Boat jumble

Sadly Bonita is still laid up in her mud berth. This is due to a combination of the lockdown, work and family commitments. At least shes better off in the mud than she would have been if she was ashore with the planks drying out in the warm weather. We hope to be able to get afloat fairly soon and maybe get in a few days sailing.

Among the cobwebs and dust in the loft space of the garage I came across Bonita's old paraffin navigation lights. These are of indeterminate age - they came with the boat when my father bought her in 1937. They look impressive ; 40 cm high, solidly made and each the size of a bucket. Part of the timeless ritual of preparing for a night at sea was cleaning and filling the lamps and polishing the reflectors with metal polish. They then had to be carried forward to be hung in the rigging.

Unfortunately the lamps had a tendency to blow out in any kind of strong breeze which could be tiresome.

 We had one very difficult episode, after a long crossing from Zeebrugge we were tacking into Harwich harbour in the dark in heavy weather with plenty of shipping about. We had to keep the navigation lights down in the cockpit, and cautiously raised the appropriate lamp over the cockpit coaming when  a ship was approaching in the hope that we would be seen. Even then they often blew out and had to be relit.
That was when I decided that we would have electric nav lights fitted before we spent another night at sea. And the old paraffin lights have spent the last 30 years gathering dust in the loft.

What is to become of them?  They could be converted to electric which would look traditional, but they are so much larger and heavier  than modern navigation lights that it hardly seems worth the trouble. I suppose I could get a few pounds for them on eBay and they might end up with other nautical curios  in a waterside pub somewhere. Its almost easier to return them to the loft.

Rerigging

In these difficult and uncertain times, is there any point in fitting the boat out for the season ahead? Many of the summers sailing events have cancelled, including the Falmouth Classics. If society goes down into total lockdown, perhaps we wont even be able to visit the boat to pump the bilges- although maybe this could be considered as an 'essential activity'.  However I am hoping that at least we will be able to get a bit of day-sailing in the Thames estuary as a bit of light relief from the troubles around us.

Last weekend Allan and Toby helped me move the newly varnished mast down the road to the boatyard to have it craned in. Wheeling a 40 ft mast on a trolley down the middle of the road does cause some disruption to the traffic, but most people are understanding and sometimes even amused.

                                                             Social distancing

Although the sky was blue, there was a cold north wind and we will not be ready to take the boat out to her mooring for another couple of weeks or so. However with her mast and rigging in place Bonita already looks more like she's more ready for her 133rd season afloat

Gunter rig

Bonita has not always had her gaff yawl rig. She was rigged as a gaff cutter ( with one mast) until 1907, when she was converted to yawl. Then for about 20 years from the mid 60s she sailed under Gunter rig.
Gunter is a variant of gaff rig, where the gaff runs vertically alongside the mast  and takes a triangular mainsail above the masthead, so the overall effect is similar to Bermudan mainsail. It is common on small dinghies but rarer on larger boats. The picture shows Bonita with her gunter mainsail - this photo was taken in Holland in 1971.

Gunter rig is named after Edmund Gunter 1581-1626, an English professor of mathematics. This may sound rather improbable, and as far as we know he had no particular interest in the design of small boats. However he applied the newly discovered logarithms to produce an early version of the slide rule. The slide rule was universally used for calculations involving multiplication or division, and many became very expert with it but it has almost entirely disappeared since the introduction of electronic calculators. Gunters rule consisted of two pieces of wood marked in a logarithmic scale sliding alongside each other, or sometimes one piece of wood with readings taken off with dividers. Gunters rule was much used on ships to perform navigational calculations, and examples has been recovered from old shipwrecks. It must have seemed natural to call the rig with the gaff sliding along the mast 'gunter rig'.

Bonita sailed a bit better to windward under gunter rig, and the first reef was easier to take in. However I did not think it really suited her classic hull shape. So when the time came for a new mainsail I felt we should revert to more traditional gaff rig.

Winter work

There are always things to be done on an old boat during the winter, and its sometimes difficult to decide between the jobs which must be done, those that should be done, and those that it would be nice to do before too long. I try to stop taking things apart by the New Year, and start putting  things back together which gives me a bit of margin for dealing with any unexpected and unwelcome problems which definitely have to be fixed before we go back afloat.

I thought I should check on  the bolts holding down the anchor winch. This led - as things do -to the winch being removed and the decision that it was time it was taken apart and the components regalvanised. Designed by my father, constructed in an army welding shop in the 1940s, the winch was last galvanised about 20 years ago. Hot dip galvanising in a bath of molten zinc is by far the best way of protecting steel in a marine environment and all other  cheaper forms of zinc coating are greatly inferior.

A galvanising works is a large scale concern and their yard was full of huge pieces of structural steel, great piles of farm gates and suchlike. My few pieces of rusty winch parts looked very trivial by comparison. However they seemed happy enough to take a small order. Their minimum charge is for 100kg. The winch seems pretty heavy when you move it about but its still only around 40kg, so its an opportunity to get some other bits of boat ironwork treated 'free'.

                                                     As good as new?

The picture shows the winch reassembled, waiting to go back to the boat. It seems almost a pity to put it back in a hostile corrosive marine environment.

What plans for the new season? Things are still a bit uncertain but we may once again be heading west. We enjoyed the Falmouth Classics last year and may try to fit it in again if we can.

Laying her up for the winter

After several days of autumnal weather with strong winds and heavy rain I thought it must be time to put Bonita under her winter covers to await the arrival of Spring. Sunday was a rather better day, cold but dry with light winds. The picture shows Allan and Toby helping with the trip from Bonitas mooring to her winter berth in Faversham creek.

Toby, now 2yr 9 months old found plenty to talk about and was very interested in seeing some long abandoned wrecks on the mud at the entrance to the creek. He had no trouble spotting the red and green buoys, but was rather less sure in identifying buoys with points on, like the one in the picture above.  Some sailors rather more experienced than Toby can occasionally find these confusing too.

Its rare for us to be able to get into or out of  Faversham creek with its many twists and turns without touching the bottom once or twice. Sometimes, when things have gone really badly I have had to call up the yard launch for a tow. That doesnt happen often - usually when theres a strong crosswind making manoevering difficult.  But on this occasion we managed to get all the way to our berth without disturbing the mud at all. With a force 2-3 westerly wind there was a line of smooth water running along the channel indicating where the deeper water lay. This shows where the flood tide is running most swiftly, and I am always reluctant to assume that this necessarily indicates the deepest water as it often doesnt. But on this occasion the line of smooth water provided a reliable guide, 

Bonita is now snug under her winter covers, with the mast, spars and sails stored ashore.  Various bits of gear have been taken home for drying out, repairs or if absolutely necessary,                                                                      replacement.