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CRUISING THROUGH FRANCE
BRENDA DAVISON
12 November 2009

Brenda gave us a straightforward and detailed run down the French canals from St Valery to the Med and Greece in a (sailing) catamaran. As always the locks and barges were the villains and the countryside, tranquillity and food the heroes.

The French are apparently building commercial canals with a new one between Paris and Belgium which could carry sea-going vessels coming up. Pâté de foie gras one way and chips and mayonnaise the other no doubt. We, of course, are still digging out the ones we already have just to let Jim and Mabel get to Eccles Union for the annual booze up. The continental canals are a serious business, as you appreciated from the photos of giant French barges appearing round corners with hardly enough room for an emaciated stickleback to squeeze by let alone a boat. John advised against running into the bank in these tight situations because your stern swings out into the path of the unwavering peniche.

Brenda and husband John liked the Med. From Port Napoleon they went to the Corsica, down the west coast of Italy and round the bottom across to Greece. On the way they encountered a violent katabatic storm, a restaurateur who charged them twice for the same meal and saw Mussolini's Steps. These led from the sea to nowhere, looked magnificent but were abandoned – a bit like the man himself. They saw a swordfish fishing boat which had a bowsprit several times the length of the boat. Apparently swordfish sleep quite a lot near the surface and a man perched on the top of the mast can see them way off. He then directs the boat to creep quietly towards them and, as they dream of whatever swordfish dream of, a harpoonist perched on the very end of the enormous bowsprit plunges his harpoon into the dozing fish. It didn't seem completely sporting to me. The Treasurer's boat sports a substantial bowsprit (when it's not up in the rigging) so he showed a keen interest in this bit.

They also saw the famous Charybdis whirlpool which looked a bit tame given all the hype. Brenda explained that the sea bottom had been changed by an earthquake and quietened it down. They didn't see Scylla, the sea-monster alleged to haunt the other side of the Straits of Messina. It led some of the older members to lament the decline of sea-monsters in recent years, the only time they see them these days is printed on their charts.

Brenda and John switched from sailing to a Dutch motorboats a few years ago and they are cruising the canals of France with their locks, tunnels and, appropriately, guillotine bridges. We could see that they are enjoying themselves no end. Brenda has written a book about their travels in France. It's called “Floating Through France” (and there's Floating Through Holland" . There's a website: www.brenda-davison.org.uk.

YACHT SAILS: DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION AND USE
STEVE GOACHER
14 January 2010

Steve is a competitive sailor and a national champion, and has a knowledge second to none of the vagaries of the wind on Windermere, where he has a state-of the-art sailmaking business. He explained the characteristics of woven fabrics relative to laminates with the aid of swatch samples. Woven fabrics are easier to handle and make up, and last longer, resisting flogging and folding damage, but stretch badly, particularly on the bias. However with multi-layer laminates fibres can be built-in to provide strength where it is needed. Sails are now designed on a computer, and the panels and fibres cut out and laid down by a machine. In this way some forty panels can be assembled into a genoa or mainsail, and strength is provided along the radii from two or three corners.

We saw photographs of racing yachts in which inattention to setting or maintenance had led to the sails stretching and losing their figure, and in contrast 12m yachts sheeted very nearly flat. In fact all sails regardless of size perform best with a belly 1 foot deep! Aerial photos of these yachts, close hauled, showed the very different angles of mainsail and genoa, illustrating how the pair work together, with the upwash effect enabling the yacht to tack through angles of (only) some 60 degrees.
Discussing downwind sails Steve outlined the requirements for symmetric and asymmetric spinnakers (the latter being variously known as cruising chutes or gennakers). The key concept was that power depended on the length of the luff.
Questions were invited; it appeared that furling mainsails presented design problems, because of the hollow leech. Members probed the cost of a high-tech suit of sails.

The (disappointingly small) number of members who had braved the severe wintry weather had had a most interesting and instructive evening. Steve's website is at www.goachersails.co.uk.

RG

BASING A YACHT ABROAD
CHRIS AND ALAN WILLIAMS
10 December 2009

Chris gave an account of their Island Packet 350, which they bought from an American, in Scandinavia, raising immediate questions of paying VAT in the most favourable country. They had tried permanent berthing in Finland, Sweden and Germany, and noted the difficulties of getting there from NW UK cheaply and easily. Once they had discovered the availability of overwintering in heated sheds, they found there was no need for a permanent berth, and could sail nomadically. Facilities were in general good, but they had to watch for restrictions in the maintenance work that they could do themselves in the yard. Pre-cruise planning had to be much more comprehensive, and they described issues with credit cards and insurances. To dispel any idea that any problems were daunting, however, they showed slides of the passages and anchorages in the Baltic sailing area, commenting that they had had only four wet days in three months, and members agreed that they had found an excellent sailing lifestyle.

In questions, they estimated that a winter storage as described cost some two thousand euros in Sweden, and about the same in Germany The season was generally reckoned as May to September, but seemed to be getting longer with some brave souls sailing up to November.

NEXT MEETING

Thursday 11 February
Bob Bradfield
Extreme Latitudes Sailing

Sailing from Puerto Montt in Chile down through Chilean Patogonian, through the Andes to the Magellan Strait and then the Beagle Channel, to Cape Horn and down to the Antarctic Peninsular. With stunning photos!

TO COME

11 March
Ian Noble
World Arc Part 2 Bali to St Lucia

15 April
Members' Meeting
Cruising Area Seminars

13 May
Stuart Carruthers
RYA
Cruising Topics

more to be announced

Visitors welcome for a small entrance fee except
15 April meeting

All at 2000 at the Hough End Centre, Chorlton. See the meetings page for details