JUNK

RIG

VENTURES

Author: Pete Hill

  • Atlantic Crossing

    Pete Hill

    Linda decided to fly to Europe instead of sailing across the Atlantic as it was her perfect opportunity to spend some time with family and friends. Linda wasn’t happy about me sailing single handed across the Atlantic in Kokachin on my own, but I was. The answer seemed to be to find out if my friend Simon from Tasmania would be interested in joining me. He seemed to be very happy to to do so. He flew to Florida a couple of days before we set off.

    I’ve sailed with Simon before on a very long trip and found him to be an excellent crew and companion. We spent 72 days sailing from Brazil to Tasmania.

    Simon and I left Palm Beach Inlet at 1700, on the 14th March, after Linda had gone to the train station. Motored out and sailed ENE in a nice SSE force 4. The wind slowly veered to the SW over the next couple of days, reaching F 6 for a time. The wind then backed to the S, just abaft the beam, about F 5 to 6. We had the best days run of 166 miles. On the 19th one of the shackles on the mainsheet broke and while taming the sail the sheet tore off the self steering (SS)  uprights. Simon steered for about 7 hours while I repaired the SS. The wind increased to F 8 and we ran off with just the top of the fore sail. The front then passed and we gybed and hoisted the top of the main. The wind then veered to the N and eased off to F 3 to 4. On the 21st the wind had backed to the W F 4 and we arrived in Bermuda at St George’s just before midnight. Customs told us that we were the first yacht of the season to arrive.

    Just over 7 days, 963 miles by GPS.

    We spent 10 days in Bermuda, having to shelter twice from strong winds and then set out on the 31st March with a WSW wind F 5 to 6.

    The plan was to sail due East along the 32nd parallel until 30 W and then sail NE through the Azores to Falmouth.

    The first week we had fair winds varying from F3 to F7 and we covered 1079 miles in the 7 days. The second week the wind remained fair but much lighter and by the end of that week the wind had gone into the ENE. Now close-hauled and not laying the course. The wind increased and on the night of the 14/15 th we were hove to for a few hours with quite big seas from the NE. The wind veered to the E and while tacking the sheet caught around the SS and broke one of the uprights. I got Kokachin steering herself to windward while repairing the SS. The wind stayed in the NE until the 16th and then backed to the NW  and then SW. We were now at 30 W and turned to the NE, laying the course for the first time in days. At midnight on 18/19 th we passed between Terceira and Sao Miguel in the Azores. We then had a few days of light SE winds. On the evening of the 22nd the wind went into the ENE F3 and we were sailing more N than NE until the 24th when the wind backed to the NNW and  slowly increased to F7 the next day.

    About noon on the 25th the SS slipped around and put us beam on to the seas and were knocked down about 60 degrees.  The wind then eased off and stayed in the N until the 28th when it backed to the SW F6. At about dawn we sailed through the fleet of racers in a French single handed transatlantic race. We were doing 6 knots, they were doing 18.5 to 22 knots. There were about 15 of them quite close together on AIS and I actually saw 3 of them in the thick weather. Overnight on the 29/30th the wind backed to the SE F7 and we spent about 6 hours hove to 25 miles SW of the Lizard. The wind eased at dawn and at 1030 we were anchored in Falmouth on 30 April.

    30 days and 3669 miles by GPS.

    As expected Simon and I got on very well and he proved yet again an excellent crew, I always slept well when he was on watch (as I do with Linda!). I hope to sail with him again.

    Anchor Troubles in Bermuda

    were well sheltered and spent a day there. When the wind eased we decided to move back to St George’s Town. Getting the anchor in it appeared to be fouled. Using the electric windlass, a corner of a large piece of steel slowly came near the surface with the chain wrapped around a protrusion at one end. Holding the chain with a rope I could then unwrap it from around that corner. The metal then dropped down and we could take in a bit more chain, however after a few more feet it seemed firmly stuck. The windlass couldn’t bring any more chain in, and was depressing the bow, the piece of metal was obviously too heavy to lift. Simon gallantly said he would go and try to swim down to see what the problem was and try to free it. The main problem was that we were in 8 metres of water, which is a long way to go down.  

    Simon jumped in, swam to the bow and then pulled himself down the chain. He came back up again, went down a second time, came back up again, and went down a third time. When he came up he said, he only got about maybe half way down but he could not clear his ears and he wasn’t prepared to burst his ear drums to clear the chain. Quite rightly so. He climbed up on board.

    OK now it was my turn. I took my clothes off, put some goggles on and flippers, and swam to the bow and then pulled myself down. I almost got to the bottom, a bit murky, and then came back up again. Took some deep breaths, I climbed down the chain again, managed to get to the bottom.  I could see what the problem was. The chain was caught twice around the corner of the steel. Anyway, after two more trips down I managed to get a rope through the chain and Simon tightened the rope and then slacked off the chain. After a few move dives I was able to untangle the chain.

    We then slipped the rope, weighed the anchor, and returned safely to St George’s.   I can’t say it was easy. I was surprised I could actually get down that far. It was fairly cold and took a bit of warming up once I got back on deck. Although I had a wet suit on board it probably would have created too much buoyancy to get down 8 metres.

    ​Knock Down

    We were off the Bay of Biscay. The wind was about Force 7 (30 knots), but with quite big seas and breaking waves. We’d been hove to on the port tack overnight. This was achieved by reefing the sails to the top panels on both sails​, sheeting them hard in, and setting the self steering to sail close hauled.

    We were faring well, a few waves coming over the port bow but no real problems. After breakfast I turned in for few hours of sleep. Simon was on watch keeping a regular lookout from below, popping his head out at regular intervals and it was fortunate he was not on deck at the time of knock down.

    About 12 o’clock we got hit by a breaking wave on the beam and were knocked down about 60 degrees. I was flung against the midship partition of the bunk and there was a crashing loud sound from the saloon. Kokachin came back quickly, so there was no fear that she was to go over and stay there.

    After quickly dressing I found that Simon was OK and he had started to clear up the mess by the chart table. Putting on oilskins I went on deck and saw that the problem had been caused by the wind-vane slipping sideways so that we were almost beam on to the seas. I sorted that out and then re-stowed some loose bits on the cabin roof. The man overboard light bracket was broken and I retrieved the light floating at the end of it’s line.

    I then opened the hatch to see how Simon was getting on and he handed up a bag of broken glass. Many of the loose items in the galley had been flung over to the chart table. As well as broken glass Simon was mopping up soy sauce and sesame oil (Linda’s Oriental Cuisine!). On coming below I started helping sort things out.  All the books on the port side were flung across to the starboard side and I slowly put them back. It took another half hour to clear up the mess. The only real damage was the broken door under the chart table which had been hit by the floorboard, next to the stove, flying across and a few small broken bottles. Simon had a small cut from the broken glass, but otherwise we were both undamaged. By the early evening the wind and seas had moderated and we were sailing again.

  • Towards Newfoundland

    Pete Hill

    To my mind a good cruise should have an objective, a destination, but much of the  pleasure is in the journey towards it. My step daughter lives in Newfoundland so that was a good reason to go there, quite apart from it being an interesting cruising ground. 

    There is no cruise without a boat and at the end of June 2022, Linda and I launched “Kokachin”. We had spent 3 years full time work completing an unfinished project. “Kokachin” is a French design ‘Jonque de Plaisance’, a 39 foot wood epoxy centreboard junk. She was lying in a farmyard not far from Paris, basically a hull and deck. We shipped her back to Cornwall and fitted her out. 

    The shortest route to Newfoundland is across the North Atlantic but it seemed prudent to have a shake down cruise before heading out into the ocean. So after visiting the Scilly Isles we crossed the channel to Brittany. 

    Linda is very gregarious and a great correspondent. For many years she had been the membership secretary of the Junk Rig Association and had kept up with members far and wide. While in Brest we visited Bruno and Elise. They had built “Lacatao”,  a sister ship to “Kokachin” and had just returned from an 8 year circumnavigation. I had met them in New Zealand and New Caledonia some years ago. The sail down to  Benodet was enliven by just missing the tide through the Raz de Sein. Linda likened the next couple of hours as “white water rafting”. 

    By this time we had some experience of sailing our new boat. We were pleasantly surprised to find that despite her 13 ton displacement she was a lively sailor and quite fast. As Pete Pye commented on ‘Moonraker’: “She looks like a box, but sails like a witch”. The only downside seemed to be a very heavy helm, despite quite a long tiller. Best looked at as a characteristic rather than a problem,  a handy billy helps a lot as soon as the wind picks up.

    Crossing Biscay and arriving in Galicia we were now in the “Orca Attack” zone and avidly following the reported sightings. On wandering around a boatyard in A Coruna we saw three yachts having their rudders rebuilt. Sailing along the coast felt a little like Russian Roulette. All the attacks had been in daylight so we felt that the sail from Baiona to Porto would be best done at night, a fast sail down the coast had us anchored in the Douro for breakfast. The anchorage just up from the mouth of the river was ideal with a short row to the north shore and there was a bus and tram stop to take us into the city. It was early October but still the city was packed with tourists, despite it being a very interesting city to wander around.  The highlight of the visit was taking the train up the Douro valley to the end of the line and back. The track hugs the side of the river with splendid views of the vineyards.  

    Because of the continuing Orca problems we gave up on visiting Lisbon and sailed for the Algarve by going well offshore, outside the shipping lanes.  A cruise along the coast brought us to Faro to visit a very old friend of mine, Joni, who lives on her boat there. The proximity of the airport and cheap end of season flights tempted Linda to fly to Croatia to see her family. 

