2017 Fun

More photos and story coming soon!

A mini sailing adventure

June 2015

The Yealm estuary is a tree banked river mouth on the south Devon coast which opens up to the quaint village of Newton Ferrers and Noss Mayo, it is around a 2hour passage from plymouth. An ideal short trip, leave Friday eve after work, either tie up to the visitor mooring or anchor up, stay the night and then sail back the next day.

A memorable trip to the Yealm, it was a very uneventful passage, we got in around 20:00, pumped up the Naish Nisco paddle boards (www.naish.com) and headed up to the pub (The Yacht Club and The Dolphin in Newton Ferrers) for a pint and chips hoping to get some food before last orders. One pint down, we wanted more, chance would have it there was a band on, one pint turned into 5 and some bopping and pub chat later we embarked on the paddle back to the boat.

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The tide had dropped significantly, however with a 300mm clearance we were OK, making our way to the main channel we started our slightly wobble paddle back to the boat, moving away from the pricey houses spilling down to the water edge shedding a dull light across the now oily black water, the water then began to glow with the disturbance of plankton causing phosphorescent to drip off the end of every paddle stroke, it was a pretty cool experience.

Back on the visitor pontoon we were accompanied by a couple of other guys on their own trip, we invited them onboard for a night cap of brandy and cheese under the light of a storm lantern, they also brought on a FM radio playing classical music, all manner of conversation were discussed. All pretty surreal experience. Inevitably this was paid for the following morning with those sweats and very dry mouth only being awoken by the harbour master collecting overnight fees. The two companions from the night before had slipped line early to continue the trip and avoid the harbour master. After sorting out our head, having a leisurely breakfast we to slipped our lines and drifted back to plymouth in the ever dying light winds, a mini adventure, not possible with bricks and mortar…

Jens baptism of fire, the trip to Fowey

July 2014

Ben
In 2014, after the first couple of months heavily renovating the boat, it was time to embark on another adventure.
Having a fixed time scale to work with the best day was decided upon to make the trip to Fowey. The weather as I recall was 15-20knots from the southwest (the prevailing wind direction for this area), vis good, around 2-3ft short swell (wind swell). It looked by all accounts a good day to be on the water, however, it would be a bit of long tack on beam westward to our chosen destination. Knowing Jen had only been sailing for the length of time I known her which amount to 2-3 sails I was well aware I would have to do the majority of the work (navigation, sail hoisting, sail setting, etc.) with Jen just coming along for the ride, holding the helm while I went forward to tinker or below to do a log entry (navigation not bodily function!). We were all set, left the safety of the marina, stowed fenders and hoisted sail. It looked a fine day for sailing!

Jen
Having been together for a couple of months and being the middle of summer Ben thought it was the right time to go on a sailing adventure – the idea sounded great to me! So, it was decided, we would head to Fowey for a couple of days. Fowey is about 30nautical miles from Plymouth, roughly about six hours of sailing. The weather looked good and I was pretty excited to be heading out of the sound for the first time! Being new to sailing I was mostly unaware that sailing with just the two of us meant we were short handed and Ben had to do most of the work. I was however and still am totally confident in Bens sailing abilities and have never felt uncomfortable at sea with him. On the trip to Fowey Ben had decided he wanted to the navigation properly, meaning I was left to take the helm. I was confident enough to do this, despite the occasional shout to Ben if something didn’t feel comfortable for a bit of advice.

Ben
With full sails set (main no reef and 130% genera) we were making good progress, the boat was healing but manageable. We were making a dog leg in a southerly direction. To maintain good seamanship I wanted to keep a log every hour, a little rusty it took me around 4-5 minutes to complete an entry and plot our position on the local charts. During this period Jen was required to take the helm, with the instruction to keep us on a steady course and yell if anything was up…

Jen
A couple of hours in, I was at the helm with Ben taking our position below deck. The next thing I knew something wasn’t feeling right and the whole boat was pulling away from me, I wasn’t sure what was going on and didn’t really do a lot, then I remember looking down into water from the starboard side of the boat and thinking this is it I’ve managed to tip this thing over and I’m about to get very wet (at this point I still hasn’t managed to get my head round the action of the keel)! Whilst this is taking place Ben casually looked out from the hatch and asked if everything was OK and we’d lost some eggs. I think all I managed was a frightened shake of my head giving the indication that I was not ok and needed some help!

