The ‘Baby Seal’ Offshore Project. (Atlanta Project Update)
You may well have seen 'Baby Seal' just inside the entrance to the club when she was there for a short time to raise the mast to have a survey. What you will not have seen is the great amount of work going on both inside and outside of the boat to get it ready for the sea. The craft was surveyed a couple of months ago and this revealed some small areas of de-lamination of the hot moulded Agba plywood construction. These can be corrected by the injection of resin. One or two other suspect areas around the rudder post on the transom have also been strengthened.
There is no doubt that David Cunningham has performed a Herculean task in getting this boat fit for our purpose. To list all the work done would take up more memory than my laptop has so I will be brief.
The boat had been owned by Dr Peter Davis for over 20 years and during this time had been a receptacle for an incredibly wide range of goods and modifications suited to single-handed sailing. David has been fully occupied trying to identify which fittings served what purpose. The only practical solution being to remove the lot and start again.
We were fortunate in obtaining an original oak and brass 'mainsheet horse' (this from one of the attendees at the Atalanta Owners Association meeting held at the club this year to discuss their proposed 'Round Britain Relay' ). This is now fitted and looks great with its brass slides. Peter had controlled the boom using two mainsheet blocks and jammers attached to each side of the rear cockpit bulkhead. He used this as some sort of preventer and I suppose it could be used to centralise the boom or place it to windward. However, the original rig is now in place and will be better for our purpose especially as the horse will support the mast when it is lowered for transport or storage.
Coming to the end of all the work means that we now have to decide what to do with the boat. The Original plan was to take it to Oulton Broad allowing safe sailing with easy access to the sea. The main argument against that now is there would be little time to make use of it before the end of the sailing season and the trouble and expense involved in recovery and transport back to Derby has to be considered. So transport back from the club to David's garden seemed to be the prudent option. From a practical point of view we do need to do a 'recce' of any intended site for stationing the boat and any experience of this kind of operation would be gratefully received by us.
You will probably be aware that the AOA (Atlanta Owners Association?) are celebrating some 50 years of activity by initiating the afore mentioned 'Round Britain Relay', where owners would agree to sail certain 'legs', handing over to the next crew at a pre-arranged port of call. The latest news of this is that it would be over some 14 weeks.
When this was first mooted it was thought that this would be an ideal vehicle for publicising what we do at Carsington Sailability by doing the whole circumnavigation, the advantage being that at least for most of the way we would be sailing in company. The latest time table of 14 weeks would now seem to be impractical if we are to have a semi-permanent crew of 2 with a further 2 'change over' as practical on the way round.
There does seem to have been a flurry of 'Round Britain' activity of in 2009. We had tetraplegic Geoff Holt going round single-handed in his Challenger trimaran and then we had tetraplegic Hilary Lister doing the same in her 20' Artemis with only sip and puff controls. The Helen Macarthur Trust also did a circumnavigation in 'Scarlet Oyster' taking in relays of some 85 youngsters suffering from Leukaemia. All can be tracked on the internet and it makes interesting reading.
The main difference in these efforts and ours is that they are all going clockwise but the AOA project would do it anti-clockwise. Going round the top of Scotland is out and the Caledonian Canal and Crinan would be used to get to the west coast. I have made contact with ex- Carsington SC member Peter Hogbin who is at Loughgilphead and he will help us through the Crinan if we need it.
The purpose of this article and my personal concern is that all this hard work and commitment should have some 'return' in use. It would be such a shame to see 'Baby Seal' 'abandoned' on a mooring somewhere on the coast like so many other boats. To this end can we have some indication of people who might be willing to 'have a go' either taking control over a week end or longer and whether doing a leg on the circumnavigation would be considered.
We also need ''Critical Crews' willing to take over at very short notice should an emergency arise. (I have already had one offer for this role).
Interested in any aspect of this project? Then sign up for information. If you are interested in Sailing Baby Seal please let me know.
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Don't just confine this to the list but talk to friends and see if there is any interest there too.