    On her return I went down with Covid followed a few days later by Linda. We spent a few days recovering anchored off Culatra before setting off for Madeira.  We never got there, the very light SW winds defeated us and we bore away for the Canary Islands. 

    First stop was Graciosa. The anchorage at Playa Francesca was very crowded and when it started blowing onshore we escaped across to the lee of Lanzarote. Here we met Trevor Robertson on Ironbark III and Karl and Miki on Fai Tira, a Nicholson 32, who we saw much more of in the Caribbean. An official chased us out the next evening and we sailed overnight to Playa Blanca and then on to Las Palmas, arriving just as the ARC mob had left. 

    My 90 days in Europe were up so we sailed down to Sal in Cape Verde. The first couple of days gave us good runs but then the wind went light with very relaxed sailing.  From Sal on to Brava, anchoring first in Tantun at the South of this small island. The bay is in the wind shadow of the island and a welcome relief from the boisterous trade wind. The bay is home to a small community of fishermen who launch their open, outboard powered 20 foot boats from the stony beach each morning. The village was on the top of the cliff up a very steep footpath, poor people with a hard life. 

    After a couple of days of peace and tranquillity we sailed upwind to the port of Fuma. Here you anchor and take lines ashore to the rocky breakwater. ‘Tcha’, is the local yachtsmans friend who helped us tie up and showed us around. The main town on the island is Nueva Sintra a 6 kilometre minibus ride up a steep switchback road. It is a charming town of cobbled streets and well dressed people. Many people go away to the USA and Europe to work and then bring back their pension to retire, so there is some prosperity. 

    The crossing to Tobago was a windy one and quite quick at 15.5 days for the 2160 miles. At times the wind was blowing force 6 to 7. On one occasion there was an involuntary gybe which severely bent one of the aluminium battens and on another day the mainsheet caught around the wind-vane and broke it off, but it was soon repaired. 

    We anchored in Charlottesville at the North end of the island. The village is surrounded by rainforest and is a tranquil place with minimal tourism. The local outboard powered skiffs go out each morning successfully trolling for fish. The only downside to the place is the rolly anchorage. We were pleased when Fai Tira arrived. We shared many walks, sails, dinners and laughs with them. They sailed on to Martinique and we to Prickly Bay, Grenada. 

    “Kokachin” has a DIY coppercoat bottom, which worked well in European waters, but couldn’t cope with the tropics. Her big bottom was too much for me to scrub regularly, so we sailed up to Tyrel Bay in Carriacou and hauled out to put on some antifouling paint. Ironbark III was anchored here and Trevor, who knows the place well, helped us sourced materials before he set off for Panama and the Pacific. 

    Once relaunched we had a hard sail to Martinique and then loosely sailed in company with Fai Tira up the Islands to St Martin. Our experience of the Caribbean was that there were way too many yachts and Tobago was the best of the islands we visited. 

    From St Martin it is due North to Canada with Bermuda lying on the route. We left towards the end of April and spent two weeks in Bermuda visiting friends before heading up to Lunenburg. 

    Much of the passage was close hauled crashing into the waves. I noticed that the port forward bulwark had broken away from the deck. It seemed unlikely that wave action had done this, but on arriving in Lunenburg we could see that we had hit something large, a log maybe. 

    The South coast of Nova Scotia has many anchorages some of which we visited as we day sailed towards Cape Breton. After locking into the Bras d’Or lakes we stopped off at Baddeck. Here Henry Fuller made us most welcome and offered us a berth at his “Cape Breton Boatyard”.  The sheltered berth and a few days of warm dry weather meant we were able to do the repairs to the bow of “Kokachin”. 

    Our objective was now close. We set off from Ingonish to cross the Cabot Strait to Newfoundland. This has a reputation for fog, strong winds and currents flowing in and out of the Gulf of St Laurence. It did not disappoint, the wind was F5 from the East, with a rough sea and mostly thick fog. We were sailing fast at 7-8 knots hoping to complete the 90 mile passage in daylight. Having set out at the crack of dawn we took watches to get some rest. Linda had to steel herself to do her watch, tearing along in rough seas, relying on AIS while peering into the impenetrable fog . Once past the Strait the fog cleared and the seas diminished in the lee of the land. We anchored tired but pleased to be in Codroy well before sunset. 

    My step daughter, Irene and her family live in Corner Brook, in the Bay of Islands, on the West Coast. We tied up at the yacht club and spent 10 days ashore with them. Usually while cruising there is only the opportunity to see the coastal area, so we were very pleased to be driven around by Irene and Neil with little Noah to see something of inland Newfoundland. The highlight of which was the Gros Mourne National Park, which was spectacular. 

    From Corner Brook we sailed North up the West coast to the Straights of Bell Isle – day sailing wherever possible. Once round the top of the island there is the recreated Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadow, a popular spot as there were two other yachts here, the only time we shared an anchorage away from a town. Here we saw our first iceberg, peaking out of the fog. 

    There was still some thick fog about as we sailed around to St Anthony, but thereafter it was thankfully absent and for the rest of our cruise we had generally glorious weather, with little fog. However, it did mean very light winds with often dawn to dusk sailing between anchorages to progress 20 miles. The anchorages were almost always lovely and each day Linda would declare “This is the best one yet!”. 

    Once around the Northern Peninsula the fishing villages became more numerous and often on anchoring a local would ask if we needed anything and give us a cod. As we approached Fleur de Lys we were surrounded by five whales feeding on capelin, one even surfacing a boat length away.  One of the more memorable stops was La Scie. It was Linda’s birthday and we had hoped to eat ashore. The one cafe was booked up but they suggested the Tea Room  at the local museum. Every village seemed to have its own museum. The Tea Room closed at 6, just as we arrived, but nevertheless, they invited us in, made us the most delicious meal and all the while entertaining us with local stories and music. 

    And so we proceeded round the island calling at Twillingate, Fogo, Bonavista, Catalina and other anchorages in between. Then came St John’s – the big city. It is a commercial harbour and not set up for yachts so we tied up alongside some huge tires, in the centre of the town. We needed some more diesel but most “gas stations” don’t sell diesel. After fruitlessly walking to a couple in town a local, who stopped to chat, volunteered to drive me to find some. He wasn’t daunted to have to go at least 8 kms away, this was typical of the friendliness and helpfulness of many of the people we met. 

    We pressed on to Burin where we waited out some rare bad weather, but it did mean we were befriended by Don and Ethel Peter who took us into their family. We had intended to call in at the French island of St Pierre, just off the South coast. It was shrouded in thick fog so we gave it a  miss and saved ourselves having to clear back into Canada.

    The final phase of our circumnavigation was the South West coast, which is considered the most spectacular scenery, with deep fjords and bare rock. We dipped our toes into the edge of the Bay d’Espoir, sailing through Little Passage and anchoring in Middle Goblin Bay. Further West is the outport of Francois, which is at the head of the bay surrounded by  high cliffs. The houses cling to the rock and a torrent of water runs through the middle of the village. 

    Our Newfoundland cruise ended at the island of Ramea. The weather forecast spoke of high winds for the South coast and as it was late in August it seemed prudent to scuttle back to Nova Scotia while we could. 

    Our objective had been achieved. The cruise around Newfoundland was wonderful thanks to the unusually good weather, we had actually seen the island rather than imagining it in the usual fog. Delightful anchorages and friendly welcoming people. What we found surprising was how few other yachts were there. As to the whole journey, what stands out in our minds is the people we met,  old friends revisited and new friends made and some great sailing.

  • From Hard Work to Sailing

    Pete Hill

    Over optimistically, I thought we could finish Kokachin in about a year, it took us three years with the two of us working full time (weekends included). 

    Very soon, as we started working on her, we realised that  Le Forestiere’s Jonque de Plaisance are complicated boats! Also if she was to meet our needs and wants many things would have to be altered and finished differently. All of this was going to take time.  It was not  a quick job any more, as it looked at the time of infatuation, read – decision to buy her. Both of us wanted to spend time sailing instead of boat building. But does one ever learn.

    ​Daily hard and long hours of work was followed by household chores and researching / ordering the material. Covid worked in our favour, we had a committing project to complete. Just before the lockdown Pete spent three whole days ordering everything we would need for the boat building.  All the material had to be stored either inside or outside the boat on which we were now living. The biggest nightmare was finding a place to store things, and having to move them around all the time. I spent frustrating hours searching for something which had been moved (who knows where) but we needed it there and then. After the first year Blossom was sold and we moved onboard. While this sounds like a living hell (and probably was), it was much better than living on Blossom,  for many practical reasons. Kokachin was warm and cosy, although cramped.  Often we asked ourselves: “Why on earth did we embark on this madness yet again?” While laughing at her bizarre shape I dreamt of the day when I would sail her. Most of this hard work would be forgotten by then.

    It took three years from the boat arriving in Southdown until launch day, working 7 days a week, 10 hours a day, two of us for over two years. On the last year we allowed ourselves Sundays off. For the original build Mr Fabrice took 7 years, but part time.  Our workshop was a shed constructed over the cockpit, and to everyone’s amazement, not least ours, it survived for three winters of gales. The materials were stored under the boat,  inside it or in the shed. 

    We are often asked: Has she met our expectations? Actually when we bought her we had no expectations or dreams.  We wanted to try something different and she has definitely surprised us – by how well she sails and how comfortable she is at sea in rough conditions down below, we never strap up in the galley and we don’t have lee cloths. While she can roll a bit when sailing down wind or in a rolly anchorage, she heels little and does not slam. She is fun to sail and is surprisingly manoeuvrable despite her long keel and 13 tons displacement. However Linda struggles with the big, heavy rig on her own and finds that the lovely spacious cockpit in harbour becomes very exposed at sea when the going gets rough.  

