Messing about on the Water

[watervole]

 My daughter has long been fascinated by boats. She grew up with 'Swallows and Amazons', has had two holidays boating on the Norfolk Broads and on the rare occasions when money allowed has hired a dinghy in Poole Harbour.

She recently lost two of her grandparents and inherited some money.  Most of that is earmarked for finally being able to afford a step towards the first rung on the housing ladder, but the dream of owning a dinghy also floated to the surface.

New dinghies are crazy money, £9000 for a new fibreglass Gull for example.

On the other hand, if you love older boats and are prepared for the love and attention that a wooden dinghy requires, then a second-hand wooden boat is only a fraction of that....



Add in the fact that there is a second-hand boat on ebay  that was exactly what was needed.  Big enough to take 3 adults and a child (and maybe a 4th adult at a pinch), but capable of being sailed single-handed, wooden hull, complete with oars, road trailer and launch trailer, elderly but recently restored, stable design intended for pottering about rather than racing, although still capable of racing if desired.  In short, a perfect family boat - a mk 1 wooden Gull.  £600  (reading the Wikipedia article, the odds are that the boat is 40-50 years old)

Of course, storage is a bit of a problem....

A friend with a spare field agreed on Tuesday that Lindsey could store a boat there over this winter if we could get it into the field (which won't be easy, but there is a lot of willingness to find a way through the difficult entrance).

Now add in the staggering level of coincidence that the designer of the boat was one Ian Proctor (our family name), and the boat itself was called Molly (Lindsey's late and much-loved grandmother)

So, on Saturday morning we headed down to Exeter. A two hour drive made a lot longer by a massive tailback behind a car that had broken down while towing a caravan.

Got to see boat, which was tapped all over, sails inspected, varnish checked, all bits and accessories checked over. (I know nothing about boats, but Lin knows what she was looking for.)    Delighted when boat checked out as sound.  Here's what she looked like when we saw her

Richard pulling the launch trailer back up the slipway.

Molly with Richard and Lindsey sailing in the harbour.  (Granny and Oswin safely ashore while R and L work out how to handle the boat.  They picked us up about an hour later when it was safe to have Oswin aboard)

Reconnecting power to the brake lights.  (see how the launch trailer fits on top of the road trailer)

Oswin after her first trip in Molly (from the way she's holding her arms, I think she's being a barn owl)

A good time was had by all. Learnt a lot of things to do different and some to do the same.

Here's to good weather for the rest of September!
.

Comments

[kotturinn]

Wonderful. May you all have many happy voyages.

[ranunculus]

She's a beautiful boat! Hope you make many happy memories with her.
Looks like she might need a nice cover sewed up...

[watervole]

Getting a proper breathable cover is high on the 'to do' list.

She's under a tarpaulin on our drive until the sailing season has definitely ended.

[watervole]

Thanks!

[legionseagle]

She looks lovely; much like a classic Enterprise, I think. Should be quite nippy and an excellent boat for learning and exploration purposes.

[watervole]

I'm really looking forward to learning how to sail her - I was a passenger only on this expedition for very sensible reasons. Lin needs to be fully familiar with the boat before teaching anyone else.

See what you mean about the Enterprise. Very similar.

[igenlode]

Gunter rig - that's unusual (at least nowadays!)
Basically a compromise between the large high-up sail area of a four-sided gaff and the stiff leading edge of a triangular Bermudan rig; deliberate decision in order to provide a trailable boat in this case, I imagine, since the gunter mast is so short relative to the length of the boat. That sail really has an amazingly short luff!

And a 'wooden' boat in the sense that it's made of plywood, rather than having all the issues with weight, planking, ribs and general maintenance involved with the construction of a boat out of actual wood...

I learned to sail on Ian Proctor's Wayfarer before we were allowed to graduate to Toppers :-)

The boat looks astonishingly well-maintained from those pictures if she really is fifty years old - much better than most of the boats I've ever hired. Is that some kind of self-bailer in the stern thwart, or locker access?

[watervole]

I've only known what a Gunter rig is for four days! I think you're right about it being to fit the boat on a trailer - that was my thought before I read your post.

I confess to having no idea what you mean about a short luff.

The plywood is rather beautiful when you see it end on in places like the centreboard case.

Her number is 1316 and that suggests she was made around 1067/1968 (going by heavy googling on the numbers of other Mk 1 Gulls - though if she was a kit boat, you can't tell how long it took to build her.

Her previous owner was a marine engineer by trade. We saw other boats he was working on when we collected Molly. He'd restored her for his own use, but his family are moving to Germany where his wife comes from, hence the need to sell Molly.

There was a small plastic bailer which we've had practice in using :)

[igenlode]

On looking it up on the Internet, I find that the classic example of a gunter-rigged boat is the Mirror dinghy - though to be honest I've seen any number of them and never noticed...


The luff of the sail is the edge that is set next to the mast, and which starts to bulge/flap if you head too close to the wind. You can remember this because in "Swallows and Amazons" the helmsman is always being told to luff up into the wind when they want to lose speed -- 'luffing' is the process of deliberately making the luff flap :-)
In that picture of Molly's sail being raised, the vertical section next to the mast looks extremely short compared to that on a gaff sail -- it more or less has a diagonal leading edge. Although I think the effect is exaggerated in that photo by the fact that the sail isn't fully raised yet...

[watervole]

I'm slowly starting to get to grips with sailing terminology.

I have luff and, throat, and two days ago I could have told you what the rear edge of the sail was called....

I can now tell a gunter rig from a Bermuda rig (though, as you say, they look awfully similar at a distance)

[igenlode]

I believe the trailing edge is officially called 'the leach', but it's not a term I've ever heard used in practice; I'm not even sure it applies to a Bermudan rig. I tend just to think of it as 'the edge of the sail', since it's the only free edge that exists, the others being attached to various spars...
It's also the edge that you have battens on, if your sail has battens. (I don't think gaff rigs ever do; battens are a means of stiffening the very long unsupported edge of a triangular mainsail.)

It hadn't occurred to me that 'the throat' and 'the luff' of the sail are basically the same thing; I mainly think of the 'throat' in terms of which end the throat halyards are on (when hoisting the gaff, it's important to keep your throat and peak halyards in sync to avoid the sail jamming on the way up!) And the 'luff' is the bulgy bit next to the mast ;-)

Basically it's like grammatical terms; you only need to know them when they refer to concepts that you actually find yourself needing to talk about (like "let go the peak halyards, quickly!" or "you're steering too close to the wind, the luff is flapping again")
Otherwise they're about as relevant as frontal adverbials :-p