Yachting

MAY 2016 http://www.yachtingmonthly.com 3

M

ost sailors assume you can’t have

too much stowage and it’s broadly

true. We’ve interviewed a dozen

crews who crossed the Atlantic

this winter (see p20) and many of them said

they struggled to stow everything. Boat test

reports in sailing magazines often lament the

lack of stowage in yachts old and new. But can

you have too much of it? I think you can.

At the end of last season I made a promise to

my boat. I’d unloaded half a ton of stuff and

she was floating higher than usual, with her

boot-top stripe well above the waterline.

Glancing with shame at the waist-high pile of

clutter blocking the pontoon – old almanacs,

threadbare jumpers, obsolete electronics, rusty

tins of antifoul, varnish and Cassoulet de

Castelnaudary, almost-empty oil cans, reams

of leaflets from French and Irish marinas – I

vowed to stop treating her like a floating shed.

It could have been worse. When my

colleague Dick emptied out Maurice Griffiths’

gaff cutter, after buying her in France and

sailing her home to the Thames (see p38), he

found clumps of what looked like the great

man’s hair caked all over her internal ballast.

The oldest thing I found, deep in the stemhead

void, was a 1970s lifejacket, which, although

riddled with mildew, still actually worked.

I couldn’t fail to notice on winter daysails

how much quicker Cleaver moves through the

water and reacts to the helm without all that

dead weight. It’s a subtle difference, but if

you’ve owned a boat for a decade it’s obvious.

She feels livelier, more positive and purposeful.

The other thing I noticed, sailing an

empty boat, was my own unease. That clutter

was a security blanket. I keep imagining

improbable scenarios in which I might actually

need one of the many things no longer on

board. I bet I won’t, though.

So here’s my resolution for the new season.

From now on, I will be diligent – and ruthless

• about stowage and disposal. Things that are
  broken but potentially repairable, if I had the
  time, will no longer be stuffed or wedged into
  far corners of lockers and allowed to remain
  there for years. I’ll start this season with a
  sensible minimum of equipment, provisions
  and spares, and end each sailing trip with a
  determined clear-out and a
  visit to the boatyard bins.
  I’m even tempted to paint
  a Plimsoll line on the hull.

‘You can have too much stowage’

PHOTO: COURTESY OF SZYMON KUCZYNSKI

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PHOTO: GRAHAM SNOOK

Kieran Flatt, editor

[email protected]

VIEW FROM THE HELM

You’ll need every last inch of stowage space on an ocean passage (see p4 and p20), but a surfeit of stowage can be a burden for coastal cruising