Sailing Forefathers (Yottie Types)

Mind you, one of my ancesters commissioned and commanded the largest ship in the world, at the time.


I think he was called Noah....
 
Perhaps at some point in the future we'll be able to predict the weather more accurately and for further ahead. The ability to know exactly what the weather will do in a month's time would be a staggering improvement in safety for anybody at sea.
If this happens, I'd imagine it would make a bigger impact on safety than lifejackets, liferafts, EPIRBs, GPS, etc etc. Perhaps the yachties of the future with access to such forecasts would think that even the best equipped yachtsmen of today were mad to contemplate taking to the water without knowing what was going to hit them.
 
Captain Foster speaks well of his employers.!

However, not everyone did; I knew a man who told me that onecareer with Hains as an officer was to be able to box, which says something about the Jolly Jacks who shipped with them...[/QUOTE

I sailed as AB in the MV TREVAYLOR about 1963. I don't know about prior to the P&O take over but in my day Haines Steamship Company were known as 'Hungry Haines' some of the worst feeders out of London Docks. Board of Trade basic issue as per ships articles and the scale of issue was as per the Merchant Shipping Act of (I think 1894)!!
Five months in her, she was built in the 1940's and down by the head with cockroaches, even they were hungry I reckon..
 
I don't think you are tougher just because you don't have the gizmos. My previous boat had echosounder and log and SWMBO bought a hand held GPS that I didn't use.

My present boat I bought fitted with a GPS, log, echo sounder and broken wind intrument. I fitted a second hand chart plotter but can't get a signal. No liferaft and one's not top of my list of 'must have' but heating would be nice. I have used the GPS when out of sight of land and very comforting it is. The lack of gizmos and gadgets doesn't mean I have any more bottle, though.

Just poor ;-)
 
highandry said:
Captain Foster speaks well of his employers.!

However, not everyone did; I knew a man who told me that onecareer with Hains as an officer was to be able to box, which says something about the Jolly Jacks who shipped with them...[/QUOTE

I sailed as AB in the MV TREVAYLOR about 1963. I don't know about prior to the P&O take over but in my day Haines Steamship Company were known as 'Hungry Haines' some of the worst feeders out of London Docks. Board of Trade basic issue as per ships articles and the scale of issue was as per the Merchant Shipping Act of (I think 1894)!!
Five months in her, she was built in the 1940's and down by the head with cockroaches, even they were hungry I reckon..
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Ye Gods! The Pound and Pint scale - in 1963!

How were you off for showers, etc, in her?

Very different in some other companies even then. My lot (CNCo) bought three ships from Watts, Watts and they were pretty comfortable (and cockroach free) - built in the middle Fifites as I recall.
 
Hi Minn, I joined her in the West India Dock in late Spring '63 I recall. She was in a state, all her derricks were stowed on deck in a pile, out of the goosenecks. She was 4 berths to a cabin for AB's, right aft on the poop over the steering gear which groaned and wailed all the time. Shower was in the heads between the AB's and OS/deckboy's cabin. Messroom was 'midships. We loaded fertiliser in Bremenhaven for the sugar cane fields in the Caribbean and the ships fridges packed up before the Azores so we went on tinned stuff most of which the 2nd Steward issued once a week. Tinned milk, sugar,tea etc: according to scale.
The cook boiled up spuds and put corned beef etc: with it, and the kindly ship owners finally got round to paying for the fridges to be renewed when we were in Baton Rouge up the Mississippi for repairs nearly 4 months later.
 
Foxy said:
IMHO good points about the fear thing. It hurts to say it - and damn them for it! but, from what I've seen, it appears that the average french yachtsman would be out there sailing, with nothing but a rough looking yacht, a partly working engine, in the cold and wet and still dry out on legs on the beach - much like the stories I hear of the UK 20 or 30 years ago. ....
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I remember doing a Cowes Week probaby in 2000. We were on E pontoon out in the river. One morning a Melges bearing a FRA sail number passed by, tacking into the northerly blowing up the Medina. Even among the racing fraternity there was a bit of tutting but I was envious. Isn't that what sailing is about?

