"And Now The Shipping Forecast…"

"Lundy, Fastnet.  Southwest veering West or Northwest for a time 6 to gale 8, occasionally severe gale 9 in west Fastnet.  Squally showers.  Good."

Every once in a while I end up having BBC Radio 4 on when the Shipping Forecast comes on.  It's not very often, but when I hear the clearly enunciated phrase "And now the Shipping Forecast…" it seems to have an instant calming effect on me - most likely because I'm not manning the helm of a fishing trawler in a severe gale 8 many miles offshore.  These 350 words (give or take) that are broadcast four times daily at 0048, 0535, 1201 and 1754 on Radio 4 are largely irrelevant to probably around 99% of the station's listeners, and the other 1% who might put to sea for a living probably check the maritime weather forecast on the internet.  Some might argue that it's irrelevant in the modern age.  But it's an institution, lodged firmly in the national psyche;  a subtle reminder that we are an island nation that has historically relied upon the seas.      

The "Viking" print by James Brown, depicting the 31 sea regions of the British Isles.

Our ability to predict the weather at sea was the raison d'être behind the formation of the Met Office and the development of modern, scientific, weather forecasting.  In the mid 1800s the large number of ships being lost at sea caused the British Government to appoint Captain Robert Fitzroy (he of Charles Darwin/Beagle fame, as well as for being a former governor of New Zealand and having a building at the University of Plymouth where I sat through a lot of oceanography lectures named after him) to form the Meteorological Office in an effort to provide more accurate information and warnings to mariners.  

The forecast is divided up and follows a strict format: first the date, then gale warnings, the general synopsis and finally the forecast for each of the 31 areas.  Each of these areas is named for a defining feature such as an island, river or sand bank, with Finisterre being renamed Fitzroy in 2002.  The forecast for each of these areas are always read in exactly the same order circulating the British Isles in a broadly clockwise direction.  

Whether or not the Shipping Forecast is a relevant daily broadcast, when the daily news is filled with stories of the British coastline being battered by ferocious storms, enormous waves and howling winds, the Shipping Forecast - read in the calm, measured and hypnotic classic BBC style - serves as a timely reminder of our historical connection with the waters surrounding us.

Whatever Floats Your Boat

Well, she floats.


And in this case, whatever floats my boat is about a year and a half of hard work and head-scratching (on spare weekends), three sheets of fsc certified plywood, a couple of old school science desks, some kitchen worktop offcuts, mis-blown foam from a lifeguard paddleboard, various workshop scraps, an old windsurf mast, the spare sail and a few bits from a knackered old mirror dinghy, 26 old seatbelts, a load of used plastic drinks bottles, a roll of fibreglass, some epoxy resin and finally patience and advice from a whole heap of people.
  
And what a relief it was when I pushed her into the sea!  After a year and a half in the making, An Reun Govynnus had sort of become the elephant in the corner; the project that I'd taken on that was arguably waaaaay to big.  So to push my little wooden boat off the beach at Port Isaac where my Great Great Uncle was the last wooden boat-builder and for it not to keep on going along the seabed until water came over the gunnels, or instantly capsize, was a pretty nice feeling.  To be honest, just getting it finished took a weight off my mind, let alone whether or not it was seaworthy.

An Reun Govynnus (Cornish for 'The Curious Seal') has featured on here a few times in the past (here and here), but I didn't want An Tor Orth An Mor to become a build diary for a project that I wasn't completely confident of finishing.  Building a boat is quite a big job as it turns out, particularly when you're working from a book (not full scale plans), adapting all of the measurements to suit the reclaimed and recycled materials that you're intent on using, don't really understand any boat jargon and only have 5 clamps to your name.  All that, and I'd just started a new and pretty full-on job which was overly-demanding on my time.  

It must be getting on for ten years ago that the desire for an outrigger canoe first crept into my mind; it seemed like the ultimate vessel for accessing some of the little nooks and crannies under the high cliffs around where I live to go spear fishing.  The outrigger would give it the stability to climb back aboard easily after diving that a normal small boat wouldn't provide.  So I called around a load of outdoor centres trying to get my mitts on a knackered old Canadian canoe with the aim of lashing a bit of drain pipe onto the side of it.  Well that dream morphed a bit over the next decade.  Surfboards get in the way in small boats, so for small surf trips up and down the coast an outrigger canoe provides space to lash a stack of boards....and why paddle everywhere when there's free energy in the wind?  One guy that I e-mailed for advice told me to build one in a day with friends and a crate of beers then smash it up paddling around in the surf to see whether I liked outrigger canoes enough to build one properly.  But by the time I'd shelled out for three sheets of plywood I figured that I'd made an investment and might as well do it properly.  Cue admiralty charts laser etched onto the fore and aft decks (so that I don't get lost), a trampoline of recycled car seatbelts and a whole heap of other little touches that might only be known to me.  If a job's worth doing...

