Posted by Jock on August 24, 2007 at 10:30:44 from 87.105.81.146 user Jock.
In Reply to: Re: Well, I find the shape of the Pye End Buoy as interesting as Beckfoot's plumbing... posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on August 24, 2007 at 23:44:07:
The writing may be OK but the seamanship certainly isn't!
In actual fact, Clarke received a seamanship award for his exploit. However, I have, on occasion, wondered about the wisdom of his passage.
Clarke was a good sailor, but no bargeman. After buying J & M, the awful truth dawned on me that although I knew how to sail, I didn't know how to sail this... .
He gradually refits her, scrounging bits from the fleet of barges laid up after WW II, and teaches himself the art of bargemanship. But to captain a sailing vessel which can load 115 tons of cargo, without being born into the trade is difficult enough. Moreover, during the last 5 years of his 11 year stewardship she is moored at Brigg on the Humber where her three-inch-thick pitchpine decks had taken the brunt of all weathers without a drop of sea-water to relieve their agony: salt water retains moisture and pickles wood; fresh water, in which she had floated for five years, only wets to rot-an insidious decay.
As J & M's condition and Clarke's financial position gradually worsen, he and his family make the decision to sail south and sell the barge. This is the point where the book starts.
A number of incidents take a hand in shaping the voyage. His two adult hands prove more hindrance than help, and the final voyage starts without them. He is helped by his wife Mollie and his son Kester, but he has an very singular approach wrt. the former. To speak of a wife as a 'chief mate'... is ridiculous; a woman's work afloat, unless she captains her own ship or is a professional, will never allow her to be more than a temporary stand-in as a very un-able seaman... .
Clarke had been at the helm for two and a half days, the breeze was easterly Force 3, occasionally gusting Force 4. A picnic on deck. Off our starboard bow, only a couple of miles or so away, Orfordness headland and white lighthouse were in brilliant contrast against the blue seas and sky. The tide was on the turn. We'd be able to make Harwich Harbour that afternoon even if the wind died away to nothing.
He is too tired to see the first warning signs. If I had not been so tired, so lethargic, so confident that we were nearly there, I would have noticed the warnings in the sky... . Then the wind comes. The wind had backed four points. Almost dead astern it was coming at us like an express train... .
In spite of the gale, he gets the staysail down, At this point they are on port tack so can't head for Harwich without gybeing or wearing ship. Their first attempt to tack fails, their second succeeds and they are on a heading straight for the cliffs at Bawdsey with massive weather helm. It was quite impossible to bear away; it was as much as I could to hold her on a reach.
For forty minutes they struggle to brail the mainsail. They are still carrying a topsail! Just short of the Deben Bar they bear away on a new course heading for the Cork Lightship. It is at this point when we joined the crew in my post 28883. I told myself that it would only be a matter of minutes before we were behind Languard Point and into sheltered water where we could anchor, but I just could not bring myself to turn and face the wind anymore. The wind had beaten me into submission at last; I had faced it fairly and squarely for three days and two nights-now I was finished. I couldn't take any more.
***** ***** was the simple way out.
(I'm not going to post a spoiler on TarBoard, but if anyone wants to buy me a beer I might consent to e-mail an account of the eventual outcome!)
[For A.C-B's eyes only. He gybes.]