Ben
On the second entry, 2hrs into our passage, I started to notice the boat changing angle, then lot of noise and then the eggs and everything else went flying, the boat heeled the other way, then another crash, I looked out of the cockpit to see what was up, I saw a frightened set of eyes looking back a me. Having not understood the concept of weather helm the boat had got the better of Jen. The boat probably with to much canvas up screwed into the wind, heaved to the boat continued to turn to leeward to crash jib.

Jen
This incident shook my confidence for the rest of that journey and it was impossible for Ben to make any more plots as I was simply not happy to be left at the helm on my own. Although, the sight of dolphins playing at the bow did help cheer me up. It’s safe to say I was quite grateful to see Fowey and was quite looking forward to the shelter of the harbour and not having to worry about sailing Gunslinger.

Ben
All very exciting, however the wind strength was not too dangerous for the crew or boat. Nevertheless fear was struck into the Jen and lessons were learnt.
For the remaining 4-5 hours of the passage I didn’t leave the helm except for putting a reef into the main (which made for a lot smoother sailing). I don’t think even the sight of dolphins did that much to improve Jens confident at this point.

Once in Fowey I felt there was a lot of confidence building needed, with a not brilliant forecast for the following day we decided to stay in for 2 nights and have a day exploring the area. Out of the school holidays It looked like we lowered the average age of our fellow yachtsmen and women in Fowey harbour considerably. This was apparent on the passage when the majority of other boats in the area were seen motoring to Fowey as apposed to making a couple of long tacks. Having no shower or running water in a half renovated yacht we soon started to look rather grubby compared to our neighbours on the tidy looking cruisers, however I feel giving out a non conformist image is all part of the inheritance of a boat with the name of Gunslinger.

Jen
Being in Fowey, I spent my first 24hours on the boat without touching dry land. This in itself was fine and cabin fever luckily escaped me. What I actually found most disconcerting was when we went into Fowey itself. Having not showered for a while I felt like I looked incredibly grubby, but it was also the feeling of land sickness that I had never felt before that I just couldn’t get used to at all! The feeling of a rocking boat just wouldn’t leave me and walking around town felt incredibly odd! Having decided that I was reasonably unwashed, on returning back Gunslinger I decided it was time for a shower. Whilst most people are probably happy to part with pennies for a nice warm shower using the harbour facilities, I decided I wanted a makeshift shower on the boat. So on deck I donned my bikini and took to a bucket held by Ben as my shower, probably receiving some interesting looks from the surrounding boats. To me I think this all added to the experience of the first trip away on Gunslinger.

Ben
The return trip in the most part was less eventful, having wind from the west and following sea it was a run back to plymouth, both in a lazy and far more relaxed mood than the voyage two days earlier. All was smooth sailing until we reached plymouth, the sky became overcast the more the day progressed, upon reaching Plymouth Sound it started to rain and the wind picked up, this was a squall, not a problem. We both put on our wet weather gear, I was confident it would pass before we needed to take down sails. Jen went below deck to put on her fowleys, due to the heavy rains the hatch was pulled over, on exiting the cabin, not once, but twice managed to bump her head in an attempt to dislodge the hatch, the hatch won, as you can imagine this caused me much amusement…
Lee way was fast running out and the the squall showed no signs of passing, with Jens confidence half restored it was time for drastic measures, no other choice than to go head to wind, let the sail flap (with the increased wind this was very noisy). With Jen at the helm I ran forward and dropped the sail onto the deck, all went without a hitch.
The trip was definitely an adventure! A voyage of discovery and some important lessons were learnt. Jens performance was admirable considering she was at this point still very green (new to it all, not sea sick) and I can only guess how foreign sailing is to her. I to learnt not to take ability as a given, knowing my own, the boat and the crews ability is essential.

