Campbeltown Classics

The Campbeltown Classics are a venerable event in the OGA calendar but have been struggling in recent years. There is really only one gaffer in regular attendance, the fine Swn-y-mor. Tantina II and Naiad are classic bermudans - Naiad is a year older than Robinetta. These three boats are the heart of the Scottish OGA. This year, other areas wanted to support the event and it fitted nicely into our idea of heading north for a bit to explore Gigha, Islay and Ratlhin which we have missed so far.

Our plan came together even better than I had thought it would as we were now effectively re-creating Robinetta’s first cruise on the 80th anniversary. She left the Mersey on the 13th May 1937 and sailed to the Isle of Man, anchoring off Douglas and then in East Tarbert Bay by the Mull of Galloway and then off Arran. We left on 13th May 2017 and sailed to Peel to wait out a gale and then to Portpatrick and Campbeltown. Close enough.

Not surprisingly we were the only East Coast members due to come. Molly Cobbler now sails with the North Wales area and Master Frank from Peel is nominally part of the Northern Ireland area so we one gaffer from each of four areas and a number of classic bermudans from Scotland and Northern Ireland too.

Swn-y-mor

Friday was a fine evening and warm enough for drinks in the cockpit of Tantina II before a saunter up the road to the hotel for dinner. I sat with Warren and Jill from Swn-y-mor and got them to tell some of their tales of circumnavigation in her. Warren said his boyhood dream had been to visit the Marquesas and he knew he would never manage it except in his own boat. We had both read Robert Louis Stevenson’s account from 1888. He had been there a few years after the end of cannibalism. Warren said it was still a special place when he was there. He also had strong memories of sailing in the Mississippi. The US government has closed the river to recreational craft and provided a parallel waterway. So Swn-y-mor was one of the last yachts ever to use it.

We had a reasonably early night and a lazy Saturday morning. I did a little shopping which included a trip to the whisky shop. Campbeltown is one of the defined areas for Scotch and was once the ‘Whisky Capital of Scotland’. At it’s peak it had over 20 distilleries, although every story I read told a different number. Now it has three, two owned by Mitchells and one by a smaller company. The shop keeps a few barrels which they use for tastings and will fill bottles from while you watch. Luckily for me, someone had left one of them dripping and the sample jug was full, so they handed sips round to all in the shop. It worked - I bought a bottle!

All this made me a little late back to Robinetta where Alison told me to get a move on as we were going out for a parade of sail at noon. It was 11:50. We didn’t have much to do and were by no means the last boat out. The four gaffers and Gary Lyon’s Ocean Dove - a Maurice Griffiths ketch sailed up and down the loch for a couple of hours with OGA President Alistair Randall on the quay and the press photographer in a rib taking photos. We took some too.

We didn’t think there would be much wind but in the event we had a F3 gusting to F5 which made for a fun sail.

Master Frank

Master Frank

Ocean Dove

Swn-y-mor 

Molly Cobbler

In the evening we all went to the Sailing Club who provided a bar, dinner and a duo playing Scottish music to end a gentle and hugely enjoyable gathering.

There are other traditional boat events in Scotland, notably at Portsoy in the Moray Firth and at Tarbert in Loch Fyne. We just missed Portsoy in 2014 as we really wanted to get to Orkney. We came down from Stornaway in

2015 to the Tarbert event and really enjoyed it. Maybe the OGA isn’t needed as much in Scotland as on the East Coast.

Thanks to Neil and Gordon and the Campbeltown Sailing Club for organising a great weekend.

Portpatrick to Campbeltown

We got up at 06:30, to be away by 07:00 to take the last two hours of the tide north towards the Clyde. We left in company with Molly Cobbler, and stayed quite close together all the way to Campbeltown.

We put the main sail up as we left Portpatrick, and tried flying the no 1 Jib, but we kept the engine on. The wind we could feel was only a light land breeze, and soon failed us.The sea was flat calm so the tiller pilot went on, and we soon lowered the main as it was doing nothing.

Julian went below and cooked us kippers for breakfast, and we ate them in the cockpit revelling in the flat sea and bright sunshine. Unfortunately we needed the engine on full revs to keep up with Molly Cobbler and her 6hp outboard.

I told Julian that there was still some water in Worm after the trip from Peel, and he decided to rig the pump in her while I went below and washed up breakfast. He pulled Worm along side, relying on the tiller pilot to keep Robinetta on track. With his concentration on Worm he stopped watching Molly Cobbler, and Mary called up on the VHF. Could Julian to please keep a look out as she had had to take avoiding action twice!

We raised the Scottish courtesy flag, which we should have done for Portpatrick, but forgot since we arrived in the dark. It might have helped keep the starlings off the rigging there. Our course was 344ºT practically all the way from Portpatrick to Campbeltown. We saw three trawlers in formation close together, all with their trawls deployed. Luckily our course took us across their track ahead of them.

