Iceland 2007
Due to a fixed departure date and persistent bad weather there was no time for extended sea trials. On Monday 14th of May 2007 Alert’s bows lifted to a swell for the first time, during a brief maiden voyage that took us around Plymouth Breakwater. On Tuesday we set off, bringing up to anchor only a short time later in Cawsand Bay as the wind was still a bit strong.
I expect it was the first time a smuggling lugger had anchored off Cawsand for a very long time. On Wednesday we sailed in high spirits; the first port of call was Oban, on a journey that would take five days. Manning the capstan, the anchor was retrieved.
The jib, fore-lug and mizzen hauled aloft and the sheets pulled in tight to sail close hauled to the Eddystone Lighthouse. Having reached the Eddystone, whilst marvelling at our new machine, we tacked and sailed close hauled back! Two days later, on a dark night, in a slightly lumpy Celtic Sea, we spent half an hour tying all the boat’s ropes in knots in order to complete a single tack. Spirits were somewhat dampened as both ourselves and the boat clearly needed setting up. During a sunny, calm spell the bosun’s box was bought up.
The chain halyards were sent down and rope halyards rove in their place; this gave Bill (a former pilot) the opportunity to demonstrate some admirable mousing splices. Spare blocks were sent up to increase purchases and sheet leads improved. John (a resourceful boat builder and sailor) settled down to digest the standard text for lugger sailors, Edgar March’s Sailing Drifters. Seaman Hingley, (Morwellham’s redoubtable blacksmith who had gamely shipped aboard as cook having never been sailing) took up the galley reigns.
Bill left us in Oban. We were very grateful to Bill for the effort he had put into preparation for the trip, nonetheless, ‘then we were three’, which wasn’t ideal. We thumbed through all of our phone books and exhausted our various contacts as we fiddled up the West Coast. The excellent Mister J. Hayes of Ullapool Boatbuilders joined us at Gaerloch and piloted Alert up to Kinlochbervie.
The day we rounded Cape Wrath was marred by two incidents of poor seamanship on my behalf, with potentially conclusive results for our adventure. It rained and having been aware from the helm, with lazy man’s inertia, of the poorly stowed fore-lug the price was paid, fortunately not in full, when yard and sail washed overboard in the Cape Wrath overfalls. Once alongside it was fairly difficult to get onboard as one moment it was level with the bulwark and the next three feet below the waterline. Later on we were jolly lucky not to get blown ashore in Loch Eriboll; it was only John’s vigilance that kept us off the beach. Having heard warning of a previously unmentioned imminent SE F8 on the Inshore Waters Forecast we turned towards Loch Eriboll for shelter. Once tucked in a small bay with the anchor holding, we settled down to get slowly roasted by the enormous wood burning stove. Steam rising off the wet oilskins accompanied murmurs of pleasure at our comfortable situation as the wind rose. John, normally admirably quiet, spoke words of alarm which made me quit the comfort of the cabin in a terrible hurry. Seaman Hingley fired up the engine as John and I boggled at the proximity of the shingle beach. The bows had paid off with the force of the wind and it was difficult to get her back up. Furthermore, by now we were on the wrong side of a small moored boat with 30 metres of chain and a heavy fisherman dangling from the hawse pipe. There seemed to be too much tension on the chain and anchor to retrieve it; whilst thinking about whether to ditch the lot and fish it out later Alert came on to the right side of the moored boat and motored full throttle, dragging our ground hamper, up to a separate great big mooring buoy. Having eventually got hold of it, we tied ourselves on very securely and reeled in what turned out to be a folded up anchor.
Once safely inside Scapa Flow, Orkney Alert came under the wing of the most helpful Sandy Robertson and his lurcher, Lurch. Meanwhile Seaman Hingley, every bit the sailor, found himself a girlfriend. One significant benefit of this was a chauffeur driven tour of the main island for all of us. Sandy, leaving Lurch ashore, accompanied us on a windless passage to Scalloway (Shetland), where a more permanent crew member appeared in Mr Stirling senior, plus newly acquired pipe with atmospherically aromatic tobacco.
The delightful Sara James, somewhat larger than at our previous encounter, also came to meet us. I counted myself of unparalleled fortune, when she accepted my proposal of marriage. This was made on a small green topped, cliff bound islet, connected to the main island by a tombola. Alfred was born on 31st August, six weeks after Alert returned to Plymouth. Alert fairly raced across from Scalloway to the outlying Shetland Isle of Foula. The harbour was tiny; little more than 100’ square. At 65’ over the spars, as Austin Powers, it took a good deal of manoeuvring to turn around and arrive alongside. A wall-side scale with a mark of two metres just below the surface prompted me to scuttle off as fast as possible to a nearby grass-roofed house in order to find out if the harbour would be deep enough when the tide left. Fortunately, although confusingly, the scale did not seem to relate to harbour depth. Having climbed Foula and warded off the Skuas by whirling jerseys around our heads we re-visited the grass-roofed house. A query from John as to whether Foula or Fair Isle was the remotest inhabited part of the British Isles caused an unexpected increase in the tempo of the conversation as our host assured us of the remoteness of Foula as opposed to the well connected Fair Isle. Nonetheless she kindly allowed us the use of her internet to check the weather.
