| Polls |
|---|
| Who's Online |
|---|
| We have 27 guests online |
Home
| The Ten Month Test, 3 |
|
Hiscocks used to carry on Wanderer III and IV. The best I can say of it is don't bother. It needs polishing at least twice a week if it's to look the part. And for all the light it gives out, you'd be much better off with a hand torch on the mainsail or - if things get really serious - a white flare. Still, it does make a good anchor riding light. And it does look terribly good, aswing in the smoky morning... Two other items I carried as a daymark were large round trawler fenders painted black. There's an old saying - the smaller the boat, the bigger the gear. That certainly holds good for fenders, and I got these two at the Brest festival of sail in 1992. But painted black and hoisted forward they become a Not Under Command daymark - not perfect, perhaps - but sometimes the singleharder just has to grab an hour or two. And I like to think that the world's merchant ships still know the meaning of two black balls, one over the other, hoisted in the forward part of the vesseL..For offshore self-steering I used a Hasler trim-tab. They are long out of production but it was the gear I wanted, and I got it for £160. And why did I want a Hasler? When I was a pen¬niless student, you see, I took the liberty of writing to the great man himself, with the usual bucketful of enthusiast's questions. Hasler, always at appropriate length and always with great courtesy, always replied. So my trim-tab gear is something of a person¬al salutation to him. It works quite per¬fectly, of course. For inshore work meanwhile, I have, over the last six years, used Autohelm gear - either 1000 or 2000. but have experienced serious problems with them: in fact, disgraceful might be a better word. The fIrst 1000, new in 1991, took me to France and back to Falmouth a year later. It packed up in the Roads there, and was repaired by a local agent. It packed up again off the Manacles, leaving me to hand-steer to Dublin. There, it was replaced by a new 1006. This in turn stopped working on the way south in 1995 and was replaced - again in Dublin - by a 2000 (far more than pow¬erful enough, according to its makers, for a boat displacing just 3 tonnes). This unit did practically no work until the following spring. But at the end of March and after one week's day¬sailing, it was exposed to a shower of rain and stopped working. I took it to the nearest handbook-recommended dealer in north Spain. They said, more or less: "We can't fix this, or replace it. though I don't know ijyou'lljind it any better." As for the rest of electric/electronic equipment aboard: my Stone Age Brookes & Gatehouse sounder still works, though not very well - and the log gave up the ghost last year (though I carry an old-style Walker). I shall replace them with Autohelm's Tridata unit. (Yes, Autohelm. Having sailed with one, I have to say I was impressed). Before I left, I replaced all the mast wiring, the masthead light unit, and the deckflood - the latter now comprising a super-bright steamer¬scarer. Of course, the real genius of the piece is the little Garmin: a handheld unit, but also with plug-in to the ship's power supply along with external antennae; a superb piece of kit for coasting, far less anything else. We also carry a cheap Davis sextant, a tranny from the Ark, and a £15 Casio. They do the job - but be honest, guys, GPS is the future and it's here already. In the realms of small scale kit, I can recommend a number of items that can easily be overlooked as one anxiously scans the grand commissioning-lists of the standard manuals. Slippers, for instance, are just the thing for the long night watches as you slip below in the soft light of that little oil lamp by the chart. It's all psychology, you see; just like taking your ollies off to sleep on the hardest of offshore races. A pot¬holer's headlamp is something worth its weight in gold on the foredeck and at the mast, and a hundred other holes and corners too. to be continued................ |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
