SOLO SAILOR

According to Bernard Moitessier, I am not a natural borne solo sailor.
I think that nothing is better than sharing the joy of sailing and a fair share of the work, with a good companion. However I do sail solo a lot of the time and discovered many years ago that being trapped in harbour waiting for crew did not suit my temperament!
The following are ways of going about single-handing that I have evolved over the years. They are very far from a ‘how to do it’ instruction kit! I offer them in a spirit of humility to any sailor who is nervous about giving single handing a try.
It should go without discussion that you the Skipper have spent considerable time sailing your boat in light and strong conditions, under main or foresail or both. You are totally familiar with boat systems, handling under power and coming along side. In short, you know your boat.

1. Before going off on any sail longer than a lazy afternoon day-sail, I spend the night aboard at anchor or on a mooring. My pontoon berth is far too protected and insulates me from the motion of the sea, so physically tuning in to my boat is not possible. Next morning, after a light breakfast, I set off before the day breeze has built up to its full strength.

2. I have a five day weather forecast when available. Even though it is only accurate for about three days as a rule the best guess of a professional is useful. I have a navigation plan, which can change if things are not as expected. I keep a plot on my paper chart and in my navigators logbook every hour.

3. I set sail under main alone, not motor. I work my way clear of moorings and then unroll the genoa when I can set a good tack. For most of my sailing life I sailed boats with hank-on foresails, but I’m getting a bit lazy as I get older.

4. I take short hops; no more than fifteen or so miles, or about six hours duration. I avoid overnight sailing for the first few days.
It is a mistake to dread sailing at night. Indeed it can be easier to navigate, observing other vessels lights, than it is making out what they are doing on a hazy summer day. Going into an unknown harbour at night is another matter. I find the leading lights get confused and hidden in a background shore-side clutter. Under these circumstances I hove to till daylight.

5. When I am clear of traffic, or expect to be for a while, I fiddle with the sails and the elastic chord holding the tiller and try to balance the boat. I want to be able to make tea, check the log, move around the boat and not be chained to the tiller for the duration of the passage.

The months race by and new year drags itself to an end. Now I am flying under false colours. Yes still a Gaff owner, but also an old man fallen under the spell of a slick young chick! Well a Marieholm Folkboat actually. The days lengthen and brighten, but not in the shed where all is still stygian. By March the Folkboat is ready to launch, the Gaffer, still inundated with rope, paint pots, grease, tar and sticky rigging will take the rest of the month. By mid April the seductive Marieholm and I have sailed together nine times and the Gaffer has a new owner. I feel guilty, the easy life of roller reefing, GRP and unpainted decks seems effete. But slicing up to windward, helm light as a feather is a compensation!

How swiftly the years have gone by! It seems only a few months ago that I was trapped in a giant shed with the other ‘Mad old Men’ working in the stygian gloom on our labour intensive boats. Now that shed time has come again, while outside the third, (or is it fourth?) almost hurricane force wind of winter 2011 churns up the loch and shreds the sails of the unworldly. Varnishing a wooden mast is not a once and for all task. After five years (and a touch up) the varnish is cracked and must be stripped down to bare wood. The mast rests on a couple of waist high trestles. Its length is some thirty feet and at five inches in diameter that comes to X square feet? This is an area I don’t want to calculate as I know it is sneakily growing every time I look away. The scraper is brand new, a tungsten carbon blade in a metal handle. It is a joy to use. The lightest of strokes, one hand pulling the other controlling the pressure, produces a delicate ribbon of varnish, curling and falling to the floor. If find that rocking from one foot to the other helps keeping the action smooth. Hours of gentle pendulum activity pass and the floor is covered with a snow of dead varnish. Essentially the mast is bald. Bits of me hurt but a shower will cure that and the first stage is done.

It is late May and all dreams of cosy wood-burning stoves have vanished in the heat haze. Now the juices are stimulated by thoughts of a fresh young Jib to go with our splendid new Mainsail. Then there is the depth-sounder. It failed again on Saturday, gibbering nonsensical numbers while we flirted with fog. Much more of this and I'll slip back forty years and start using a lead-line! We know the depth sounder is demented by static, which is created when the prop shaft turns. (with or without the motor being on) This can be 'earthed', to the anode eliminating the problem. However, if the shaft gets greasy (from the gland that stops the sea dripping in) the 'Electro Eliminator' doesn't work. Mostly this happens when we are coming into a tricky anchorage or navigating in fog. Yesterday I cut up a plastic fitting, designed to stop oars slipping through rowlocks and glued and cable clipped it, bedded with some lovely black gunge, to the shaft between the electro-thingy and the greaser.
It works in harbour. I shall test it for real soon!

Today it is hot. Yesterday was hot and, miracles of miracles, they say tomorrow will be hot! If it lasts to the end of the week it may be our summer. So, today Holly and me and my long suffering wife went sailing. Tacking up the Holy Loch in a force two and a half was like a mouse nibbling cheese. Very slow but methodical. The cheese vanished at Strone point, so we lay becalmed and had lunch. Then with much reluctance fired up the trusty engine to twenty thousand RPM and raced at all of four knots (on the GPS so it must be true) up Loch Long to Ardentinny. There we lazed, hove to under mainsail drinking tea and disliking the submarine pens across the way until a gentle force two arrived urge us homeward. It is incredible how much fun you can have in a sailboat doing about half a knot! Lovely chuckling sounds from the bow, delectable curves in the sails. We arrivedhome relaxed and happy, set to make a perfect landing on our not-so-easy to reach berth. Then I accepted an offer of help from a bystander ashore!
How quickly chaos reigned. What does one say in those few pregnant seconds? No thank I don't trust strangers? Go away I know what I'm doing after 40 years? What is your experience of stopping boats slowly? Being a softy I said "Thank you, take the bow line." (the one we didn't need to use) He seized it enthusiastically and cleated it to the pontoon, causing Holly's stern to swing out violently! Fortunately I had stepped ashore and cleated the midships mooring line just in time. Once I had sorted things out I thanked him, in what I hope was a polite manner. After all Holly was fine, only my wish for a perfectly executed last act was thwarted!

Today my boat Holly bit me, but it was probably my fault. One of the vital tackles, called the 'Throat', is not set up perfectly. It works well, pulling up the heavy gaff main with little effort, yet the way the fall rubs across the other ropes will cause trouble in the future if it is not changed. So, around ten this first-of-April morning I got a neighbour to come and haul on a rope attached to my seldom used Bosun's Chair. The tackle attached to the chair is called the 'Peak' and is only three-to-one, which means he must pull down a good seventy pounds to lift my two hundred plus up the mast. So, here we are on this bright but freezing cold day; half sitting in this chair-thing, which resembles an oversized blue nappy, trying to help lift my weight up Holly's mast by pulling on adjacent ropes and clamping my legs around her to stop the newly violent wind from batting me around. Then Holly bit me! Technically the sleeve of my extra large wind-chill-defying sweater got pulled into the sheave on the moving block attached to my 'Nappy'. But I know it was Holly giving me a love bite!