    To see more about her sails and spars see other Kokachin’s pages on her webisite and the rest of the blog post that followed.

    Finally Kokachin was launched. She sails well, easily driven and fast. Sailing to windward she tacks through 90 degrees in flat waters and goes about easily, especially when centreboard is down, even in big seas she tacks very well. It is often difficult to assess sailing performance, especially to windward, as there is not another boat to compare against, Recently we sailed in company with friends on a Nicholson 32. They sailed the boat well and had a nice suit of sails. The course was dead to windward for 11 miles, wind 20 to 25 knots and a very rough sea. We were pointing equally well, tacking through about 100 degrees, and making 10 degrees of leeway. The Nicholson was a bit faster, but not by much. We were impressed and so were they. Kokachin is very stiff and even driving to windward she heels no more than 15 degrees. She is spectacularly dry in the cockpit, while we only had a couple of small splashes on the above sail, our friends were drenched. Sailing downwind she doesn’t roll until the wind and seas build up, but by then the foresail will have been reefed and sheeted flat, which dampens the rolling to a certain extent. Because of our vulnerable self steering gybing requires sheeting the main in and then out on the other side and in strong wind this may include dropping a few reefs first.   

    On the downside we found that the tiller steered rudder was very heavy work especially as the wind got up. As Kevin Cardiff said: “Not a problem, but a design characteristic”. So far we have tried to tame the heavy steering with a three part handy billy, using the trim-tab to dial out any weather helm and finally steering with the trim-tab. We now cut a chunk at the lower part of the rudder. We need to wait for sea trials to see how effective that is going to be to reduce a  heavy helm. These are only partial solutions and we may well have to resort to wheel steering, which would be a disappointment. But at times, in rough seas the tiller becomes almost uncontrollable. 

    Self steering is a very important consideration on long passages.  From the outset the self steering was going to be a challenge! Self steering is with Bill Belcher OTG II wind-vane driving a 20% trim tab on the trailing edge of the rudder. We also found that in lighter winds the wind-vane (3′ x 1′ / 90cm x 30cm)  was not powerful enough to turn a trim-tab. This was a major setback. Kokachin’s rig extends the whole length of the hull and the main sail is sheeted to the aft end of the davits. The wind-vane is placed on the stern rail, inside the main sheet. There was no room to make the windvane bigger so the only solution seemed to be to make the trim-tab balanced.  This necessitated a quick haul out and moving the trim-tab somewhere behind the rudder with 20% balance. This solved the self-steering problem and it now works very well. However the wind-vane is very vulnerable to being swept away by the main sheet (which has happened on our Channel and Atlantic crossing, resulting in a broken wind-vane). We now have installed a strong hoop over the stern rail to give it more protection. We need to see how this will work.

    The main sail is 50 sq metres and the fore 30 sq metres, built with Weathermax 80 cloth using Arne’s camber sail design. It has taken a while to get the sails to set properly without too much friction on the mast, also because we had so many other things to focus on – and she sailed well anyway. Originally we were against Hong Kong parrels as we wanted to keep the rig as simple as possible, and they do have a bad press. However, Arne persuaded us to give them a try. So we did. They do work well and do not seem to cause any problems. The sails are set up with a four part halyard, a yard hauling parrel and a fixed throat parrel. There are also batten parrels. Still trying to work out the compromise between creases in the sail and too much tension on the Hong Kong parrels.

    The yards are 4 ½ inch X 3mm alloy tubes and the battens are all 50mm x 2mm alloy tubes. During our transatlantic passage the top sheeted batten on the main bent after a couple of involuntary gybes in strong winds, and then broke, otherwise they seemed strong enough.

    We are often asked: Has she met our expectations? Actually when we bought her we had no expectations or dreams.  We wanted to try something different and she has definitely surprised us – by how well she sails and how comfortable she is at sea in rough conditions down below, we never strap up in the galley and we don’t have lee cloths. While she can roll a bit when sailing down wind or in a rolly anchorage, she heels little and does not slam. She is fun to sail and is surprisingly manoeuvrable despite her long keel and 13 tons displacement. However Linda struggles with the big, heavy rig on her own and finds that the lovely spacious cockpit in harbour becomes very exposed at sea when the going gets rough.  

    Pete Hill

    PS:

    Kokachin website has not been updated with the latest modifications to the rig and trim tab yet.

    For an occasional Kokachin video on YouTube – link:   @kokachin-junkrig-bl3vl

    ​

  • The Work on Kokachin

    Pete Hill

    We bought Kokachin as an unfinished project in France. The hull, cabin and decks were completed, along with some rudimentary accommodation and part finished mast and rudder. 

    Over optimistically, I thought we could finish her in about a year, it took us three years with the two of us working full time (weekends included). 

    Very soon, as we started working on her, we realised that  Le Forestiere’s Jonque de Plaisance are complicated boats! Also if she was to meet our needs and wants many things would have to be altered and finished differently. All of this was going to take time.  It was not  a quick job any more, as it looked at the time of infatuation, read – decision to buy her. Both of us wanted to spend time sailing instead of boat building. But does one ever learn.

    To see a more detailed description about building her see Kokachin’s pages on her site. This is just a brief overview. 

    Exterior

    The main requirement was to protect the exterior as much as possible to minimise maintenance and cost in the future.  Below is a short summary on some highlights. For a detailed overview with pictures check the website. 

    • The boat had been painted (inside and out) but that was a few years before. So we needed to put several coats of epoxy primer and then the top coats. 
    • The cabin sides were made of edge glued planks of maritime pine wood which we covered with 6mm marine plywood and then epoxied. 
    • The bottom was given a DIY copper coat with 5 layers of epoxy and copper. 
    • Plans called for a steel shoe on the bottom of the keel. Quite apart from having someone to fabricate this long piece of steel, we felt it would be a corrosion problem in future and instead scarfed together 1 inch plywood that was heavily fiberglassed. If nothing else this would form a sacrificial piece at the bottom of the keel.  
    • As a finishing touch we laid a douglas fir deck in the cockpit and on the cockpit seats, using 5 mm veneers and the Gougeon system. 
    • The side decks and foredeck were covered in fibreglass / epoxy and the cabin top was epoxied. We used Kiwi Grip for the non slip coating

    Centreboard was made with three layers of plywood. The middle layer had cut outs for steel plates to be inserted to give negative buoyancy. The whole thing is covered with glass epoxy and copper coated. 

    Rudder came with the boat but it was not finished. It needed fibreglassing etc as well as adding the rudder head for the tiller and making the trim tab. The trim tab was hinged on the trailing edge of the rudder. Subsequently it had to be changed to work properly as the wind-vane was not powerful enough. We subcontracted the stainless steel rudder fittings. 

    Self-Steering A wind-vane to control the trim-tab was made of plywood to Bill Belcher’s OTG II plans (modified). 

    Masts – The masts were made according to the drawings but they seemed to be a little on the light side. We fibreglass them with several layers of heavy unidirectional glass fibre and a layer of fibreglass cloth on the top. It also required constructing the masthead fittings.

    Mast Steps – Two mast steps had to be constructed. The forward one was extremely complicated to accommodate the 11 degree rake of the mast, as was cutting the hole through the 3 inch thick deck at an angle. The main mast one was not much simpler either. 

    Mast Collar – When the masts were installed a thick fibreglass collar was constructed which is held by 12 10mm bolts screwed into sockets glued into the deck. This was instead of having wedges and their accompanied squeak. 

    Cuddy – A plywood sliding cuddy was built over the entrance hatch. 

    Sails – One Christmas we rented a Scout hut to make the two sails. It took us only a week to make the sails and then another week later on to finish off the details. 

    Engine

    The hole through the deadwood for the engine shaft was drilled for us by our shipwright friend with a special long cutting bar. Once this was done the engine beds could be made and eventually the engine was lowered in through the hatch (only just fitted) and bolted down. Bronze stern tube and shaft was made for us which we installed, everything lined up. Fuel lines, electrical wiring and engine controls were also installed

    Ballast & Bilges

    Ballast was 18 kg cast iron ingots (we even had to recover a ton of those that were stolen from us!) All (3300 kg) had to be carried up on board and fitted into the bilges on top of a layer of rubber. Gaps were then filled with steel punchings before the floorboards were securely fastened on top. 

    Interior

    We needed a comfortable and warm boat that met our liveaboard cruising needs. With the exception of the main bulkheads, the two bunks, and the spiral staircase, which came with the boat, everything else was built new.

    Insulation 

    Cabin, decks & hull (down to the stringers) was insulated. It was like building another hull inside the outer one. Patterns between the frames and the deck beams had to be taken for insulation cutting. Framing around the insulation for the finished layer plus the pattern for those had to be made.  The insulation was covered with either tang & groove, thin plywood or cork / carpet. 

    Installations

    Installing heaters, cooker, wiring, lighting was all extremely complicated which is not easy to explain in a few words – best forgotten!

    Carpentry – At times doing the carpentry felt like three dimensional chess, just mind boggling complexities. As well as the job of constructing and fitting all the furniture (which Pete did) , insulating, finishing and painting everything was an equally mammoth task (done by Linda). 

    Time & Space

    It took three years from the boat arriving in Southdown until launch day, working 7 days a week, 10 hours a day, two of us for over two years. On the last year we allowed ourselves Sundays off. For the original build Mr Fabrice took 7 years, but part time.  