Jens story

Before I met Ben I had never been sailing at all, my experience was limited to a couple of hours on a topper, of which my only memory was that of heading towards a dam with no idea what I was doing. Although it has always been a sport that I would like to have tried, my life had always been dedicated to other sports and the idea of living on a boat had certainly never crossed my mind.

On our first date Ben took me to look at Gunslinger; having only had her for just over a month and being such a big project, on the inside she looked less than desirable to someone such as myself with little experience of yachts and no concept of the project, in fact my first words were, ‘it’s quite small’. This seems quite ironic now given that this statement was based on just Ben living aboard and not the two of us. It’s safe to say after my first encounter with Gunslinger I was still not particularly thrown by the idea of living on a boat.

However, in the following months, the more time I spent with Ben, naturally the more time I spent around Gunslinger. Ben took me out sailing and after work I would go down to the marina and help him out with renovations, at the time I was working as a painter and decorator, but I’m not sure I was of any particular use throughout the project. My enjoyment of sailing grew and grew, as did my desire to improve my sailing, but, not only that, I was coming round to the idea of living on board and was starting to see why Ben had set his heart on such an idea.

In September 2014 I started an MSc in Sustainable Environmental Management and moved into a small, damp and dated flat with my twin sister, who was also studying for her masters. The small damp and dated flat wasn’t the only problem with the living situation; being twins, many people think my sister and I are the best of the friends, but most of the time this isn’t the case. We are both competitive and stubborn and living together on our own, as many of our friends commented, was never going to end well. We had lived together in our third year of uni but with other friends and we had the best time, but with no mediators in the flat, there were many arguments.

Over the coming months I was starting to hate the flat and tensions between myself and Rachel grew (although it wasn’t always horrible, when we do get on we have a great time!), as Gunslinger moved towards a liveable state, she started to become an incredibly desirable place to live and given that I was spending most nights with Ben and not at my flat and the cheap rent, it was decided that we would both move onto Gunslinger the start of April 2015 and I was to become a live aboard.

The first winter aboard

We did the entire winter of 2015-2016 living aboard full time. Hats off to all the live aboards who do! Over Christmas we retreated to the warmth of my parents house followed by a 10days of sun in the Canary islands. You can’t blame us, the winter in the UK is grey, wet, cold, dark and windy, not ideal weather for being on a 32ft boat. All things said we moved back on early Feb, the drizzly depths of British winter. I think the pinnacle of this was waking up one morning with the condensation frozen on the inside of the window… I think there has many been times when Jen has wanted to be in a real house made of bricks. Now the days are getting longer and it being light in the morning, life onboard is getting more bearable. This might also be due to an oil filled radiator to heat the space, much better than our old fan heater.

The delivery trip

April 2014

 

The previous owner informed me it is unlucky to change a boats name, I assured him this was not an issue. Two weekends later and the boat was in the water, with a marginal weather window for a return trip to Plymouth on the Sunday, I had to assemble a crew, I called around a couple of local mates, one stepped up to the mark and my dad agreed to the voyage. In addition, the previous owner who by the sounds of it wanted one last final send off agreed to show us the ropes.

My long suffering parents dove me down to Falmouth on a drizzly Saturday morning (early April). We meet up with the previous owner on a marina where they had brought Gunslinger aside, she looked better know she was in the water. We set about putting the sails on, and I was promptly sent up the mast to fix a wind vain. Everything was great, like a kid at Christmas. We offloaded our sailing gear which included a set of flares, a hand held radio and some local charts, what I considered the bare essentials if something was to go wrong on my maiden voyage. I arranged to meet up with the previous owner to do the final settlement, I was also invited to go racing on his new bigger, faster boat. For the payment I secretly wanted to hand over a wad of money as it was the most expensive thing I have ever brought, but we ended up doing an online bank transfer, how undramatic. The race went well, as I can remember we got line honours. The race was followed by a trip to the yacht club for some post race beers where I started to get to know the previous owner, who was becoming a bit of a character.