Ghoster up

Molly Cobbler off the Mull of Kintyre

Once we cleared the Mull of Galloway what little wind there was came from the port stern quarter. Julian decided to give our second hand spinnaker a try as a ghoster, and it did fly, giving good service and letting us come off full revs. After about an hour Julian gave in to temptation and raised the main as well. It filled, but did nothing to obviously help our progress and we were never tempted to turn off the engine.

Ghosting along    photo by Mary Gibbs

Mary raised sail too, and we got some good shots of Molly Cobbler against the Mull of Kintyre. The best part of the day for me was watching a skein of Gannets, flying between Sanda and Ailsa Craig. One flight of at least 20 birds came skimming along the sea towards us, then rose with a flash of bright white underwings as they lifted over Robinetta's stern. Gone in a moment, but it made a moment to treasure.

The wind died to nothing as we approached the entrance to Campbeltown, so we got the main and reaching sail down before heading for the marina in company with Molly Cobbler. We rafted up together on a wide finger berth after a lovely day on the water.

Lazy Day in Portpatrick

Relaxed day in Portpatrick with pidgeons and starlings crapping all over Robinetta. Julian took the opportunity to take some find bird pictures.
 

Just Robinetta and Molly Cobbler in until lunchtime, then a twister came in; three wooden boats! By 20:00 another 3 bermudans had arrived, all GRP and 35-40' long. Harbour wall felt full with two bermudans rafted and 1 with no ladder.

Peel to Portpatrick

Peel Castle

We spent a lazy morning in Peel waiting for the flap gate. We expected it to drop around 2pm but the Harbour Master said it would be more like 2:45 because the harbour was full of water after the rain.

We bent the main sail on and went up to the Co-op for croissants and pain chocolate for a late breakfast. I don't think I'm losing weight this trip!

Over the winter I bought a couple of corner reflectors to hoist at night or in fog. Robinetta is too small and too wooden to have much of a radar cross-section. Most reflectors are rubbish but at least the old fashioned corners at least work at both marine radar frequencies and having one each side of the mast should provide a corner to most radars. We didn't manage to fit them for the trip over from Liverpool.

We had time now and Alison wanted to check the peak halyard mast strops so I hauled her up the mast and she seized a new eye to the port aft shroud and ran light halyards to it and to the eye already on the front starboard shroud. We can also use these for courtesy flags and bunting.

A quick walk around the outside of the castle, fee paying at the Harbour Office and tea and a cake at the Manannan Centre and we were ready to leave. There were lots of boats waiting for the bridge lift. We got the call and pottered down, getting the bow sprit out and bending the No 1 jib on.

Outside, there was more wind than we had feared and we raised full sail and set course on a gentle broad reach. The wind filled and before long we were creaming along at 5 knots. Robinetta was loving it and so were we. We had a perfect sail until about 7pm.

As evening drew on the wind dropped. There was still enough to sail, but our arrival time had slipped from 11pm to 2am. That would be OK but the worst thing was that the wind was no longer strong enough to keep the boat stable against the swell. The sails banged about. These are the conditions when rigs are most easily damaged. We reluctantly took the main down and motored the rest of the way.

Sun setting over Northern Ireland

We did get the radar reflectors hoisted but several of the plastic corners fell off. I don't think they are meant to be assembled and disassembled often. We really want to keep them flat when we aren't using them.

We had good tidal assist for most of the trip and managed 6 knots SOG now and then even under engine and stay sail.

Dusk lasted a long time and there was still light in the west as we neared Portpatrick around midnight. We slipped into the inner harbour and past Molly Cobbler who had arrived a little earlier. Mary had left Whitehaven at 2:30 am and got Portpatrick about 7:30pm after waiting in East Tarbert Bay and anchored to wait for the tide around the Mull.

Portpatrick has an ingenious scheme of ropes anchored to the top and bottom of the wall with fenders free to run up and down them with the tide. You can tie a rope loop round and slide up and down with the fenders. Unfortunately they are not well maintained and we had to reinforce one of the mooring lines with our own ropes to be secure.

We crawled into bed around half-past midnight.

Storm Bound In Peel

After our long trip from Liverpool Julian and I were glad of a day or two in port, even if it was because we were storm bound. Unfortunately it rained, and rained, and rained, starting from about 5 in the morning on Monday. We had not put the cockpit cover on, and regretted it as the cabin began to leak. I crawled out of bed as soon as I was awake enough, got all dressed up in my oilies, and got the covers over.

