Tag: east coast

Veteran East Coast small boat sailor Charles Stock caught on video

 

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

As a young man sailing with my family on the magical East Coast rivers we often came across Charles Stock and Shoal Waters. It was a big thrill on a visit back to the Old Country last summer to see her looking as trim as ever – photo attached.

Sailing Just For Fun is also a terrific read and should be on all cruising sailors’ bookshelves.

Cheers, Paul’
Thanks Paul!
Shoal Waters, photographed last summer. Click on the photo for a larger image


Dylan Winter’s Keep Turning Left

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Keep Turning Left 2

Keep Turning Left Keep Turning Left 3

Forgive me, for I have sinned – I have quietly been enjoying Dylan Winter’s video series Keep Turning Left and have failed to mention it for far too long.

If you haven’t seen his Youtube videos about slowly sailing around our coast in an anti-clockwise direction, you should – and soon.

He’s up to over 40 episodes now and they look and sound great,  I have to say. Dylan makes excellent use of a camera, and he’s an entertaining and informative commentator with whom I find I usually agree. He’s interested in sailing, landscapes, history, the way we use our planet and in almost any kind of boat that doesn’t have a large engine and doesn’t have to move a huge amount of water to get somewhere, and films and talks about all of them.

Ah, sailing slowly around the country. I suppose I should mention that I’m prejudiced in all this. The whole idea makes me envious to the point of losing my marbles!

F B Cooke’s In Coastal Waters

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In Tidal Waters

In Coastal Waters includes some stirring illustrations by C Fleming Williams

F B Cooke wrote some interesting and entertaining and evidently popular books about the pastime of yachting in the early part of the last century – click here for some earlier posts about his boats, his books and sailing.

In Tidal Waters is a collection of tales from his sailing youth in the later part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th. I’m not entirely sure these stories should be  read by anyone who might be put off sailing – but if like me you’re already hooked and there’s no escape, they’re great fun.

A few sentences from his introduction will give you some idea of what’s to come in the book, and of his very democratic views on sailing as a suitable activity for young men.

‘Those whose ideas of yachting have been derived from lounging on the deck of a large steamer at Cowes during the Regatta Week, with an obsequious steward in attendance, will probably find little to interest them in these pages, as the cruises described were for the most part carried out in what the East Coast waterman usually terms ‘little old tore-outs’. The boats were certainly inexpensive, and in some cases not even seaworthy; but in the golden days of youth all our geese are swans, and I spent in them some of the happiest days of my life. It is not by any means the man with the longest purse who gets the most fun out of yachting, and no youngster with a fancy for the sea need be deterred from taking up the sport by any mistaken ideas as to its cost. The expense will be just as he likes to make it, for it is merely a question of cutting the coat according to the cloth.’

Click here for a fine read, thanks to the Canadian Libraries Internet Archives.

My thanks to reader Paul Mullings for pointing out this gem.

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