Juggler's Logbook

"...their lives are touched and altered by such things as shells and stars."

"Juggler" is a Halcyon 23 sailing boat. The following is an ongoing logbook of her summer cruise of the Bristol Channel.

The log is currently (September, 2000) being written and placed online using a Psion series 5 handheld computer and an Ericsson SH888 mobile phone which has an infra-red modem.

The sea was bumpy near Worms Head, where I had to reef the main in a squall. I scrambled up to the mast as the deck heaved up and down and ropes and nylon rattled and thrashed. Carefully untangling my safety harness from my wellingtons I sat at the mast and realised I'd have to go back into the cockpit in order to release the kicking strap that holds the boom down against the sails tendency to lift. After another scramble along the side deck on my bum I managed to quieten the sail by reducing it to a third smaller. Then Juggler took off at 6 knots with me safely back at the helm, heart pumping.

In the "Street Cafe'" I order a coffee and a tea cake for breakfast and pleasure. Juggler is safely moored in Ilfracombe inner harbour, near to a trawler from Bristol, which I know the occupants of. The crazy golf course is empty, it's pink, red, yellow and green blooms brighter than ever, after September drizzle. ILFRACOMBE is spelt out on an angled bed in red and green, the green has overgrown and blurred the letters, Summer is dying. I wonder where the seven crazy golfers who alighted around me in the Street Cafe' during early August are now? Leaving their umbrellas in some other time and place (As they left I had pointed out two umbrellas they had forgotten)!

Tourists are of a different sort, now the schools have gone back. Some children are to be seen, but they are with parents who have good reason to delay the onset of the school term. The trawler from Bristol, for instance, has a family living aboard. The children are not at school yet because the tides must be right to work on the hull of the boat and that factor determined the date at which they arrived and stayed. Headmasters were informed and agreed to this anomaly, while the kids schoolmates think they are super-cool by living in a trawler. And, indeed they are because of the way normality is disrupted by the moon and the tides, their lives are touched and altered by such things as shells and stars.

At the age of five I was sometimes tied into a fourteen foot sailing dinghy to prevent me falling out. My mum and dad sailed a GP14 called "Hot Diggity", my sister loved it, while I was bored and disliked the monotony of tacking along an estuary. I was never allocated a commanding post! Not Captain or Skipper or Navigator, just incompetent crew. I was tied in because the boredom would put me to sleep, my chin wet with dribble and salt spray against the yellow canvas cylinders of my life jacket, tasting like salty string.
That is a defining quality of sailing, namely, hours of incremental progress along a knife edge between possible outcomes. Steer a little too far this way and the sails will collapse out of their driving state. Steer a little too far the other way and the tide will veer the boat away from home adding hours to the time enroute.
Sailing offshore sees these types of parameters enlarged frighteningly. One no longer just misses closing time at the pub, it is getting in at all which is in question. Staying out offshore at night is usually a cold affair. At three a.m. one imagines one can see the natant sunrise in the East, but it will be several hours before the shipping forecast on Radio 4 and the first news of the day drives out the bible-black.
I see a development, a man in a grey tea shirt and jeans is putting out the crazy golf obstacles. It is a bright day but not very warm. People either wear pastel coloured coats or casual shirts. The latter clasp their hands together on their laps to conserve heat.
A crowd of happy pastels, group next to a clump of flowers and cheerfully make a photograph. will they play golf or come into the Street Cafe? It is the coffee which wins, they have Yorkshire accents and there is a clear delineation between men and women. Women have handbags and open shoes, their bodies recede; men have golf shoes or trainers and watches, their bodies persist.

The crazy golf course now has fourteen punters, the Summer lurches out of its pre-hibernation, as if in r.e.m. sleep, waking several times before the Autumn drives it underground.

A couple, young, intellectual and trendy, sit with coffee and broadsheet newspapers. They both frown at the contents of the papers spread out on their laps. They are probably very happy people, although they do not talk to each other, perhaps eleven-thirty on a Saturday morning is too early for chat.

A household wares catalogue proves interesting to a woman with a bobble head haircut (thanks Kresza for that description!) Her head moves as she surveys the items of kitchenware on sale; tea towels with cat prints on; green plastic clothes drier rain covers etc. etc. I must pay for my coffee and have a look up in town at the shops, I am reminded.

It is Saturday and I want to consume, which consists of a good read on W.H. Smiths magazine shelves, a tussel with stainless steel pans in a hardware store, a flirtation with digital cameras in a photo store and a skirmish with cosmetics in Boots'. Also I must check the fresh goods in any charity shops I pass. After that I shall return to Juggler exhausted and make plans to escape again to what Gerard Manley Hopkins's (Inversnaid) lines describe thus:
"What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wilderness? Let them be left.
O let them be left, wilderness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

(Thanks Mum, for sending me that).