Julian had connected shore power on Sunday evening, so I unwrapped the little electric heater, and the cabin began to dry out. I left Julian putting the cabin into day mode, and headed for the shore heads. Stupidly I took off my waterproof trousers before leaving Robinetta and regretted it immediately as the strong wind drove the rain and my trousers were soaked in a minute.

The door code the harbour master had given me, which worked yesterday, did not work this morning, and it would not work on the pontoon security gate either. However there was a phone, labelled 24hr Harbour master, so I used it and got the Douglas Harbour master, who gave me the new code.

There is a shed near the harbour, labelled HMS Chandlers, but the doors were closed, however walking along towards the pub where we ate last night I saw someone going through a door labelled Ship to Shore. It had looked like a false door, but was obviously in use, so I followed them in anRobinettad found a good commercial/fisherman's chandlers. They had a good selection of bilge pumps, and when I asked about sail mending I was given the contact details for a lady in Port Erin.

The next task of the day was pumping out the bilges and moping them as dry as possible so Julian could get a good look and decide if we needed a new pump or just a repair. The answer was a new pump, so he headed for the chandlers in the driving rain and bought one. They only had Rule brand ones, while the broken one was Whale, but Robinetta had a Rule when we bought her, and the screw holes only needed a little cleaning out to be perfectly usable. Fitting this new pump was much easier than the last one!

Julian then moved on to making a new tiller pilot mount, while I took the stern light apart. The electrical connection had looked a bit dodgy, and on opening it up I was amazed it had worked at all. After reconnecting the wires I made a grommet with self amalgamating tape to take the strain off the electrical connections.  They were both jobs we could do in the cabin, in the dry.

The rain gave way to drizzle as the afternoon wore on, and in the evening we headed to the Creek Inn to celebrate Julian's birthday without putting full waterproofs on first.

Tuesday saw us taking off the cockpit cover on a grey but dry morning, then taking the sail off and bagging it to take to Port Erin. The taxi took us though thick fog, but Port Erin itself was clear at sea level. Jenny at 7Wave soon had a patch sewn over the rip, and we caught a steam train to Douglas for the afternoon. The sky brightened up as we travelled and by the time we reached the terminus the weather was beautiful.

Port Erin in the murk

There was an amateur production of The Producers on at the Gaiety Theatre in the evening, so we bought tickets, and the box office looked after the sail for us while went to the museum and had a walk in the sunshine.

The bus back to Peel at 23:07 was surprisingly full. We ended the day back on Robinetta at Midnight, having successfully completed all the essential maintenance tasks needed before setting off again.

Liverpool to Peel

The Friday afternoon bus to Liverpool got us there at just gone ten. We walked to the Marina through the Albert dock and along the river walk. It had obviously been raining, but was dry now and surprisingly warm. Robinetta felt dry when we opened her up, a reminder that we had only been gone for four days. The Drainman pump had kept Worm from filling too; it is a very useful gadget and I'm glad we got it working again.

The first lock out next morning was at 11.30. We did not try to get in to that one, but were off the pontoon in time for the next lock cycle. I reversed Robinetta off the finger birth easily enough, but found it very difficult to get her alongside the pontoon in the lock. The lock basin feels square, very wide but short, and I was going too fast for my own comfort as we entered the lock. In the end Julian took over and easily brought us alongside.

We were out into the river by 12.10. The tide ran strongly against us and we crabbed out, but there was enough depth of water to let us straighten up and motor down river outside the channel. I tried calling Mersey Radio to report out movement, but they could not hear us clearly and told us to call again when we were clear of the marina. We raised the stay sail to help the engine fight the tide, and I got the bowsprit out and bent on the no 1 jib. It was a bit gusty, and we soon changed it for the no 2. Wind over tide made the river a little lumpy, but nothing that caused a problem, although when I went forward to retie a mast hoop that had come loose I had to hold on tight, and regretted not putting on a safety strap.

We turned into the wind by the Echo Arena building and got the main sail up, reefed, then called Mersey Radio again. They recorded us this time, but stated they could not see Robinetta. A few minutes later they called us and asked if we had a blue hull; they could now see us. They asked us to report again at buoy C22, and kept a good eye on us as we sailed, and motor-sailed slowly out along the Queen's Channel. It felt quite strange to hear the pilot boats reporting on our progress as they passed!

Liverpool from the Queen's Channel

We tried to keep just outside the channel, in what would have been the expected yacht behaviour at Harwich or Portsmouth, but received a call, telling us we had strayed outside the channel and to stay in it at all times. After that we did. Apparently the revetment (or training wall) is very close to the channel and they did not want us going onto it on a falling tide.

The tide stopped impeding us a couple of hours after we left the marina, and we sailed with the engine off a lot of the time. We had to put it on where the channel curved, because tacking across the channel did not seem like a good idea.

