Early Books on Cruising under Sail?

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Thanks for your help

I almost had an ideal opportunity to check the stopping distance, over the weekend's flat calm, but Christmas intervened, so I put it off to New Year's Day, when the forecast seems to think it will be blowing. Will keep trying. I suspect that you are right and I am wrong about the stopping distance.

I also suspect that the prop is not sufficiently immersed.
 
Re: Thanks for your help

I have the feeling that you need to come down on the diameter, but up on the pitch, I think that with 15 hp you should be able to run an almost square prop, if there is at least 2-1 reduction. However, props are too expensive to be dicking about, I will run the figures you gave me past that bloke I was telling you about and see what he says.

Are you thinking that you are getting excessive cavitation, because the prop is not deep enough? It's a possibilty?
 
Re: Thanks for your help

2,300 rpm, 1.87:1 reduction

A smaller diameter would be great! Its a bare half inch from the sternpost as it is, which clearly is not enough.

Yes, I'm suspecting a bit of cavitation, but I may be baking up the wrong tree altogether.

Thanks a million!
 
Less of the "old fart" if you please, when you are getting a little more "mature" (and that will happen in the next few years for you!) then you will realise you cannot blame your own behaviour on age, I, for example, was born daft as a brush!
 
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I, for example, was born daft as a brush!

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Well, me too, but you don't think I am going to admit it on here do you? /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I fully intend to get old totally disgracefully! /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
Many thanks, that looks like it might be promising. I will have a good dig around in there. I have a friendly second hand book dealer here in Bideford, I might give him a tug and see what he can do as well.
 
RD McMullen, \"Down Channel\"

I just thought of something.

This book starts with young McMullen learning to sail in his 18ft half decked sloop "Leo" in 1850.

Amongst his early mishaps he recounts being carried athwart hawse a ten tonner at anchor thereby awakening a couple of "unlucky wights who rushed on deck in their pyjamas".

Now, this was in 1850 and we have one small cruising boat with an amateur crew colliding with another...

so... just when did our sport - messing about by ourselves, for a few days at a time, in little boats, and visiting other ports, harbours and anchorages under sail - begin?

One of Uffa Fox's books has an account by Roger North of a voyage from London to Harwich and return in about a ten tonner, including an incident where they see some East Indiamen lying at anchor in the Warp (IIRC) and are hailed and asked if they "want to take some goods in", which they choose not to do and congratulate themselves on not doing so when they are pulled over soon afterwards by a Customs cutter. This (not racing, just a cruise) would have been in the 1670's.
 
Re: RD McMullen, \"Down Channel\"

I would venture to suggest that it first started when man learnt to make a boat!? Surely it is not too absurd to think that after he learned the skills necesary to construct a boat, that he didn't on occasion travel to places just for the hell of it?...................................

Surely one of the things that sets us apart from the rest of the creatures that inhabit this planet, is our curiosity? What's up that creek? What's around that headland? Where do the oceans end? Is the earth flat? /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
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The kind of sailing that I am really interested in couldn't be done by most people today. People just don't have the time, there is always the need to be somewhere, usually back at work, by Monday morning, that sort of thing, so going back to basics just isn't an option, I can't imagine any employer being very sympathetic to a message saying that one couldn't be in for work this morning because one is becalmed in the middle of the Irish Sea! /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif


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No! There's no harm in dreaming. Boating is about dreaming! (Isn't it?!) Maurice Griffiths even wrote an interesting book that touched on the subject - 'Dream Ships' (1949) (published by Hutchinson's), describing lots of nice yacht designs. And practical tips. (Including the lines and plans of a 79 foot Scottish Zulu!) (and Plymouth Hooker, bawley, smack, punt, Loch Fyne Skiff, prawner, Brixham trawler...)

PS - and yes - Roger North's voyages are fascinating. Likewise FB Cooke - my favourite... And M.G.'s descriptions of the swatchways. And McMullen...! And...
All the best.
 
"The kind of sailing that I am really interested in couldn't be done by most people today. People just don't have the time, there is always the need to be somewhere, usually back at work, by Monday morning, that sort of thing, so going back to basics just isn't an option, I can't imagine any employer being very sympathetic to a message saying that one couldn't be in for work this morning because one is becalmed in the middle of the Irish Sea!

I have to confess, that I am probably becoming a tad eccentric, as I move nearer to my 60th birthday, but the idea of sailing as it used to be done, seems more attractive as the days go by."

I think that one gets more out of each minute spent afloat with his sort of boat - the "quality" of the experience, rather than the "quantity" is what counts.

Actually, I disagree. In FB Cooke's day, nobody had a car, and City clerks (himself, and most of his sailing friends) worked on Saturday mornings.

