Introduction
Sailing an open dinghy around the Isle-of-Wight is a significant
undertaking and requires careful preparation. These include:
- The crew.
- Clothing.
- The boat.
- Additional equipment and supplies.
- Navigation.
- Trials.
- The day before.
- Safety Briefing
The crew
The Wayfarer Association guidelines are that the crew should
be either two or three in strength. It is also important that
all the crew are competent in a Wayfarer. There is no room for
passengers, especially if something goes wrong. We opted for
three. This was to give both more options in terms of rest, and
the safety of more movable ballast.
We planned the trip with myself, my wife Lydia and my son
David. We all have RYA level 2 and a number of seasons experience.
However, none of us had sailed round the Island before. Indeed
most of our experience has been racing rather than cruising.
So we took care to seek out advice from those who had.
Clothing
The key question with clothes was whether to wear yacht sailing
gear, or wet suits. The advantage of yacht gear is that it is
relatively comfortable whilst giving good weather protection.
It is not so good if you end up in the water. Wet suits are good
if you end up in the water, give good weather protection, and
are less bulky, but can become uncomfortable, and are a serious
inconvenience if you need to go to the toilet.
In practice, this decision was largely taken for us in that
we had wet suits, and buying new clothes would have been a major
expense. As it turned out, we did not find them uncomfortable,
even for the extended period we were in them, and only one of
us needed to relieve themselves, although that was awkward.
So our clothing list was:
 | Swimming costume/underwear
| Wet suite
| Wet boots/sailing shoes
| Splash top
| Buoyancy aid
| Baseball hat
| Sailing gloves
| | | | | | |
We also took some spare warm clothes - fleeces.
The boat
Our Wayfarer is a Porter's Mk II. It was originally used for
training, as many Wayfarers are, and its previous owner had used
it for racing. So it was not set up for cruising. Further we
had sailed the boat for 3 years without doing anything significant
to the boat and so I had planned a refit of the boat during the
winter.
The set up of the boat before the refit was:
| GRP hull and deck
| Wooden seats, rubbing strip, centreboard and rudder
| Jib, Genoa, spinnaker and main sail
| Paddles
| Furling jib
| Reefing by rolling round the boom
| Rear sheeting
| Kicker brought back to the thwart
| Outhaul and downhaul at mast end of boom
| No self bailers or pump
| | | | | | | | | |
A number of the improvements made were directly to make the
boat more suitable for such a passage. These were:
| Install a slab reefing system so that the main sail could
be easily reefed at sea (two reefs)
| Install self bailers and a stirrup type pump to get the boat
dry again in the event of a capsize.
| Replace the rather old centre board and rudder with GRP ones
| Add an outboard bracket and outboard motor (Mariner 3.3 HP)
| Give the boat a buoyancy test.
| Check the rigging
| | | | | |
In addition we had the following done:
| Rubber fendoff to replace the wooden rubbing strip
| Centre main
| Outhaul brought back to the thwart
| Bow launch for spinaker as for Wayfarer World
| New launch and recovery system for spinaker pole
| Compass
| Check and fix fittings and hull
| Measurement certificate
| | | | | | | |
All this was more than I had time or skill to do myself, so
I had the work done by Porter Brothers who are reasonably local
to us.
Additional equipment and supplies
Additional equipment and supplies included
| Anchor - 5 Kg Plough + 30 m of warp
| First Aid kit
| GPS (Global Positioning System) - Garmin GPS 48
| Torch
| Mobile phone and important phone numbers
| Charts and tide tables
| Food (snacks worked best)
| Drink
| Petrol/two stroke mix
| Tool kit
| Spares for outboard
| DriTek bags
| Jug and bucket for toilet provision
| Waterproof disposable camera
| | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Navigation
With the boat and crew sorted out, the other part is planning the passage itself. The Wayfarer Association organises the event
as a cruise of independent boats. This means that each boat has
to have their own passage plan, and whilst it might seem quite
easy to sail round an island (just keep it on the same side of
the boat until you get back to where you started from) in a boat
like a Wayfarer, making sure that you are sailing with the tide
rather than against it can mean doubling or halving your speed
over the ground.
I had no previous experience of navigation, so I started by
getting a book, in this case "The RYA Book of Navigation"
by Tim Bartlett - recommended for people in a similar situation.
