I resign

For the past few years I have been a columnist on this most excellent publication

http://smallcraftadvisor.com/

siteB1  siteB3

This weekend I wrote my last column..... I had to resign.... I am a traitor to the cause.

This past autumn I trailered my 22 foot Hunter Minstrel back from Inverness to my garden in Buckinghamshire. It was a 500 mile journey each way using a borrowed truck and a self refurbished trailer.

I offer you this information because I know that you, dear readers of this most excellent of publications, will understand and have envisioned the number of things that could go wrong in such an operation. Bearings, trailer brakes, lights, blown tyres, flapping ratches strap, new scratch on formerly immaculate borrowed truck. I am sure many of you will have experienced at least two of the six because to be a small boat sailor is also to be in the small boat transport business. We are a sort of brotherhood of awkward loads.

However, the other real bonus of being a small boat owner is that you can bring your loved one home for the winter. This is a marvelous thing and source of much joy. I love having a small boat in the garage/shed/workshop where I keep all my other gubbins.

You know how it is. Every time you go in to get something unrelated to boats there she is looking back at you with her graceful curves reminding you of the summer days when the wind was warm and the tiller was gently moving like something alive in your hand. It reminds you of the near perfect aerofoil shape of the sail driving the boat through the water using miraculous invisible physics.

For me, no man-shed is complete without a boat in it. I keep my duck punt in there – suspended from the rafters. She makes me smile every time I see her.

Even better though, my true love, Katie L now sits outside my house safe and sound on her trailer. Her spars, the berth cushions, her sails and her warps are in the warm dry shed with the duck punt.
Every time I walk out the front door she makes me smile and reminds me that I am a sailor and that this is the boat I expect to be sailing on the River Blackwater when I am a doddering 85 year old sailor.

Katie L is a Hunter Minstrel – canoe stern, gunter rig. A brilliant boat for exploring shallow places, for daysailing and the occasional night aboard when the weather is pleasant.

Jill and I had a marvelous summer in her on the Scottish East Coast – mountains, clear water, dolphins, labyrinthine sand harbours. Look it up on Google earth and see the p[lace for yourself.

The weather was, as is always the case in Scotland, a bit catchy at times. But there are plenty of harbours with visitors pontoons where you can plug your fan heater in, get out a good book and sit it out

Three days of rain is wholly unexceptional. Inverness is an 11 hour drive from Oxford so scarpering home until it stops raining is not really an option. When closer to home we just pack up and run when the weather turns bad.

So we were forced to sit the storms out attached to a pontoon in a perfectly designed 300 year old stone harbour built by Stevenson or Telford. Perfectly safe but a cramped.

We had the dog with us. The bikes were under the boom tent in the cockpit. When people ask us how we get on in such a small space for so long I tell them to cast their minds back to the days when, as a child, they would hang sheets or towels around the dining room table and pretend they were in a tent. Well living inside a trailer sailer for a three day rainstorm is a bit like that – but that it goes on for 72 hours.
Two years ago I bought a 26 footer for one year just to take self and family over the rocky top bit of Britain. It was a Westerly Centaur – Britain's most popular yacht and now all about 40 years old. Massive slab sided Landrover of a vessel. Not a sparkling performer, nor a thing of subtlety as is the Minstrel. But Cenaturs have massive accommodation and are a really tough sea boat with an engine too big for her. I sold her once we had been around Shetland and Orkney.

I am now about to make a start on the wet west side of Britain. There will be many, many three day rainstorms and this summer past while living aboard the little boat we started to miss the standing headroom, the sink, the cooker the proper bog, the cupboards, the table and a separate place to sleep .

So Katie L is in the garden – for at least four years and I have bought another Centaur – the second Centaur in two years.

She is called Lilly M and is currently down in the south west England on the Fal estuary. She is on a pontoon with lekkie and web and I will sail her as often as I can through this coming winter. Then I will take her up the Irish Sea to Plockton just to the North of Skye where a sailor has loaned me a mooring. We will use this buckshee mooring as a base from which to spend the next four summers exploring the west coast.

I will miss the little boat . A four ton Centaur can never feel as much a part of me as the one ton Katie L does. She is perfectly balanced and responds to the tiller like a show pony. She is alive under my tiller hand in a way that no Centaur ever can be. There are times when she feels part of me.

I will miss the way Katie L allowed me to sail through waters no more than a welly deep, how I would happily sail right in under rock faces and among the submerged outcrops. In the Centaur I will be just that little extra further from the rock or the sandbank.

