Of Freedom

 

Today, on the first day of spring, Stargazer is returned to her element.

A shorebound winter is behind us. A summer of carefree seaborne wandering beckons.

The joyous taste of freedom is on my lips. As it must have been, for the citizens of Eastern Europe, as the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet empire crumbled, more than three decades ago.

Now Putin's (I will not say Russia's) winter-dark army marches through Ukraine. Laying waste. Seeking to, once more, lower an Iron Curtain across the continent. To shut off the nurturing light of spring. To stifle the fragile blossom of freedom.

Depaul is an established charity, working within Ukraine, to support those made homeless. Please click here to find out more, or to make a donation.

Picture Credits

1. Stargazer, Porth Cressa, Scilly, 2021     Me

2. Ploumanac'h, 2020                                Me

3. Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989                 John Tlumack, Boston Globe

4. Kyviv drone shot, 2021                          Oleg Petrasiuk

5. Ukranian homeless                                Depaul International

Making Ready 9

A succession of storms, Dudley, Eunice, Franklin and their kin, fed by an active Atlantic jet stream, halt pre-launch preparations.

Stargazer’s tiller, re-varnished over the winter evenings, is shipped. The furling drum serviced and refitted. The mast re-rigged and ready to restep. Cutting has commenced on the Vectran mainsail. But the smooth sweep, of the launch countdown clock’s hands, is stayed.

Wayne-the-crane has been unable to lift for two full weeks. Leaving craft stranded either ashore or afloat. It is too windy even to apply the antifouling, to the now thoroughly cured epoxy. Wet paint would spatter onto the topsides of neighbouring boats. There is nothing to be done but wait patiently, for a lull.

But when Mother Nature closes one door she, often as not, opens another. This is bracing walking weather. I don my boots. Setting out beneath the bare boughed trees, which whip in the breeze, atop the sea wall. Seeking their shelter.

At Hollowshore, where Oare and Faversham creeks meet, before flowing into the Swale, the Shipwrights Arms hunkers down in the shelter of the dyke.

A RIB (Rigid Hulled Inflatable) skims upriver, on the flood. An outsize Union Jack at her stern. The sound of her engine whipped away, by the buffeting bellow of the wind.

It streaks toward Faversham's Iron Wharf boatyard. Where whitecaps dot the turbid brown water. A fierce wind fighting a determined tide, between low grassy banks.

The stalwart yard launch butts up the swirling river, spray blowing back from her bluff bows.

Until the shelter of the saltings is reached. Where hibernating sailing barges slumber peacefully, in their mud berths, as they have every winter since time immemorial.

The tongue, of making tide, advances inexorably toward the head of the creek. Wind wracked sedge and meadow land give way to neatly tended gardens. Houses line the banks, offering a welcome lee. Calming the waters.

As each storm heads west, to make more mischief in mainland Europe, it is replaced with another. Stargazer is safe. But, day by day, fallen roof slates, fencing and guttering accumulate in my garden. Chin stroking contractors pace through the debris, pursing their lips, as they prepare their quotes. Happily my roof is tiled, meaning that the slates have blown in from elsewhere.

It seems that Stargazer may not be relaunched, as scheduled, on the first of March. There is no hurrying Mother Nature. Nor, once she relents, and the winds subside, Wayne and his crane crew, who must work to clear a backlog of boats. Our sailing season has begun with a judicious reminder, that wind and weather are the ultimate arbiters, in any cruising plan.

Picture Credits

 1.   Storm Eunice, Porthcawl                          Getty Images

 2,3 Stargazer, Chatham Dockyard                  Me

 4 ,5,6,7,8, 9,10  Faversham Creek                  Me 

11. Storm Eunice, Le Four, Chenal du Four    Ewan Lebourdais

12. Stargazer, Ile de Brehat                              Me

Saxon Shore 10

 

From China, across the squall strewn Indian Ocean . Through the steep, ship-breaking seas, of the Mozambique Channel . To round the Cape of Good Hope, where the meeting of three oceans mounds the waves high . Then the long haul north, the length of the Atlantic, to England . Crowding on canvas for every hour of that fifteen thousand mile passage. 

Taeping and Aeriel vie for the title of first clipper home . Cradling the precious new season's crop, of China tea, in their holds . For the glory . For the fame . For the wealth that it will bring .

Cutty Sark floats serenely on a sea of mullioned glass . The gingerbread work, on her shapely stern, aflame in the winter sun . Framing her famous name.

Her cut-water hull . Built for sea-kindly fast passage-making - and for cargo carrying capacity . Toned and taut.

She reclines resplendent in a Greenwich dry dock berth . Her mighty rig dwarfing skeletal trees and waterfront buildings alike . Standing ready to harness the wind's energy . And transform it, once more, into a silent rush of globe circling speed.

Cutty Sark was launched, on the twenty second of November 1869, into a mercantile world on the cusp of a paradigm shift . 

