Evening all, Hope you are all good in 2021!
What have you all been up to so far this year?
I challenged myself to 10,000 steps a day in January…my poor dog is super happy that’s over.
I have also officially finished Netflix. I scared myself silly watching The Night Stalker and I am a killer. Never again will I sleep with a window open.
I have a theme for this month’s Newsletter, “oopsies at sea!” Now, I have never been on a boat when it crashed or was beached (It’s hard being perfect) …but I did sit at CYC and had great amusement watching people getting stuck on the sand bar. (Summer Wine)
I have a couple of guest appearances this month too. Lets see who actually reads to the end!
So sit back, get your reading glasses on and let’s go…….
Does anyone remember when sailing was tough and the start lines were full of swearing and no one really cared if they hurt your feelings? The winners had no shame and the losers either went home in tears or begged the top dog for some advice? Those were the days!
Now I’m pretty soft when it comes to being cold so I didn’t really take part in the winter racing, however, the weekly highlight was watching the start of the winter series up at St Peters Basin. Boats all rushing towards the start line, new and colourful swear words being bandied about. Fishermen livid that the yachts were there, yachts livid the fishermen were there …ahhhhh yesss…. But then….. Something more interesting happened….. Can you guess what it is yet?
Rumour has it, the crew of Corkanut were told not to discuss what happened on board that cold winters day when Nik decided to take a closer look at the millennium bridge. However, shockingly, Women love to talk!
A Bridge Too Far
Or how to not to stay friends with the Port of Tyne Harbourmaster ……
It was a beautiful sunny October day as we assembled at St Peter’s Marina to race in first race of the 2005/2006 Tyne Winter Series, an annual winterfest of hardy sailors from NE yacht clubs who turned up every fortnight between October and March with a sole collective aim – get round the course as quickly as possible, so we could all get into the marina pub The Fog on the Tyne for post-race beers and a chance to talk rubbish for a couple of hours.
Admirably choreographed by our ace Race Officer Tony Ainsworth, the course was rarely more than an hour long. So, the apres-race socialising was more arduous than the sailing – especially fighting your way to the bar packed with thirsty sailors, and particularly if you were drinking with Ken Murray whose thirst knows no limits.
Racing on the Tyne in the middle of winter was eventful – tricky, unpredictable winds, limited room to manoeuvre, overhanging lamp posts posed to strafe a heeling mast, moorings with hidden lines that would mysteriously wrap themselves around your keel, and a tall green navigation mark with spiky bits aloft that could (and did) take out your backstay if you got too close.
How we laughed together in The Fog On the Tyne as we recounted our post-race battle stories each Sunday : ‘Did you see the Sigma knock down the lamppost as she heeled towards the river wall and NOT lose her mast?’ ‘The Melges was sailing really quickly with her kite up today. Pity it was in the wrong direction past the mark, bad gust that one’. (There were also more esoteric questions like ‘Why was Tony Freeth’s crew dressed up as the Blues Brothers today?’)
So many obstacles. And then someone had the bright idea of building a new Bridge over the Tyne. More later …
Late morning on Sunday 16 October 2005, the sun was shining, the river sparkling and conditions looked perfect. Corkanut and crew were looking forward to a fun morning as Skipper Nik, bowman Roger, and trimmers Kaz, John and I rigged our Cork 1720.
It was known among the fleet that as our skipper had a history of commanding larger vessels – ie tankers – his language at the helm to Corkanut’s crew could be a little rich at times. But hey, we were used to his ear-piercing imprecations to do something faster and better, which generally went ignored. After all, he was just the bloke at the back. What did he know about the more tricky and skilful art of spinnaker handling we said smugly?
As the usual gaggle of 10 sports boats locked out from St Peters onto the Tyne, the wind was, unusually, blowing from the East. It was, as usual, gustier than we initially thought. Plus, there was a big flood tide running. No matter, it was sunny. Race Officer Tony had set the windward mark a mile or so downstream, leaving us a lovely long spinnaker run upriver to the leeward mark set somewhere – unknown until we got a bit closer – near Newcastle.
The usual short start line melee and shouting saw us all off to a clean start at 1130 in a keen breeze. In no time, we were round the windward mark, kites hoisted and we were all flying to Newcastle in a blaze of coloured spinnakers. Looking pretty cool we thought, in front of the Sunday morning shoppers and Quayside drinkers as we rocked and rolled our way past in the gusts. As we neared the Millenium Bridge where we eventually spotted the leeward mark, there were more people than usual out today – folk abseiling down the Baltic, hoardes of people lining the Millenium Bridge, and the Pitcher and Piano terrace was packed with drinkers. At last, our ‘15 minutes of (sailing) fame’ as our fleet streamed towards the Bridge.
