Part II of this reprint by Phil Teece.
Sometimes I suspect that I am a slow learner. During my earliest years of cruising aboard Galadriel I followed the big, deep keeled boats into what might be described the guidebook anchorages. There my diminutive sloop would lie to her fathoms of chain i a depth of water sufficient at all tides to float a Grand Banks schooner. My experience of cruising in those novice days was that good anchorages were always crowded.
Eventually, however, a revelation materialized. On my way to the big harbours I frequently looked through narrow, rocky portals that led into shallow basins where, as often as not there was a foot or two of water. And I looked at my boat. Galadriel is a British Caprice class sloop, designed for use in the tidal estuaries around the English coast, where it is a common place for a boat to spend part of every day aground. Why was I not using her as she was designed to be used?
When I looked at things in this light, I realized that there is literally no place too tiny or too shallow to be a secret haven for a little twin-keeler like Galadriel. Any hole in the wall that I could look into, I could probably sail, or paddle, into.
Thus unfolded my secret cruising world, the alternative universe where one never encounters anybody else. In our crowded era, such exclusive havens are a gift to sailors willing to cruise aboard very small craft.
Yet not every shallow-draft boat will serve as a magic carpet into these hidden realms. I see a lot of small craft nowadays, many of them twin-keeled or centerboard boats, that I would not want to risk in Galadriel's regular shelters. Not every boat whose draft is a mere few inches is really a practical shoalwater cruiser.
In fact thin-water capability is not really so much a matter of draft as of design and construction. When cruising among the drying creeks and rock crannies, a boat must not only lie aground, but also occasionally endure a bit of pounding at the return of the tide. Few modern production pocket cruisers are designed to knock about aground as a normal habit. Most small bilge-keeled sailboats today haul keels that are a part of the hull molding, with the ballast poured inside. Often I have watched such craft being towed into the boatyard in a sinking condition after contact with a rock. Where a keel is an extrusion of the hull itself, a hole in the keel can fill the entire boat.
So I have learned to appreciate the qualities of the Caprice's old fashioned construction. Around England's coasts, where boats traditionally lie on moorings in estuaries that dry out at every tide, small cruisers are routinely fashioned to disdain groundings. Galadriel's twin keels are not an integral part of her hull. Each is a heavily built wood laminate shod with a 300 pound ballast shoe of bare cast iron, the whole structure bolted together through strong floors within the hull. When she grounds on stones or hard sand, the massive iron castings that make the contact with absorb the shock without harm to the hull.
A boat of this sort, whose design and strength I can trust, has been the key to exploring the infrequented shallows.
Continue to part III.
Back to part I
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