Sailing pics from Shetland

James Robinson sent this cruise report from Shetland:

Last week there was a quiet spell of weather that enabled me to take 'Amity' for a first sail this year.

Shetland can be quite rough weather-wise in the early months and for me it was a bonus to sail, especially as I have only been out a couple of times. It was still a little blowy, but I enclose a couple of pictures for you.
'Amity' is a 17 foot Lysander designed by Percy Blandford as a twin-keel shoal draft little boat more designed for the inland waterways of England yet still capable of sailing around the coast and estuaries.

With 2 jibs set and a reefed mainsail it was an experience I won't forget for a while as we sailed around the north end of Bressay which is situated opposite Lerwick, the capital of Shetland.

'Amity'. I'm not able to sail by myself yet as I am recovering from an operation so Rab helps out when I am able to sail.'Amity' is coming out of the water later on this week for antifouling and a refit. Hope to be back in the water for the end of June.
I think this is the Holm of Beosetter again on the north of Bressay. Known also for the families of seals here.
Happy sailing to all at the Twin-keeler web site.

Wooden keel Alacrity

I have been i doubt that there were fiberglass Alacrites with wooden keels. However I may have been wrong. More here.

Unknown boats: Jaeger 15

Not really a mystery boat, but one we do not know very much about. The 15 foot Jaeger Eastern Seaboard Seabird. Owner Michael Hyland sent us these pictures and is eager to hear from anyone who has more information about this bilge keeler. He writes:

I am not able to find anyone who knows anything about my boat. I purchased her not a year ago to have a restoration project. I was told she was made on Vancouver Island, West coast of British Columbia, some twenty years ago. I found two boat restorers in Maine, they suggested it may have been a prototype. The rudder is not original, neither is the keel. The twin shoal keels appear not to be weighted. The owner was a fella (who has passed on now) apparently was a mechanical engineer who had made a centre keel, weighted. Only 4ft. 6 inches long and approximately four inches deep bolted through the bottom with stainless bolts. One of the sons (retired) had told me, that keel made quite a difference in the stability of the boat.
There is a home made bow-sprit, one of the sons said the old fella had made a jib.

A couple of pictures of the centre keel and one of the shoal keels.The holes above the keel in the cockpit. I cut as the void there was about three inches by three inches wide, and about six feet long I picked out all of the of foam that doesn`t seem to have much to do with floatation. I had been thinking of filling it with concrete? The foam was a very good sponge in that when I dried pieces out in the summer sun.I took some pieces and dropped into a bucket and they soaked water up so very fast.
Not a marine foam closed cell type at all. Since there wasn`t much weight to stabilize the boat in the first place I may just put the centre keel back on.Hope to have her in the lakes this summer.

Mysteries at sea

It’s easy to understand why so many early sailors were superstitious from some of the odd experiences I’ve had at sea. Many strange things, which are frightening at the time and do happen too many people whilst out boating, can be explained now. We can read up about them afterwards, in many of the publications that are available to mariners. Ancient seamen obviously didn’t have that luxury!
Undoubtedly, ball lightening, which I witnessed many years ago in the Java Sea, was extremely frightening. Beating south on a black, humid night, accompanied by rain squalls and the rumble of thunder, a large red fireball suddenly started floating about in front of the boat. This eventually seemed to dissipate, after what seemed a very long time when it was lower in the sky. Knowing nothing of this phenomenon, I was really scared. On seeing two more of these fireballs later that night, but having no real way of gauging their distance to me, I just tried to sail away from them. Perhaps this was a rather pointless thing to do, when thinking about it later, as they moved all over the place. But it didn’t feel that way at the time!
My latest reading about Ball Lightening seems to indicate, that what this phenomenon is, might finally have been solved. It having been re-created in a Brazilian lab, and suggests that when lightening strikes a surface, like the Earth’s silica-rich soil, a vapour is formed. This silicon vapour may condense into particles, and combine with oxygen in the air to slowly burn, with the chemical energy of oxidation. The lightening balls I’d seen back then seemed to appear on my starboard side, where the long coast of Sumatra continued south towards Krakatoa. Maybe it picked up silicon from this land!
Any type of lightening, seen at sea on a sailing yacht is worrying, particularly with your mast waggling around as a great big aerial. Ball lightening is very dangerous. Knowing about it now, does help to take some of the unknown factor away at least!
Single-handed sailing or being alone on watch during a dark night allows your imagination to run riot. Bringing us all much closer to how it must have felt for primitive man. Standing up looking around in the cockpit on a moonless but wonderful night, when pleasantly running down wind in the NE trades. Being punched in the chest by some unknown creature that flapped around the cockpit grating close to my bare feet wasn’t fair at all! My heart missed a beat, until I used a torch and realised, it was only a small flying fish!
More recently, whilst teaching power boating in Scotland I was amazed to see a large waterspout moving slowly across the Largs Channel. After a quick call on the VHF to warn the two other RIB’s, we rafted together in mid-channel and watched it meander slowly east towards the Ayrshire coast. Roughly three or four thousand feet in height, from sea to cloud, its tube of water was a wondrous sight. Reminiscent of many of those I’d seen in the tropics.
However, I was even more astonished to see the workboat with our bosun, having just left the marina go charging down towards it. Andy had seen it and decided to find out firsthand, what it felt like inside a waterspout. He’s a braver man than me! We expected to find him or the boat in trouble, but emerging in one piece he continued north up the Clyde, to begin laying some racing marks off Inverkip.
If Andy had known that waterspouts are ’tornadoes over water’, possibly he might have thought twice! Although their wind strengths are mostly weaker than land tornadoes, they can still pose a considerable danger to boats from flying debris etc., if the wind is strong. And there is no real way of knowing that, until it’s too late!
Asking Andy later what the experience felt like, he just said "noisy, windy and very wet". Bob our boss at the National Centre then, wasn’t surprised at all by this action. Summing it up beautifully by mentioning, that he thought that perhaps "Andy might lack somewhat in imagination, sometimes"!
Yours Aye,
John Simpson

About stability and righting moment

There seem to be quite a few people out there who think that twin-keelers are less stable due to their shallower draft. I found this interesting thread on a boatbuilding forum. The discussion is quite technical but the consensus seems to be that twin-keelers are definitely as stable as fin keelers of the same draft and also if they have shallower draft, given the right construction.

Mast support fixes

This may be of interest for all owners of Alacrities and Vivacities or boats that have a similar mast support beam as those. Sometimes those wooden beams get damaged or crack. On the Alacrity site, two owners show pictures of how they fixed the problem.

A Caprice in Spain

Joaquín Domínguez sails a Caprice on the Galician coast in Spain. He bought the boat in a quite sorry state but has since restored her to her former splendor. Here are some pictures.He also reports that she has in-mast-furling for the mainsail.
"The boat is equipped with mainsail furling in the mast, a Z-Spars. I do not know if there will be many boats like this that take this system."