Living on Board the PicoMicroYacht

I have slept on the PicoMicroYacht three times. 

I used an existing tent, a purpose made boom tent not so suitable for PicoMicroYacht. For a bed-board I used the dagger plate, which worked better than might be expected.

Putting up the tent required being off the boat, and on each occasion I assembled it from a marina pontoon.

The lock-down is giving me plenty of time to think, and I realised I could adopt a more flexible system if I used a bivy tent, which would enable me to assemble it whilst being on the boat.

I chose the Snugpak Stratosphere tent, which is reasonably priced and well designed. It has two small poles at the head end, which keeps the tent fabric off your head, an important luxury. A ‘side entry’ makes it possible to get into it whilst on the PicoMicroYacht.

I also made some light wooden boards that are supported by  the rowing frame and provide a deck for the tent. 

The video above shows me trying it out in my garden. When making the video it felt eerily quiet, deserted - the Stones have released a new single expressing this thought, called 'Living in a Ghost Town,' the best they have done in ages. But I have found friends around me are creating a virtual town instead.

PicoMicroYacht's Shortest Voyage

I am locked down and landlocked. I have managed, however, to slide PicoMicroYacht through the garden gate and assemble the rig for my 'Shortest Voyage' (see the video below). But the pull of the sea remains.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

Bryn Terfel singing John Masefield's Sea Fever

Video: PicoMicroYacht's Shortest Voyage

On returning to the sea

It is not too far-fetched to think that one of the greatest 20^th Century adventure writers is Adlard Coles. He wrote books describing his voyages on the South Coast of England and beyond, noting the simple pleasures of yachting in a small boat. His voyages were mostly unexciting, but his detailed writing captures the essence of such sailing in a way unsurpassed by others.

Adlard Coles in later years

His classic book ‘Sailing Days’ evokes carefree days of exploration in the 1930s.

Illustration from Sailing Days

A follow up book, ‘More Sailing Days,’ was written at the end of the Second World War.

At the start of the book he describes how he sailed his 22 foot yacht called Zara from Itchenor to Wooton Creek on the day war ceased in Europe.

Zara

 His sense of gratitude is as follows:

‘I had bought the yacht in 1944 when, like multitudes of others, I was longing for the time when I could get afloat again. And so you will understand that it was a great moment in my life when a year later these fancies grew into a reality and I found myself making the journey down to the sea and to the little ship from which I had been separated.’

Adlard Coles 'on board'

PicoMicroYacht will launch again as soon as it is possible and of course also my small yacht, Lady Elizabeth.

The Boot Trick

Cold and windy weather has limited PicoMicroYacht's voyaging recently, but I was able to visit Chichester Harbour and a favourite spot, East Head.

East Head - anchor locations marked with a cross

This sand dune promontory is a great place to beach a boat. Due to the inclement weather, it was fairly deserted.

It was too cold to hang out on the beach, so I went for a walk.

I had to calculate the tides carefully, to be able to get back to the boat before PicoMicroYacht floated again. It could not be easily dragged up and down the foreshore due to the damp sand.

PicoMicroYacht was beached about four hours after high tide. With approximately six and a half hours between high tides, I had just over four hours until the boat would float again.

To be cautious I attached it to an anchor borrowed from my larger boat, using a long warp.

I then did the boot trick.

I learned this trick from Dylan Winter. If you leave a boat in such circumstances and do not want people to meddle with it, then leave a pair of boots by the anchor. His view is that it has the effect of making people think you just about to return. Of course, they could walk off with the boots, but I think that unlikely!

Three hours later, I returned and lay on the shingle upper foreshore, watching the sea and the sky.

The tide came in and PicoMicroYacht was readied.

The photo shows a newly acquired depth transducer mounted on the bottom of the rudder

A Cold Winter's Row

On a cold winter’s day, I decided to row out into the entrance of the River Blackwater on the Essex Coast.

I was dressed well to keep warm.

