Author: Buck

We made it to Inverness! Wendy was having a bit of terror when I suddenly questioned whether the insurance worked the same on her courtesy car. If they had only insured her to drive, without me as named driver, she would have had to drive the six and half hours here. No, it’s all the same, I’m good to drive. It’s a nice car they’ve given us, a ’20 plate Skoda. Wendy hates it. Since passing her test she’s only driven her Mini, so going from a diesel 1.6 to a litre petrol, with a different bite on the clutch and a slightly different feel, and having to do the adjustment on fast, very bendy, wet, unfamiliar roads is a bit much for her. I reckon if she’d have just been trundling back and to to work, cutting her usual groove, she’s have been fine and really quite liked the Skoda. I drove us here, we went into Inverness to pick up my race pack for the marathon then we drove to our holiday chalet. It’s really nice. Comfy, quiet, and has heating, which is an imperative as we’ve gone from long, long, warm summer into a cold, wet Scottish autumn. It’s weird though. They’ve got underfoor heating. So it takes hours to warm the pipes up and for the heat to get the room toasty, then suddenly you are lathered, you turn the heat off and it takes many hours for the pipes to cool and stop roasting you alive. Not an ideal system, really. Anyway, we got here, race pack collected, and settled in. The owners had left us a welcome pack, a loaf of bread butter, cereal, milk, eggs, shortbread and a bottle of wine! Eek! Thanks but can you take that with you? Then Wendy had to stress again. In the morning my race was a bit weird. You are not allowed to go to the start under your own steam, so Wendy had to run me to the main road (6 miles) where they had a collection point for the coaches. They don’t provide a return service, so I needed Wendy to come and pick me up from Inverness, 20 miles away. Poor sausage was a nervous wreck. I had moment on Saturday night when I realised I hadn’t packed any gels (basically sugar sludge in individual packets, to give you energy). They were giving some out on the race, but not enough, and not at the required intervals. Another stupid mistake: they said it was going to be cold at the start, wear a disposable layer. I looked through my kit, I had a long sleeve running shirt that I never use, wear and discard that. Stupid, stupid me. It’s meant to be a breathable, light top you can wear while running. We got to the race start, where Wendy had wisely suggested I try and buy some gels, and someone on twitter said if not, get some sweets. It was a wind blown, […]

I’ve not updated my blog because I was waiting for a conclusion to the boat debacle. It’s not quite there, but I can hopefully finish it off tomorrow. I went back, all full of good plans, to get the boat, throw it on the roof rack and be sailing the same day, last Sunday afternoon. I fitted the roof bars in the morning. They attach by an arm on each side hooking under the roof gutter and a screw to tension them up to the feet actually on the roof. OK. The roof gutter didn’t look that sturdy so rather than ruin Wendy’s car I just fastened them to the minimum, using the small arm of the allen key so I didn’t exert too much pressure. Epic fail, right there. I got to the guy’s house and it took both of us to carry the boat out to the car. He said, contrary to everything I’ve read, to put the boat on transom to the front of the car, because the trailer would sit on top of it, and the handle would obscure you view if it was over the windscreen. The thing is, the boat is shaped so that water, and air, flow from prow to stern. I’m fairly sure that was a pretty big fail as well. We finally got it on the roof, with the trailer on top, and the mast sections all lashed down. I set off and the satnav took me down the motorway for a mile or two before taking me off, across a linking A road, to go onto a different motorway. Within 2 miles the ratchet strap tails were banging on the window. Then the metal hook of the ratchet strap. The tails were just the loose bit flapping about, but the hook meant it had come undone. I quickly pulled over, luckily on the A road. I went to fasten the ratchet strap then realised all four of the screws holding the roof bars on had come loose! The only thing holding the boat on the roof was it’s own weight. So not good. I hadn’t packed any tools, I didn’t have my credit card to buy tools, and I was in Wendy’s car so she couldn’t have come and brought me tools. I took off some of the thick string/ thin rope and fastened the transom to underneath the bonnet. I was still about 17 miles from home. I set of gently, staying off the motorways. The string snapped. I had to pull over and redo it. About 3 times. I was a nervous wreck the whole time. In the end I improvised a strap from the end of a ratchet strap and the string looped around 4 times for strength. That held. It was still only held on by it’s own weight, and the strap was just stopping it from just flipping off the roof. The A roads route led me through Thelwall and into Latchford. It was only […]

I’ve had a bit of a relapse with the obsessive shopping thing. It’s only three weeks until we go away to Loch Ness, a huge body of water, ideal for sailing if you can avoid the monster. I want to sail! I looked all over the internet, but I can’t find anywhere that rents sailing boats. So I set to looking at buying a boat. I know, I know. *sigh* The thing with internet shopping is you start by saying ‘I want a cheap boat that I don’t mind crashing’, and read the reviews. And every single time they say “this is an adequate item, but what you want is *this* one, at ten times the price”. I was looking at the Laser. It’s relatively cheap because there have been so many made, and there are a lot for sale, second hand. It’s an adequate boat. It’s an old, basic design that it’s detractors say is painful for leaning out of the boat, and the mainsheet gets tangled on the transom. As I’ve already discovered. But you can learn on it and, if it’s cheap enough, not worry about getting the odd scratch. It will still do the basic boaty stuff. But what you *really* want is the RS Aero. The hull is ridiculously light (30 kilos as opposed to the 76 kilos of the Laser) it’s hull has rounded wings so you can lean out comfortably, the transom is open so if you capsize water just pours straight out, and it’s a lot faster. But it’s a premium boat and it’s only been in production for a few years so has a limited second hand market. The Lasers I was looking at range from £350 to £1,600. There is one, bare bones, Aero for £5,700 or £7,000 with the desirable sails, cover, and launching trolley. Then you have to think about my competence. And whether I’ll stick to it. And how gutted you’d be if you smashed a £7K boat into a rock. It would be like buying an Aston Martin to pass your test in. Damage limitation, then. I was messaging some guy about the £350 boat, but he was in Norfolk, and the final straw was when I asked about the sail size. There are 3 sizes, more sail is more power and suitable for heavier sailors. Obviously I want the biggest sail. Possibly two of them. The Norfolk guy had the smaller sails. I looked, and you need to buy a different mast, not just a larger sail to go full size. That would double the price of the boat. Then I found an obscure sale sight, Boats and Outboards, that had one for sale in Manchester, full sized sail, for £500. I went and had a look today and it seems fine and dandy. I looked up the Laser site to find the faults to look for, I couldn’t find any on this boat. You never know until you launch and sink, but it looks […]