I looked out to sea and there was a small coaster. Not a ship as such, unless it was in port where it would be quite big, probably about ninety feet long. Compared to the usual monsters I see passing by out in the shipping lanes, this one is tiny. I am captured somehow (or perhaps the coffee is "kicking in"!). This sets off several thoughts as I walk quickly to the coast path to keep the coaster in view.
One of my relatives ran a coaster back in the early 1960's.
I have most of the skills and a fair amount of experience needed to run such a vessel.

I walk along the seafront, quiet apart from the gulping, swishing sea, my eyes transfixed by the little coaster. For a moment I thought it was turning towards Ilfracombe harbour entrance, at which point I made to hurry to the pier-head to watch it enter. But it was bound further up the Bristol Channel. I hear its engine/s even over the distance of half a mile. I love the sound of ships engines. I stand wondering at the sight of it as it dwindles to a small black line off Rillage Point, a mile East of Ilfracombe..
I wonder where such vessels trade and what they carry. Surely road transport has taken over entirely. Where can I go to see such vessels. But of course they are so much a part of my everyday scene I hardly notice them. I ponder the reasons why this particular one has captured me so.
A yacht is making toward Ilfracombe from a mile off. In fifteen minutes it will enter the harbour and moor up at which point it will become a sort of caravan. For now though it is solitary, atomistic, vulnerable, like a migratory seabird. I love to watch it's slow progress as it reaches for it's harbour.

The grey sea ends in a straight line, at the horizon, where the grey sky ends too. These vessels come and go, from that and to that. Its beautiful.

Monday morning and it is muggy and sultry, I feel ill I'm dripping sweat from my eyebrows. I have returned from a jet garage with three Tetra cans of unleaded petrol. The fuel blockades meant there was a queue and I waited in line. I was glad to be able to get petrol, otherwise I would be endangered. I like to sail with a full fuel stock, enough to motor to port from nearly every point on the journey. If the mast broke I would be thankful for that option.

Last night I moved Juggler from the inner harbour to a mooring in the outer harbour. A strong breeze blew all night in contrast to the forecast 3/4's. It thrummed and whistled in a threatening way. This morning I readied to make for Barry. However, my ill feeling mixed with a bumpy sea in the harbour had me wanting only one thing, sleep. So I allowed myself the luxury of abandoning the plan by crawling into the forepeak and my quilt.
A most restorative lay-in followed during which the tide left Juggler sitting solidly on the sand and I could let my stomach relax out of it's need to throw-up!

I awoke midday refreshed but feeling laconic and sweaty. I slowly walked up the hill into into town with my petrol cans. A taxi brought me down to the boat with the fuel, just £2.40, so I gave him £3. Back on the boat a lifeboat call went out; two maroons exploded high over Ilfracombe summonsing the offshore lifeboat crew to duty.
A caterpillar tracked vehicle soon appeared pushing the lifeboat through the harbour entrance into the outer harbour until it floated. Several clamps were released as the lifeboat roared into life and accelerated away out to sea. The caterpillar tracked vehicle reversed, up to it's windscreen in seawater, back into the inner harbour. Tourists and myself thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle. I hope the distressed vessel is as impressed.

I turned the marine V.H.F. on to channel 16 to listen to any communications. Nothing was to be heard which says more about my radio than the seaward situation. One immediately thinks of friends out there. The Bristol trawler, Sally Anne (Janet Jensen) left this morning, early, to return to Bristol in one hop of 65 n miles. They left at 0530hrs BST so would be somewhere near Flat Holm and Steep Holm, the two islands near Barry, by now.

I have hunger pangs and am sweating, definitely not right. Maybe if I just ate some decent food I would benefit. Last night I had chips, aboard Sally Anne, I have largely neglected fresh vegetables. Perhaps I'm going down with scurvy!

The next mission, today, is to eat something decent and keep cool. A young brown Herring Gull arcs across the water, it's wing tip close to the wavelets like a Manx Shearwater. It rises on an eddy out of the harbour mouth, spooks a pigeon and lands delicately on a high wall. By this time of year these young ones are learning the skills which will enable them to meet the challenges of Winter. They no longer squeak incessantly at their parents for food, acting as if they are still covered in down. Instead they peck at anything to see if it is edible. They posture against other birds, expressing the will to power over food sources, as any self respecting Herring gull must.
The adults are strapping, big, grey and white birds. Their beaks are yellow with a red spot near the tip. The whiteness of their bellies is clean and bright, a wonder considering the time spent scrabbling for food in the water. Their cries are a constant refrain at the seaside,"Gulla, gulla, gulla, gulla, gulla". It drives the human inhabitants wild, many of whom see gulls as "rats of the air". I think they are beautiful, vivacious, survivors. They have clear, sharp eyes and can catch bread in mid air, like hawks can songbirds.