    Our workshop was a shed constructed over the cockpit, and to everyone’s amazement, not least ours, it survived for three winters of gales. The materials were stored under the boat,  inside it or in the shed. 

  • Blossom

    Pete Hill

    When I was going to become boatless (read ‘homeless’), Linda and I compiled a list of requirements that we were looking for in a future boat. The boat had to be suitable for short-handed ocean passages, large enough for two to live on board, but small enough for me to be able to handle on my own. This also meant roomy accommodation, sizeable tanks, insulation, heating and ample storage area. We also wanted good sailing performance, shallow draught, moderate displacement, junk rig (ideally), a reasonable price and for the boat to be conveniently located for our current location and future sailing plans. Needless to say it was not easy to find a boat to meet this specification, and we needed it quickly, here and now! At the time we were in New Zealand and Linda was flying back to Croatia for a short while. Once reunited, the plan was to sail to some cold and desolate destination.

    Oryx was up for sale and my New Zealand visa was about to expire so the pressure increased to find a new home. An internet search for junk rigged boats for sale, brought up Raggedy Edge, a Pearson 367 lying in Florida. She appeared to be in good condition, was a suitable size, had lots of equipment, and was very reasonably priced. I bought her sight unseen and booked my ticket to Florida. 

    The boat had been converted to junk rig by the previous owners. She had a nice, hollow wooden mast and a well-made flat sail, which was really too tall for the length of the mast; and the battens looked far too light. I spent two weeks sorting the boat out, strengthening the battens and buying extra wood for repairs, amid much rain and thunderstorms, as the first tropical storm passed by, in the Gulf of Mexico. I renamed her Blossom. 

    My original plan was to sail Blossom up to the Chesapeake Bay, out of the hurricane belt, and make some modifications there. Instead I decided to sail back to the UK to do the work there. To avoid the hurricane season, I needed to get moving quickly.

    After a long and eventful Atlantic crossing, during which Blossom looked after me well, I arrived in Falmouth at the end of July. Moving on to Millbrook, East Cornwall, I hauled her out at Southdown Marina to start the repairs necessitated by the voyage, and commenced converting the rig to turn her into a fine cruising boat.

    Jury rig on arrival
    Ashore in Southdown

    1 Mast

    The mast was put in to suit the accommodation – which means that the rig needs a lot of balance forward. To achieve this, the obvious choices were aero junk or split junk. As I had a good experience of aero junk I decided to go with that. I also wanted to try using extruded fibreglass battens instead of wooden ones. We chose this option because of its apparent simplicity, but it was more work than we would have hoped, because we could not get sufficiently long battens, which meant that they had to be joined. This took quite some time and effort: making the battens was a lot of work and in retrospect, a split junk might have been a better choice. 

    The beautifully-made, bird’s-mouth, douglas fir mast was too short for the boat and it hadn’t been fibreglassed. I extended it by 3 feet, fibreglassed it with unidirectional glass and cloth, then epoxied and finished it. The halyard block is held at the masthead with a thick dyneema strop. 

    2 Sails 

    The sails were made on Linda’s houseboat in London, over the Christmas period. They were easy to make as all panels (except the top one) are squares of the same size. Making the sail catcher took more time, but I really wanted to make one, because they keep the sails tidy and protect the sail cloth from UV damage. The sail cloth was 6¼ ounces, tan Clipper Canvas. 

    3 Battens/Wishbone 

    I bought 5m pultruded square tubes, which as I mentioned, had to be extended. I did this by putting a 10 cm long wooden plug inside the tube to strengthen the joint and covered it with glass/ epoxy. The cross beams for the wishbone were made of round fibreglass tubing. To join the wishbones at the after end, I made a plywood wedge with a recessed tube. I stretched dyneema across the wishbone, for the horse, for the jiblets and added a small block acting as a traveller. The front of the wishbone had another round tube joining the two ends. There is a need for steadying the wishbone/sail bundle when the sail is down, with restraining ropes at the top of the cuddy, which works well and is simple and quick to do. 

    4 Cuddy 

    I made a new cuddy (12mm plywood side and 6mm top, epoxy finished with 5mm polycarbonate windows). The involved 3D puzzle was complex to make on the top of the rounded, sloping cabin and decks, with nothing to provide support while designing it – not to mention the wind knocking it off as I was working on it. It gives much appreciated shelter and does a very good job. This, plus the many compliments we received from passers by made it worth the effort put into building it.

    5 Engine choice 

    The boat had had its engine removed and replaced with an outboard. After much deliberation about electric, diesel or combination of two I decided to go for Beta 25, saildrive diesel engine. I felt that electric or hybrid technology and the batteries have not reached their optimum development and either is still quite an expensive choice. While I use the engine very seldom, it is nice to know that there is the potential to motor for quite a few hours if needed and I felt the electric engine would not yet deliver this. The old engine beds had to be removed and that was far from easy and working in a confined space, with fibreglass dust like flour covering me was very unpleasant. At that time I did not use an air fed mask and an allergic reaction caused me to come out in a rash all over my face, hands and legs! 

    Cutting the hole for a saildrive, through thick fibreglass, was another unpleasant task to deal with, but once the engine was in it all looked good and I am happy with it. The two bladed folding propeller works well with minimal drag. 

    6 Sailing 

    The pressure was on to launch Blossom in early May, so that we could do some sailing trials before the JRA AGM in Brixham at the end of that month. As it turns out we only launched her 7 days before the event. Our first sail was to Cawsand, then to Dartmouth (Dittisham) and Brixham, where we met David Tyler sailing on Weaverbird. Needless to say, there was no time to properly test the rig. 

    After the AGM in Brixham, we cruised west, back to Plymouth and then on to Falmouth and the Isles of Scilly. Blossom sails very well and is well balanced. She seems to be quick and tacks like a dinghy, keeping her speed up through the tack and not falling off, before picking up on the new tack. The main does set with some creases at the top and It appears that while the battens and yard are strong enough they are not quite as stiff horizontally as they should be. 

    She has a very roomy cockpit and although she has wheel steering, there is room to pass by the helm. We fitted two 2 inch draining tubes astern (above the water line) to add to two existing cockpit drains with seacocks. Her side decks are wide.

    7 Interior 

    Once we started living on Blossom, her shortcomings became more apparent, especially to Linda. Everything was either too high or too big for her to feel comfortable, especially after Francis (which is a gem of minimalism and functionality). As for me, who has mainly lived on his home-built/own design/modified design boats, not being able to alter things was quite frustrating: she has an inner moulding. For me, Blossom worked OK and I said that I could sail on almost anything and be happy. Making changes to her accommodation would have meant destroying most of the interior, and we really didn’t feel up to it. 

    We made some limited improvements to her interior setup: moved the dining table and the stove; removed the double bunks in the saloon; removed all the pressurised water system; blocked seacocks below the waterline and numerous draining holes in the cabin, which were part of a water collection system. Importantly, we insulated the hull with three layers of aluminium bubble wrap, finished off with carpet. This is our second winter living on her and the insulation has proved to work very well. 

    New Project 

    Quite unexpectedly on returning to Plymouth, we heard about a partially completed Forestier 12.5 junk for sale near Paris. This seemed too good an opportunity to miss: while we were looking forward to cruising again the Forestier would be a much more suitable cruising home for us both. We flew over to take a look, bought her and then arranged her transport back to Cornwall. It sounds simple, but entailed a few nail biting weeks while Linda coordinated English transport, a French crane and lastminute document delivery to France. After that was organised we had a few weeks to wait and so sailed in Blossom to Falmouth and then on to the Scilly Isles, having a delightful holiday. Once back in Millbrook we hauled Blossom out at Southdown Marina and when our new boat, Kokachin, arrived, she was placed alongside Blossom. As work progresses on Kokachin we can live on Blossom, a three step commute away. When we finally move aboard our new boat, Blossom will be for sale. 






  • Delivering My New Baby

    Pete Hill

    Oryx was up for sale and my New Zealand visa was about to expire so I needed to find a new home. An internet search for junk-rigged boats for sale brought up Raggedy Edge, a Pearson 367 lying in Florida. She appeared to be in good condition, was a suitable size, had lots of equipment, and was very reasonably priced at $8,000 US. I bought her sight unseen and booked my ticket to Florida.

    I flew to Orlando via Honolulu and New York. The airline had allowed me a very generous two items of luggage of 30 kgs each, not to mention 10kg of cabin luggage. I took full advantage of this and nearly killed myself trying to get it to the airport on the bus. On arrival at Orlando I went to pick up the car I had booked to drive the 100 miles to Indian Town, where my new boat lay. Unfortunately I hadn’t realised that I needed a credit card to hire the car, they ‘let me have it with just a debit card. Bus transport was out and Uber were not interested in driving me. In desperation I telephoned Mark and Tina, Raggedy Edge’s owners, who were staying in their motor home near Indian Town to hand over the boat to me. They very kindly agreed to drive to Orlando to pick me up and then put me up for several days, very generous hosts.

    The next day I saw my new boat, which I have renamed Blossom, and was pleased to see that she was as advertised. We did all the paperwork, Mark and Tina then drove me around to buy what I needed and when the boatyard relaunched her a few days later I moved onboard. It was the middle of May.

    My original plan was to sail Blossom up to the Chesapeake Bay, out of the hurricane belt, and make some modifications there. Instead I decided to sail back to the UK to do the work there. To avoid hurricane season I needed to get going quickly.

    Blossom had been converted to junk rig by the owners prior to Mark and Tina. She had a nice hollow wooden mast and a well made flat sail, but the sail was really too tall for the mast height and the battens looked far too light. I spent two weeks sorting the boat out, strengthening the battens and buying extra wood for repairs, amid much rain and thunderstorms as the first tropical storm passed in the Gulf of Mexico.