For the day of the steamship had dawned . And the shortcut Suez canal had opened .  Cementing the economic advantage, of piston power over sail, on the China sea-trade route . She fought to be home first, from Fuzhou, for just eight short years . Before the era of the China tea clippers ended forever.

 Undaunted, Cutty Sark carved a new niche, on the merino wool run, from Australia . Through the Southern Ocean . Riding the icy unfettered winds, of the Furious Fifties and the Roaring Forties, with the wandering albatross . Rounding the tempestuous tumult of Cape Horn ; where steamships feared to swim.

 Storming past the stoic penguins of Patagonia and the Falkland Isles . Slowing in the heat soaked, wind starved, Doldrums ; with the lazily soaring tropic bird circling her mastheads . Leaving Recife, on the bulge of Brazil, to port . Seeking out the north east trades . Swooping home, over the swells of the western approaches.

 Tired and travel worn . Bought and sold . Changing owners, renamed, multiple times . Her fortunes slowly declined, along with her cargoes, over ensuing decades. 

Until, stormbound and disheveled, she sought shelter in Falmouth’s Carrick Roads . Where the seafaring eye, of captain Wilfred Dowman, piercing her crusting of salt rime, perceived her true pedigree . Recognised her as the last of a noble line .  He vowed to preserve her for national posterity.

Cutty Sark's return to the London River has proved her salvation . Likewise, my return today, to the streets of London, has borne fruit. A Visa de Long Sejour is proudly pasted into my passport. Granting, Stargazer and I, the freedom to roam French waters at will, for a full six months this summer.

Picture Credits:

1. 'The Mighty Clippers' by Montague Dawson    Bonhams Auction House

2. Cutty Sark cargo hold                                       Roamingrequired.com

3. Cutty sark stern view                                         CNN

4. Cutty Sark bow view                                          Roamingrequired.com

5. Cutty Sark                                                          Krzystof Belczynski

6. 'Cutty Sark' by Louis Papaluca                         Getty Images

7. Felixstowe container port                                 Me 

8. 'Wandering Albatross in Flight'                        Mike Double

9. Cutty Sark                                                         Lloyd's Register archive

10. Cutty Sark, renamed Ferreira                        National Maritime Museum

11. Stargazer, Carrick Roads, Falmouth              Me

12. 'Sailing into the Sunset,' Falmouth                Me

Saxon Shore 9

 

Heavy, garnet crusted, brows become the wings of a fantastical war-bird ; as I stare into the inscrutable pagan ‘face.’ My gaze is returned by dark pools of shadow. The blunt noseguard resolves into a scarab-like body. The stylised moustache metamorphoses into a fanned tail. Jaws agape, this terrible creature soars to attack a snarling serpent. Head of gold. Jewelled eyes aflame. With sinuous iron torso, the snake forms the helm's, sword deflecting, crest. 

Germanic wolf warriors gyrate. Mounted spearmen trample fallen foes. Twining beasts tumble across shimmering repousse surfaces. Tusked boars spring from the tips of the brow-wings. Thus, the epic poem of Beowulf reveals, rendering this helmet impenetrable in battle.  

Discovered during the Sutton Hoo boat burial excavation. Most famous among the grave goods, of the Saxon King Raedwald . An unambiguous personification of power ; the helmet's true purpose remains enigmatic . Ceremonial splendour, the ultimate battlefield armour, an accompaniment to the afterlife ; or all three? Perhaps, one thousand five hundred years ago, the divides, between these realms, were more blurred. 

Much clearer is the imprint, left by the centrepiece ship's timbers. Their sinews long since subsumed by the soft damp of the Suffolk loam . Leaving only the original iron fastenings in situ.

Stamped into the soil is the shapely form, of a slender clinker built craft, twenty seven metres (ninety feet) long. Reminiscent of the Oseberg (pictured) and Gokstad ships, excavated intact, from eponymous ninth century royal barrows, in Norway. 

However the interment, of King Raedwald, predates those, of the two Norwegians, by fully two centuries. It's only known contemporaries lie in eastern Sweden. At Vendel and Valsgarde. Where the designs, of both ship and grave goods, are strikingly similar to those of Sutton Hoo. (Vendel helmet pictured). Raising the intriguing possibility of a seaborne link, between the eastern coasts of England and Sweden, during the seventh century.

Today, the Sutton Hoo treasures no longer lie looking across the river Deben, toward Woodbridge and its Tide Mill. Instead they pose their riddles from the British Museum, in central London. Where I am presenting documentation, to the French Consulate General, in pursuit of a crisp clear Visa, in my passport. The desk officer's expression is as inscrutable as that of King Raedwald’s helmet, when I pass her the painstakingly assembled sheaf of papers. Only time will tell if my application has been successful.

