Well, we sent in our dues again. Maybe next year we will get out sailing in Olympia.
Now the Pelican winter is beginning, with the Center For Wooden Boats regatta next weekend. Then we sail October 2, 16, and 30 and November 6, and 20, plus December 11, weather permitting. In between we are hoping for good weather for the MacGregor. Maybe if there is a cruise to Jerrell Cove we can connect with SSSS sailors there.
We had a weekend in England on the way to a cruise to the Heads of Navigation of the Rhine, Neckar, and Danube, so hired a 30 foot Broads Cruiser for three days on the Norfolk Broads. The boat was thirty feet, including a short bowsprit. It was a very heavily ballasted little boat. The main is gaff rigged and was equipped with a topsail. The smallish jib was roller furling.
The peak and throat halyards were used to raise the cabin top when moored, to give full headroom. On our boat the cabin top just raised on one side, but that was adequate. We are used to a standing lug rig, and found we tended to peak the gaff up too high for optimum sail set. We did set the topsail at the boatyard, just to sort it out, but with only two of us we decided it was a little much to handle although it would have helped get sail area up over the river banks and fields of reeds.
Broads Cruisers do not use cleats of any sort!!! The jib did have self tailing winches, which helped, but the mainsheet had to be hand held and in any wind that was a job!!!
The mast was mounted to a tall pivot point and was counterweighted with several large slabs of metal. When the mast was up this was additional ballast. To lower the mast it was necessary to unship the boom, take a filler out of the foredeck, release the forestay and pay out the line of a tackle to drop the mast onto a scissors type crotch on the after deck. Then you could motor through the bridge reset the mast.
They have one race, up and down three rivers, in any order, which involves dropping the mast several times to pop through stone bridges of minimum height. As it turned out we explored for two and a half days without having to go under a bridge, so did not waste our time lowering the mast. Any farther and we would have had to.
On Saturday we saw large boats racing on Wroxham Broad. The Broad is perhaps half the size of Capital Lake, and the boats ranged from little, 20 and 30 footers, to those around 40 to over 50 feet. These boats are mostly gaff rigged, with topsail. A few have true Marconi rigs: tall thin masts with tiers of spreaders, webs of shrouds, and ranks of headstays, forestays, and running backstays. Most are quite old, according to a friend who grew up in the area.
Not racing, but certainly sailing were Albion and several newer Wherrys. These beamy flat bottom boats, gaff rigged and boomless were the freight haulers of the Broads until fairly recently. Albion, over 100 years old, is now a museum, but an active one as we saw her sailing down the River Bure, carrying the bishop of Norwich to the ruins of a monastery some miles away for an annual dedication.
It was a very hot day and we were glad to find an ice cream boat tied to the staith at a local park. He was doing a great business in soft freeze and popsicles.
The wind was very gentle on Sunday as we ran up the Bure to Wroxham. Monday there was none as we motored back past Wroxham Broad, through a regatta being held on the river at Horning despite bumper to bumper motorboat traffic in both directions. On Monday it was mostly kids, with a few adults, sailed Lasers, Wayfairers, Wanderers, Merlins, Optimists, Enterprises, Mirrors and one lonely OK Dinghy. Also some classes we did not recognize.
We motored as far as the mouth of the Ant, then set sail for a very interesting beat into increasing winds. We followed instructions and tied up ashore to set sail. Dave had the engine running as we would have to work the boat around onto port tack to get under way. I put the rond anchor aboard and pushed the bow out. My foot slipped. I grabbed the loop in the deck, there were no cleats, and found I was lifting the cover of the channel where the foot of the mast swings forward when it is being lowered. There was no provision to fasten it down!! As I slid overboard, I carefully replaced the lid and then grabbed the toe rail, yelling for Dave to stop, at least not put the boat in gear or sheet in the sails. Over the engine and the clatter of the sails, he could not hear me, but he did notice that I had vanished, so he came forward.
“Work your way aft,” he suggested and ran back to make a step by stretching the mooring line from its loop on the after deck to the winch. Well, I could stand on it but it was too long to get aboard. I was eyeing the shore, swimming was no problem except that many of the boats do not have holding tanks and I really did not want to get any deeper in that river than necessary. People ashore called him to come in and so he put the engine in gear and motored to the bank where the boat was held while some fellows came aboard and helped haul me into the cockpit. Then they backed the jib, sent our bow out into the stream and we cut off the engine and were sailing.
Oh, what a sail. The width of the river was little more than twice the length of the boat, the wind was in our teeth, and the bank on the port side had collapsed, constricting the channel in places. Motor cruisers of all sizes formed freeway type traffic up and down the river. The sailing plan: gain speed “ready about!” tack, then hold the boat into the wind so it shot upwind along the shore, very vertical banks. As soon as it began to loose momentum, spin onto the other tack, backing the jib when necessary. On the Wherry, Albion, a foredeck hand a pole gave a hearty shove against the bank with each tack.
The only way to secure the mainsheet in was to wrap it over the helmsman, like a Volga Boatman towing his barge upstream. One hand and shoulder for the sheet, the other for the tiller. Dave got a workout running back and forth trimming the jib sheets. But the boat went well, never faltered in stays, and the motor boats politely waited each time until we had fallen onto the new course, then scuttled across our stern before we were obliged to tack again. Imagine beating up the Lake Washington Ship canal on Sunday evening in July, just after the big lock opened.
It was really a satisfying couple of miles before the river turned again and we could close reach. A long reach, then a short tack, then another reach up the shore. Then the river turned again and we could fall away to a beam reach, sit back and enjoy the scenery: reed beds, windmills, dozens of other boats.
All too soon we had to turn about and run back up the Bure and the Thurne to Potter Heigham to prepare to turn the boat in next morning at 0900. We moored again at the yard and I tried out the on board shower. It was one of the best showers I have ever encountered.
Would we do it again? Yes, but with a smaller boat, or with the largest ratchet block we could find, to lash somewhere to take the strain of the mainsheet.
The yard of our little Pelican is going to seem like a toothpick after the 20 foot by 6 inch pole of a gaff on Lady Hazel!!
Good Sailing, we will get to Olympia yet.
Jean Gosse