2020 Swale Race cancelled

 Sadly the familiar curse of the August Bank Holiday weather has struck again, and this years Swale race has been cancelled. There were very strong northerly winds and it certainly would have been difficult with a mass of boats on the start line tacking out of the river. Lets hope for better next year. So Bonita is still on her mooring, as in the picture in the last blog post. The only differences today were grey skies and the boat rolling on white-topped waves, even in the sheltered water of the river. 

One of the pleasures of the Swale race is waking up on race morning and finding the river, which is usually so empty full of all sorts of traditional craft all getting ready for the start. As a memory of more settled times, the picture shows the scene just before the 2015 race began as Bonita drifts downriver on the tide towards the start line.

All dressed up...

 Bonita is on her mooring and has finally been painted. Scrubbing off and painting in the middle of summer is so much easier as the days are long and the water is warm. Also barnacles are less likely to regrow after a midsummer scrub as it comes at a later point in their annual life-cycle.

Sadly it doesnt look as though we will get any more than the occasional day sail this year with no plans for any more adventurous cruising. Some years are just like that. We are hoping to take part in the Swale race later this month. For many years this was run with astonishing efficiency by the late and much-missed Lena Reekie. Last years race had to be cancelled due to stormy weather. This years race will be very different due to social distancing. I imagine that there will be far fewer of the larger boats needing big crews, and the prize giving will be 'virtual' rather than the usual jolly and rather boozy affair ashore. However I think its important that the tradition of the annual Swale race is kept going and we hope Bonita will be there!

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.