Once clear of the Queen's channel we said farewell to Mersey Radio, and set off on a heading of 300º magnetic towards the Calf of Man, 60 nautical miles away. Our lovely South Westerly wind held steady for a couple of hours, then dropped and backed to South Easterly. Not ideal as we were now on a run. By seven it had died away, leaving nothing but an uncomfortable swell. We fitted the tiller pilot, but it could not cope with the conditions, and the new mounting Julian had made at Holyhead failed. We would have to hand steer the compass course all the way.

With hand steering we would need to use shorter watches, two hours on, and two hours off. Staring at a compass for longer than that would be impossible. Since it would soon be getting dark we lowered and stowed the main once the wind failed. The swell was pushing the boom all over the place. So we lashed it down.

I had just settled down in the cabin at 23:10 when Julian called from the cockpit. Could I check that the bilge pump was working? Grumbling a little I did so, but he was right to check. The bilges were full enough that the float switch was right up, but the electric bilge pump was dead. I came up on deck, and worked the manual pump until it sucked dry. We did that at every watch change from then  on.

By Midnight the wind was back, from the west, at about force 3. I unrolled the jib, but our course was too close to the wind for the main, so it stayed down. The seas rolled Robinetta uncomfortably all night, and sleeping was almost impossible. Holding the course with nothing to aim at was also quite challenging. The moon rose behind us, and a few stars could be seen, but only over my shoulder. Ahead was dark, with nothing but lights from commercial boats, none of which were close enough to worry about, but kept a close eye on them.

Isle of Man from Robinetta

Julian took over the watch at 3 a.m, and by the time I “woke” next the sun was up, and I could see the Isle of Man, or at least its hills above the low cloud.
We were too late to get through the sound between the Calf of Man and the Isle of Man, so headed south past Chicken Rock. Once we were clear of the rocks, at about 09:00 we turned north-north- west, and Julian proposed getting the main sail up.

All sorts of things went wrong. Not all of them because we were tired. First the throat halyard was jammed under the topping lift. Then another two of the mast hoops came untied. Remembering how unpleasant tying on one had been in the Mersey I suggested leaving them, but Julian went forward and tied them on properly. Then Julian noticed the gaff outhaul was loose and he fixed it.

Turning head to wind again Julian tried raising the sail. For some reason, probably tiredness, he did not make off the peak halyard properly while tensioning the luff, and the gaff dropped down the sail. I heard a rip, and saw a small triangular tear in the sail, made by the out-haul tensioning bar.

Once the sail was up we had a lovely run up the coast to Peel in bright sun shine, the only downer being the persistent swell. We could see a dredger empting its hold just outside Peel harbour. It went forward, backward, and round in circles before heading back into the harbour to work again.

Peel Castle from the Sea

I asked Julian to check the marina call up channel, and he called up to say that we were supposed to call an hour before arrival. As we were about to round the breakwater we were more than a little late calling! The harbour master was good though, and told us that he could call us back once he had seen some boats out of the harbour. It was 12:20, and the flap gate had just opened.

Julian got the main down and as we circled round in the outer harbour, avoiding the dredger, the waiting buoy, and the shallows. There was no way we were leaving the shelter of the breakwater, flat water was very welcome after 24 hours of swell.

Five boats came out, then we were called in. The harbour master was waiting by the open bridge to tell us where to moor,  and we were safely tied up by 12:50. Once Robinetta was tidied up, and Worm pulled onto the pontoon, we got the bedding out and went to sleep.

Heading to the showers after our nap

Happy Birthday Robinetta!

Robinetta was launched on the 10th May 1937 and on the 11th Rayner made a first abortive trip up the Mersey single handed. He was a little late leaving and ran out of water and turned back.

On May 14th 1937 she left the Mersey for the Clyde, arriving at William Fyne's Fairlie yard on the 18th.

Robinetta left Fairlie again last year and went round Ireland.

Last Saturday we got her back to the Mersey.

Back in 2012 Eddie Farren reached out to me. He said: "I discovered your Robinetta blog earlier this year whilst undertaking research into my family history. Since childhood (some 50 years ago) I have known that my grandfather was a partner in a boat building yard in Rock Ferry, Birkenhead. This years research has filled in many of the blanks in my knowledge. Your blog has been a great encouragement to me to see his craftsmanship is still fulfilling the role for which ie was intended some 75 years later."

 Last year Eddie sent me more details on the Enterprise Small Craft Company.

On Saturday before turning to cross the Mersey to the lock gates we got within 1,000 yards of the site of the boat yard.

 We were even closer on the bus on Friday evening. On the Rock Ferry bypass we got within 100 yards and actually saw the KFC which is now on the site. 


She is now in the Brunswick Dock 1.5 miles away from where she was built.