Weathering winter weather

Dave Selby

Dave Selby's Mad about the Boat column: A handy guide to keeping warm and dry

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Back in 2022 at this time of year, I was fair flying along, sailing on bare poles over mountainous crests as I worked south to round the Horn in shrieking winds so deafening I couldn’t even hear the heavenly, soaring strings of the Nelson Riddle orchestra accompanying Frank Sinatra on that easy-listening classic Come Fly With Me.

Up top the Hydrovane self-steering was coping manfully, but down below it was carnage, like being in a washing machine on a cold spin.

The floorboards were afloat, my delicates and fast-coloureds all mixed up together in the dirty bilge water with a sodden, swollen and now useless copy of the essential blue-water sailor’s bible Sailing: And How To Do It.

I’d already read the first chapter – Sailing, And When to Do It – but had found it a bit confusing.

Neither am I sure I’d completely got the gist of chapter two on Sailing – Where to Do It, but the great pity of it was that I hadn’t even got to the chapter about how to secure books in a seaway.

Anyway, I had more pressing issues to deal with and struggled across the cabin as dividers, knives, machetes, fire extinguishers and even a spatula flew past my head and impaled themselves on the bulkhead in a rather artistic arrangement that was at least as good as this year’s Turner Prize.

Then, to my horror, when I got to the cassette player I found my favourite Frank Sinatra tape had shredded itself.

Being a glass-half-full type, albeit in a boat half full, the thought occurred to me that even though most people use CDs these days the brown ribbons of tape might make a handy deterrent to stop marina gulls pooping on decks and earn me 30 quid as a PBO reader tip.

I disentangled Frank Sinatra and for some reason selected Patsy Cline’s Crazy from my cassette rack.

Crazy as it sounds I identify more with that than Sinatra’s My Way.

Now, as I cast my mind back, I realise that I’m not as crazy as I once was.

This year’s destination is the Caribbean, and on the terrace of the harbour side La Isla Bar on La Gomera in the Canaries, it’s a very pleasant 21ºC, and all the more pleasant to sip a cool beer with a view of 98 Atlantic rowers preparing for their odyssey with a mixture of eagerness and nervous anticipation.

Their plan had been to sail the Atlantic non-stop, but since leaving Portugal 11 days ago the winds haven’t been playing ball.

The boats weathered the 20-knot-plus north-easterlies magnificently but a big wind hole is developing to the south and south-west.

The rowers will be hoping it stays that way, but it’s not much use to a sailing boat.

Prevailing winds

As for the trade winds, they’re not doing what they’re supposed to do.

If you think of the trade winds as a bank of escalators, someone has turned the nearest ones off, probably for routine maintenance or because of industrial action.

Where there is wind the first rung of the escalator keeps receding beyond reach. There are north-easterlies coming in to the east but when you’re short-handed and in a 29ft triple-keeler that’s none too fast it’s probably best not to stray too close to the west African coast where most people are lovely but some are a bit naughty.

So that was that decision made and truth be told there are worse places to be in December than passing time in a waterfront bar in T-shirt temperatures while your smalls churn round in a nearby laundromat.

It’s just a pity I’m not there.

Just as with the Golden Globe Race in 2022/3, this winter I’ve been sailing from my fireside, plotting the progress of my mate Max Liberson on my laptop, and thanks to Elon Musk or some other smart person have been able to exchange short satellite text messages.

The slow-burning daily drama is way more captivating than watching Howard’s Way or The Onedin Line on some Freeview oldie channel, and surely the most practical way to go sailing in winter (another PBO reader tip worth at least 30 quid).

As a committed winter wimp, I’m grateful that there are people like Max who, at this time of year, go sailing so that I don’t have to.

He’s in a Sea Dog 30 that he bought from eBay for £1 and restored and fitted an extended bowsprit to.

He departed Southsea Marina in September, crossed Biscay, and carried on across the Atlantic.

Next stop is Carriacou in the Grenadines. I’m excited already.

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