SAIL AND RIG:
THE TUNING GUIDEA TIDE FOR DROWNING
WORLD CRUISING
DESTINATIONSMagne Klann & Øyvind Bordal,
Fernhurst Books
A practical and passionate guide to choice, maintenance
and management of the rig and sails – essentially
a stayed Bermudan rig with mainsail and headsails.
Although its translated origin is obvious (and the
proofreader hasn’t fully earned their credit), the style
is engaging and the explanations logical. It’s well
laid out and profusely illustrated. The
authors quote from John Rousmaniere:
‘The goal is not to sail the boat but help
the boat to sail herself.’ My own elderly
ketch is far removed from the beautifully
photographed examples here but, as I
read, I found myself realising how much
more effectively I could use the features
she possesses already. I therefore
recommend this book.Dick Durham, Amazon
Dick Durham’s first novel is not for the faint hearted. It’s
a raunchy, macabre thriller, drawing on his experience
of the old hard-drinking days of red-top Fleet Street and
Essex coastal squalor – I relished the fictional boatyard
where plastic sheeting has been shredded ‘into no more
than hanging blue string’. The writing is exuberant
and opinionated and locations range
from corporate Canary Wharf to the
abandonment of a dementia home,
but the novel finds its true voice in the
horizontal world of the Dengie mudflats,
their few crazed beacons put to a new
and grotesque use. I wasn’t sorry to say
goodbye to the killer and his white plastic
powerboat but I hope Dick writes a second
novel soon.Jimmy and Doina Cornell, Bloomsbury
For those adventurous souls who believe it is better to
travel than to arrive, Jimmy Cornell has already produced
World Cruising Routes. World Cruising Destinations,
written with his daughter Doina, assists the rest of us
to make hassle-free check-ins, producing correct papers
at the correct port of entry and not offending the locals
by allowing our toes to peep out of our
sandals. Its admirably clear layout
includes country profiles, climate and
charter information as well as formalities
and facilities for 184 countries, and will
be a boon to sailors deciding why they
might want to visit Chagos (‘one of the
most dreamed-of cruising destinations
in the world’) or Yemen (‘must be avoided’).between NE and E, chiefl y ENE. But there may have been
an offshore breeze or two at Dunkirk: and a east-north-
east wind blows straight down the Dunkirk coast, so it
would be a beam wind for any vessel sailing towards
England – if she had her sails up.
The Full Moon had her topsail up, we know. But there
was more. The other sails would not be as neatly stowed as
they had been for the tow over. In prospect it was a quick
departure, and before she went inshore they would have
made the sails half ready, the mainsail not fully brailed, the
foresail ready on the forestay. In this, the enemy assisted;
something, perhaps a fragment of bomb, carried away the
starboard vang, and machine gun bullets parted the peak
and upper brails of the mainsail and the topping lift of the
mizzen. Apart from the topsail, the broken vang would give
the sprit and topsail a useful attitude with the wind aft or
even on the starboard beam.
One noon or midnight, then, on the top of the tide, she
lifted her anchor and sailed away.
The sand outside are no great danger to small craft and
the anchor hanging on its short scope of chain, two or
three fathoms, would act like an elephant’s trunk and
warn her away if she touched. How she picked her way
among the wrecks is a more diffi cult question.
There may have been some unseemly sidling at fi rst, but
when she got out to sea and made her fi rst turn westward,
I like to think that she presented her fi ne wide transom
to the wind and pointed her proud head the way that she
was going. At all events, steering six hours westward, and
six hours north-easterly, the streams cancelling out, she
made her stately passage home. It must have taken her
three days or more. She fetched up, I reckon, somewhere
near the North Goodwin Lightship – she may even have
crossed the Goodwin Sands. Her last leg took her to the
Sandwich Flats. There, at least, they found her, anchored
on the sands, Arthur’s topsail still set.
The return of the fi ctional Full Moon in The Singing Swan
is based on the story of sailing barge Ena, long believed
to have sailed herself home from Dunkirk. Much later
research, not available to A.P.H, revealed that the Ena
had in fact been commandeered by late-arriving British
troops. Thirty six offi cers and men had made the journey
home, then left her empty at anchor off Deal as there was
no room in Margate Harbour.
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