It is or was a Chinese belief that a house has a spirit. It is said that one can feel it when crossing the threshold and I believe they call it ‘Sen Fu’ — which is the nearest I can get to the original. It is plain from the articles that appear in these pages that some of us believe, or like to believe, the same thing about our boats. I certainly once had a strange experience in this regard.

One weekend I had sailed up the east coast on the Saturday in quiet conditions, passing through Harwich harbour to spend the night up the Stour on the mud. The Sunday morning brought a light westerly wind with a forecast of it freshening later. I headed down the Stour on the first of the ebb, with the wind dead aft and the genoa goosewinged. I pegged the tiller with a length of shockcord and Snufkin sailed himself towards Harwich and the open sea. Sitting back and running my eye over the rigging I was horrified to discover that when rigging the boat the previous day, instead of fastening the port shroud to its own shroud plate, I had fastened it to a small eye plate intended for the boom vang. This was only screwed to the deck, not bolted, a few inches further aft. My first instinct was to anchor somewhere while I sorted it out, but for some reason I decided to do it while the boat was still sailing itself, although the self-steering effect is not normally to be relied on. When I rig the boat, the shrouds are attached with ring-fastened shackles and the forestay has a rigging screw — there was quite a bit of tension on the eye already as the foresail is set flying and the luff tensioned with a powerful lever. The mast is not standard Roamer as it has only single shrouds.

The first thing I did was to furl the genoa; amazingly, Snufkin sailed on unconcerned. I slackened the tensioning lever and removed the rolled up sausage of the sail. Then I gingerly crept onto the foredeck expecting the dinghy to fly up into the wind at any moment — but no! While my legs hung down each side of the bow I removed the lashing and slackened the rigging screw. This slackened the port shroud, the boom being on that side. The weight of mast, sail and boom was being carried by the starboard shroud and the forestay. I gently moved myself aft and prepared to undo the ring through the clevis pin on the shroud shackle. Still the Roamer held a steady course!

A thorough look round in case any boats or ships were approaching, and then I committed myself. I edged the clevis pin out holding onto the shroud with my other hand and transferred the shackle to its proper place. With a sigh of relief I inserted the ring and then went forward again, taking the genoa with me. Forestay tensioned, genoa onto its furling drum and then standing on the foredeck — halyard clip, sheets fastened with bowlines and finally the tensioning lever pushed home. I moved aft again, unfurled the genoa, tugged the sheet to set it goosewinged and then — bingo! — Snufkin spun round on his keel to face the wind, and I distinctly heard the words, “Okay this time… but don’t count on it.”

Or was it just the flapping of the sails?

O

Hewie asks why my Roamer has such a ‘silly’ name. ‘Snufkin’ is the friend of the Moomins in Tove Jannson’s books, who sets off to roam in warmer lands when they, after their traditional meal of pine needles, hibernate. He returns every spring.