Me, dad and Guy my mate, got a burrito from one of the quirky local establishments and went for a pint before we headed back to Gunslinger for our first night aboard. The drizzle from earlier had now turned to rain; the list of jobs to be done on the boat started with fixing some of the obvious leaks on the deck.

After not the greatest night sleep certain doubts crossed my mind as if it was the right thing to do. We awoke at first light with rain and with slightly stronger winds than previously forecasted. We slipped mooring at around 7, straight after managed to slip a fender, but after a little frustration fuelled by a couple of hours sleep, we retrieved it – it not a great start. We rendezvoused with the previous owner, the forth member of crew and set on our way, Sheets were run and sails prepped for hoisting, the previous owner optimistically set the spinnaker sheet, wanting to show us Gunslingers full potential. In the lee off Falmouth docks we hoisted the sail, came off the wind and were way, judging buy the conditions in Falmouth harbour we promptly put a reef in the main. We edged ever closer to the mouth of the harbour knowing we were in full exposure of the elements, 30knots just off the beam, with a decent 6-8ft wind swell running, not as uncomfortable as I was expecting, Gunslinger, as the previous owner had said was holding her own, still not what we would want to be doing for the next 8-10 hours (a respectable time for the 60mile passage). The thought of turning back was on everyones minds yet no one said it. After rounding a nav mark just off Falmouth, we bared our way to a waypoint just off Plymouth. This was better, the boat was now surfing the swell, picking up runners and accelerating up to 10knots or so – this was fun, especially with having the confident of the previous owner on board happy and egging the boat on. The wind now 35knots, swell 10ft and visibility less 1 mile, we were making good speed, averaging 10-11knots, hanging onto the the tiller we maxed out at 16.5knots surfing down a larger wave, splitting the wave open chucking a gigantic bow wave ether side of boat. This was comparable to dingy sailing, playing the main to get that extra little bit out of the boat. I Can safely say the spinnaker was staying safely tied up in the bag.

There is a certain period into every voyage where people become happy with the conditions and chatting begins. When the previous owner discovered dad was a dentist, he promptly showed us his dentures. The question was asked as to how he lost his teeth….he was hit square across the mouth with a boom of a trawler, a previous career. But apparently this was nothing, listing off a number of work based and other injuries, all topped off by pissing on electric fence (described as the feeling of being stabbed in the kidneys) and being kicked in the balls by a horse. Undoubtedly he has had a colour full life and was as tough as old boots.

After around 4hours, in very good time we hit our waypoint just off Rame head, turning into Plymouth Sound the the swell dropped and the visibility increased. We made our way to what was to be Gunslingers and eventually my new home. After the assistance of the marina staff and narrowly avoiding being t-boned on the pontoon finger we were back to a safe haven. Cold, Wet and tired but all with beaming smiles from the far from placid delivery trip/ maiden voyage.

Why a boat?

Febuary 2014

The initial seed was planted at the local pub, the Odd Wheel, I went up to see a mate who was off to Australia for a half a year or so, but that’s not relevant, the relevant part was that he and his girl friend had a motor boat they were in the process of doing up to live aboard in the UK. After recently starting a ‘real job’ there were expectations and a desire to move out of my parent house and this presented me with two options; buy or rent a house/ flat in town. Buying I felt I would be a 20 plus year sentence of paying monthly mortgage contributions (given, I would have a house at the end of it), whereas renting would be paying for someone else’s mortgage with no reward. Both of these options seemed unappealing given that my parents house was only a few miles away. So whilst talking to my friends, option three arose which suddenly seemed like the logical solution; get a cheap boat, do it up and live on it for a couple of years, kind of a cheap city flat, simple….