Category: Boatbuilders and restorers

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Mark Shiner with his boat Arctic Whaler. Notice he isn’t wearing any unnecessarily nautical attire

This entertaining and clearly genuine story of how a tiny problem can turn into an embarrassing ordeal appeared yesterday on the Dinghy Cruising Association’s excellent Yahoogroup ‘Openboat’.

As many readers of intheboatshed.net will know, the Breton cap can often be the cause of strong feelings both positive and negative. We all know people who would wear one at their daughter’s wedding – and others who feel strongly that the only person entitled to wear a Breton fisherman’s cap is a Breton fisherman.

Usually, however, the one thing one can say is that those who are strongly in favour of the Breton cap are a different group from those who are strongly against.

Mark Shiner of Stromness in the Orkney Islands, however, is in the interesting position of being simultaneously for and against them at the same time. Here’s his story, which appears here with his permission:

‘I have a Breton Cap. I wear it everywhere – except in the boat. The reasoning goes like this: if I stuff up in Stromness harbour wearing a rainbow beanie hat then the many inevitable observers will not be too surprised. If, however, I am sporting a navy blue Breton cap then I will be seen as guilty of “wearing nautical attire without due cause”, as you can imagine.

Two days ago I decided to break the taboo and, cap in place; I went to practice my boat handling in the harbour.

That was a bad move.

All went well until I decided to drop the main and run into the slip under jib alone. Lacking sea room I hastily dowsed the main, but the bitter end of the halyard went whistling up the mast and stuck in the block. My concentration now blunted by this I lost height on the slip and drifted across the dinghy line-out rope that runs out from the slip.

I grabbed it with the boat hook as it passed beneath (I had raised the plate) but was horrified to see

Read the rest of this post: Continue reading “The curse of the Breton cap”