    I left Indian Town Marina on 29 May and motored down the St. Lucie canal to Stuart, on the east coast. Blossom’s original 40hp diesel had been taken out some time ago and been replaced with a 6hp outboard on the stern. It worked well in flat water, but cavitated badly with every power boat wash, and there are a lot of power boats in Florida. The next day. I went for the first sail in the wide bay off Stuart. Blossom sailed very well despite needing one reef, because of the too short mast, and rather too much lee helm. She pointed quite high and tacked reliably and I was very pleased. I continued motoring down the Intracoastal waterway, passing countless Italianate palaces, most with big power boats tied up to their docks, a mind boggling ostentatious display of wealth. It took two days to get down to West Palm Beach, where there is access to the sea. I quickly cleared customs and did a final stocking up of fresh food. On 2 June I motored out of the breakwaters and set sail towards Falmouth.

    The wind was a light south-easterly and we drifted and sailed slowly north, helped enormously by the Gulf Stream. The next day the wind veered to the south west and picked up to F4, giving a very respectable run of 136 miles. This was followed by more light winds and calms, but glorious sunshine. I was sailing very conservatively as I was concerned about the strength of the battens. Ideally I would have built new battens but time was against me and I already had plans to redesign the rig as an Aero Junk.

    On day 9, in a southerly F5 the second batten down from the top broke. I reefed right down and waited for the wind to moderate to repair it. One of the great things about Blossom was that she came equipped with a Monitor self steering gear, which steered her beautifully. Rather than being tied to the wheel I spent my days planning her new rig and the small changes I wanted to do, as well as catching up on my reading.

    We seemed to have sailed out of the Gulf Stream, and at times even had a counter current. The wind went up and down, but there were no really strong winds and quite a few calms. On day 13 (lucky for some) the next batten broke, on day 16 the boom broke, snatching in the swell and light winds. It seemed prudent to head for Lunenburg, in Nova Scotia, 200 miles to the north of us and do something about the boom and battens. But the wind disappeared and, now back in the Gulf Stream, we were carried quickly to the east. Then the wind picked up and the top two battens broke. We were making very little progress towards Lunenburg and I decided it would be easier to head for St. Johns, Newfoundland.

    The wind and seas had dropped enough to get the sail off and repair the boom and broken battens. Before I could finish, the wind got up again and I sailed under bare poles with the self steering. On day 24 (26 June) I managed to get the sail reassembled on deck with some difficulty, but it was too rough to re-rig it on the mast and so I lashed it down on the starboard side deck. The wind then quickly picked up to a westerly F7. We had been lying ahull whilst I worked on the sail, but the seas were building and I started hand steering downwind under just the windage of the mast. I thought the self steering would cope, with occasional help when a wave hit the stern. This was working well, but it was getting colder. I nipped down below to put some warmer clothes on for what I thought would be a long night.

    I had barely started to don the clothes when we were hit by a big breaking wave, which seemed to come out of nowhere (until then there had been no dangerous seas), that knocked us down onto our beam ends. Blossom quickly recovered, but a lot of water had come below and the cockpit was full. I quickly put my waterproofs back on and went out to a scene of destruction. The sail bundle was all but washed overboard, two stanchions had ripped out of the deck, the pulpit was broken and twisted and both solar panels on the starboard side were washed away.

    Thankfully another piece of Blossom’s equipment was a Jordan series drogue, I had already rigged it, ready to go, and it was quickly streamed astern and this rapidly brought the stern into the wind and waves, quietening everything down. With great difficulty I managed to get the sail bundle back on deck but, of course, the repaired boom and battens were again broken. Down below I pumped out, but everything was wet: a horrible night. I was very despondent and feeling depressed.

    Later that night we got hit by another breaking wave astern, which filled the cockpit and sent a few gallons below through the cockpit lockers, but there appeared to be no damage done: the drogue was doing its job. The next morning I discovered that the wave had somehow displaced the bevel gears on the self steering, it was inoperable unless I could repair it.

    When the wind and seas went down I started trying to get the rig back together. I had run out of wood to repair all the battens but was able to splint the boom and repair the top two battens. When I had taken the sail off the mast earlier I had tied off the topping lifts to either guard rail, when the starboard guard rail got flattened it had broken the starboard topping lift rope close to the masthead. I re-rove it using the spare masthead block and was able to hoist three panels of the sail. Steering was now by hand which gave me plenty of time to think about how I could possibly repair the self steering without bringing the whole contraption on deck. The thought of steering for 2,000 miles certainly concentrated the mind and before long I was leaning over the stern and fiddling with tiny circlips to release one of the bevel gears and realign it. It worked and I didn’t lose a single part so we were back under self steering again, what a relief.

    The next disaster was the shackle on the spare mast head block failing. Now I had only the port topping lift with the reefed part of the sail on deck. The solution was to rig up a block on a rolling hitch on the mast and push it up as far as I could with the boat hook, fortunately high enough to allow two and a half panels to be raised.

    By now I had given up on the idea of going to St. Johns, 400 miles to the north. By the time I got there and sorted out the rig I would probably be almost to the UK if I just carried on. The other option was to go to the Azores, but again that would require a big detour to the south, and it may well have caused problems with VAT, I much preferred to pay VAT in the UK, especially with Brexit about to happen.

    On the 1 July in very light wind and thick fog I saw a big yacht, CR 29, coming up astern on the AIS, I was doing about 1 knot, they were doing 11 knots! They actually had to alter course a little to avoid me. I spoke to them on VHF and they kindly agreed to send an email to Linda, who was eagerly awaiting my arrival, explaining about Blossom’s damage and my extended passage time, which was quite a relief.

    We continued east with fine weather and the wind much too light for the reduced rig. I was not going to run out of food but I now started to ration it more carefully to be on the safe side. Fortunately there were no more problems with the rig and it was very pleasant sailing, largely in sunshine.

    On the 52nd day at sea, after 3,883 miles, I anchored in the evening in Falmouth Harbour. It was the 24 July, just in time to wish Linda a happy birthday and report my long overdue arrival. A couple of days later I sailed around to the Tamar river and Blossom was hauled out at South Down Marina to start the repairs.

    Blossom had looked after me well and with a new rig she will make a fine cruising boat.

  • French Polynesia

    Pete Hill

    In the middle of June we left Whangarei in New Zealand and after clearing out from Marsden Cove, we set sail in a fresh SW F6. Once clear of the channel we bore away past Bream Head for French Polynesia. I say ‘we’ as Linda Crew-Gee, a Croatian Londoner and fellow junk enthusiast, had joined me for the voyage.

    The wind continued SW for the next two days, slowly easing to force 5 and giving us splendid runs of 158 and 157 miles, and taking us across the dateline, thus enjoying two Fridays. The SW wind died out and swung round to the ESE F4-5; Oryx was beating to windward into a rough sea. The E wind persisted and a week out, in 31o S we tacked and headed SE with two reefs in each sail. The wind increased in strength over the next three days, by which time it was blowing NE 7 and we were jogging along with four reefs in each sail.

    Dawn brought a sharp increase in the wind and with large, breaking seas we ran off downwind under bare poles and set the Jordan series-drogue. We immediately slowed down to under two knots and all was relatively peaceful below. We turned in to catch up on sleep. By the late afternoon the wind and seas had eased and after 20 minutes effort, we retrieved the drogue and got underway again with a gentle NW wind.

    The following week we had light S winds with daily runs of about 60 miles, but by the end of that week the wind returned, blowing SW F6-7 and giving us good, if rough, runs. By this time we were well S of Tubuai, in the Austral Islands, and when the E wind returned we were able to lay our course. On 6 July we sailed in through the pass in the reef and anchored off the village of Mataura, on Tubuai. We were glad to be in after 23 days of a rather rough passage of 2,188 miles.

    The July fete was about to start, so we had arrived at just the right time. The main attraction was the inter- village competitions for traditional dancing, drumming and singing. This took place in an open-air, sand arena and was all the better for not being a staged, tourist spectacle. The Austral Islands lie 500 miles south of Tahiti and off the main tourist and cruising routes; fewer than a dozen yachts call each year. Perhaps because of this the islanders were very friendly. After a few days some bad weather arrived and made our anchorage untenable, so we moved further from the village to anchor near the commercial wharf and were able to land in the very sheltered small boat harbour. A road runs right around the small island and we went for long walks, and the hitch hiking was easy when we got tired.

    After ten days in Tubuai we sailed overnight to the next island south, Raivavae, just over 100 miles away. Our luck held and we had arrived just as their fete started. If anything the costumes were even more elaborate and the amount of effort put in by a large proportion of the small population was impressive. One of the many advantages of having Linda aboard is that she speaks very good French (I am a monoglot), and is very outgoing. We were soon on friendly terms with one of the gendarmes, Thibault and his wife, Cindy. They had only arrived from France a few months before, but gave us much useful information about the island. We borrowed a couple of bicycles from the Gendarmerie and did a tour of the island, which was fun until Linda got knocked over by a large dog jumping out from a garden. No bones were broken, but Linda was shaken up.

    At the weekend we took Thibault and Cindy for a sail to the other side of the island and anchored off an idyllic uninhabited island, Motu Pescine. This lies on the edge of the fringing reef and has a large shallow natural ‘swimming pool’ on one side. After a day of swimming, exploring and picnicking, Thibault and Cindy had to paddle their kayaks over to Raivavae and back to work the next day. We stayed anchored off this delightful spot for a further ten days, exploring the nearby motus, sailing in our dinghy Crake and celebrating Linda’s birthday with barely cool champagne. In retrospect it was the highlight of our cruise.

