Trip To The Jersey Shore

[ebb]

Hilair Belloc has a nice Wikipedia.
A prodigeous literary giant but shackled to a huge bias that kept me from reading him
back in the days when reading authors was an obligation.
My daughter when she was an academic wrote a paper on the cultural bias
writers, professors, archeologists bring to their interpretations of the past.
EG, if your cultural view of man is men before women, that is how you will see the Neanderthal.
And by extension any accessment of the present state of man.

Evidently, like Belloc in 'The cruise of the Nona', Raban takes us down side paths in '..Juneau' that are on his mind when writing his sailing book. These side paths are the plate and color of the feast befor our eyes. However, for me, the lens of the writer has to be crystal clear not one filtered through rose colored glasses.
Maybe Raban has this radical CLEAR VIEW, sanity. Hope so.

That's all I'm allowed to say here.

[Ariel 109]

Ebb,

Raban has none of the old prejudices which we all know were quite common in Belloc's time. In "Coasting" one theme Raban takes apart is the ideal of the what drives amateur sailors to take to the sea in small boats, a relatively recent human pastime. In earlier times people did not go to sea unless they really needed to. He writes about the early books on yachting and the bias of their writers, quite interesting.

From Raban's "Coasting", the four boats he names below are the yachts of early sailing writers.

"The "Rob Roy", "The Kate", "Perseus" and "Nona" are a lot more than mere yachts. Loaded down on their marks with testaments, theories, dogmas and solutions, that are like arks of the Covenant, holy vessels bearing sacred texts. Jesus Christ...Aristotle...Malthus...Mussolini..each of the lone sailors puts to sea with a ghostly first mate. And the boats themselves are miniature ships of state, their trim style of domestic ecomony set side by side with the ramshackle and disordered house of England across the water."

[Ariel 109]

Another Herreshoff S-Boat. This one is Tern and she's the last one made, 1941. Trimmed in Teak, a rare option resulting from being originally built for a wealthy Newport owner. Also one of the few self-bailer S-Boats made, although now converted thankfully to the deeper soled cockpit. You want to keep that long wooden boom as far from your head as possible. If everything goes as planned she should be racing at the end of May. Anyone interested in crewing?

[C38]

Another Herreshoff S-Boat. This one is Tern and she's the last one made, 1941. Trimmed in Teak, a rare option resulting from being originally built for a wealthy Newport owner. Also one of the few self-bailer S-Boats made, although now converted thankfully to the deeper soled cockpit. You want to keep that long wooden boom as far from your head as possible. If everything goes as planned she should be racing at the end of May. Anyone interested in crewing?

ME ME ME!! I would love to crew that beauty! though I am not that great of a sailor so I can just be rail meat...

[Ariel 109]

Michael,

It would be great to have you come out and crew on Tern next summer. As for your sailing skills, I'm sure you'll do fine. The S-Boat has a self tending jib so there's not much grinding going on. There is the spinnaker to fly, but only in the medium to light winds for the most part. A most important chores are tending the two running backstays and keeping the big mainsail trimmed.

Thankfully S-Boat racing is not like something out of a Gatorade commercial. More on the order of "simply messing about in boats" and keeping an old one design class active. There are some very fine sailors in the fleet and the racing is competitive and interesting. If all goes as planned there will be ten S-Boats racing in the Western Sound Fleet next summer. That many boats racing together hasn't happened since the fifties.

We're also going to sail the Wednesday night "beer can" races off City Island with the Ariel next summer. If anyone wants to join a quixotic campaign against modern "gear" laden sailboats.

Ben

[Ariel 109]

Another one of those great forgotten books republished back in the sixties by the Time Reading Program. Richard Hughes doesn't disappoint in this classic hurricane survival story. Nice cover by an artist by the name of Tom Ballenger. This picture was taken while the book lay in the eye of the holiday season.

[Ariel 109]

Yesterday a friend gave me this little pamphlet of the history of the America's Cup, printed in 1930 by the Plymouth Cordage Company. It has these nicely drawn dinky (1" x 1") etchings of all the Cup defenders and some of the challengers. I scanned and enlarged these images.

[Ariel 109]

Another Richard Hughes book better known by it's original title "High Wind To Jamaica", the American publisher changed the title. Later made into a decent film starring Anthony Quinn and James Coburn. Read the book first, thought by many to be masterpiece. An easy find at used bookstores.

All these great books about the sea!

[Ariel 109]

Here's an early Carl Alberg design he did while working for Alden just after WW2. Called the US One-Design, the little picture below is of one they have awaiting restoration up at the International Yacht Restoration School (IYRS).

