The last cape horners

[j.sabourn]

#10 That sounds very familiar Keith your ref. to toilets which others put out of mind especially in situations where you are definetley short of them . My last two vessels just prior to the Piper alpha disaster and the current one at the time of the destruction of the platform , think it was the actual one at the disaster , we had a total of two toilets on the vessel. I shortly found out after sailing that both toilets were using the fresh water supply from the fore peak. Water on a trawler was always going to be a problem in any disaster situation as very rarely lasted out for only crew purposes for the time one was on station for , and was common practice to take fresh water in drums off the rig just for domestic use such as coffee and tea. However I shut both toilets down , and had the water to the flushing system disconnected and put a bucket in each toilet with line attached to take direct from the sea. According to our smart media we had 37 survivors , to me there appeared more , plus the 4 crew members on board and self , this was a minimum of 42 men on board with 2 toilets and two buckets and lines attached . Nothing is ever said about minor inconveniences at the time , shore people are too busy elaborating on other things . When a certain celebrity said to me I hope you were wearing your brown trousers out there , he was closer to the truth than he knew. This situation was for about 8 hours , God knows what it would have been like for 8 days. Cheers JS

[thomas michael]

hi keith #10
good afternoon, yes its a frightening book once you sit down and imagine you where there and its actually my book i take the toilet with me in other words i literally sh** myself when reading it. Well its great that you are still getting out on a boat, you dont have to go far to enjoy your time on it as long as your judicious with the weather forecasts. at the moment im just back this week from a cruise and im still hurting, so im relising time is not on our side sadly, as for the contessa i have never sailed on one, but the amount of people whom recognise its ability is second to none, and i have one moored next to me its all black with a red boot line and white coach roof shes a stunner, but anyway any sailing is better than none.
tom

[Keith Tindell]

Yes , too old for much sailing now Tom, i have also sailed on the John Laing a few years back, volunteer crew again, that was for the Ocean Youth trust, and we bought her back from Souther Ireland to Southampton. Have you read any of Eric and Susan Hiscock ?, on their various boats called Wanderer. When Eric died in South Island NZ, Susan sailed the boat single handed back to Auckland to be sold, she then came back and lived in one of the coastguard cottages on the front at Yarmouth on the Island here until she died. I bought the last car she owned, an Austin, which was always known in the family as Wanderer. Both were long distance sailors.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

The only sailing ship I sailed on was the Bounty the reproduction of of Bligh's ship, I was privileged to be allowed to steer her up Sidney Harbour from the Heads one Xmas.
The other {Sailing} I did was in tine boats made from sheets of tinplate when I was around six to eight.
Des

Des steering the Bounty.JPG

[j.sabourn]

Can you not sell that picture to Birds Eye Des. Looks more authentic than the original . Cheers JS

[Des Taff Jenkins]

I don't know John, I did have a birds eye of the young girls, volunteers climbing the mast, lol
Des

[j.sabourn]

We lay ahead on the quay. At Custom hours quay Greenock right ahead of the think it was the Malcom Miller if not it was the Winston Churchill and she had an all girl crew we were whistling at them , so they came across and dared us to race them aloft. Or shut up. 3 of us took up the challenge and went across. I was more nimble in those days but even so nearly froze a couple of times, I came down the same way I went up , they just slid down the masts shrouds and stays ,so I said it didn’t count just to save face.Didnt stop me whistling at girls but was careful they weren’t on sailing ships. The Leeuwin out here as said In a previous post was asked to sail for a day on her when home on leave just to make up the legal watchkeeping standard , that was an eye opener as well . Cheers JS

[thomas michael]

hi keith #13
good morning, There is nothing like being at the helm in the cold wet and the wind blowing through your your foul weather gear,and when you try to hand the helm over and stand up your legs will not co-operate with the rest of your body and in some cases like my buddy who at eighty four this year has to be lead down the hatch below, sadly we are all on borrowed time,
as a matter of fact i read quite a bit of eric and susan hiscock and once again a truely remarkable couple and their accounts of sailing is daunting, as you know he died in new zealand, i didnt know she lived in the i.o.w did you meet her when you bought the car.
still on about sailing into old age, when i was in baltimore ireland many years ago there was a wooden carvel built canadian motor cruiser ashore, she was about thirty five foot , i was told by locals that a eighty nine year old woman had sailed her across single handed, so never call time until the fat lady starts to sing.
tom

[Keith Tindell]

Agree Tom, i loved sailing, never done any real long distance stuff, back from Ireland on the John Laing, and cross channel, Brittany with my own boat, sometime with mates and sometimes just me and wife. As to Susan Hiscock, i saw her around the Island from time to time, but bought her car from the local garage. A friend of mine was at a meeting in Beaulieu in the New Forest, he was there to talk on the OYC, and Susan Hiscock was at the meeting. He had taken his car over to the meeting, and saw that Susan was getting anxious, kept looking at her watch, and assumed she was fretting about the ferry times. He approached and said if she was worried about the ferry, he had his car, and was wellcome to a lift, she replied, thanked him, but was not worried about the ferry, was worried about the tide, as she had sailed her small dinghy over from Yarmouth !!. She was well into her 70s then. i think she died about 77 years old.There are quite a few well known sailors/seamen on the Island, another couple who i have met, via a talk, are Maurice and Maryln Bailey, who had sailed their plywood built Golden Hind half way across the world, they were in the Pacific, when a whale attacked and drove a hole in the bottom of the boat, which sank, and they spent the next 114 days in a rubber dinghy and an inflatable life raft, their book was called Auralyn I think. At the talk they showed film they took as the boat sank, him at the oars, and the last photo showed about 2 ft of mast as they went under. Some incredible men and women sail the seas.

[thomas michael]

hi keith #19
good afternoon, im having loads of problems with this laptop, and i have been semi-closed down for the last hour or two, i finally solved some of the problems but it seems when i have been typing the word checker over-rides, and unknown to me it has been replacing some of my text with its own version ie if i try to retype a word after erasing it for in the case of misspelling, anyway thats why im only reading your mail now,
Its no surprise that you write that susan hiscock was sailing that dnghy out in the solent at 77 years of age, i think a article i read in the yachting magazine a couple of years back gave the age of a women club member in the south of england as ninety nine and was still turning too on club races,i can not remember her name or the club but what a fantastic thing, I have never heard of the bailey husband and wife but there is so many people these days just packing up and doing it most likely because of the gps and other technology available, Did see a couple of weeks ago the film on james wharram the catamarran designer , he built it out of plywood and sailed off with the two girls whom he married on the way, catch it on youtube ,
tom

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hi des #14
good afternoon, love the hat des i dont suppose cpt james cook was the master was he.
tom