    In early August we sailed off towards the Gambier Islands, 700 miles to the east. Apart from one day of light winds and one vicious NE squall lasting a few hours, we had moderate W winds and a pleasant passage. There was one hairy moment on entering through the reefs. There was a buoy ahead in the early morning glare, not shown on the Navionics chart, it looked like a starboard hand buoy at a turn in the channel. As we approached to leave it to starboard, Linda spotted a shallow reef right ahead; the green buoy was in fact red! A swift turn to starboard saved the day. We anchored off the village of Rikitea on Mangareva after six days at sea.

    The islanders seemed less friendly than in the Austral Islands, and quite prosperous, with extensive black pearl farming giving much employment. Yachts were no rarity here, with up to 30 anchored at a time early in the season, having arrived from Panama and Chile. It was late in the season now and only four yachts were in the anchorage. We got friendly with a young French couple, Sandrine and Robin on an impressive steel yacht, Brinacier. They hoped to sail down to the Antarctic the following year and the gear seemed massive. On returning on board Linda thought that their boat was like a tank going to war, laughed and said Oryx was nothing but a paper boat. We sailed over with Brinacier to the nearby Aukena Island and met Bernard, who lived on the island with his assorted animals, all fed on coconuts. He had given up a lucrative job of water diviner on Tahiti to lead the simple life on the island where he had grown up.

    One day we all went for a sail on Oryx to the tiny Motu Tauna, using Bernard’s local knowledge to pilot us through the reefs. Another day we sailed out to Akamaru Is, Sandrine commenting that in the light winds Brinacier would not have moved at all. Akamaru is a beautiful island where the tiny village is one, big, well-kept garden. That night we went out in Bernard’s boat to watch them dive for crayfish, which we shared on the beach for Sunday lunch. As we ate I commented on the cockerel on Robin’s T-shirt. ‘Yes,’ he proudly said, ‘it is the national animal of France. What is the English animal?’ ‘A lion,’ I replied. ‘Ah, England has a lion and France, . . . a chicken.’ Everyone laughed. And so the days passed.

    It was time to move on again, as we had arranged for our friends Rob and Maren to join us in Tahiti, which was 900 miles away. We set off on 28 August with little wind. The rhumb-line to Tahiti passed very close to Mururoa, and it seemed prudent to give the atomic bomb test site a wide berth. Interestingly Bernard had told us that when the first above- ground bomb was tested, the local officials and bigwigs were housed in a reinforced concrete bunker, while the rest of the islanders where put in a wooden shed with a corrugated iron roof, for several days. What should have been a simple detour round the island had us tacking back and forth with a light, variable wind that seemed determined to send us straight to the island. We eventually won, clear and the trade winds returned from the SE. They blew fresh and then even fresher at F6 with frequent stronger squalls and for a while we were running under bare poles. After seven days we were sailing along the NE coast of Tahiti with the wind easing, but just as we were about to round Venus Point into Matavai Bay a blinding rain squall hit us, with visibility of less than 50 metres. The sails were dropped and we lay ahull for half an hour until it passed, and then tacked in to anchor where Captain Cook had lain for the transit of Venus observation.

    Matavai Bay has quite some history as, apart from Captain Cook, it is also where the London Missionary Society ship, Duff, first anchored in Polynesia, and the Society Islands are named because of that. It is a beautiful anchorage, yet we were the only yacht there. Ashore were showers and fresh water, 2km down the road were two good supermarkets, Post Office, ATM and a bus into Papeete, 10km away; who could ask for more? It is no longer possible to anchor in Papeete, as all is now an expensive marina. We sailed around to Maeva Beach, near the airport, which is the popular anchorage, to see what we were missing. Extensive moorings and a very crowded, small anchorage area had us quickly returning to Matavai Bay.

    Rob and Maren duly arrived from New Zealand and basked in the sunshine after an exceptionally wet and windy winter in New Zealand. They were keen to go sailing and we had an exceptional sail over to Moorea, with perfect trade winds and a fine display put on by the many whales breaching and sounding all around us. We anchored in the spectacular Cook Bay the first night and then round to Robinson Cove the next. Of all the islands we visited, Moorea was the most beautiful. It was then on to Huahine, Tahaa and we ended up in Bora Bora where they left us after a few days. Bora Bora disappointed us: cruise ships, umpteen pearl shops in town and the islanders seemed poor compared to the other islands. The surrounding motus had many expensive, foreign-owned resorts on them with the visitors rarely going to the main island. The islanders seemed to gain little by being a tourist mecca.

    Our three-month visa was about to expire, so we were keen to get away, but it blew very hard for days and even in our sheltered anchorage, in Baie de Povai, we sailed around the anchor in the fierce williwaws.

    Eventually the wind moderated a little and we left French Polynesia for Tonga, 1,200 miles to the E. We had five days of great runs of over 150 miles and then the wind picked up again to ESE 7 with frequent stronger squalls. With just one panel up on the port sail we went along at about 4kts with surfs up to 10kts when a big wave passed. Linda is no stranger to heavy weather, having doubled the Horn as crew aboard a 20m, gaff ketch, but it is rather different in a 10m ‘paper boat’. One night, a particularly large wave broke under us sending us surfing along at a peak of 17.8kts. The self steering kept us right on course, but it was obviously past time to do something. Conditions were not so severe as to need the Jordan drogue, so we put out the Australian-made Sea Brake astern. This certainly stopped us surfing and we continued on our way at about 3kts, but it was a jerky motion, unlike the Jordan. After a couple of days the wind and seas moderated and it was E 5 again and the runs were back in the 150s.

    On the final night of the passage we had to slow down for a daylight entry to Vava’u. At midnight a heavy thunder storm arrived, with squalls and winds from every quarter. By dawn it was blowing SE 7, which gave us a hard beat to enter harbour. Fortunately it eased off by mid-morning, allowing us to tie up at the jetty in Neiafu, after ten days. Unexpectedly we had recrossed the dateline and missed out on a Thursday, to arrive on Friday the 13th.

  • A New Rig for Francis H

    Pete Hill

    Rig Selection 

    The most difficult part was designing the rig to fit the boat. There are some controversies around how much lead junk rig needs on a monohull. With a multihull it is easy as they don’t heel and therefore a Centre of Effort (CE) of the rig can be placed over the Centre of Lateral Resistance (CLR) of the Hull.

    Once the lead has been decided one of the next major considerations is where the mast is going to go. We used PJR and the designer’s original sail plan to determine an appropriate lead. Time will tell whether or not this was decided correctly.

    How did we determine the lead? We used the original boat plan but then noticed that the boat’s actual dimensions differed. She was stretched during the build. All calculations had to be based on the current photograph of the hull with the rudder included.

    Where to place the mast? 

    Francis has a very shallow forefoot with a narrow keel/stem timber. This made placing the unstayed mast any further forward than the original bermudan mast position difficult, due to structural problems with the mast step and getting enough bury for it.

    Having decided to keep the mast in its original position, this dictated a larger than usual balance in the sail. The available rig designs were a Hasler / McLeod sail (with or without camber), a split junk rig or an aero junk. 

    The most suitable rigs are either Slieve McGalliard’s split junk sail or Paul McKay’s aero junk. Linda liked the aero junk rig the best, especially the sexy curved wishbone battens. Having sailed on Oryx for 900 miles in all sorts of conditions she was impressed with the way the rig worked, its ease of handling and how it responded to the sudden wind changes. And nothing broke!

    Using the formulas in PJR, I worked out the CLR and gave the rig a 7% lead (not taking the rudder into account)!

    Mast 

    Getting a mast in New Zealand is not easy. Good spar timber is very expensive and there seem to be no suitable grown sticks available. In the end Linda had decided to go for the aluminium tube (125mm x 3mm 6063 T6). After much searching we found a suitable Douglas Fir (Oregon Pine) roof truss (demolition wood from the earthquake in Christchurch). This was 150mm square, 4m length beautiful close grain with only a couple of small tight knots. When planed down it looked like new timber and it smelled beautiful. 

    The top of the topmast has a 25mm thick plywood disc glued and fibreglassed to it with three stainless steel 8mm U bolts for the halyard and topping lifts. The topmast has 300mm of bury and extends the mast to 7.5 metres. The topmast was coated with a layer of 300g glassfibre cloth and epoxy before painting.

    Mast Fitting / Stepping 

    Fortunately there was not too much to do to strengthen the deck/cabin because the cabin had a substantial hanging knee as had the deck beneath it. Two layers of 6mm plywood were glued up under the deck between the deck beams and a 18mm oval plate glued on top of the deck, together with a plywood collar for the mast boot. The mast step consists of a 40mm plywood plug that fits into the base of the aluminium tube. This is glued to a plywood base with a timber wedge underneath to make it level. Two 10mm x 120mm galvanised coach screws through the plug connect the mast step to the inner keel (over the old mast base).

    Building the Battens  

    We could have used aluminium for the battens but it is quite expensive here and also I prefer wood anyway since my boat is wooden. Not to mention how they look alive when in action! The timber for the yard and battens is clear pine (yard: 40mm x 20mm, battens: 30mm x 20mm). The most economical way to buy the timber dictated that we had to saw each plank in half to form the two halves of the wishbone. You need to remember to keep the two cuts to use as a pair for a wishbone to ensure that each bends at the same rate. See the drawing and photos for the construction details. The triangular piece supporting the main cross member was a design failure because – it was fiddly and not very strong. We added the rebate and probably the triangular piece serves no purpose. The yard is only a variation on the batten. With these shapes Francis definitely looks very feminine.

