66 CLASSIC BOAT FEBRUARY 2018RORC CARIBBEAN 600
Clockwise from
top left: Captain
Brendan McCoy
communicates
with the foredeck
via radio; Garry
Maidment on the
helm; mate Jason
Beken; the
skipper and The
Nipper (pro crew
Andrew Barbar);
pro crew Alasdair
Purves, great
grandson of
Charlie Barr;
stewardess
Emma Etchells
and cook ‘Juicy’teamwork. While the windlass heaves up the anchor, one
of the hands ships a davit. He hooks the fall of the tackle
onto a balancing lug on the shank and leads it to an
industrial grade electric winch at the foot of the
foremast. With this taking the strain, the windlass is
eased off so the chain can slack away. The massive pick
is then winched over the capping rail to be manhandled
into its chocks by three hands in a heavyweight ballet
performed twice every time the yacht goes to sea.CATTING THE HOOK
Catting the hooks would be a day’s work for some, but
on Eleonora it’s a sideshow. Leaving aside the jackyarder,
which stayed ashore until day three of our training,
hoisting the sails is huge but straightforward – all except
for the fisherman staysail, that is. This four-cornered
beast is set flying. The throat stands at the lower
foremast head while the tack downhaul is tensioned at
its foot. The peak is hove up to the main topmast and
the sheet leads to a cheek block on the main boom.
Whether to set it to windward or to leeward of the fore
gaff is a moot point depending on point of sail, but one
thing is sure. It has to come down to tack, and this is
when things started to get interesting.
Coming about on a schooner of this power and
complexity involves a lot more than just sheeting the
headsails across. The main topsail – even the jackyarder- goes with the mainsail, but the fore gaff topsail and the
fisherman stand inconveniently in the area between the
masts. The staying of a gaff schooner involves a heavy
triatic between the two lower masts, with lighter topmast
forestays and backstays, also between the masts. The
fore top and fisherman simply have to be set to leeward
of all this standing rigging or disaster follows, so they
must be dropped before the boat can be brought to the
wind. As the helmsman luffed her up for our first
attempt, the foremast gang gathered on the downhill
side. On the word, the topsail halyard and sheet were let
go. Any rope on Eleonora that’s going to run is flaked as
carefully as a whale line in its tub. I never saw a snag in
ten days. Four or five guests grabbed the sail as it came
down. They were joined by a couple of pros to sort it out
for a quick rehoist on the other side. Meanwhile, the
midships team spread out along the deck under the fore
boom ready to smother the fisherman when its two
halyards were eased away. All sorts of man-eating
horrors await mistakes here, but somehow they shoved
the heap of apparently random canvas under the boom
for hoisting on the new tack.
Once the upper sails were safe on deck, the skipper
spun the wheel and round she came. The activity as she
filled away was frenetic. Jib top, jib and staysail had to
be sheeted while the foremast and midships teams were
re-hoisting the flying kites. Down aft, people were not
watching the scenery either. Two enormous sets of wire
runners had to be swapped over. Although the main and
topmast backstays were downright intimidating, they
were handled by the two stewardesses and the cook,
who rattled them in, then clapped the mighty tails onto
two hefty winches. They had some relief from my
fellow-guests, former RORC commodore David Aisher
and Chris Copeland, a retired army officer better known