Reading old books like those by Adlard Coles and Maurice Griffiths it's obvious that they have less equipment, whether it's navigation aids or just having to arrive by train and carry your victuals wrapped in newspaper, rather than rock up in a hatchback with everything in coolboxes and tupperware. But then they didn't have to manoeuvre out of tight marina berths and their boats were often small enough to push off a sandbank. In the end we are the same people but in a different environment.
 
Thanks Highanddry; I suppose I should have known, because the chandlers were still carrying the stuff in the early seventies (very handy if you were storing a yacht - anyone for tinned butter and lifeboat biscuits!), that it was still going on, but it was outside my experience - thank the Lord! My lot were not considered quite pukka by the likes of the P&O,but we were living in luxury by comparison!
 
I think the pre-war generation were much more self-sufficient through necessity. One of Maurice Griffiths stories is where his friend put their boat onto a shingle bank one Boxing day. No calling for help, just strip off and jump over to push her off 'I put her on, old chap, I'll push her off'

Maybe because there are VHF, GPS, EPIRB etc to fall back on and sailing in not only easier but safer in many ways, less self sufficient types are trying sailing. People who would never venture out of sight of land can now do so thanks to GPS. Then the wind comes up on the second day, or something breaks, the RNLI 'get you home service' isn't available and maybe they find there's more to sailing than gizmos and gadgets.

I find myself agreeing with Tom Cunliffe, a lot of these things are not 'safety' but 'emergency'.

But then I think bike riders make better car drivers because their vulnerability makes them concentrate more and that car drivers would concentrate more if the drivers airbag was replaced with a nine inch spike.
 
LONG_KEELER said:
Do you think our sailing forefathers had more bottle than us ?

i.e. no engines , gizmo's , weather reports etc

Or foolhardy ? Did being in a war influence things ?

Or are we naturally restrained because of today's pressures ?
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I have a very interesting book at home - it's called "the last of the sailing coaster" and its the story of a man who shipped aboard the sailing trows of the Bristol channel.

Now thats the area I sail so I read the book with interest and was initially surporised at the places they got these boats, which were the HGVs of their day, without engines and usually with one man and a boy as crew.

The key turned out to be timing. They went when conditions were right for the journey. None of this "got to be back at work tomorrow" approach. If necessary, they waited a week for a favourable wind or tide combination.

Thats not to say that people didnt drown. But by dint of timing things well they took non engined unwieldy boats into places that I would think twice about under engine.

They also used a lot of techniques that we dont - for example drudging.
 
wotayottie said:
I have a very interesting book at home - it's called "the last of the sailing coaster" and its the story of a man who shipped aboard the sailing trows of the Bristol channel.

Now thats the area I sail so I read the book with interest and was initially surporised at the places they got these boats, which were the HGVs of their day, without engines and usually with one man and a boy as crew.

The key turned out to be timing. They went when conditions were right for the journey. None of this "got to be back at work tomorrow" approach. If necessary, they waited a week for a favourable wind or tide combination.

Thats not to say that people didnt drown. But by dint of timing things well they took non engined unwieldy boats into places that I would think twice about under engine.

They also used a lot of techniques that we dont - for example drudging.
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Some notes from my experience so far:

Sailing without using an engine is very interesting - one's sense of geography changes. Distance becomes a function of wind speed and direction and of the tide.

A "ghosting" headsail most definitely justifies its place in the sail locker - it takes up little room and it can give you a knot or more in conditions where the ordinary light weather canvas is hanging limp.

One discovery that I made - drudging is best done with a bight of chain over, rather than keeping the anchor a'trip; one can vary the speed by varying the amount of chain out (more speed - less control) and there is no danger of the anchor suddenly taking hold...round a mooring chain, for instance!
 