    Sail Design and Making 

    The sail material is 300g/sq.m PVC on nylon, a bit too heavy but the price was right! 

    I set to making the sails. I used Pete’s Sailrite sewing machine on Rob and Maren Prince’s garage floor. Sewing it together was straight forward because the sail is flat. Measuring extremely carefully was important and it was essential to put the jib over the mainsail to make sure that the battens lined up perfectly. This meant laying the jib on the top of the main, luff to luff. 

    The sail has small battenlets (4mm fibreglass rods – as used for carnival costumes!). This is to stop excessive flogging of the sails when head to wind. These fit into pockets on the sail at every batten position. Each batten let end was protected with heavy sailcloth padding to stop them poking through.

    Rather than have metal rings to attach the sails to the battens, webbing tabs were used instead.

    The main and jiblet each have a sail-catcher/sailcover sewn to the bottom of each sail. They are not working perfectly and will need some fine tuning with more rigid supports at the top of each sail catcher. 

    Stitching up the sails was quick and easy. To do all the finishing work took at least as long again. This was because of all the detailed work required instead of just long runs when stitching the panels together.

    Rigging 

    Of course putting this all together took much longer than planned but eventually the mast was finished, the battens and yard built and painted and the sail sewn up. Francis came alongside Oryx and using Oryx ’s port mast to lift it, the mast was lowered into place. The mast hole in the deck gave a 12mm gap all around, a strip of 6mm conveyer belt rubber was placed around the mast and then a couple of turns of 8mm bungee cord was driven into the remaining gap giving a nice tight fit, then the mast boot was pulled down over the collar giving, for the moment at least, a watertight seal. 

    The sails are hoisted with a two part purchase using the latest low friction, hard-anodised “rings” instead of more normal blocks. The main sheet is a single part from the yard through the end of each batten and down to the horse at the stern.

    The original sheeting was a multi part to sheetlets. This proved to have too much friction and miles of rope in the small cockpit was mayhem. The new system is yet to be tried properly and we will have to wait until next summer. 

    Originally I used 10mm rope (the price was right!) for the halyard and the sheet but it proved it had too much friction for the size of the rings. I now changed it to 8mm rope which seemed to solve the problem. Also the original halyard was 3 part and it was extremely difficult to raise and lower the sail. The halyard seems to work well with 8mm rope (I bought the largest size of ring available) but maybe traditional blocks would work better. However I did not want to have metal clanking on top of the mast. The rings are attached to the U-bolts with Dyneema line. 

    Sail Testing 

    The winds were light but there was sufficient to see how the rig worked. You would expect a Francis Herreshoff design to sail well and Francis with her new rig performed even better than expected. The rig was almost perfectly balanced with just a touch of weather helm and steering was fingertip light. She seemed fast in the light winds, pointed high and tacked on a sixpence. There were a lot of big smiles all round on that day. Much more testing will need to be done in varying conditions to evaluate the rig properly.

    Unfortunately we had no time to test the new sheeting and halyard arrangement fully nor to take a single photograph! Francis needed to be put to bed on her winter mooring – and this required some mud digging and pontoon adjustments, which took priority.

    Technical details: 

    Sail area 16.72 sq. metres, with the jiblet being 26

    • LOA 5.63m 18’ 6” 
    • LWL 4.69m 15’ 5” 
    • Beam 1.90m 6’ 3” 
    • Draught 0.76m 2’ 6” 
    • Displac. 770kg 1700lbs 
    • Ballast 363kg 800lbs 

    Mast length 7.5m overall, 6.5m above partners 

    Lower mast: 125mm diameter, 3mm wall thickness, 5m aluminium (6063 T6)

    Top Mast: Oregon Pine (Douglas Fir), 2.5m (solid) Mast weight 25Kg 

    Battens & Yard 10kg 

    Sails 8kg 

  • Oryx Sails Further East

    Pete Hill

    South Africa, Mauritius, Australia, New Caledonia, New Zealand

    I left Durban at the end of July, single-handed again and very much alone. I had rather lost my sense of direction and was not sure where to go. I couldn’t face continuing on to Madagascar and it seemed wrong to retreat back to the Atlantic. In the end I decided to sail further east, towards Australia, but midwinter is not the time to cross the southern Indian Ocean; I would go via Mauritius.

    Leaving Durban harbour there was a very light NNE wind which veered and freshened overnight to a F7, giving me an uncomfortable beat with three reefs in each sail. A couple of days later the wind eased and shifted to the S, but a 30 knot squall broke several of the starboard battens before I could reef down. While removing them to be repaired, the port sail gybed, which broke another batten. The wind quickly increased to F8, still from the S and it seemed a good time to deploy the Jordan series drogue. I then retired below to start scarfing and gluing up the battens, one at a time. The ‘fun’, however, was not over for the day as the starboard tiller broke off just before midnight. I had lashed the tillers and foolishly raised the rudder blades, against which a wave had broken. I removed the blade and tied the rudder cassette to a cleat. The drogue was doing its job and down below was relatively comfortable.

    Surfing in the Southern Indian Ocean

    The next morning the wind and seas were down and it seemed a shame to let the S wind go to waste. Getting the drogue in single-handed caused some difficulties. In the past it was quite easy with two of us. I would heave in the slack after a wave passed and Carly tailed on the cabin top winch and held on tight when the next wave approached, whilst I held the rope down over the after beam. I took over Carly’s job but with no one holding the rope down it rode up the davit and snapped it off. That was bad enough but unfortunately the dinghy was still in the davits – another bit of my foolishness. I eventually managed to get the dinghy into the cockpit, which rather filled it, and to retrieve the drogue with some difficulty – more things to fix.

    Broken battens
    Making repairs underway

    We sailed on well reefed, just using the port rudder. When the wind disappeared the next day I was able to repair the starboard tiller. When the wind did fill in it was back to the NE, on the nose. As I repaired the battens (the bridge deck being long enough to glue up the 16 foot battens) I could set more sail, but it was a week before we had full sail again. Except for a couple of days of light south westerly winds the wind remained in the NE, F3-5. Added to this was a 1 knot current against us us; progress was not rapid. 20 days out we tacked off Ile de Reunion in light winds and it took another 3 days to sail the 120 miles to Port Louis, Mauritius.

    After clearing in, I sailed up to Grande Baie at the NW corner of the island and spent a pleasant month in this large, well-sheltered bay. Mauritius is very reminiscent of the Caribbean, particularly Trinidad, with its sugar cane fields, large Indian population and the quaint seedy colonial buildings of Port Louis (away from the new tourist waterfront complex). Travelling round the island was easy and cheap on ancient Ashok Leyland buses.

    On the 18 September I set off towards Albany, on the S coast of Western Australia. The southern Indian Ocean has a reputation for being rough and it did not disappoint. After a very slow start from the island, the wind settled into the SE F6 which had Oryx bashing into the steep waves. We continued on S to try and find some W winds. In fact I got so far S that I considered calling at Ile Amsterdam, only to discover I had no chart of it, and so abandoned that idea.

    One nasty moment was when I dashed out in the night to reef in a fierce squall and heard the cabin door slam shut behind me, with no key. Only after managing to squeeze my hand under the opening saloon window to unfasten it and climbing through did I see the funny side of it. By now the brave W winds had arrived and we made some decent runs but our troubles were not over. Several battens broke which caused tears in the sail and a few days later the port rudder blade broke off at the waterline. In calmer conditions a few days later I was able to extract the top half and bolt it upside down into the rudder cassette, giving half a rudder blade.

    As I approached Cape Leeuwin the wind went back into the SE and we had to tack the rest of the way to Albany. We arrived after 41 days at sea and 3,700 miles, with a long list of repairs to do.

    The Customs officers were welcoming and friendly and so was the Environment Protection officer, but he confiscated much of my remaining food and charged me £200 to do it. In the late 1980s I lived in Penryn (Cornwall) for a while and there got to know a young Australian couple, Darren and Linda Russell. They lived on a lovely 28 foot, Venus gaff cutter with their baby daughter. I had heard through the cruising grape vine that Darren was now a boat builder in Albany. The Customs Officers knew him well and told me that his boatyard was at nearby Emu Point.

    The next day I walked around the coast path to Emu Point, some way out of town, to find Darren. Fortunately Darren remembered me and took me under his wing. He gave Oryx a berth alongside his travel lift dock, use of the workshop and drove me around to buy wood and materials for the repairs. I made two new rudders, new battens and re-cut the sails back to a split junk rig.

    My visa for Australia was for three months, multiple entry. I had optimistically booked a flight to New Zealand from Tasmania in early January to renew my visa and go to the junk rig rally in the Bay of Islands. After six weeks the work was finally done and I took Darren and Linda for a trial sail on 17th December. All went well and I set off the next morning for Tasmania.

