IT’S ABOUT HER OPERATION…

“Pink flesh 12 inches square, and you are to make the incision!” The young surgeon has a team round him and the big man in the background just in case. The amateur who sets out to alter his boat has, mostly, no backup team and probably no ‘big man’ to take over and stitch up the mistakes. He is alone with the agony of diagnosis and design, and with the decision to cut or not. That is why I bought an exercise book.

IT’S IN THE BOOK!

Everything I have done has been through that book. Into it I have poured ideas, dreams, data and information, quotes from books and articles — anything useful and usable. Methods and mechanisms, usable and unusable are sketched there in profusion, for my family truly says, “Dad can’t think without drawing it.” Some ideas are developed over several modifications, most are rejected. In with it all go lists of priorities and order of working — they use time like sitting in a waiting room and save time when on the job. So far it all works!

THE PROBLEM?

Just that we bought a wooden Drascombe Lugger: the previous owner had completed her from where John Elliott left off and had used her, but only for river sailing for one season. Now his wife wanted a cabin so he sold her. We sail in the Orwell estuary and so a lot of details have been altered and some bigger things — and we find in the DCA that there are others with this sort of thinking.

DRY SPOTS

John Glasspool’s tantalisingly brief allusion, plus one photo, of David Pyle’s Lugger in which he went to Australia gave form and order to ideas which I had been mulling over after a bit of experience in the boat plus several readings of Ken Duxbury’s beguiling books on Lugworm and his other one on Seamanship in open boats.

A letter to John Elliott the builder brought a handwritten reply reassuring me that the boat should support her crew even when swamped. However I do not like wet sailing and have a thing about watertight integrity, as well as liking to keep my gear dry as long as possible. I found there was even a limber hole into one locker, while rain got into the after lockers either down the mizzen mast or running down the after bulkhead and in the opening in it which served as a hatch to the after lockers. The forward locker was liable to get a dribble of anything on the foredeck too so a remedy was needed.

THE REMEDY

The remedy lay in a series of separate but related projects which together have improved the situation. I cut two hatch holes in the after deck about 400 x 450 mm, and fitted coamings and hatch covers to fit down over, retained in place by shock cord at present, which will cope with all but a knockdown or swamping. Then I filled the holes in the bulkhead which had been access to the lockers and covered the forward face of it with thinner ply glassed on. Result: dry lockers, and into the bargain far better accessibility, because one can reach all the locker floor areas and without the grovelling which was necessary before. One further item was the construction of a short collar or upstand where the mizzen mast goes through the deck at the deck plate which also covers the top of the rudder trunking. A sleeve of old motorcycle innertube slides down the mast and over this to form another watertight joint for all but pressurized leaks.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

(*) asterisks indicate relevant drawings.

For the technically minded, I cut the two hatch holes and then strengthened the edges with 5 x 20 mm softwood glued and cramped on (size is immaterial, it was what was to hand) flush with the edges of the holes. This formed the edge into which the screws and glue of the mitred mahogany coamings went. (*) It is vital to get the coamings ‘level with themselves’ by ensuring a sheet of ply sits flat before drilling and gluing not after when planing is not a good alternative.

The hatch covers are of ply with fillets glued to the edge and on the inside of the rubber sealing strip. (*) In this way the hatch cover overhangs and all incidental water cannot enter.

The mizzen collar was formed over a temporary sleeve over the mast foot, giving enough clearance for a working fit. It is simply two layers of glass mat and resin, overall length about 80 mm of which about 50 mm will stand up, A line at that length around the collar and tin snips cutting slits up to it from what will be the bottom, the ‘tabs’ formed being bent up outwards (*). The deck plate is sanded to bare wood, and the collar seated on resin exactly over the hole for the mast. More resin to make a fair curve is all that is needed as it is not required to be strong, only watertight. Paint finishes this, and a 75 mm length of old motorcycle innertube slipped up the mast will come down over the edge of the collar to give that a watertight joint. The deck plate is in its turn rebolted to the deck with a mastic seal as it must move to give access to the rudder trunking.

UP THE SHARP END

There were no fairleads and nothing but two rather diminutive bollards. So now, after experiment, we have a good solid Sampson post whose root is a dovetailed housing joint with a dowel up its centre to take both the fore/aft tensions of towing and mooring and the athwartships pressures of coming alongside etc. (*) I also made a set of fairleads from scrap oak which have been much admired. They are simpler to make than many people think, but I got one diagonal top slit wrong by 90° and rope with an upward pull could come out.

Another useful fairlead is the 25 mm hole in the tumblehome piece over the transom, lined like a sewn cringle with a piece of plumber’s copper pipe, peened over (*) with a hammer. This leads the mizzen sheet out to the bumkin without fouling the Seagull and avoids chafe on the top edge. Cleats at the quarters and abreast of the mast at gunwale level, and a rail from knee to knee forward to secure small lines and sail ties too, make a lot of difference. Another pair of cleats on the deck plate at the rudder head take the strain of the mainsheet when it is not in hand, yet keep it accessible.

SELF STEERING AND HELM RESTRAINING

From the newsletter, other people are interested in this too. The means has been to use two of the cheap (25p or 50p last year) wooden blocks from Thos. Foulkes, sanded and varnished. On to these I spliced strops with 750 mm tails which I then hitch through the waterways in the knees at the after end of the well, abreast of the rudder head. (*) It is simple to lead the main or foresheet through the appropriate block according to the point of sailing. Lacing eyes on the edging of the side decks (*) provide an anchor point for rubber to be a counter spring. I have plans in mind to use belaying pins in a series of holes in the tiller to alter the amount of leverage and sheet travel for a given angular movement of helm, by altering the distance from the rudder head at which the sheet is attached. It is also possible to use a piece of rope permanently rove through these blocks and hitch the sheet to that. The permanent rope, especially if it be nylon and you stretch it or if you put a piece of shock cord in its length will act nicely as a tiller restrainer. I once read of a man who ‘singlehanded’ and brought up to moorings by using a line like this which led forward, so he could tend his helm from up forward, using it as a yoke-line, in effect.

Self steering is fun, but if the boat can do it with you on board, she can do it if you fall overboard too! I nearly tripped on the after deck on a reach across Harwich Harbour and since then have felt the need of a lifeline if doing anything outside the well area, if by any chance I am alone. The Lugger balances well, properly trimmed, without self steering, but it adds to the fun.

GETTING AT THE SWEETS

Getting at the sweets or the chart, glasses etc. if you have to delve prone into the after locker or even upended into the new ones is not easy. Ken Duxbury made do with nets, but we have now got a pair of boxes, slung by web and shock cord under the side decks. The edging keeps rain and any spray out, and if the bilges fill up a bit, the box is watertight from below too as a net is not. The next plan is for a galley that folds up there too.

“Her operation” is proving a bit drawn out for Tethys, but it is fun planning and doing it and maybe there is something in the telling for someone else to use as a seed thought and develop in their own way on their own boat.