Londoners often comment that you can wait hours for a bus
and then three will appear all at the same time. There was a TV programme about
this recently where the mathematics of the phenomenon were explained and yes it
seems that buses do have a power of attraction to each other. I couldn’t hope
to replicate the maths to explain it but essentially if buses leave the same
location at say ten minute intervals along the same route, they will tend to
bunch up during the course of their journey. The first bus has to stop at every
stop, the second bus less so, because the first bus has picked up all the
passengers. In effect the later buses tend to travel faster and catch the
first.
What has this to do with buying a new boat, well not a lot
except that having spend a fairly lazy year looking for a new boat, and
renovating a house in France – and guess what – a number of factors coincide to
make this not the ideal time to become the owner of a boat requiring major
work. Firstly, having stepped out of mainstream nine to five full-time work, I
now find myself in demand as a sort of fixer, and I have just agreed to
undertake a project described as ‘maybe ten days work’, Well, already I know it’ll
take a good deal longer than that. 
Secondly, the house renovation has reached a critical stage.
The ground floor is wet cement, I’m ‘camping’ on the upper floors, access via a
ladder, cooking on a single burner camping stove and washing up in the bath.
And finally, winter is on the doorstep – with lots of rain and wind – not the
perfect weather for renovating anything – house or boat. And so I look back to
those idilic wasted days of summer and autumn when I should have been getting
on with things rather than dreaming.
Still the good news is that the boat is here with a
beautifully painted green hull and she is parked up in the prettiest boatyard I
have ever seen.
First job is to make a kind of list, I guess, of all the
obvious tasks, and then determine to best order of work. Actually, two lists
might be better than one - a list for dry days and a list for wet ones. A bonus
with this boat is a charcoal stove in the cabin so no matter how cold and wet,
I should still be able to move something forward. Who knows, if the house
renovation doesn’t pick up speed I may have to relocate to the boat for a while
anyway.
The delivery, by the way, was pretty uneventful but there
was one funny incident when I met Mike at a pre-arranged rendezvous so that I
could direct him for the final few miles along the back-roads to the boatyard.
We had agreed to meet at Joe’s bar, by the harbour at
Plouer. Joe buys the drinks from the local supermarket and sells them from his trailer
on the quayside. Mike’s wife who accompanied Mike, asked Joe for a coffee. Well
he tried his best, borrowing a spoonful of Nescafe from the local marina
office, a couple of sugars from the boatshed next door and using his microwave to
get some heat into it. There was no milk – but well, if you ask for something
exotic, as Joe explained, you need to give him a bit more notice.
Seaward
Like anyone, you are going to have to prioritize. I imagine your house is going to gobble up most of your time, and rightly so if you want to keep that first mate of yours, so you'll have to keep your boat list fairly short this first winter. A good guideline: make a list of the essentials -- the things that *must* be done on the boat this winter -- then order them by priority.
ReplyDeleteIf you get the first third done, you'll be doing better than most. That's why you need to be very tough when prioritizing.
Here's what I would do:
1. Join the Westerly Owner's Association. Advice from genuine experts can save you a lot of trouble. The trick is identifying the experts.
2. Figure out what you've got. If it were me, I'd rig the boat (on a calm day). This should be a 2 man job at the most with your boat and you should be able to do it yourself, with a bit of time and perhaps a few emails to the WOA forum. You want to handle and inspect every bit of the rigging, from the masthead on down. This is the only way to figure out what bits are missing or need to be replaced. Stays and shrouds *should* be okay, but check them anyway by running some cotton wool over them to make sure there are no hooks that may indicate the wires are starting to come apart. Check all the halyards, sheets, and other lines. Old boats tend to have a collection of crappy, worn out lines. Don't get cheap in this area. With rope, you get what you pay for (ask me how I know this.) Buy anything you can; make a list of things you'll have to order.
3. Make sure it all works smoothly. Most boats are horribly neglected because the owner leaves it to the yard and the yard doesn't give a damn. Also, boats tend to be 'modified' over the years. Sometimes because the owner wants to 'improve' something, or (even more common) because a new owner doesn't really understand how the boat was meant to be rigged. These sort of rigging errors tend to get passed from owner to owner, thus cementing the errors in place. The WOA should help you figure out how the boat was supposed to be rigged, originally. Since the Nomad was designed by a genuine expert, you should trust Rayner's original plan if it differs from anything the previous owner told you. If the boat has any roller furling gear, give that your special attention. Fix anything you can; make a list of the rest.
4. Do a sanity check, particularly on any deviation from the original design. Are you really going to be able to operate that piece of gear when it's blowing Force 8 in the Channel? If not, rethink it. This is where some genuine expert help can be invaluable.
5. Inspect the sails. Old sails often need to be re-stitched. It must have been a sailor who said a stitch in time saves nine. You can live with stained or out of shape sails, as long as the seams don't blow out at a most inconvenient time.
6. Get that engine inspected and serviced by a genuine expert. You must have 100% confidence in that engine when you leave the dock in the spring.
If you make the boat seaworthy, you can do some good, safe sailing next summer, even if the cabin is not quite up to your standards. If you focus on the cabin first (a natural inclination), you might not be able to sail safely, or at all.
Have fun!
I thought of two other things that should go on your list: checking your anchoring systems (two, minimum), and safety/navigation equipment.
ReplyDeleteI would never leave the mooring without two anchors, because in my experience, you often need the second anchor to save the boat. I include a good, hard dinghy in the list of anchor gear, because when you need to get out that second anchor, you usually need the dinghy.
Running lights are the usual weak link in the safety gear. Lights that were bright enough for 1960, might not cut it today. The lights are just as bright, but the background light they need to shine against is much brighter. The smaller the boat, the brighter the lights should be ;-) I started out with oil lights, quickly switched to electric ones, and this summer replaced them with LEDs. I'm finally satisfied that I can be seen by other boats in almost all conditions.
I should not have exaggerated to make one point above: No little boat should be out in a Force 8 wind. With modern weather forecasting, there's no reason to be caught out in one. I never have and hope I never am. Force 6 is probably the most you need to prepare for, and I'd do my best to avoid that, too!