working craft and yachts alike.

Coleman Folkhard was enthusiastic about the yawl rigg in his summary "For comfort and convenience the yawl rigg is one of the best and handiest that is known, whether for yacht or pleasure boat large or small” – he goes on to say -“ it (yawl rigg) is admirably adapted for a shooting or fishing yacht; in fact no better rigg is known for either purpose".

In summary a reasonable description of the yawl therefore might be “a two masted fore-and –aft rigged sailing boat, where the mizzen is smaller than the main mast and is stepped close to the rudder stock; and where the mizzen is small in proportion to the mainsail”.

Or at least it might be if it were not for the fact that Francis Herreshoff , Coleman and others distinguish between yawl and yawl rigged. If then our definition above describes a “yawl rigged “ boat what then is a yawl?

Warrington Baden-Powell commenting on "canoe yawls" in Forest and Stream, 10/17/1889: refers to -" a double ended boat as used by a man-of-war similar to a ship’s jolly boat or pinnance, normally rowed by four to six oars".

He continues "The term yawl has nothing to do with rig; it is an indefinitely old sea term for a sea-coast model of boat which was of long form and light construction, used for both sailing and rowing, without fixed ballast; such boats to this day are the Yarmouth yawls, the Norway yawls and the coble.”

"A work on naval architecture of 1793 describes the 'yawls' carried then on men-of-war 'for sailing and rowing' (like this one on Gavin Atkin's In the Boatshed Blog)as practically of a form we should now call whaleboats, i.e., sharp at each end; and further, the same authority says of the Norway yawl: 'Of all such boats this yawl seems best calculated for a high sea; it will venture out to great sea distances when a stout ship can hardly carry any sail."

In conclusion are we agreed, the yawl being a type of boat while yawl rigged describes the sail plan which accommodates both yachts and working craft?

Not so fast.

Here is a delightful 1903 Long Island Oyster Sound Sloop looking very much yawl rigged.

And finally my favourite is “Favourite” a “Whitstable Oyster Yawl” which is certainly not a rowing boat. Nor according to the restoration team is it yawl rgged.

“Favourite is an oyster yawl. The rig, perhaps surprisingly, is a gaff cutter and not a yawl which would usually mean a second smaller mast abaft the rudder post. As far as we know few, if any, of the Whitstable oyster yawls had a second mast rigged as a true yawl. We do not really know the origin of the term yawl in this usage - can you help?"

If you have comment or input on any of the above I’d be delighted to hear from you.

Please email me

Volvo Ocean Race

I went to get a haircut yesterday. 'Little Sean' the barber, who knows I sail, announced that he was "doing the Volvo Ocean Race".

Suitable impressed, I asked him when it was leaving, only to be told that he's an online competitor in a virtual version of the race.

Check out the link http://www.volvooceanracegame.org/home.php there are over 100,000 competitors sailing virtual yachts around the virtual world.

If you read Tillerman http://propercourse.blogspot.com/ who's Laser sailing exploits include trying to sail more than 100 days during 2008, a virtual Laser event might be just the thing,or maybe not.

Winter Work

Three masts, three booms, two gaffs and a bowsprit, all needing a few coats of varnish before the start of the season - there are also two sets of oars which could do with some attention but they will have to wait!!

The aim is to have them all looking like poured honey, but the reality is they will look smart, but no where near the polished perfection to which I secretly aspire.

Work, life and getting out on the water all get in the way!