Picture Credits:

1. Sutton Hoo helmet original              British Museum

2. Sutton Hoo helmet reconstruction   Tom Milkins

3. Sutton Hoo excavation                     British Museum

4. Oseberg ship                                    Getty images

5. Vendel helmet                                   Mararie                 

Saxon Shore 8

 

Site of the summer palace of the Saxon Kings of Kent. Soaring gables, rufous clay tiles, buxom bow frontages, painted clapperboard, and half timbered upper stories crooked with age, crowd along cobbled streets. The jostling shadows, of millennia past, throng the steeply sloping pavements. Silently witnessed, these last seven hundred years, by the watching windows of The Sun Inn.

This scene is lit by a sharp edged winter sun; speaking of an atmosphere cleansed by windy weather. The tide, with an hour still to rise, races to meet me, at the foot of the street. Over-topping the creek. Crossing Conduit Street. Transforming waterfront properties into anxious islands.

North of Scotland, the ninety mile per hour winds, of storms Malik and Corrie, whip the white crested waters, of the Atlantic Ocean, south, into the funnel of the North Sea. The sea bed rises beneath them. The two shores taper inward. Mounding waves ever higher, as they approach the Kent coast. Creating a North Sea storm surge, which today coincides with the time of high tide.

Larger vehicles wade their way tentatively through the temporary inundation. Lower slung cars, and pedestrians, either turn around and reroute, or settle down to wait for the ebb. I back track, to higher ground, and walk parallel with the bank.

The opposite shore appears in glimpses. At the end of an alley, the centenarian steel built Thames sailing barge Repertor, lies snugged down for the winter, spars struck. A survivor from an age, on the fringes of living memory, when such craft still dominated coastal trade on the London river, and beyond. 

Cottages crouch behind a grass covered sea wall. Front steps are stacked with precautionary sand bags, as still the water clambers higher. Submerging the boardwalk of a jetty. Residents periodically emerge to survey its inexorable advance. Hostages to an uncertain future, in these times of climate change and sea level rise.

I retreat to the sanctuary of historic streets, placed, by far sighted mediaeval architects, on a resistant chalk ridge, clothed in brick-earth. Beyond the reach of the sea. Now and then. An eclectic mix of construction styles, eras and materials, to either hand. Ruddy brick and warm wood. . . .

. . . .give way to cool white facades, in the market square. Astride which stands the alice blue Guildhall, raised in the sixteenth century. The sun lit Council meeting chamber above, providing shelter for market traders, in the shade of the colonnades, below. 

With filigree fingers spread, a leaf-shorn tree, sinuous and asymmetric, raises a hand in protest at the march of rectilinear regularity. Beneath it, silhouette stick figures scurry. Mingling with the shadows of a rich past. Ever present, as Faversham bustles about its business.

Making Ready 8

 

An ominous stream of, what looks like, cow's milk issues from the base of Stargazer's saildrive leg. Water ingress has emulsified the gearbox oil, at some point during the past year. Simon, the diesel mechanic, dips his thumb and forefinger into the catch bucket. He rubs the contaminated oil knowledgeably between them. "Lucky. . . . I reckon the seals only failed recently. This oil still has some lubricity left. . . . . . . But I'm going to have to take the drive assembly back to the workshop, in Brightlingsea, to strip it down and check for damage."

Propeller, rope cutter and then the whole drive assembly are quickly removed, from the leg. A rag temporarily staunching Stargazer's open wound ; and preventing any ingress of grit to the finely machined surfaces within.

The annual service of the engine, new in 2019, goes more smoothly. Oil and coolant are drained and replaced in short order. Drive belts replaced and re-tensioned.

The fuel filter is renewed and the old one inspected for signs of diesel bug. Thankfully, none are found. Growth is an ever present risk, due to the increasing addition of hygroscopic bio derived fractions to pump diesel. 

The Marine 16 treatment, which I add religiously, when refuelling, seems to be doing its job. My habit, of refilling from cans, probably helps too. Effectively, any new fuel quarantines, giving the bug killer time to get to work, before being added to Stargazer's tank.

A precautionary new impeller is fitted to the raw water cooling system. My line of red paint, starting on the front of the bronze impeller housing and continuing onto the body, ensuring that the face plate is replaced in the exact orientation it came off. Increasing the likelihood that an effective, drip free, seal will be formed.

Two weeks later, Simon is back aboard. Refilling the gearbox, with oil so clear that it is scarcely visible on the dipstick. He advises me to check its level, once we have motored back to the berth. In case the reinstalled transmission harbours an air pocket within.

Simon has turned down and sleeved the stub shaft, for the propeller . Creating crisp clean seats for the new oil seals. After a thorough bench examination, the rest of the lower drive mechanism has been passed fit . The folding propeller has been polished and lubricated. New anodes fitted and the rope cutter reassembled. Stargazer’s engine is ready to begin a new season.

Picture Credits

1,8                  Simon French, of French Marine

2,3,4,5,6,7      Me

5                     Pirates Cave Chandlery