Yachting

(Wang) #1
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
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