1) Aids to Plotting a Course

“He stepped to the rail and cleared his throat noisily, standing waiting. ‘Go’, came the Admiral’s high clear voice from the poop, and Perez spat into the indigo sea.

The Admiral was by the rail on the poop, the finger of his right hand clasping his left wrist. He was counting the number of times his pulse beat whilst the fleck of mucus drifted back to him, which would enable him to estimate the speed of the ship through the water”. (From the Earthly Paradise" by C S Forester)

Losing my first boat through inexperience, I set about reading - among other things - pilotage and navigation. It is soon evident that to set a course accounting for wind and tide, one must first know the boat’s speed through the water. The Admiral had one way of doing it, but to rely on your pulse whilst your crew is leaning over the side, dropping matchsticks into the water, is not reliable. A stopwatch, or second hand, is. This method is surprisingly accurate, if a number of drops are made and an average taken.

The formula: 6 x length ÷ 10 x seconds = speed in knots is easily worked out in your head, especially if a dropping spot is marked and measured 10 feet from where you sit at the tiller. For example: the average time of a matchstick to float by 10 feet of boat is 2 seconds……

60 ÷ 20 = 3 knots

Using the same formula, a piece of wood attached to a line 20 or 30 feet long, paid out over the stern and timed, will give slightly more accurate results, and is useful if you are single-handed. Or, going further, an old type of ship’s log is easily made. A wooden chip, or small 'sea anchor', attached to a line which is marked off at regular intervals, can be paid out over the stern and timed, the number of marks, or knots, run out being your speed.

I made a log consisting of a triangular piece of wood, weighted at the base which could be tripped for hauling it in. The log line was knotted at 25'3" intervals, and run out for 15 seconds it registered speeds up to 6 knots. This log I made in preparation for our trip to Boulogne, but although it was tried out on several occasions, it was never used during that cruise. Why? Well, despite the fact that it could be tripped, winding it in was a long job, and to do it every hour, according to the book, was a bit tedious. Nor was it possible, owing to the weather and the motion, to lay out the chart and draw little triangles.

The method we did use during the crossing worked quite well. We made good landfalls both sides of the channel without the use of a log. This method is to plot the tidal streams from the point of departure, for each and every hour of an estimated time of crossing, and lay your course by these. From Dungeness Point to Boulogne is 26 miles. With the wind abeam at about 15 knots, we reckoned we could cross in 8 hours. Having decided the hour of sailing from the point of departure, a number of short connecting lines are drawn on the chart, each one representing the direction and speed of the tidal current for each hour of the estimated time of crossing. This information is taken from the tables printed on the chart. Whether this zigzag line is drawn over land or sea does not matter. Between the last tidal line and the destination is drawn in the line which makes the crossing. This is your compass course, which has still to be corrected for leeway. I prefer to overestimate leeway rather than underestimate it - better to arrive too far to windward than to have to beat up to your haven.

Having done this you will know your course to steer from the point of departure. If you set out at the right time and steer a good compass course, at the end of the estimated crossing time you will be somewhere on the course drawn on the chart. By then, if you haven't arrived, you will be able to identify some shore marks with the aid of the chart and by pointing your boat at one or two of them, read off their bearing directly from the compass. Plotting these on your chart to cross the course will give you an approximate D.R. position.

A formula which might help at this stage is √H x 1.1 = distance of the horizon, H being the height of the eye above sea level. For example, if your eyes are 9 feet above sea level, then: -

√9 = 3 3 x 1.1 = 3.3 the horizon is about 3½ miles away.

What, you may say, if we cannot lay our course?

When we crossed to Boulogne we had with us a prepared table of angles and times should we have to tack. This told us how long we could sail at a certain angle off our course before we made a 90º tack to come back onto it. For instance, sailing 15º off our course for 60 minutes, then making a 90º turn towards it and sailing for 16 minutes would bring us back onto our course. But I've never put this into practice. I prefer to lay as near as possible, under bow the tide, tack when the tide turns, and rely on identifying the landfall.

To keep track of your course whilst doing this, as you may need to do in a mist or among hazards, requires the use of a log. That's why I’m looking for a young lady to drop my matchsticks over the side.

2) Beachcomber's Tent

At the after end of "Beachcomber" is a locker, the door of which is detachable so that, supported by a leg at the forward end, it does duty as a table. You have probably seen similar in caravans. Sat on the side benches, two persons may eat in comfort, with their feet under the table.

The snag at first was the shape of the tent. Slung over the raised boom and lashed to the side of the boat, it presented a typical triangular tent shape, which meant that one's abdomen was screwed up whilst eating - not conducive to good digestion, as one could not sit upright.

An idea was sought to overcome this problem - the tent needed to be converted from the shape of a triangle to that of an upturned hard-chine hull. The trouble with bright ideas is that they usually involve finding storage room for extra gear, so on the basis that each item must perform a double duty (like the table), I looked around the boat for something I could use. When rigged for sleeping on board, I never quite knew what to do with the oars; here was a chance to make them useful.

Rigging the tent the usual way, but leaving the sides slack, I hung the oars from the boom inside the tent by passing a line from one oar around the boom to the other, both fore and aft. The oars were then kept apart by an athwartships stretcher (both fore and aft) as one does with the clews of a hammock.

Canvas covered spring clips at each end of a batten are ideal: -

When rigged and adjusted, my tent now looks like: -

The after stretcher is right aft out of the way, the forward stretcher is about amidships; very handy for slinging one's clothes over at night. All the extra gear carried to effect this change is two stretchers and, to give them double duty, I make use of them as whisker poles, one end clipping around the mast.

Also, I have been able to throw the dyspepsia powders overboard!