To achieve a weekend on an engineless boat in such circumstances took a bit of planning, but they managed it.

Cooke was, IIRC, responsible for persuading the Great Eastern Railway, which in those days served Maldon, Tollesbury, Brightlingsea and Aldeburgh, with a launch service to Pin Mill as well as Southend, Burnham, Fambridge, Colchester, Walton-on-Naze, Harwich, Manningtree, Felixstowe, Woodbridge and Lowestoft which still have stations, to issue a "Yachtsman's Ticket". This was a weekend return which allowed the bearer to return from a different station to the one that he had disembarked at, on payment of the difference only (at weekend rate) between the two. Thus one might sail from Fambridge to, say Brightlingsea, or Walton, leave the boat on her anchors in the care of the Cruising Association Boatman for the week, and take the train back home from Brightlingsea or Walton.

In a way the car has made matters worse as one needs to get back to the start point, and the CA has given up its Boatman system.
 
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No! There's no harm in dreaming. Boating is about dreaming! (Isn't it?!) Maurice Griffiths even wrote an interesting book that touched on the subject - 'Dream Ships' (1949) (published by Hutchinson's), describing lots of nice yacht designs. And practical tips. (Including the lines and plans of a 79 foot Scottish Zulu!) (and Plymouth Hooker, bawley, smack, punt, Loch Fyne Skiff, prawner, Brixham trawler...)

PS - and yes - Roger North's voyages are fascinating. Likewise FB Cooke - my favourite... And M.G.'s descriptions of the swatchways. And McMullen...! And...
All the best.

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Yes, I think you are probably right, at least as far as I am concerned, dreaming has been, and is, very much part of my boating. Some of those dreams have been easily achieved, whilst others are yet to be achieved. Still I wonder, and sometimes fear, that I haven't time on my side as I used to have, but none the less, I shall continue to dream, and to journey towards those dreams hopefully /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

By the sound of it this bloke FB Cooke, and his like seem to be (from what has been said so far) well worth investigating.
 
[ QUOTE ]

I think that one gets more out of each minute spent afloat with his sort of boat - the "quality" of the experience, rather than the "quantity" is what counts.

Actually, I disagree. In FB Cooke's day, nobody had a car, and City clerks (himself, and most of his sailing friends) worked on Saturday mornings.

To achieve a weekend on an engineless boat in such circumstances took a bit of planning, but they managed it.

In a way the car has made matters worse as one needs to get back to the start point, and the CA has given up its Boatman system.

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I am sure that you are right about quality as apposed to quantity.........trouble is, I don't think most people today would think that way? We live in a very immediate society, I think that a lot of people just wouldn't want to faff with all the planning and such.

Yes, the car has a lot to answer for, but it isn't all bad news is it? The car has brought the possibility of boating to thousands of people who without it just could have contemplated it. However, as you say, with regard to the kind of boating we have been discussing it has been a bit of a double edged sword. In Cooke's day, life in general was conducted at a more leisurely pace, and the planning was just part of the experience?

Also, planning can be made a lot easier, by having access to ones mooring at any state of the tide, not a luxury available to a lot of folks, certainly nearly no-one on the N. Devon coast.

That shouldn't be read as a complaint by the way, just an extra challenge as far as I am concerned, working the tides is a way of boating life here, and we are all well used to it. Working engineless ships and boats under sail has always been one of the more interesting features for observing parties around here, particularly as the tidal range is vast, and the speeds are swift! /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
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I have to confess, that I am probably becoming a tad eccentric, as I move nearer to my 60th birthday, but the idea of sailing as it used to be done, seems more attractive as the days go by.

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You seem to be going the opposite way to my father then. The older he seems to get the more gadgets and gizmos he wants to add. So far in the shape of a laptop chartplotter and AIS. I can tell you it's doing absolutely no favours to the already "interesting" wiring aboard. That said however the next gadget I am in full support of. A proper brass Very Pistol.
 
Hmmmm, not sure of my facts on this one, but I believe one has to obtain a firearms certificate to have one aboard?

As to your Dad, don't worry, he is just heading for his second childhood! I'll bet he is enjoying every minute of it too! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
You need a firearms licence to keep one ashore. Not for keeping it aboard. Just to be safe though he is having it put on his certificate. He thinks it'll be useful for white flares. I think it'll just be fun.
 
Hmmmmmmm! could be fun for repelling wayward Mobos!

Ooooops! did I say that? Naaaaaa, must have been some other fella. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Where would one obtain one these days?
 
Not sure where you'd obtain one. I guess you need to get it through a gunsmiths as I doubt it's legal to flog 'em from your car boot.

Ours was found towards the bottom of our boat store. No doubt it was one of many things on board that the war department lost after WWII.
 
What you want is one of these:-
scan0004-1.jpg
 
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