The Blind Sailor

Well, since leaving Blackwater Marina, I have been seeking a permanent home of Alex that does not require a dinghy trip. With Inca, limited vision, and general stupidity, dinghies are best left for sunny days.

Bradwell was nice but too expensive, so we looked at Tollesbury Saltings. Very nice in many ways. But the tidal access is not great at anything much less than springs. Then you have the added problem of the marshes being awash for an hour or so either side of HW. So, either too much water or not enough! Inca really did not like the jetties either. He refused to board, full stop.

So, after a few days of trying to get him on and off the boat, I was forced to admit defeat and shift Alex while still able to get off the saltings.

To cut a very long story short, we now have a permanent home in Maldon, on a floating pontoon behind the chandlers. Seems nice. The guide dog seems happy, the missus seems happy, there seems to be no less water than Maylandsea, so thats that sorted.

Video all about the trip now in the Video section. Hope you like it.

…with the extra 2 feet?  I very nearly moved Alex to a new home at the Bradwell Marina this weekend.

However, all is not as it seems.  The marina measure every boat as it arrives and charge accordingly.  Now, I have always assumed that Alex, being a W21, was 21 feet long.  It now seems that she is in fact 23’6″!  The marina include the stern hung rudder and the overhanging pulpit   This is a pity as it puts the berth just out of my financial reach.  So lucky we have the swinging mooring!

Don’t get me wrong, I love the bay and the sailing is great, but not being a car driver and having to rely on public transport to get to and from the boat, carrying an outboard, LJ’s for Inca and myself, and the tons of other boaty bits that seem so essential to a trip afloat, is not an option.  At least on a pontoon I could leave everything aboard, making bus use practical.

Still musn’t grumble, the weekend is nearly here and the high pressure looks like it might last a few more days.

Well, that was good while it lasted.  As followers of this blog will know, Alex lives in a drying marina.  Sadly, she has just moved back to a swinging mooring.  I simply could not afford, or justify, the expense of keeping her on a pontoon.  No longer will we simply stroll up the pontoon, dressed in ‘normal’ clothes.  Back to a little dinghy, braving the tossing main and struggling to get a hulking great guide dog in and out of the tender. On more then one occasion, my eyesight being what it is, I have totally missed the landing jetty and shot past it, aiming for the far shore about a mile away.

On the plus side there is the camaraderie of the jetty, the cheap beer in the clubhouse and the lovely views across the bay, so mustn’t grumble.  At least I still have a boat and somewhere to sail her which is more than most people can say.  I heard about that poor copper, shot in the face by Moult, who, by the sound of it, took his own life today.  Maybe the poor chap just could not adjust to his sight loss.  Such a shame.  So there you are, I have a boat, somewhere to keep here and a lot of useful vision left, so nothing to grumble about after all

We popped to the boat today to remove the tender following its duties laying out the anchor and ferrying us ashore after grounding last trip (see video section).  The trouble with using the tender in the winter is that it simply will not dry out.  So it has to come home, get hosed off, dried out, packed up, taken back to boat and stowed away.  Convenient eh?

Anyway, we arrived at the pontoon to find poor Alexandros with at least a foot of snow in the cockpit.  Inca was not impressed.  While he waited for us to clear the snow from the boat he had to sit on the pontoon.  After a few minutes I noticed he was looking decidedly unhappy and was in the act of composing a letter to Guide Dogs asking for a sensible owner! 

I quickly went below and lit the trusty ‘Victory’ stove and before long Inca was ensconced on his duvet in the fore-cabin and looked much happier I have to say.

I decided that the tender was far too cold and stiff to move.  Plus the pontoons were not easy to walk on and carrying a tender back to the car did not seem like a good plan.  It will have to wait until things warm up a bit I think.  Another job was to deliver the new kedge anchor to the boat.  £18 from the WOA AGM last weekend, bargain!  Confession time coming up.  I had put this anchor into the car prior to the last trip (yes, the one we run aground on) but could not be bothered to carry it from my sons’ car to the boat and left it there.  Now, had we had the kedge aboard when we grounded last trip, maybe we could have got off the mud!  Moral: never put off today etc etc.

Anyway, a good scope of rope has been added to the 5 meters of chain and the whole lot put into a mesh bag and stowed in the aft locker ready for use if (when) we run aground again.  That’s about it for now, but thought a couple of seasonal piccys to finish this entry.

The ships bosun hard at work

Mrs BS shovelling snow

Snowy Alex

…middle sons idea, and a good one.  Double tide, neaps, F3 to F4 forecast, perfect.  Apart from the temperature, -2′C.  Brass monkeys ‘aint in it!

A new film can be seen on the video pages.  Suffice to say we run aground at 51’46.2N by 0’53.7E.  Take my word for it, this is in the deep water channel.  Except it isnt anymore.  I am informed by the East Coast chaps that the area was last surveyed in the 1970′s and I guess things have changed a bit since then.

Any way, have a peek at the film and see for yourselves.

Planning for the first blind Jester challenge entry continues.  The problem is that it is supposed to be a single handed event, I think.  However, I reckon that Barret Bondon (the autohelm) is exempt and no one could confuse Inca with a person, could they?  Today another member of the crew arrived as an unexpected gift, from an unexpected quarter.  Barnacle Bill will be acting as Bosun on the trip, he probably knows as much as I do after all.

Barnacle Bill the Bosun, ready for duty.

These little figures are knitted by a work colleague of Mrs BS.  They must take an age to produce.

Kehaar, should be a great help with navigation

Barnacle Bill also brought his pet seagull, Kehaar with him.  Inca thinks they are toys and keeps eyeing them hungrily!

No sailing this weekend the wind forecast is F8 even though the tides serve.  Never mind, I might have to put the Jester on hold for a while, even with the new crew.

Just thought I would stick this on the blog.  We got a short sail in on Sunday 14th Jan.  Nothing remarkable went wrong.  However, we saw lots of seals.  I even managed to spot them with my binoculars.  Wonderful.  Mr. Tellytubby had just fitted a repaired genoa to his Leisure 17 and we had heckled him and proffered good advice, as you do.  On the way out of Lawling Creek, Plughole Steve took a few snaps on his phone.  It is not often that you get a photo of your own boat, ‘cos you are normally on it!   Anyway, this was rather nice so I thought I would share it.

A winters sail

well not yet perhaps.  But I have been thinking about sailing with Mrs Blindsailor and have had to consider berthing.  Getting into our marina has always been a two man effort.  One up on the bow, mooring line in hand and the other at the helm.

So, I had to work out a way to do this single handed as Mrs Blindsailor does not fancy clambering about on the bow and jumping onto the pontoon with a blind bloke on the helm struggling to see where he is pointing the boat etc etc.

After much rumination I came up with the idea of a short strop  over the port winch and dropped over the first mooring cleat as we enter our berth.  This can be done at close quarters and vision should be less of an issue.

So, after a couple of practices I now feel fairly confident at mooring Alex to a pontoon.

One of Mrs. Blindsailors’ modifications was to place a short section of coloured pipe in the bowline loop.  This made the strop much easier to drop over the pontoon cleat as well as making it much easier to see.  The length of the strop was carefully calculated to bring the boat to rest in the right place for mooring.  O, alright then, it was trial and error but it works.  With the engine in forward at tickover, Alex gently comes to rest and is held against the pontoon while her other lines are attached.  As you may have read elsewhere, Mrs BS is not a natural sailor so I am very proud of her coming out today and helping me solve this berthing problem.  The first blind bloke to complete a Jester?  Well, we all need dreams don’t we?  Now where are those Atlantic charts?