"Maria (1946)
Type: Alden One-Design; Designers: Carl Alberg, John Alden; Builder: Quincy Adams Yacht Yard
John Alden design #757 came off the drawing board of Carl Alberg during World War II. Thirty boats were built in 1946 and 1947 to the highest standards of the day by Quincy Adams Yacht Yard at Quincy, MA. The boats were available with or without a cabin trunk and a minimum of accommodations below deck. Maria's hull form’s short keep and narrow waterlines reduce wetted surface while the long overhangs increase her sailing length dramatically as she heels in a breeze. Her well-balanced long ends give her a stunning look. LOA: 37' 9"; Beam: 7'."






http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=5023

http://www.iyrs.org/boats/boatstober...9/default.aspx

[Ariel 109]

Bundled up for an afternoon of winter sailing off City Island in Hans' Ensign "Pleasure". We each had a fortifying brandy served in a plastic cup during the run back to the mooring.



I'm the one steering the boat. Hans is the one filming and almost falling off the boat.

[Ariel 109]

Met Bill Schultz the ninety five year old previous caretaker of the S-Boat Tern, the boat I'm beginning to look after. I felt really honoured when he gave me this old hand painted necktie emblazoned with an image of Tern, sail number 70.

Bill told me the first sailboat he went cruising on was a Pearson Ariel back in the early sixties. Remembered having to sleep up in those tight fitting vee berths Also told me there's an Ariel moored in Hempstead Harbor, which is not too far from City Island. The beginnings of a one-design fleet?

[C38]

Michael,

It would be great to have you come out and crew on Tern next summer. As for your sailing skills, I'm sure you'll do fine. The S-Boat has a self tending jib so there's not much grinding going on. There is the spinnaker to fly, but only in the medium to light winds for the most part. A most important chores are tending the two running backstays and keeping the big mainsail trimmed.

Thankfully S-Boat racing is not like something out of a Gatorade commercial. More on the order of "simply messing about in boats" and keeping an old one design class active. There are some very fine sailors in the fleet and the racing is competitive and interesting. If all goes as planned there will be ten S-Boats racing in the Western Sound Fleet next summer. That many boats racing together hasn't happened since the fifties.

We're also going to sail the Wednesday night "beer can" races off City Island with the Ariel next summer. If anyone wants to join a quixotic campaign against modern "gear" laden sailboats.

Ben

Thanks, I would love to! Just let me know when the season's getting close! ( I am in eastern LI so it should only take about an hour for me to drive out )

I would love to come on Wed as well but I have my own quixotic campaign Wed night races to attend to!

[Ariel 109]

Michael, won't forget you and I'll keep you informed. It's great that you're going to race your Commander this next season. You have to post descriptions of the races for us like Rico does.

I'll sketch out the current plan to get Tern racing this summer.

Tern is being worked on up in Newport after being stored in a barn for almost a decade. She's in the hands of the boat builder Jim Titus, a kind and quiet craftsman who I feel lucky to have doing the work on the old girl. The plan is to sort out as much of the many structural issues as to allow the boat to safely sail in this upcoming season's regattas. I hope myself to spend at least three weeks in May working on the boat in Newport. Then transporting her down to City Island to splash and install the rig, she's got a beautiful mast. It an ambitious crazy project but I'm getting much support from fellow members of the S-Boat fleet down here on the Western Sound. I don't think I'll be the prettiest S-Boat out this summer, but give me a few years.

Here's a picture of Tern sailing with Bill Schultz back in 1995. That's the Shields class starting in the background.

[mbd]

Ben, in re-reading your thread here, I finally put it together - Tern was the reason for your "Trip To The Jersey Shore"! Doh! It'll be fun to watch her progress from the early posts here. What a beauty! Wish I were closer, I'd love to get out there with you guys this Summer.

[Ariel 109]

Mike (MBD),

The whole thing sort of evolved on it own.

The boat we visited down at the Jersey Shore early last spring was the S-Boat Volunteer not Tern. It's been languishing down there for about decade. I've been pestering the owner this past year with a phone calls every now and again to help motivate her resurrection. I actually enjoy the conversations and have learned many things about the S-Class from him. He bought Volunteer after she sank at her mooring some twenty five years ago. Raised her and got her racing. As we all know life intrudes on our best laid plans and I'm sure that's why Volunteer has been dry docked for so long. Still she not yet firewood and she's got her winter cover on this season.

I'll keep an open invite to you for a sail on Tern.

Ben