VO5 said:
I never cease to be amazed that the public do not realise that the safety police are not there for the purpose of acting truly in the interest of the well being of the public. It is quite the opposite. They act contrary to the interests of the public. They encroach upon the public. They treat the public as if the public were children, with neither common sense or any sense at all for that matter. Of course the less the public actively resist such nonsense the more the other side feel emboldened to pass and enact increasingly arcane ideas. But the public, in very large measure is to blame, by resigning themselves to be subservient. And the public...remains mystified as to why these ideas are put forward and by whom. The answer is quite simple. The answer is that there is no interest in acting in the public interest at all. There is an interest in cynically pretending it is the case. The underlying reason being a well disguised objective, This objective includes dumbing down the population to make the population subservient, obedient and ultimately enslaved. This is in the hands of cynical planners who keep pushing the envelope using all sorts of excuses and silly reasons that do not stand up to intelligent scrutiny to bulldoze their way to impose their ideas and to succceed to have them implemented as law. The sooner everybody wakes up the better.
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I don't often find myself agreeing with your posts but I think you're right with this one!
 
Foxy said:
Perhaps it stems from being based in the solent for a while. Other areas of the Uk are perhaps a little more adventurous.
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Good post but spoilt by a silly remark.

My boat is based in the Solent simply because it's the most convenient to where I live, and provides the shortest crossing to Normandy and Brittany, my preferred cruising grounds. I happen to loathe the all-pervading "safety at any price" culture that is one of the factors spoiling this country.
 
Talking of MG's friend putting him on the bank. On passage from the Crouch to the Medway, we missed a bouy (boo-ee?) in the thames estuary in the early 60's, at night. Ran onto a sandbank on a reach. As we were bumping further on, the only way to turn the boat was for my brother and I to get over the side and heave her round so as to tack off. 27ft with a fin/bulb plate, 3ft draft with the plate up. Can't imagine what the elf&safety mob would make of that. Shook our confidence a bit, so I was up in the pulpit looking for lights for a while after. Got even wetter. BUT, we didn't think it was dangerous or stupid (apart from missing the light) Just a solution to the problem. Alternative was whacking the boat to bits on the bank. No radio, of course, so what do you do? Depth was by lead line too, not something one does at night if one thinks one is more or less on track.
A
 
A recollection of 1972...

My (very tolerant) girlfriend and I had spent the afternoon in my extremely clapped out old Dragon, K6, "Arabis" at 45 degrees on the Thirstlet Spit; when the tide eventually made we had a nice south westerly so we set sail up the Wallet; no nav lights apart from some battery ones I had bought at the London Yacht Centre which did not work; Prout folding dinghy lashed on deck and a torch to see the ex-RAF grid compass with...

She had the bad habit of leaking like a bucket if either (a) going to windward over F2 or (b) going downhill over F3, and a very reliable Whale pump, which I could reach with the other hand on the tiller.

At about midnight the girlfriend was fast asleep and I was steering, rather dozily, on Wallet no 4 buoy, making maybe five knots with the fair tide when a big black shape shot past the boom end - it was the nearby wreck buoy, which in those days was not lighted.

Just a few feet closer and I wouldn't be here...and the girlfriend would not have had her brilliant career, which might be more of a loss, I suppose...

Made our way up to Woodbridge and called on Maurice Griffiths; when he heard what we were cruising in he gave me some advice which I will pass on - "In a worn out old boat, always carry some "Plasticine" - it's the most reliable temporary leak stopper!"
 
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Ah, the good old days.... When they were building the new bridge on the Arade river just up from Portimao, I was sailing up river with the tide and doing about 4kts looked over the side only to see a piece of 1"rebar just under the surface about 6" away from the hull. That would have spoiled my day. Later, going back with the tide out, the area under the bridge was a forest of similar stuff. Bit careless, but they did tidy it up after they finished.

Is there any plasticine left? I thought James May had bought the lot.
A
 
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