As I left the Bradwell Marina, I passed some yachts on their moorings, including a Lawrence Giles Peter Duck yacht, the original having been designed for Arthur Ransome.

I was then out into the estuary, looking upstream to where a light vessel was moored.

Just over a millennium ago, between two and four thousand Viking raiders sailed through this stretch of water, reaching Maldon and doing battle with Saxon Warriors, pitching their arrows and spears against the Saxon’s mighty shield walls.

I could imagine how the Vikings arrived in relatively small boats, with perhaps an east wind blowing them gently up the estuary.

Looking out to sea and on my starboard bow was the Bradwell Nuclear Power Station.

Close by on the bank a family were walking their two dogs.

As the afternoon wore on, it was getting very cold and I turned back.

A golden and then deep orange sky awaited me as the sun dropped to the horizon.

The Jurassic Coast: It's Bat's Head, but is it Art?

In the past few days an unusually high pressure settled over the UK, the barometer reaching 1050 millibars, the highest recorded since 1957.

High pressure was caused by a massively fast Jet stream in the mid-Atlantic, recorded as 238 miles per hour. The jet stream hit slower air over the UK and a pile-up ensued, accounting for the high pressure.

With the sea calm, little wind and a neap tide, I decided to continue with the Jurasic Coast adventure on the Dorset Coast.  I had to skip the first five miles due to the firing range just beyond Kimmeridge.

I started at Lulworth Cove. In the winter when the visitors are few and the cove is empty of visiting yachts, this is one of the more beautiful spots on the South Coast.

It was formed due to a coastal wall of hard limestone being breached by the sea. The waves forced through and refracted outwards, wearing down the softer rock behind and resulting in a bowl-shaped natural harbour.

The limestone is Portland stone, this type used to build many iconic building, including Buckingham Place, St Pauls Cathedral and even parts of the United Nations Building in New York.

It was a surprisingly short distance between launching and exiting the cove, the entrance flanked by the remains of the wall.

The west side of Lulworth Cove

A light easterly wind made it easy work going west and the sea remained calm.

Out to sea was a Royal Navy vessel on exercises.

I could see the Isle of Portland in the distance.

A close up revealed the lighthouse.

The next major landmark was Durdle Door, again formed from hard limestone. From the sea, it looks even more like a door, the 'Durdle' derived from an ancient word meaning ‘drill’ or ‘hole.’

Durdle Door camouflaged by the cliff behind

Beyond Durdle Door is Bat's Head, a structure flanked by two arching chalk cliffs, the wings of the bat, dominating Weymouth Bay as seen from the sea.

Bat's Head - the 'head' towards the left

I was struck by how much Bat's Head and the surrounding cliff looks like a modern work of art. As I rowed on, I pondered on whether nature can ever be called art and the different viewpoints on this matter.

At this point my camera stopped due to the excessive cold. As a backup I got out my smart phone, which  I found was also not working.

PicoMicroYacht eventually entered Weymouth Harbour.

The voyage:

Later on I found various suggestions to keep a mobile phone going in the cold:

Wrap it up with an insulating material

Use a thermal protective pouch

Use a hand warmer

Use body heat - I put the lanyard of my waterproof phone pouch round my neck and push the phone down my inner shirt

Checking the chains

As well as PicoMicroYacht voyaging I enjoy being a member of a sailing club. The other day  I was helping check the club moorings, having a larger boat on one of them.

The moorings have buoys attached by chains to large concrete blocks embedded in the mud at the bottom of a creek. The chains wear out either due to chafing or rusting and have to be checked regularly.

It is a muddy business, involving using a barge to winch up the chains, and sometimes going overboard to dig down into the mud.

To get to the barge we rowed down the creek in a small dinghy, trying not run aground. We then  manoeuvred the barge into position using oars and started checking the chains.

All of this took me back in my imagination to a bygone era of hand operated barges, used throughout the ages.

A river landscape with figures in a ferry, barges and rowing boats 
Salomon van Rusdael  ca. 1644


Finding the swatchway on the way to the barge