I splashed her back in April during a horrible storm, my girlfriend Kate patiently watching from the beach in the driving rain whilst I bobbed around making a mental list of all of the things that I needed to do and improve before I could hoist a sail.  She also had to endure a conversation that I had with Tom Kay of Finisterre at the opening event of an exhibition where we gibbered excitedly and almost exclusively for a good ten minutes about various sail set-ups, making models with paper napkins and cocktail sticks to the bewilderment of everybody around us.  I owe her a public thank you for being so wonderfully patient and understanding.  Thank you!


And so to the maiden voyage:  Launching from Port Isaac seemed like the right thing to do; kind of completing the circle of wooden boat building and heritage.  Captain Christian Beamish calls it "blood memory" and I'd be inclined to agree.  It was a dropping spring tide so, having put all of the various bits of boat down on the pebbles at the waters edge the tide had dropped a fair bit by the time I'd lashed all of it together.  A few Port Isaac locals helped me to carry it down to the waters edge and, just as I shoved off my housemate Matt pulled his boat Sea Explorer into the harbour with a full compliment of clients on a sea safari.  Nice to have an escort for moral support and mainly in case my boat building skills weren't actually all that.  It's an interesting way to test yourself isn't it?  Putting your faith in your own craftsmanship to the extent that if it fails you'll probably have to swim a long way home or get scooped up by the lifeboat.

I paddled out of the harbour walls and looked back to enjoy the view of the picturesque little fishing village that I'm so used to seeing from within (some of you would recognise Port Isaac from Doc Marten, the TV show that's filmed there).  A mile east under the cliffs to Port Gaverne and then after beaching to adjust my rigging and eat some lunch I pointed north up a rugged, beautiful and largely inaccessible stretch of coast.  I had my eyes and heart set on a semi-secret beach a good few miles away but was paddling against a light head wind and didn't want to be overly ambitious on my first outing.  The last time I was in charge of a boat was a good few years ago after all, and I kind of wanted to soak it all up; this stretch of coast is utterly stunning with verdant green clifftops speckled with purple heather and yellow gorse flowers, incredible cliffs, waterfalls, coves and sea caves.  An Reun Govynnus only draws about 15-20 cm of water with me onboard so can come in remarkably shallow and skim over some of the reefs protecting the rocky shoreline.  

I hoisted the main sail and jib (the smaller sail at the front) for the run south back towards Port Isaac, just as the sea mist descended over Tintagel Head and the breeze picked up.  After such a beautiful hot and sunny day with barely a breath of wind the sea mist came down the coast amazingly fast.  Almost as fast as An Reun Govynnus which, at 16 foot long and less than 2 feet wide doesn't need a lot of sail up to get a move on.  This was the bit that I was a bit more apprehensive about because I'm a surfer and by no stretch of the imagination a sailor, and essentially an outrigger sailing canoe is an offset catamaran with the mast over to one side unbalancing it enormously.  When the sail is out over the outrigger it is pushing down on that buoyancy, however when it swings out to the other side it is more likely to capsize the boat than power it forwards and you need to be able to scramble out to the outrigger float to counterbalance it.  Everything that I read stated that these things are fast, easy to capsize and difficult to right, particularly singlehanded.  Luckily the breeze was manageable and I made it back to Port Isaac just as the sea mist caught up with me and almost exactly on dead low tide which revealed a few choice rocks and boils just outside the harbour walls that aren't often uncovered.
My original plans had been to follow the coast south and west the 7 miles or so back to Polzeath so that I could run my boat back up on my home beach and wheel it up the sand back to the garage where I'd built her.  But that voyage is probably an overnighter that can wait for another day and the next patch of high pressure that moves over us.  One paddle stroke at a time hey, now that I know that it floats.