The Isle-of-Wight is the shape of a squashed diamond off the
south coast of England. Hill Head Sailing Club is on the English
coast more or less opposite the northern tip. For going round
the Isle-of-Wight, the first thing to decide is which way round
to go. Now the tide flows from East to West as it ebbs, and from
West to East as it rises. Since the passage can reasonably be
expected to take 12 hours, it is desirable to undertake the passage
in daylight, and you want the tide to flow with you this decision
will take itself. In our case low tide was at about 10:35 at
the Needles - the western end of the island - and we were starting
from Hill Head - more or less opposite the northern point of
the island. The prevailing wind is south westerly, so it is as
well to assume it will be a beat down to the Needles. The tides
were neaps, which gives an average tidal stream of about 1 Knot.
So the last figure required is an assumed speed for the boat
through the water - we assumed 4 Knots and the rest is geometry
or vector maths. I arrived at a start time of 05:30. So our start
time and direction of circumnavigation were fixed.
Since I was taking a GPS with me I calculated and entered
waypoints for each hour of the journey as planned, plus one for
each corner of the island, so that I could judge progress relatively
easily without resorting to charts on the way round.
The complete passage plan is provided here
as a PDF file.
Trials
It would not be sensible to set out on such a passage with
so much new kit that was untried. In particular, the slab
reefing and the outboard motor.
So during the early part of the sailing season we tried them
out.
Slab reefing and sail plan
Slab reefing is wonderful - at least the system Porters installed
for us. It is easy to set up before you go out, and easy to take
in or let out a reef on the water. Another thing we discovered
was that the boat still sailed in a well balanced way with the
jib/Genoa furled, especially when the main was reefed. (Note:
partially furling a jib/Genoa does not work, as it does on a
yacht, because there is no metal rod that does not twist to stop
the sail partially unfurling.) This gave us a considerable potential
range of sail plans:
| Genoa and full main
| Genoa and single reefed main
| Genoa and double reefed main
| Jib and full main
| Jib and single reefed main
| Jib and double reefed main
| Furled jib and full main
| Furled jib and single reefed main
| Furled jib and double reefed main
| | | | | | | | |
Moving from Genoa to jib was roughly equivalent to taking
in a reef, as was furling the jib. However, changing the Genoa
to a jib is difficult, particularly in the conditions in which
you are likely to contemplate it. So we opted to set out with
the jib in the first place. With furling the jib being equivalent
to taking a reef, this left the following as our plan for shortening
sail:
| Jib and full main
| Jib and single reef
| Jib and double reef
| Furled jib and double reef
| | | |
In addition to this we would carry a spinnaker.
Given that we had three crew, rather than two with which you
normally race with, we considered this sufficiently conservative
for the passage contemplated.
Outboard Motor
None of us had used an outboard before, so there was a lot
to learn. Mounting the outboard on the bracket was straight forward.
The system installed provided a base bracket on the boat on which
an extended pad could be mounted when an outboard was required,
which in turn meant the outboard could be left mounted on the
bracket, even when sailing.
The Mariner 2 stroke engine had the throttle mounted on the
engine, as most smaller engines do. This means to operate the
throttle you need to sit on the "boot" of the Wayfarer.
This is OK, but not comfortable for long periods. We therefore
purchased a piece of plastic water pipe to act as a tiller extension
to give comfort when using the outboard for extended periods.
Another advantage this gave was that when not in use, this could
be put in a vertical position, like a flag pole, which had the
effect of preventing the main sheet from snagging on the outboard
when tacking or gybing.
The next trial was discovering just how many things you had
to do before the motor would start:
| Engine in neutral
| Air inlet on petrol tank open
| Petrol on
| Choke on
| Throttle part open
| | | | |
The first time we went out I spent 5 minutes trying to start
the motor with the petrol switched off! However, once we had
learnt the drill we were impressed with the ease of starting.
The engine gave plenty of power, with half throttle being adequate to push the boat briskly through the water.
The day before
The day before setting out we rigged the boat as far as possible
to save time the next day, and checked our stowage and that everything
we were carrying was tied on in case of a capsize. In the evening
it was off to the safety briefing.
Safety Briefing
Pat Dollard, who organised the cruise, ran the safety meeting
the night before the cruise (many thanks) and ran the operations
room during the day - counting us all out and counting us all
back.
There were 10 boats taking part in the cruise. The others
were all departing from Calshot, the other side of Southampton
Water from Hill Head. Key elements were:
| Weather Forecast (Wind WNW increasing force 2-4)
| Phoning in drill for each corner of the island
| Boat names, numbers, crews, phone numbers
| The usual safety matters and warnings for any cruise (its
your own fault if anything goes wrong)
| | | |
Finally we were ready! Find out how we did here.
Matthew West
W8684 Salsa |