Corkanut’s ride under spinnaker up to Newcastle had, unusually, been incident free. We’d even started to relax and enjoy ourselves, swapped jokes, took the mickey out of the Skipper, the usual crew banter. But, as Sailing Lore dictates, the wind suddenly picked up alarmingly, and the Bridge that was several hundred yards away a moment ago now seemed to be moving pretty damned quick towards Corkanut. The leeward mark thankfully was still some way off – dropping the kite will be fine Roger and I nodded knowingly to each other.
But again, another vicious gust and the Bridge was even closer as we were propelled by both wind AND flood tide towards it. Then, Nik’s inevitable ear-piercing command came from the stern (and he wasn’t nice about it either) : ‘If you don’t get that *@?!@!! spinnaker down NOW, we’re going to hit the *@?!@!! Bridge!!’
Roger, Kaz, John and I jumped to it and the spinnaker came down PDQ. But it was too late. We were being sucked under the Bridge by the wind and water not running in our favour, pushing us through alarmingly quickly. There was an awful CLANG as our mast hit the Bridge. Then Corkanut lurched onto her starboard side, almost flat as she crabbed her way under Newcastle/ Gateshead’s pride and joy. ‘Hang on everyone,’ someone shouted, just as Nik fell out the back and went for a brief swim.
To starboard, the Pitcher and Piano drinkers were cheering us on. Above us there was a cacophony of screaming from the spectators on the Bridge, who got more entertainment than expected when they set off that morning to watch the Baltic abseilers. ‘Move back, get back’ we shouted at the Bridge spectators as the top of the mast shot back up towards them as we bounced upright again – this time on the wrong side of the Bridge, trapped! Ooops ……..
Finally, all went quiet and we looked around at each other. Nik, Kaz, John, Roger and I were all on board. AND we still had a mast! All was well and, if it hadn’t been for Nik’s boat handling skill under pressure, it could have been a very different outcome that day.
Unfortunately, when the Port of Tyne Harbourmaster took our call to ask for a special bridge lift to let us ‘out’, he was having his Sunday lunch. Not happy! And the Tyne Series was banned from racing anywhere near the Bridge – forever!
But that day Corkanut too took its place in the Tyne Series history books alongside our fellow Winter sailors, and provided some new post-race entertainment in the Fog on the Tyne. We maintained the leeward mark had gone adrift in the strong tide, and moved closer to the bridge, and we stuck to our theory!
And that should have been that. So, it was somewhat of a surprise when we found ourselves on the front page of The Newcastle Journal on Monday morning, a front page picture and page 3 article. We were too busy to notice the Press that Sunday, but it does show that sailing is much more interesting than abseiling!
Thank you so much to Carolyn Dougherty. I don’t know about you but I thoroughly enjoyed reading this! The winter series was definitely enjoyable to watch.
A little advice if I may……
My advice is ……. listen to Tony Freeth once every Fifteen years.
We were racing in the spring series on our Melges 24 Auf Wiedersehen Pet! It was blowing hard so we recruited Tony because of his wealth of sailing skill and knowledge (he was heavy)
As we approached the windward Mark, I called for the kite to be made ready ,when Tony started to question my sanity. Now the Melges is a high performance boat and doesn’t have a kettle which allows it to white sail down wind in these conditions at about 10-12 knots but deploy the kite successfully and this jumps to 16-18 knots.
(you see my thinking?) As we bore away around the windward mark Tony was still muttering on about this is suicidal or something. I had to give him a little encouragement by saying “come along old chap, pull the halyard if you have a minute”
or words to that effect. As the kite was about half way up we were hit by an almighty gust and with the crew weight being forward the boat nose dived, resulting in the secondhand bowsprit snapping as it went underwater dragging the kite with it, which in turn compressed the mast so much it went out of column and snapped!
(In hindsight we should probably have had more rig tension on)
Now when you snap a mast what hits you is, hopefully not the mast but how quiet it has become, only the faint noise of someone saying “I told you so”
We salvaged all the bits unassisted and motored in, informing the race officer we would be retiring from the race due to technical issues!
Once ashore many beers were consumed and blame allocated (Tony’s Fault)
As you can see from the photo I’m still managing to snap masts 15 years later🤦♂️ and Tony did say it was going to be rather windy when I think about it.
Ken
I don’t know….All these people causing carnage! We did Roker Regatta the same year AWP snapped her mast, every time the mast made a noise we all looked up with fear in our eyes!
Now some words from someone who does the exact opposite of breaking boats….although the rumour mill does say differently!
