Tall Ships Trust Sail - Dec 2024
Published 18:10 on 21 Dec 2024
It's mid December 2024 and along with a 10 Club members, I am off on yet another day trip down the Solent organised by Bob Hewitt, his 5th to date, with the Tall Ships Trust.
The auspices had not been too clever recently, with some three named storms so far this winter mixed with two, unnamed anticyclonic glooms, none of which would give great joy to the participating guests. However, it would appear that the wind gods had taken kind to us organising and unexpected sunny day with significant North Westerly winds and a flat sea. In using the Royal we, the aforesaid refers to members of our club amongst whom, for the first time I believe, included some of our youngsters.
We assemble at Gun Wharf key shortly after dawn. Down in the galley, bacon is piling up along with tea, coffee, an assortment of jams, butter and baps as we informally introduce ourselves in order of arrival. This was a precursor to a formal round-the- galley introduction with a brief outline of our personal sailing experience to date. We were soon spilt into groups for more formal safety briefings before we could get down to the serious tasks of preparing the sails.
Challengers are hands-on boats. Apart from an engine, nothing is powered from bilges upwards. She is a beauty, as the accompanying photo shows, of a Challenger passing astern under full sail, Nevertheless, stored in the forward's locker, those two foresails belie the weight and work they take to rig. Accordingly, our next 40 minutes were to be taken up with pulling, pushing and dragging in order to rig them both into position prior to hoisting via their two respective halyards once out in the Solent. Official photos taken, we slipped at 1045 GMT. The plan was to "race" the other Challenger already ready and waiting off the Nab Tower.
Raising the Main Sail was next on the agenda, a task which, amongst others, involves sweating the relevant halyard. We are talking about a sail which weighs the same as a mini. Accordingly, sweating the halyard involved the sweating of those crew allocated to pull, whilst others took up the slack on the relevant winch. These winches are located in the snake pit, a place devoid of cobras, boa constrictors, pythons yet resembling the zoological specimens thereof.
Before we start the action we need a winch briefing. Winches are one of the easiest way of amputating an appendage and Challenger has lots of them on which to try your skill. Something as obvious as expediting coiling a rope, whilst balancing your weight in a heaving sea, can prove rather more difficult than one might expect. hence a detailed briefing
More sweating, this time the two foresails known respectively as the Yankee and the Stay. These are important terms to remember because tacking involves winching both. Under stress, recalling which winch you are operating might seem obvious in a classroom but not aways when you change on board position as the boat heels, there is the wind and lots of shouting going on.
.And so it went on. I am going to stop here because, in fact, I think I have said enough. What I have outlined so far, has and will form part of every Tall Ship's voyage. As to what happens next will very much depend on the weather. On an ideal day we will race a complete circuit of the Isle of Wight powered by wind alone. In the past three years this has happened only once due to time constraints, tide and the weather. Bob Hewitt asked me to write this as a taster to encourage as many of Worthing Sailing Club members to come along and give it a go. He was most impressed by the performance of our youngsters who, hitherto, have not been been invited. Next March will be the 4th round the Island attempt. Whatever happens if you have read as far as this, as you see you will learn a plenty.
Toodle pip
