Sailing Worm

We needed to visit Robinetta this weekend to retrieve sleeping bags ready for the Cambridge Folk Festival. It seemed the ideal day for a proper sea trial of Worm as a sailing dinghy. I re-soldered the rudder gudgeon that had failed at Titchmarsh and extracted the old eye bolt from Robinetta’s main sheet attachment that had failed on the way back from the Wivenhoe. For once, Wyatt’s had one in stock and we got everything ready on pontoon at West Mersea.
The rudder fits perfectly now, but floats up out of the fittings. The weight of the tiller keeps it down, but I definitely need to fit a retaining clip.

Rigging Worm on a mooring is fine. The only problem is raising the yard. The halyard is a little short, so with the yard down, the other end of the halyard is in the air. Not a big problem but a bit longer would allow it to be secured to the boat. Once up, the yard slides forwards round the mast. The vestigial ‘saddle’ doesn’t work. The parrel line is too loose, but it can only be tightened so much, as the mast hast a noticeable taper and the yard would not come down if the parrel line were tight enough when its up. I’ll ask Iain about this but I think a slightly more sophisticated saddle will be needed.

West Mersea is a windy spot. When there is little wind elsewhere there is usually a fine breeze for dinghys. Today was no exception. I pushed off the pontoon and turned her down wind towards the Gut and she started sailing beautifully. It was obvious that the previous bad experiences we had had were due to the conditions, not the boat. Both in Shotley last year (when we had no rudder) and at Titchmarsh, the winds were strong and flaky.

Alison went off ahead with the red flubber and the outboard but I kept up well across the Gut. Once we were heading up the Ray the wind dropped and she went off ahead to open up Robinetta.

I gybed gently up the Ray looking for patches of wind and eventually got blown onto the mud. The only thing stuck was the rudder. For Essex mud, I think a lifting rudder will be worth it. Trying to turn the rudder in the mud broke one of the tines off the fork of the tiller. I poled off with an oar and got her sailing again and came alongside Robinetta. Worm’s first sailing passage was complete.

We glued and nailed the tiller back together. It was low water so we decided to have our picnic on Robinetta. The drill’s battery was flat so we couldn’t fit the new eye bolt.

After a lazy lunch we set off again in the dinghy’s for a jaunt up to Ray Island. I recently discovered that Ray Island is a little famous. Sabine Baring-Gould wrote a novel set on the Island. Its funny how some people impinge on one’s life in several different ways. I first came across Baring-Gould as a teenager in a Lin Carter anthology of proto-fantasy-fiction. Years later I became aware of him as a collector of oral history and folk music. I read the first few paragraphs of Mehalah the other week. I should find some time to read it, although it’s not in a genre I favour.

We went as far up the Ray as we dared, and still managed to go aground again. This time it took the full power of the oars to get off the lee shore but I was soon beating back down the channel. For the first time I needed the lee board. It works really well and isn’t too hard to move from one side to the other. The main problem is the cleating cord is slippery and loosens itself. It’s also not possible to cleat it off so that it’s the same tension on either side of the boat. In a decent breeze it reduces the leeway brilliantly.

The tiller failed again – this time the other tine went. We stopped at Robinetta and put a couple of tie-wraps on it and shortened the parrel line.

The tide was flooding strongly now and the winds were light. The trip back to West Mersea took a very long time. I didn’t get Worm to point very well. There are several reasons for this:

• It’s Alison’s first attempt at sail making, and a very flimsy polytarp sail
• The rope horse is too long, making it hard to sheet hard in
• The sheet attachment is too far forward – I need to look at the plans again
• The yard was still not behind the mast, so was not as vertical as it should have been, so the top of the sail was not sheeted in as hard as the bottom
• There were places and times of almost no wind when I just drifted in the wrong direction with the tide
• I need to learn to sail her

Even so, I got there. I tied up on the pontoon and started to get the rig down. Unfortunately I leaned over too far and managed to tip the boat over. No harm done. Much thanks to the guys on the pontoon who helped.