Aquatic Adventure

  by Charles Oldham | 17 Apr 2008 | Permalink | Everything Else

One of the great things about working at Tideway is the varied interests we have around our normal tasks and the flexibility that the work hard, play hard culture extends.

One of my big passions outside of work is sailing (the profile picture is a bit of a clue) and when I joined Tideway I was pleased to find a number of other people in the same frame of mind. Between us we’ve had a few fun long weekends out in the Solent or working down to Poole. We’ve tried to suggest to Richard that he needs a corporate yacht, but so far we’ve failed to convince him…

A few weeks ago out of the blue I had an opportunity fall in my lap to help sail a yacht from Gosport on the South Coast up to Troon on the West Coast of Scotland. It’s a voyage of around 500 nautical miles and 10 days along the West Country, around Lands End and up the East Coast of Ireland. I’m very grateful that working with Duncan and Allan we managed to arrange things so I could take the leave at short notice.

So how was it? Well it was an amazing experience. There were three of us doing the trip: myself, Ron the owner and Robert a very experienced delivery skipper. When we started we were worried that Lady Luck was not on our side as the forecasts of strong Force 8 gales along the south coast led us to being storm bound in Weymouth for several frustrating days; I was certainly worried that I might spend much of my time not actually sailing. However on the 1st April a weather window opened and we set out across Lyme Bay aiming to round Lands End and headed for the south east corner of Ireland.

Things did not go as smoothly as we had hoped. The weather on the first overnight sail deteriorated and we had to have 2 people on watch in heavy winds and seas. I normally love sailing at night. Under sail you see the wakes actually glow with the phyto plankton, the foam a sort of glow in the dark green with bright sparkling flashes in the water, magical. But we had a lot of shipping around, which always seems to want to scare you by getting close at night. And we had no moon or stars to see the state of the sea. Just when I thought it was getting hard the visibility dropped to almost nothing. Wonderful. It is horribly disorienting not being able to see the horizon just the glow of the navigation lights, but still feel the boat power into big waves under the power of the wind, rolling and bouncing as it does. We had used far more fuel than we had expected so we put into Newlyn in the morning to refuel.

After a short break (and several cups of tea) we headed back out to catch the evening tides. Overall it was a much more pleasant night than the first. The stars were out which makes steering so much easier as you have hundreds of reference points. And it just looks beautiful, it really does, there are so many more and you can just spend ages looking up at the mast against the glittering sky. Some bits of the night were cloudy, some foggy but not much shipping apart from a fishing fleet. Such was our rate that we averaged just under 7 knots and consumed the 140 miles at, well, a rate of knots. Driving a boat at this rate through the night is a hugely exhilarating experience. At this rate we realized we would overshoot our original destination of Arklow and instead make Dublin at dawn on Thursday.

The third night we worked our way up the east Irish coast, past Wicklow and across Dublin Bay. The wind had died completely so we were motorsailing through a starry night. As we wanted to arrive at dawn we slowed down to 5 knots and drifted through the calm sea with only one man watches. The great thing about one man watches is that you get much better sleep, we ran an hour and a half on deck, three asleep. But the downside was the night was bitterly bone chillingly cold. Without the exercise of the bouncing boat it was terribly hard to keep concentration and a look out rather than hunching down out of the cold. And as we got near Dublin we got a lot of coastal freighters.

We had intended to stop for 24 hours in Howth, a small port on the north of Dublin Bay, but a weather forecast suggested we had 36 hours before more gales, possibly up to Force 9, hit the area. So we stopped for all of 20 minutes in Ireland to fill the water tanks and headed back out across the north passage and our fourth night at sea. As a quiet night progressed we all got a decent amount of sleep. 3 hours off watch gives at least 2 and a half hours if you are careful. I’d never appreciated how much of a toll sustained watches have on you but at day five at sea they are getting easier as you body adapts. With 3 of us we can get enough rest, especially when we can drop to single watches in calmer conditions or daylight. I have no idea how McArthur, Joyen and the other long distance single handed guys do it, I think I’d cease to function under those conditions. I think I appreciate now more that that type of sailing is fundamentally about sheer power of character much more than raw sailing ability. Clearly you need to be a very skilled sailor, but there are many of those in professional sailing; the single handers remain a relatively rare breed.

Just as dawn was breaking Ron came on watch. There was a bright morning star to steer Aurora to and she was now coping well with a fast sail her powerful rig powering her through the seas with only a little slamming to distract us. Suddenly somehow as we turned into the Firth of Clyde it felt she knew she was coming home and, with her owner at the helm, seemed almost eager to see her new cruising ground. I don’t think the grin left Ron’s face for the rest of the day. None of us felt like sleeping, we still had 40 miles to go but it started to feel like we had done it. Robert made porridge and then toast while we powered up the coast.

As we dropped the sails for the last time off Troon’s entrance I felt a small tinge of regret. Over 5 days at sea I had come to know Aurora well and was just beginning to understand her. Yes she is the more modern design often put down as a cruising caravan, but she has an amazing set of modern sails and sails amazingly well for her type of design. While not a deep water cruiser she clearly deserved her A ocean rating and for Ron to explore the west coast with friends, go hill walking and find interesting harbors she is ideal. And having got to know her we would shortly be parting.

I learned a lot from the experience. I had been out for 36 hour stretches before to make fast passages but never several days in a row. We completed just over 500 nautical miles in 5 days of near continuous sailing. The importance of managing your sleep so you can continue to function is critical. I was also out in conditions stronger than I have been before with the support of Robert’s experience which has really raised my confidence; and it is always interesting to see how another skipper runs a boat. There are also interesting challenges to living life when your world is over at 30 degrees heel and always moving, even getting waterproof trousers and jacket on is a 10 minute task.

But I do have to say it is nice to be able to sleep for more than 2 hours in a row, and not have to clamp the kettle and pans to the top of the cooker!