Yarning His Way To Brittany

Ian Stephen’s Brittany Weblog

8 September 2008

It’s a tricky breeze to begin with. Good for getting a feel for the boat under sail. Like most fairly modern style yachts she’s very manoevrable under sail and power. But. The ‘but’ is the price you pay. That broad shape which gives you space aboard and the underwater shape that lets her turn on a tanner (as we used to say) gives her a certain quirk.

When you have a bit too much sail up for the gusts she’ll round right up into the wind without asking and lift her rudder out of the water. You’ll have guessed that the consequences of this interesting behaviour include a loss of all steering.
The solution (longer term) is to reduce the amount of sail. But you also need to develop co-ordination so that the rope controlling the main sail is freed in the gusts. This slackens off tension so the powerful shape vanishes from the sail. It’s just cloth for as long as you want. No longer an aircraft wing. This is called dumping the main.

So we rehearsed calling the word ‘dump’ when the gusts came and soon we didn’t have to say anything at all. We put a second reef in to make the sail smaller and went out past the headland to play, just on the turn of the tide south. The local turbulence didn’t last long. We settled to it with dark coming up. A positive force giving us access to all these tribes of stars. Guy, used to clear Canadian winter skies, talked me through some. That ‘W’ shape is Casseopia.

We look for loose gear or lines, above or below deck, which could cause trouble when we start to jump. The sailor’s routine preparation for battle. My turn on the pans so I make the stew while we’re in the lee of the land. I like the limits of the galley of a boat – it’s a tight form – haiku cooking. Guy, a veteran of outdoors expeditions is a master. He gleaned dessert. A Canadian on Islay found fat sweet brambles. Scurvy is now unlikely.

In clear water we decided she could take a good bit more and gave the full mainsail a try. She gained speed but was still comfortable. The speed was as much as we wanted to get through on the one tide. The engine could rest for this leg. The process outlined above always produces a similar result, whatever the vessel. The crew start to grin but none so wide as that on the gob of the skipper who is justifiably proud of how his boat looks after us.

We were tramping, stomping, cooking on driftwood. Crackling through the constellations. Normally the watch system is pretty fixed. A three or four hour pattern by day, two or three by night. This boat works more intuitively. We sense when one is up for it, peaceful and exhilarated at the same time and good for another hour. Or needing to rest the eyes and appreciate the surfing motion from down below.

Our tidal atlas is pencilled to show the movement hour by hour for this very night. And the current does pretty much as predicted. Strangely the wind does too. It might be a shade fresher which is not a problem. Michel has the spinnaker ready to fly but we pole out the normal foresail instead in about 20 knots of breeze.

There’s a surge of power, a bit more than the electronic steering can handle so Michel asks if I’m up for hand-steering for a while. He checks the electronic chart on the computer below as I read the surges. A guy called Kenny Mobil taught me to do this on an open Lewis lugsail boat, a lot of years ago.

It works for Bonny too. You anticipate the wave getting a grip. Apply a touch of rudder then and ease it when she breaks free of her hull-speed to gain the momentum of the wave. That way you can ease her over her theoretical top speed which should be related to her waterline length.

Michel is grinning bigtime so I know we’re keeping the direction of the plot but ahead of our hopes. There’s no more talk of stopping at Bangor. We’ve altered a shade or two out into the channel where the tide might be slacker. If it’s slowing us now it’s compensated by an increase in the wind strength. We’re eating up the miles. Steady at over 6 knots and kissing 7 when we surf.

This can’t last forever and it doesn’t. When the breeze diminishes the sun comes stronger and every wet Irish song about the mountains of Mourne. Seems just fine… We’re all boys together so of course , when the breeze falls low behind us, we fly the spinnaker and convince ourselves it will make up the speed. It looks and feels good but it still doesn’t deliver the bloody vittesse man.

A word about language. It’s a fine mix of franglais aboard as Michel and me are determined to free off the rust from our vocabularies. Mine was never that huge but as the actress said it’s what you do with it. The expert translations of Guy are reserved for navigational issues. A good passage is better than drink or silicon spray in terms of lubrication. We’ve made the right call, together, and the three of us know it. Jean’s high sail on the bigger boat comes up well astern of us in excellent visibility in the Irish Sea.

He’s on the VHF. He can’t believe it’s us, an hour or two ahead, looking good to catch a Guiness in Howth. How could that happen? We rehearse our story about flying the kite all night. Since Jean must have caught a green and white glimpse of it. Entirely effing appropriate as we crossed the sea-border.

© Ian Stephen, 2008

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