The weather turned out to be so favourable on the trip from Foula to Faeroe that one could have shaved neatly over the rail, with barely a ripple to distort the reflection. On this rather dull journey some entertainment was provided by the Faeroese Tidal Stream Atlas. ‘Directions for Use’ included gems of wisdom such as ‘Our old ones had a proverb, saying: “Do he (The general weatherman), know, that the wind will come from that or that direction, so the current there will go quite mad.”’ This was followed by, ‘If you put a finger in your mouth, and so up in the air, and the finger being cooled on one side, then the weather is not quite calm.’ The charts were abundantly marked with red patches signifying dangerous tidal areas and the tidal developments based ‘practically spoken’ on the moon’s meridian passage. With some brain crunching John and I managed to crack the code and safely tie up along the former Grimsby fishing smack Westward Ho!
Once understood, the Faeroese Tidal Atlas proved invaluable as the Atlantic squeezes through the narrow channels between the sheer sided islands at up to 10 knots. At this time of year, in this latitude it didn’t really get dark. We set off from Torshaven, Faeroe, for Iceland in the early evening. Seaman Hingley, remembering it was his birthday (after three quarters of the birthday had passed) served an admirable supper just as we got sucked into overfalls whilst exiting a channel into the open sea. As the evening drew on the wind increased and Alert leapt across the North Atlantic waves, making distance between the Faeroes and Iceland. The wind increased on the starboard quarter so the reefed mizzen came down. Once dropped and tied to the yard the weather helm eased. The wind continued to build until it stabilised at Force 6. The reefed jib was bagged and the boat roared along under double reefed fore sail at approximately 7 knots; with the crew nervously hoping the wind wouldn’t increase further. The 24 hour run was just over 160 miles, however, there had been a monstrous lot of tide underneath us in the Faeroes. Later the wind died and having wallowed around for a short time we started the engine and motored for a few hours. By the time the snow was visible on the mountains of North East Iceland a breeze had returned and we were able to sail in a very relaxed manner up Sedisfjordur, where Seaman Hingley caught a seagull in his fishing line. Father treated us to a delicious but frighteningly expensive supper at the head of the fjord. He was seen washing his jeans in a stream the next day, presumably to save the expense. In the pursuit of local quirkiness we watched a series of bizarre short films in a tiny, comfortable and clearly home made cinema. There was some small sense of disappointment when on emerging blinking into the evening light we discovered that the proprietor was from Brighton.
There had been much enthusiasm for fishing from Father and Seaman Hingley, but little caught. I had always held aloof from the fishing thinking, as returns justified, that there wasn’t much point. Unable to sleep with the light John and I rowed into the fjord to a buoy that marked a World War Two wreck. Having caught three fish on my line, John began to row for home in disgust himself having caught nothing, whereupon I caught a further two. Seaman Hingley gutted and cleaned our breakfast in broad daylight at one o’clock in the morning. I didn’t try fishing again.
Our stay in Iceland was brief. We visited the next fjord to the North where we were met with great kindness, being offered a car and being trusted to fill up with fuel and leave the money below the nozzle. It seemed prudent to return given the clement weather, Alfred’s impending arrival at home and Seaman Hingley’s condition. The latter we presumed to be prompted by the Northern air and over exposure to sunlight. Symptoms manifested themselves on the foredeck with loud and extravagant recitals from Snorri’s Edda whilst dressed in felt waistcoat, Russian fur hat and very camouflaged trousers, of which he was very fond (none of us could remember him having been parted from them during the preceding five weeks). Having sailed away from the land the wind died and we started the engine. Some consolation for the lack of wind was provided by two whales which appeared at midnight on the midsummer’s solstice.
Return to the Faeroes was celebrated with the digestion of some revolting sweets. One can’t expect too fine a bon bon to be enclosed in a confectionary packet labelled ‘Kack’ or ‘Spunk’. They were presumably sweets, being next to the Mars Bars on the shelf. I couldn’t resist sending a parcel of these goodies to Sara who reportedly opened the packet in excitement in front of the rather prim female vicar with whom she was discussing our forthcoming wedding.
The following day, having got ourselves clear of the harbour with the engine, the foresail was set alone as a square sail and we sailed down the Faeroese fjord in great comfort and with no fear of gibing. Leaving the fjord we came onto the wind, setting all the sails as we tacked back up the adjacent fjord. Having weathered a point we bore away until we could see into the harbour of Klaksvik, a quarter of a mile away. At this moment the foresail came down, was neatly stowed on the yard and mooring warps made ready. We were bowling into the harbour under mizzen and jib. In confined water the boat manoeuvres and tacks well under this combination as the sails provide leverage from beyond the extremities of the hull. In order to travel at a more reasonable speed for coming alongside we threw two buckets over the taff rail.
The Customs Officer was spotted waving his hands and indicating a tight spot. Notwithstanding the bowsprit and outrigger we aimed for it, dropping the jib and using the mizzen to weathercock the boat into the wind. Getting reasonably alongside a rope was thrown. In great excitement the man caught the rope and began to chat, as we drifted away taking up the slack.
This, coupled with sailing to windward into the inner recesses of Stornoway Harbour marked the pinnacle of our sailing achievement. As one can tell from any map, the rest of the trip was a downhill run back home, where we were happy to arrive on the 24th of July. Return was all the sweeter as we overtook a fibreglass boat whilst coming round Rame Head, west of Plymouth Sound. Alert motored up the beautiful upper Tamar and returned to her berth in the Medieval Dock at Morwellham Quay. The crew dispersed (latterly the very capable Jonathon Reynolds had replaced Father). A month was spent attending to all those little improvements that had become apparent during the voyage and giving her a new coat of paint. Alert’s performance in the different conditions that we encountered highlighted her qualities as a sea boat There is certainly room for operator improvement and much to be re-learnt about the dipping lug rig. We found that, as a passage making rig it certainly has many benefits.