Lynne has asked me to pen a few lines as to what’s happening at Ovington Boats – I often see her driving past the yard on her way to work & I’m often asked by local sailors what the latest news is.
Our biggest news from 2020 was being selected to be a builder of the Olympic ILCA – we’ve since gone on to build 150 of them (attached photo of loading 20 in January 2021 destined for Italy). This has really helped us keep busy during what was a difficult year for all businesses.
We’re now building 15 different classes from Optimist to VX One, from the Olympic 49er and International 14, to the traditional Flying Fifteen, Albacore and 505.
We’ve slowly grown over the last 10 years and are now bursting at the seams of our site on Tanners Bank, North Shields. Planning permission has just been approved for a large factory extension on the same site – having acquired additional land off NTC. In 2021, we’ve taken on 3 additional laminating staff taking the total up to 34.
Hopefully the next 10 years of boat building in North Shields will be as successful.
Nathan Batchelor
Anyone Fancy an Ice-Cream?
I was quite nervous the first time I went sailing onboard Hummingbird. At 15 years old my sailing experience up to that point had consisted of messing around on a Topper, and not doing that with very much skill at all if we are being honest. So, when I arrived at the club on a breezy summer morning it’s fair to say I was quite apprehensive about what lay in store for the day.
There was quite a lot of activity going on, none of which made any sense to me, but I was assured that it didn’t matter as I wasn’t expected to take part in any meaningful way, I was to sit at the stern and keep out the way. This was fine with me; I might even enjoy myself.
Unfortunately, what nobody had mentioned was that this wasn’t just any Sunday race, it was the Cadet race, and the expected helm hadn’t turned up. So, as the only other person onboard under 18, I was informed I would have to helm. After a quick demonstration I was told just to listen to Peter and when he said left a bit, then go left a bit and so on.
I was nervous again.
However, things started off pretty well, we negotiated the start with no drama and had managed to get round the first lap of the windward / leeward course without crashing so I was actually starting to relax. When Peter said left a bit, I had gone left a bit and when he said go right a bit then, well, I went right a bit. It was working, and I was starting to enjoy myself.
So, there we were, on the downhill leg of the second lap approaching the leeward mark which had been laid quite close inshore. I was doing my thing at the wheel whilst people started moving around in preparation to drop the spinnaker. Once everyone was ready the instruction was given, DROP!
Nothing happened, the spinnaker stubbornly stayed where it was, and all hell broke loose. People shouting and running around, ropes being pulled, the usual kind of thing really. Unfortunately, during all this, despite straining my ears amid the noise, there was no instruction aimed in my direction, I had been forgotten.
So, like an obedient helmsman I maintained my course and that was how, my first time onboard, I managed to steer us perfectly aground right opposite the café on Blyth Beach!
The shouting stopped, and after a few seconds of silence, a voice up by the bow piped up…Anyone want an Ice-Cream?
Ben Stevenson
Apologies to Diane, I accidentally missed off the last part of her story in December!
Bringing Wavelength Home
Day 10
Lossiemouth to Peterhead 67nm
An early start for us – by 8am we had cast off leaving Dave Jnr to make his own way to the airport and wave goodbye from the harbour entrance. An interesting and sometimes lively sail along the Moray coast. We rounded the infamous Rattray Head at 1945 with a calm sea and tide just turning against us about half a mile off.
It seemed to take ages to get across the bay to Peterhead and then get clearance to enter the harbour. Tied up at
Peterhead Marina 2200 aided by a group of older gentlemen claiming to be escaped prisoners from the jail!
Day 11/12
Peterhead to Blyth 131n
After shopping at the local Aldi just a short walk around the bay – definitely the best part of Peterhead – we set off just after midday for Blyth. Dave had decided to take the direct line so we settled into a routine for the passage. We had calm seas, a wonderful sunset, a quiet night 40 miles off the Firth of Forth, an amazing sunrise and made landfall off Longstone by 0840. It was warm and we noticed insects landing on the boat and beach debris in the water – dead balloons, beach balls and half deflated lilos. Arrived Blyth at 1430 after a passage of 26 hours.
The whole trip was a great adventure not to be beaten by any far-flung foreign holiday and a very special family time given the difficult times in 2020. Highly recommended but advised to build in a few extra days for the vagaries of the UK weather.
Diane Carr
Sailing Tips or someone to help if you break your boat. Check out Storrar Marines Newsletter.
https://mailchi.mp/storrarmarine/top-tips-tuesday-whats-the-point?e=61275dd875
So there we go. I have enjoyed all your stories in this month’s issue. I did have a good giggle as they came through my in box. Nice change from reading about Covid!
Get your entries ready for next month…. Tell on your skippers, shame your crew…
Take care everyone.
Lynne x