I potter about on Juggler, everything I do is tiring, I have a bug of some kind. I know it will be gone in a day or so. I already feel better with seven gallons of petrol onboard; more the arrow than the target.

A zen like voice in me says "Why don't you let go and try to stop controlling your life. You'll never make a true sailor until you can just go, even when there is not enough fuel or snacks to keep you happy".
I can only say one thing in response to that, "Stuff that for a lark!"

Alice and Michael, on holiday from Norfolk sat on the quay as I rowed in and made the dinghy shipshape. "You did that well", said Alice. We talked about boats and fishing and dietary requirements and fear at sea and Great Yarmouth and Bristol. Michael fished with a rod and bits of sand-eels, little silver eel shaped fish used as bait and sold frozen in plastic packets.
When a bite revealed a crab hanging on the bait with no intention to let go, Michael proceeded to bully the creature so that it fell over onto its back as it swiped and snapped it's claws. Alice and I were in hysterics but worried about the well being of the crab. We breathed a sigh of relief when the crab was eventually chucked back, to sink and live on in the harbour.

An hour later (chatting to strangers cannot be hurried) I made my way up into town and bought a carrier bag full of vegetables for tonight's healthy meal, and, snacks for tomorrow's sail. The steps where Michael, Alice and myself had sat together were gone. The tide had encased the afternoons viewpoint in wobbly green seawater. I climbed into my dinghy and floated over the steps and the iron handrail peering down into the past world, as an angel might.

Tuesday the 12th September.
Buoyancy aid, safety harness, baseball cap and soft scruffy sailing slacks surround me in a clench of directed action. I have moved further out in the harbour so that Juggler will stay afloat as the tide ebbs away. Around lunchtime when the tide starts to flood back I shall make my way out into the offing to head for Barry, 35 n miles to the East of North East.
A weather forecast tells of North Westerly winds, strength 3 to 4, 5 this afternoon, super. The sea is quiet as winds have been very much offshore for a while, I am excited about sailing, rather than slightly tense, I'm going home!

Last night I put a cheque in an envelope and posted it through the harbourmasters letterbox. I could easily leave without paying but I feel totally different when I pay, to when I do not. In the past I have, on numerous times, slipped out of harbours without paying. I have discovered that I feel better when I pay, I feel to be a part of the business of the harbour, rather than like a cat creeping through someone's garden, looking sheepish.
When I rowed ashore this morning I realised that I felt good about being in the harbour. I assuredly asked the harbourmaster for a weather forecast and he provided that happily. It is a matter, for me, of the underlying relationship with the people around me being either one of participation, or exploitation.
A sea change in my attitude towards authority has come about for two reasons. Firstly, I can pay because I no longer rely on blowing my saxophone, which never made enough to pay for everything. Secondly, I am much more sensitive to the social networks within which all activities take place. Being in a harbour means having a role in a large and complex organisation of boats and users. Paying ones bill is a clear and definite way of co-operating with that organisation. It is a way of taking on the rights and responsibilities attached to being a harbour user.
I must sound conventional and even patronising in my "pay your way" view. This attitude is emerging out of ten years of skanking around in a boat, avoiding marina staff, harbourmaster, port authority dory's and harbour commissioners offices.
I have often paid my bills in the past, for instance, it cost me about two hundred pounds in mooring charges, cruising from Woodbridge in Suffolk to Falmouth in Cornwall in 1995. What I do find aggravating though is hearing that a tiny place like Wells-next-the-Sea in North Norfolk would now charge ten pounds per night to lay alongside the quay. I think Juggler cost me about six pounds per night in 1991. That seems enough for just a water tap on the quay, use of public toilets and showers a walk away, no electricity supply and a high ladder to scale to get onto the quay.
Ilfracombe costs, for Juggler, just under a fiver a night. Tenby was a little more at six pounds. Ten pounds seems excessive for a diminutive boat such as Juggler, which demands little, if any, management by the harbour staff. Most sailors are highly self-reliant and watch their boats and other's with alert eyes. Many nights I have spent in a harbour only because the weather is too bad to leave, that should not cost me ten pounds a night.
Enough about money, I'm off sailing now, where the wind is free, the waves are in abundance and social interaction is suspended.

The sea, however, was not for sailing as far as me and Juggler went today, "the best laid plans..."