I built myself a bloody boat, but it absolutely wouldn't have been possible without the following people:
My parents for the boat building heritage and "blood memory"; Richard Scott of thirdshade surfcraft for telling me that building a pram dinghy "just wouldn't be cool" and for advice and materials; John Burford of Upper Deck Marine for providing me with chandlery despite my enormous lack of knowledge about what boat bits I was actually after; Kate for taking photos, her unending patience and for making allowances for my near-obsessiveness, lateness and gluey/sawdusty clothing; Gary Dierking for designing such a rad boat and writing the book that I worked from; Matt from Cornish Sea Tours for the workspace and escorting me from Port Isaac to Port Gaverne; Dave Cook of Marine Academy Plymouth for advice; Byron the Port Isaac Harbour Master for allowing me to launch from "home", and finally to everyone who got so enthusiastic about my stupid project and encouraged me to do a proper job.  Thanks very much, sorry I didn't build on a gin-deck for us all to sit back and enjoy it on.


Images 1, 4, 5 and 8 taken by Kate Fewster, images 2, 3 and 6 taken by me and image 7 taken by Cornish Sea Tours.

Keeping The Boat Afloat

My friends Hardy and Layla live on a boat.  It's not only their home but also a full-on historical restoration project somewhat akin to an upside-down barn conversion, their "homeymoon" destination/accommodation and their floating wedding list.  It's an inspiring project and one that I've been dying to photograph for a while.  


The Northern Sky is a 58 foot larch on oak Scottish fishing boat built sometime around 1937, and she's designed to carry up to 22 tonnes of fish which, with no fish in the holds means that there's ample space  for some very unique living quarters.  Make no mistake, when they bought the boat it was in an absolute state, even being sold complete with a flea-ridden ships cat, and Hardy has spent much of the last two and a bit years working day and night and every hour in between trying to restore the boat so that she won't sink with all of their possessions aboard, and then once that's done, turn it into a home.  No mean feat.  

Captain Hardy in the port door of the wheelhouse, which actually serves primarily as Layla's country style kitchen where tea-towels hang to dry off the ship's wheel.

Ahoy!  Layla looking out of our bedroom porthole with a nautical scaffold platform below, showing past work below the waterline and one of the jobs "to do" painting topside.

Hardy has slowly but surely been replacing the majority of the oak frames that make up the skeleton of the Northern Sky;  after buying curved sections of sawn oak (from where the branch meets the trunk) he has to cut them down into beams and then take complicated multi-angle measurements of the section to be replaced, cut the replacement to fit and then swap them out.  

The aft cabin will eventually be the main bedroom.  You can see all of the work that has been done replacing the frame of the boat, and work yet to do above the waterline where there are holes in the planking big enough to stick your fingers through.  Last winter, during all of the snow and cold weather that we had in Cornwall, Hardy was sleeping in here and was woken up by rain being blown through the gaps.  Luckily there are no such holes below the waterline.

This illustrates perfectly how much hard(y) work has gone into restoring the good ship hardship:

That square nail is called a galvanised dump; each one is 150mm long and Hardy reckons that each whack of a 25lb (11kg) sledgehammer sends it 1mm further into it's hole.  So it takes roughly 150 whacks to hammer it in.

There are 60 frames running the length of the boat (2 sides) with 40 planks on each side.  Each plank is secured onto the frame by 2 nails (dumps).

60 frames 

x

 40 planks 

x

 2 nails

 x

 2 sides of the hull

 x

 150 whacks of the hammer

 /

 2 because Hardy has only re-planked the Northern Sky up to the waterline and still has the topsides yet to do

 =

 720,000 swings of a sledgehammer out of a total of 1,440,000.

To complete the re-planking of the Northern Sky Hardy will have swung his big sledgehammer almost one and a half million times, and there is no easier or faster way of doing this job.

The multi-purpose ships wheel.

Living on the water means getting friendly with all of the wildfowl.  Layla has been adopted by their local swan. 

Hardy rowing their tender back towards home on sunny evening, April 2012.  Refurbishing the little rowing boat will be nothing compared to the work done on the mothership.

The Northern Sky dockside on a Spring low tide.  

Hardy and Layla are forgoing a traditional wedding list for their upcoming marriage at the end of August and are instead asking friends and family who might wish to celebrate their marriage with a gift to donate towards the "restore and refit" coffers.  They have started a blog to allow friends and family to keep up to date with their progress and hope to arrive at their wedding reception on the Helford River in their homeymoon vessel, blasting the foghorn and trailing a couple of tin cans in their wake.