    Oryx and China Moon, River Tamar, Tasmania

    There was a mixed bag of wind but a few days of fresh south westerly winds made up for some light easterlies. Christmas day had us running with a SW6. The new, larger, fixed rudders worked faultlessly, keeping us steadily on course under self-steering whilst surfing at over 10 knots. The last 100 miles in the Bass Strait were frustratingly slow with light S and E winds. I arrived on 2nd January in the early evening to catch the last of the flood up the Tamar River. My friends Simon and Caroline (China Moon’s new owners) drove down to wave me in from Low Head, at the entrance. I didn’t quite make it up to Devil’s Elbow; darkness, the ebb and a strong head wind forced me to anchor a few miles short. Early the next morning I picked up China Moon’s mooring (she was having a refit ashore) with two days to spare before my flight We had planned to do a cruise in company around Tasmania, but on reflection it seemed more sensible to go together on China Moon. We left in the middle of February and had a month to get around. It was good to be back aboard China Moon again; some changes, two instead of one engine and radar, but then some of the lockers were as I had left them 10 years before. We went clockwise around, calling first at Flinders Island, where we climbed up the 781 metres of Strzelecki peak. Other highlights were surfing over the bar into St. Helens, anchoring off the penal settlement at Port Arthur, driving up Mount Wellington for the panoramic views over Hobart, visiting the MOMA art gallery, and on the west coast cruising and walking in Port Davey. Our final stop was in Macquarie Harbour where we were lucky enough to see a Duck Billed Platypus on a walk outside Strahan and visit the penal settlement on Sarah Island before going some way up the Gordon River. We had been lucky with the weather but had a rough passage N from Macquarie with a near gale from the E. This prevented us calling at King Island, the only disappointment on this very happy cruise.

    Mount Strzelecki, Flinders Island, Bass Strait

    On returning to the Tamar River, I put Oryx on the beach to antifoul and then set off N towards Sydney, calling at Deal Island in the Bass Straight and then Eden at the SE corner of Australia. I sailed into Sydney Harbour on a fine morning which was a memorable experience, to rival entering Rio or Cape Town. I anchored in Balls Head Bay, past the Opera house and the Harbour Bridge. It was a pleasant, if long walk into the city over the bridge to see the sights.

    By now my next three months were almost up. The cheapest flight out of Australia was to Bali (it’s a hard life); so I left Oryx at anchor and flew off for four days. It’s always a relief to come in view of the anchorage to find your boat still there, more so after four days. I could have spent longer in Sydney but a good forecast tempted me on. Sailing N from Sydney is not easy for a single-hander; the East Australian Coast current can run up to 4 knots and can only be avoided by sailing quite close to the coast, so there is no chance of even a catnap. There are few harbours with easy access; most have a bar to cross. It took two days to get to Coffs Harbour and I was very thankful to get the anchor down that night. The bay is very well sheltered, only exposed to the E; on the N side is a substantial, high rock breakwater protecting the marina and fishing boat harbour. Only a few months after my visit a sustained onshore winter storm completely destroyed the marina. I only stayed long enough for a quick look at the small town before continuing, to make use of the moderate SW wind.

    Faye, a friend of Carly’s, had invited me to visit her in Lennox Head. Not far south is the Richmond river. The bar has a notorious reputation, but on the day I arrived it was benign and I found a secure anchorage in Mobbs Bay, a small lagoon accessed through a break in the training wall, opposite the town of Ballina. I left Oryx and had a week of luxurious shore life while being shown the beautiful countryside of NE New South Wales.

    It was then only a short hop to Queensland’s Gold Coast with its hig-rise apartments and reclaimed, canal-fronted suburbs. N of all this lie 40 miles of natural waterways and islands, protected from the ocean by South and North Stradbroke Islands, a lovely cruising ground. After exploring some of this I entered the Brisbane River and sailed 10 miles up to anchor by the Sydney Street ferry terminus, close to the city centre. Here I spent a couple of weeks before my visa ran out again, but as it was now midwinter, or what passes for winter there, it was time to sail to the tropics.

    In the middle of July I cleared out for New Caledonia. It was flat calm in Moreton Bay and I motored for quite a few hours to clear the N end of Moreton Island and reach the open sea. When the wind filled in it was from the N and so I reached off to the E to put myself in a better position for the expected SE trade winds. Which was just as well, as after two days the wind shifted into the ESE and stayed there for the rest of the passage. It took eight days for the 950 mile passage.

    I had some work to do that needed internet access and so spent quite a bit of time in and around Noumea, the capital, but cruised up the coast to Baie de Saint Vincent and down to Baie de Prony. For the last three weeks of my stay my friend Marilyn flew in for a holiday. We were fortunate to have fresh north westerly winds and sailed down to the Isle of Pines, covering the 70 miles to Kuto in 10 hours. The island is considered the prime beauty spot in New Caledonia and on our first day ashore we had the place to ourselves, apart from a few other cruising boats. But the next day a large cruise ship arrived and the island was packed with Australian tourists, much to the delight of the local traders. We then cruised slowly back to Noumea with a following SE wind, stopping at many of the bays and islets on the way.

    As soon as Marilyn left my 90 day visa expired and I set off for New Zealand. We had E winds for the first three days and were almost becalmed off Norfolk Island for two days before a fresh NNE wind had me speeding along again. A front came through with rain and a wind shift to the W that took me the rest of the way to Opua, in the Bay of Islands: nine days for the 1,063 miles sailed. Opua at 174° E, is almost as far E as you can go.

  • A Short Passage to Uruguay

    Pete Hill

    Awarded the Founder’s Cup by RCC

    Our 180 days in Brazil were up so we cleared out of Angra dos Reis for Uruguay, 1000 miles to the south-west. Before leaving Brazil we sailed over to Enseada de Sito Forte, on Ilha Grande, where a beach bar kindly runs a hose of spring water out to a stone pier in the bay. We topped up our water and washed all the laundry before a final stroll down the beach and a sunset caiparinha.

    The next morning, 2 September, we set off. While Ilha Grande is a marvellous cruising ground with umpteen islands and islets to explore, it is not a sailor’s paradise as the winds are usually light and fickle. We drifted about hopefully for an hour or so before motoring in a flat calm at the west end of the island where we found a light south-easterly. The wind veered and freshened right on the nose. It stayed there for two days, until it backed to southeast again, increasing to a good F5 before eventually settling in the north.

    Oryx was sailing along at a grand pace with the wind vane keeping her bang on course until my midnight watch on the 5th, when she suddenly went off course. Going on deck revealed that the port rudder’s lower fitting had broken and the top pintle bent over at 45°. I released the two halyards of the already reefed sails and let them drop down while I dashed below to wake Carly with the news. On deck again, I saw that the rudder had broken free and was only held on by the thin self-steering lines. Leaning over the aft beam, I grabbed the tiller and held on for dear life as the rudder thrashed about in our wake. The sails had dropped, but the tops were still up enough to have us reaching at 3kts or so. I hollered to Carly, who was still below getting dressed. Coming on deck she dropped the sails and helped me to drag the rudder into the cockpit.

    My first thought was just to carry on, as we still had one good rudder, but Carly, more prudently, suggested that we ought to head into the coast to do the repairs. On reflection we suspected that the cause of the failure was when we ran into a drift net some months previously off Cabo Sao Tome. To paraphrase Lady Bracknell, ‘To lose one rudder may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness.’ We were 80 miles off Ilha de Santa Catarina. I knew of a sheltered bay close to the south of it, so we got underway again with the wind on the beam and just the windward sail up, well reefed to keep our speed reasonable. We just made it into Enseada da Pinheira before the last of the light went and anchored at the north end of the bay amongst a host of mussel farms.

    Here we spent a week repairing the port rudder and strengthening the starboard one too, while a fresh north wind went to waste. On Saturday 14 September we moved over to the south side, where there is a small town, and bought some fresh provisions before heading out that evening with a nice NE3. Overnight the wind died out before filling in again from the SW. We beat down the coast against a quite strong current, making poor progress. By lunchtime we had made it down to Laguna and, in the lee of the long breakwater, anchored in 6 metres with big swells from the south-east, much to the delight of the surfers inshore of us.

    Laguna entrance

    A recent innovation for us is a smartphone making it possible to get weather forecasts when near the coast. The wind was due to go to the north, but a Pampero was expected to pass along the Rio Plata about the time we would arrive there. After Laguna the only shelter was the Rio Grande, not always easy to enter, and so at first light the next morning we entered into the channel for Laguna. Big seas were just not breaking as we scuttled between the breakwaters and then sailed serenely along the calm channel. We anchored just past the car ferry before the channel turns the corner to the town. We hoped to remain unnoticed by the authorities, but breakfast was hardly over before a grey RIB came alongside. Our papers were examined and we were asked to re-anchor off the town before reporting to the Port Captain’s office. We cleared in with no problem about seeking shelter from the bad weather and spent four pleasant days there. The old town faced the large but shallow lagoon with many fine older buildings, while on the ocean side was all high rise apartments and hotels, almost deserted at this time of year.

    Setting out again with a fresh northerly we sped along with impressive swells from the south-east as the wind slowly veered and eased. One day the starboard sail suddenly decided to drop down, the fitting on the yard having broken, but it was soon up again on the spare halyard. We eventually ended up sailing long and short tacks close to the beach to keep out of the adverse current as we crossed the border into Uruguay. Here, under similar conditions Joshua Slocum ran the Spray aground, which took him several days and some assistance to get off.

    A few miles south of the border lie the Islas de la Coronilla, a reef of small islets, and that night we anchored in the lee of Isla Verde. Early the next morning we got under way, accompanied by several fur seals and spent much of the morning motoring in a flat calm with thick fog patches. An easterly wind sprang up in the afternoon and we sailed on to anchor off Cabo Castillo for a short while until the freshening wind forced us to seek better shelter a few miles away at Cabo Polonio. There was too much swell to land on the beach the next morning, so we sailed on to La Paloma, our first port in Uruguay, arriving there on 27 September.

    Cabo Polonio

    It had taken us 25 days to do the thousand and odd miles, and had us pondering the trials and tribulations of our passage, but people were still talking about the week of gale force winds that the Pampero had brought, so perhaps we had a lucky escape.

    Oryx – La Paloma