Practical Boat Owner – September 2019

Unmistakable St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall

ABOVE John

Willis’s Pippin, a

Frances 34

the seafront and the bay busy with yachts.

Time for my homemade curry, fit to sink a

polar bear.

I remained in barracks the next morning

as the blousy front swept overhead. My

investigation of the innards of the anchor

winch proved predictably fruitless, but I

worried not for ‘Pete the Electric’ was

coming. In the meantime I blundered

around performing maintenance – a

screwdriver mislaid here, a spanner there,

for it’s the feeling of being on top of things

that counts.

Meanwhile the wind wrought havoc with

a fleet of butterflies across the harbour

and played its doleful tune in the rigging.

Anchor shenanigans

It rained fit to drown a duck in the night.

Spam and eggs fried in the pan and

espresso bubbled on the stove, before I

headed ashore to meet ‘Pete the Electric’.

“It helps if you turn the fuel on,” he said

helpfully as we drifted in front of the busy

yacht club, me frantically pulling the

outboard’s starter cord. He soon fixed the

Yanmar’s starter and told me how not to

trigger the anchor winch’s trip switch,

which I hadn’t known existed.

Later the wind hit 28 knots, but from the

comfort of Bushe’s pub, I raised my pint of

Murphy’s in silent salute to proper sailors.

It was a very wet and windy drive back

to Pippin. I smugly noted a lightweight

Frenchie dragging her anchor, as I hailed

my new mate Nigel.

“You’re anchor’s dragging!” he yelled,

pointing at Pippin’s new location. I moved

fast and soon had Pippin safely anchored

further out, tutting as some idiot’s

inflatable whizzed seawards with no one

aboard. Ten minutes later the

harbourmaster kindly returned a very new

dinghy marked Pippin, and I choked on

humble pie, watched no doubt by dozens.

Lesson learned: even the best anchors

drag when they fail to reach the bottom, in

this case, clutching only weed. Meanwhile,

I watched my neighbour spend an hour

trying to reset his anchor, his little dinghy

flipping over and over on its tether in the

rising wind.

I spent the night on grumpy anchor-

watch and spent half an hour at dawn in

the pitching dinghy, elbows immersed, as

I refitted the Hydrovane’s rudder.

Accompanied by guillemots, bobbers

and white horses, we up-anchored and

Pippin barrelled downhill with a reef in the

sails and coffee on the stove. Rain cloud

obscured the land, but I didn’t care for

now I knew that Pippin was a very fine

sailing boat indeed.

I landed early

evening in pretty

Kinsale, which was

crowded with yachts

sheltering from the

advancing gale. Haggis and potatoes

soon simmered on the stove in the steamy

wheelhouse.

The next day a Raymarine engineer

repaired my autopilot controls, and I

shared gherkins and hair restorer with a

skipper from Paris and his family aboard

their lovely old Holman & Pye yacht. We’re

still in touch.

The next day I slipped away from the

Kinsale pontoon with the engine in neutral.

The autopilot behaved, and by the time

bacon and potatoes

were frying, Pippin

was heading

south-west across

the Celtic Sea. She

stole every whisper of

wind, slipping silently

into the sun, the

Hydrovane in charge.

Pippin ghosts in 3

knots, stirs in 6 and

flies in 9, when the

sea and hull start to

chatter. But the wind left, so on went the

engine, chuntering as dolphins fed half a

cable abeam. Eire appeared slowly in the

haze and Kinsale oil and gas rigs showed

on radar ahead. Common dolphins came

and went in the evening, causing the

usual mad flurry and megabytes of film

wasted on empty sea.

Trust your kit, I told myself, as I set

Pippin up for the night and settled to rest

in the quiet Celtic Deep. The next

morning, Pippin had slipped west in the

night, so I motor-sailed to Land’s End in

the rain. A big fat red tanker from Milford

Haven wallowed past two miles off and

CRUISING

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