Check out the past stories, see how far she's come and see what's being done on their blog "Keep Our Boat Afloat", it's wonderful, inspiring and makes me want to live with funny shaped walls and round windows too.

The Old Man and the Sea

"Then he began to pity the great fish that he had hooked. He is wonderful and strange and who knows how old he is, he thought. Never have I had such a strong fish nor one who acted so strangely. Perhaps he is too wise to jump. He could ruin me by jumping or by a wild rush. But perhaps he has been hooked many times before and he knows that this is how he should make his fight. He cannot know that it is only one man against him, nor that it is an old man. But what a great fish he is and what he will bring in the market if the flesh is good. He took the bait like a male and his fight has no panic in it. I wonder if he has any plans or if he is just as desperate as I am?"

The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway

the old man and the sea from Marcel Schindler on Vimeo.

Images from the top down:

La Panpa, Playa Pelada, Costa Rica

Garza Sport Fishing, Costa Rica

the old man and the sea from Marcel Schindler on Vimeo.

Nets, Playa Pelada, Costa Rica

Portrait of an old fisherman number 2, Arugam Bay, Sri Lanka

Beached Bows, Playa Pelada, Costa Rica

Pelicans, Playa Guiones, Costa Rica

A Productive Day, Playa Garza, Costa Rica

All photography copyright Mat Arney.

Last weeks "A Meditation In Motion" podcast may not have shown up if you use an RSS feed to access An Tor Orth An Mor, to access last week's post please click here.

A Letter of Thanks

Dear Mother Ocean/The Seven Seas/The Big Blue,

This letter is long overdue, because in all this time I don’t think I’ve ever stopped to say thank you.

Thanks for all the good times. Thanks for all the good waves.

Thanks for being so enthralling and for captivating me ever since I can remember, for being so full of wonder and living up to all of the hype. Thanks for always keeping a little back to keep me guessing though, wondering what’s still hiding beneath the surface.

Thank you for always being there, wherever I go; you’re always there when I look out of the window in the morning and you’re still there at the end of the day and I find your constant presence comforting. It’s so nice of you to give the sun a place to sleep at night.

Thank you for making the “sea air” and the positive ions that blow on the wind, keeping me cheerful.

Thank you for being so floaty.

Thank you for getting me from A to B so often, for allowing me to get around a bit and see other places.

Thanks for being so accepting, supportive and accommodating, but thanks also for scaring me. Whenever I get a bit too big for my boots you’re always there to put me back in my box and keep me humble. Sometimes you terrify me, other times you bounce me off the bottom, hold me under, pull my limbs in wrong directions and disorientate me, but I know that it’s all for my own good. I have enormous respect for you, more than I can articulate here.

When we have a bad day and don’t quite see eye to eye I know that more often than not it’s the wind’s fault, not yours.

Thanks for making my landings soft.

Thanks for dinner the other night, and for all those other times that you’ve provided me with something to eat.

Cheers for letting me wash in your waves. And for being such a good wake-up, I’d rather you than a cup of coffee any day.

I really like the way you’re always cool on a hot day and, most of the time, not as cold as the air in winter. You’re never as extreme in your temperatures and I really like that. On that note, nice one for regulating global temperatures.

Good work absorbing all of the carbon that humans release, I’m sorry that the job has fallen largely on you to do. I’m sorry too, on behalf of the human race, for all of the plastic. For what it’s worth I try to do my bit to remove the bits that I see from in and around you and I know many others do too.

Thank you for being there when I need a bit of quiet time to sit and reflect, for helping me to find the answers that I seek and not passing judgment on me.

Thanks for always being more interesting to watch than TV.

Thanks for all of the beach treasure, the shells and the seaglass and webbles that you make, the flotsam and jetsam that you carry to shore. Thanks for making sand, even though it fills my pockets and always ends up in my bed. It’s a nice little reminder that I always take away with me.

Thank you for delivering messages in bottles.

Thanks for being such a great horizon.

Thank you for giving me focus, drive and purpose. Thank you for giving me so many good memories.

Thanks for being such a good friend.

I appreciate it all more than you know.

Images, from the top down:

• Quiet Sunday afternoon, Playa Garza, Costa Rica
• Under the sea, North Shore Oahu, Hawaii
• Geographe Bay, WA
• School of baitfish, Hawaii
• Serenity, Sri Lanka
• Playing with the waves, Cabarita, Australia
• Sunset at Playa Guiones, Costa Rica
• The infamous "Neptune at Horta" - better than TV.