After the first morning of my sailing training, and capsizing 5 times, things got a bit better. The second day there was hardly any wind, so we were basically practicing the drills in slo-mo. Then it got so becalmed we couldn’t even return to shore and the motorboat had to tow us back in. It was a very frustrating day, but it meant that when we got some decent wind on the third day I had an idea what I was doing. There were some full-on blasts that kept blowing up, so you had to lean right out of the boat to stop it getting blown over. Which also meant it felt like you were going really fast. I enjoyed that bit a lot. The thing is, when you are sailing away from the wind you want the sail out at 90 degrees to the boat, which means you have to let out a ton of the rope (mainsheet) that controls the sail. Then when you turn it around to sail towards the wind you have to pull the sail in tight. What kept happening with me was all that loose mainsheet kept getting caught around my transom (rear of boat). On several occasions this meant I was suddenly flying along, sail fully powered up, boat tipping over, with no way of letting the sail out. So seconds away from another capsize. Happily I’d learnt enough to throw the rudder over and steer fully into the wind to depower the sail. Then you have to lay over the boat and free the mainsheet, in doing so lose the tiller so the sail swings around again, duck under the boom, grab the tiller, and the mainsheet had caught on my transom again! AAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH! I ended up spinning round twice, which is ducking under the boom 4 times, before I had a working mainsheet and tiller. This was while the boat was heeling over from side to side, trying to capsize. So that was fun. For anyone watching, at least. Once I’d finally regained control I was happy that I’d learnt enough not to have been swimming again, but it was a close call. I’ve passed the level 1 and 2 now, so I can rent the club Lasers on a Sunday (when there is motorboat rescue running) for a tenner a day. I’ve put my name down for one next Sunday, I’ll see how I get on. There was some interesting theory on sailing. I’ve always assumed a sail was a big sheet for catching the wind. Not so. On a dead run, with the sail at 90 degrees to the boat and flat to the wind, that is what it’s doing, but then you can only possibly go as fast as the wind. The genius of the sail design is it acts like a wing, so the air flowing over it creates “lift”, so you get the wind speed and the “lift” so you can actually sail faster than the […]

I’ve started at my sailing club. I went to help out on Sunday, just helping take boat times on the races and inputting the data into the computer. Today I did my first lesson. I think I was wise to take lessons. I capsized it 5 times in the morning session. The rudder is so sensitive! You push it a little bit and the boat goes everywhere. Not a problem in a straight line, but you have to tack upwind so you are swiveling around, while ducking under the swinging boom, and changing sides of the boat, then trying to steer with the tiller extension behind your back until you can swap hands. As with learning to drive anything, it’s a lot of things to be concentrating on at once. After the dinner break we went back out on a tougher course and I was fine. Once you’ve got the basics you can relax enough to see what is starting to go wrong and correct it. The good thing is I am now a master of the capsize drill for righting the boat. That bit holds no fear for me anymore. Also, due to DVLA being swamped and taking forever, I’ve not sold motorbike, so have had chance to ride it back and forth to the club twice. If you’re not all dolled-up in complete race leathers, just wanting to get your knee down, you can really enjoy that bike. I was in awkward kit, to which I’m not accustomed, trying for a maneuver I’ve never done, straight out of the box on an unfamiliar bike. In retrospect, I was setting myself up for a kicking and huge disappointment. Riding in familiar, comfortable kit, with somewhere to go, and pushing my limits incrementally, is brilliant fun. I *heart* my Triumph again! I’ve got over my shopping thing. Well, I’ve stopped doing it, which is not the same, really. I’ve bought some books, some seeds and we went to the garden centre yesterday so we got some flowers. That isn’t the problem. I actually use the obsessive searching, comparing, and hunting down the very best model for the very best price, as a fun hobby in itself. The purchase is where the fun ends, to a degree. I crave newness and change, shopping provides that, and kills many pointless hours. I can see that that is a problem now I’ve had my nose rubbed in it. I’ve got to buy some specific kit for this yachting lark (a top, some wetsuit material shoes with a grippy sole, and a buoyancy aid- I bought a lifejacket, not the same thing-) but I’m going to be in an out. See. Buy. In much the same vein, I’ve not looked at cars since the Damascus Google search on Obsessive Compulsive shopping. Or boats. Or anything. The bike is getting me to the club for now. Apparently the club rent boats out to noobs (£15 a day) when you’ve done the training. They encourage you […]