intheboatshed.net

Charles Stock making his customary good use of his wellies. Image copyright Tony Smith (aka Creeksailor) and used with permission

I’ve stumbled across a series of short Youtube videos featuring Charles Stock, a legend among small boat sailors, particularly on the Thames Estuary and East Coast of England.

An enthusiastic sailor since he was a kid, in 1963 Stock created a new cutter-rigged boat for himself using a 16ft Uffa Fox-designed hull made by Fairey and the rigging from an old half-decker he bought in 1948. The result was Shoal Waters, a small wooden boat in which he has sailed regularly ever since without an engine and without a tender – instead, he follows the tides, moors in shallow water and, if he wishes to do so, goes ashore in a pair of rubber wellie boots.

He’s kept meticulous logs and accounts ever since, travelled over 70,000 nautical miles in his boat, written countless articles, taught sailing and navigation to evening classes for decades and wrote an excellent book, Sailing Just for Fun: High Adventure on a Small Budget, which has sold well over 4000 copies.

He also has his own website: http://shoal-waters.moonfruit.com.

Here are the Youtube videos:

Charles Stock 1

Charles Stock 2

Charles Stock 3

Charles Stock 4

Charles Stock 5

Charles Stock 6

Charles Stock 7

Charles Stock 8

Charles Stock 9

Charles Stock 10

Charles Stock 11

Charles Stock 12

Charles Stock talks about choosing the hull for Shoal Waters

Youtube tends to encourage anonymity, so at this stage I don’t really know who recorded and put the clips – but his Youtube home page and extensive collection of videos are here: http://www.youtube.com/user/creeksailor

Creeksailor also has a weblog here: http://creeksailor.blogspot.com

More photos of Shoal Waters in action appear here: http://www.saileastcoast.co.uk/shoalwaters.htm

I’ve also pasted a photo below from Paul Mullings, who has this to say:

‘Hi Gav

Rob Roy canoe gear – click on the drawing for a larger image

I’ve just learned that Mersey Canoe Club member Tony Bibbington last year sailed and paddled from Oslo to the Baltic, following Victorian pioneer John MacGregor’s paddle-strokes all the way. My thanks to Brian Smith for letting me know about this, and for pointing out that there are some great photos online at http://www.duene1.de – click on the 2009 calendar and then on Nov 4, and you will find photos of his trip round Heligoland.

It was a 500km trip that he had to complete in three weeks due to the that old enemy work, but perhaps the most jaw-dropping aspect of the whole thing is that Tony was  determined to follow exactly the same route as his hero and did so using a 138-year old original Rob Roy canoe made by Sewells of London that he restored himself.

This insistence on following Macgregor’s route caused a few problems along the way – the first  of which was that the spot from with Macgregor first launched his canoe in Norway is now someone’s back garden. Thankfully, the owner proved friendly and Tony was on his way.

An article in the magazine Canoe Focus tells the story of a varied journey, sometimes tedious, sometimes  beautiful, and with plenty of incidents worth retelling, with Tony dressing as a Victorian gentleman canoeist and meeting an artist determined to paint his portrait; moments where, like Macgregor before him, Tony had to drag his canoe out of a stream water and use a car or other means to reach the next patch of water; and a final landing in which he landed inside the perimeter of a factory security fence. Luckily, on that occasion his path was smoothed by the security man who had read about Tony’s expedition in the newspapers.

How did Tony get on with his canoe, and how did she stand up to the journey more than a century after she was first made? In the Canoe Focus article Tony himself was happy to quote Macgregor: ‘The Rob Roy has proved herself able ”to sail steadily, to paddle easily, to float lightly, to turn readily, and to bear rough usage on stones and banks, and in carts, railways and steamers; to be durable and dry, as well as comfortable and safe” just as she was originally designed to be. MacGregor’s theory was that ”a canoe ought to fit a man like a coat”. The Rob Roy had been a perfect fit on my journey and I look forward to our next adventure.’

I think the whole thing is an extraordinary story with at least four heroes in addition to old John Macgregor himself: Tony for being brave enough to set out on an arduous 500km paddling and sailing trip in unknown country  in a 138-year old canoe, his family for travelling with him and enabling him to make the journey in a modern age without horses and carts in wide use in remote areas, and the dear old boat itself.

For more on Macgregor, click here; to read Macgregor’s account of his own trip to the Baltic, click here.

The June 2009 edition of the NMMC journal Troze is now online and and is packed with gems from the history of yachting.

The article in question is titled The English yachting narrative with particular reference to Cornwall and is written by yachtsman and retired clinical psychologist Mike Bender.

Here are some quotations I particularly enjoyed. From the beginnings of yachting:

‘In the reign of Elizabeth I, Richard Ferris decided it would be a atriotic act to show that no Englishman need be afraid of sailing in home waters after the Armada had been defeated in 1588. In 1590, with two companions, he rowed and sailed in a wherry from London to Bristol. He was not molested by the Spaniards but had to take evasive action near Land’s End to avoid a pirate ship.’

That’s a great story, if I ever heard one. Writing of the Corinthian generation of yachtsmen in their small wooden boats in the late 19th Century, Bender concludes:

‘What is interesting in these texts is that they are usually little more than expanded logs and journals, so it must have been the novelty of these passages that made them of such great interest to the contemporary reader, combined with the use of lithographs which invariably show the boat being pitched around in rough seas going round some suitably perpendicular headland. This Romantic imagery obviously appealed to the dreamer in the reader; but there is a self-denying, almost self-flagellating quality, in the self-chosen tussle with the sea in which the sailor engages.’

On women, he writes:

‘There was a long period of resistance before the First World War towards accepting women into yachting and yacht clubs. Sailing by women was feared for giving too much leeway for the dress and freedom of bodily movement required (and hence, being sexually arousing); and as a statement of equality or independence.’

And on the importance of recording the recent past:

‘There is also a certain urgency… If no-one looks for or after them, the historical records of those pre-GRP, pre-GPS endeavours – the accounts, the letters, the contracts, the tools – will soon be lost; and if no-one is interested in taking down the accounts of the sailors who used them, and getting them published in one of the many forms now available, they will take their experiences to the grave, and we will be the poorer thereby.’

This article is well worth reading. Find it here.