However, Jill and I will be in a much better position to survive the Scottish west coast climate than in a trailer sailer. I am now a big boat sailor. So I feel honour bound to resign from my column. To continue with it would make me a sham.

So, no more columns from me on here for at least four years hence when I sell the behomoth that is Lily M and go back to the best little boat I have ever owned.

I will return if these lads will have me back

Dylan Winter

PS – I am going to tow a 10 foot sail/row dinghy around Scotland so that I can still sail too close to the shore . I am open to suggestions at [email protected]

 

frontNSub1 frontNScamp frontNgear frontNdigi frontNBacka siteb8 siteb7 siteb6  siteb2

 

 

 

This is about Dylan Winter's Blog.

16 Responses to “I resign”

  1. 3 November, 2015 at 2:37 pmwarren says:

    Ahh, sad
    I expect they wont except!
    A Centaur is still a very small craft for the west coat of Scotland!
    warren

  2. 3 November, 2015 at 2:59 pmdylan winter says:

    Harmony did look pretty small compared to the other yachts up in shetland and orkney

  3. 3 November, 2015 at 4:55 pmJohn Booth says:

    If a ten foot dinghy is not a small craft, I don’t know what is!

  4. 3 November, 2015 at 4:59 pmTed B. (Charging Rhino) says:

    I suspect the KatieL will be Sailing on the Broads or some Essex backwater within 18-months. The beauty of the trailer-sailer is you’re only committed for a week or fortnight, when you choose to be.

  5. 3 November, 2015 at 9:59 pmDjeffery says:

    Column: straighten up and advance. Resignation not accepted.

  6. 3 November, 2015 at 10:16 pmdylan winter says:

    Possibly,

    planning on buying an old Passat that can tow the boat

    so a winter on the broads is a possibility

    or…. I could sail Lily M the boat back to Pembroke for the winter

    D

  7. 4 November, 2015 at 2:56 amSnorklePuss says:

    “sail the broads” has a completely different meaning here in Las Vegas.

  8. 4 November, 2015 at 4:36 amPaul Mullings says:

    Do I hear the collective murmurings of relief from numerous disgruntled ladies on the other side of the ditch?

  9. 4 November, 2015 at 1:29 pmdylan winter says:

    Naaa!

  10. 8 November, 2015 at 2:41 pmsimon leslie ellis says:

    A lovely heart felt piece of writing, beautifully put together Dylan. Show-off!

  11. 9 November, 2015 at 7:48 pmBart (from Belgium) says:

    Whatever craft you might ever buy, you’ll never resign as a small boat sailor, Dylan! Never! Nobody will believe you…

  12. 10 November, 2015 at 2:25 amSailor John says:

    I feel your pain. The truth is, I’m starting to get attached to big boats. Please do not tell my trailer sailer, it wouldn’t understand my philandering. I’ve been sailing a historic schooner http://www.governorstone.org for the last couple of years training to be one of her captains. My package is almost ready to be sent off to the Coasties for review and I’ll have my ticket. Its not that I don’t love my little 18 footer, its just so much more comfortable if the wind picks up to a force 5 or 6 and your boat is 14 tons. BTW I was lucky, more like blessed, to spend four days sailing with Mike Monies in the Red Scamp around Pensacola Bay. John Welsford has designed a fantastic little ship able to withstand just about anything the sea can throw at her. I also once sailed my stretched Puddle Duck Racer 60 miles. It only took nineteen hours over two days. :)

  13. 10 November, 2015 at 7:52 amdylan winter says:

    the schooner looks great

    imagine the psi on the end of that bowsprit coming at you with 14 tonnes behind it

    I keep on looking at scamps and thinking about them

    might build one – I have the space here to make one

    as for going even bigger – now that I can stand up and I have a table that is as much as I need

    and I miss the delicacy of touch that Katioe L brings to sailing.

    The good thing about owning a trailer sailer is that you can keep her at the house and she is not costing you anything. She gives such pleasure just by existing. She knows you will come back to her.

    by the way…. just in case people don’t know what a scamp is

  14. 14 November, 2015 at 9:39 amJules says:

    Of course we know what a scamp is Dylan :-) , John welsford is a legend in the small cruising boat world.

    I have long harboured the desire to build a navigator but the scamp is interesting too.

    Your resignation is declined, keep up the good work.

  15. 14 November, 2015 at 5:24 pmdylan winter says:

    but I am a big boat sailor now

    I can stand up and have a table

  16. 10 July, 2016 at 7:05 pmMike R says:

    Pfft. Standing up is for outside.

Leave a Reply