A Lugger goes into the Blue!

An East Coast Lugger goes to live in the Ionian.

“Somewhere between Calabria and Corfu the blue really begins.”   

Lawrence Durrell          

Imagine the scene.
Its cold, grey and wet outside. Two people sit in their living room in silence as the rain is dashed against the windows by a cutting easterly gale. Two people lost in their own thoughts, joined at that moment only by the shared need for the box of "Man-Size" tissues between them. 
I heave a sigh, loaded with more  melodrama than a Barbara Cartland novel, and push my notes and calculator away.

“We can’t go on like this!” I say, the anguish cracking my voice.

“It’s too much... I just can’t do this anymore!”

“Hmmm?”  Said my wife, peering over her copy of “Granta”, the glint in her eye reflecting  the red flames of the wood burner – but without the warmth.

“If it’s a divorce you’re after just say the word.” 

Sherwood in winter. Not a lot of Blue!

She reaches for another tissue and blows her nose, vigourously. Not a fan of the goodwife Barbara and a touch brusque, perhaps, but it was a Saturday evening, after all. One of the few moments in my wife’s week not taken up with things educational. The last thing she wanted was the possibility of some angst-ridden nonsense disturbing her peace before Match of the Day.

“A divorce?  No, I don’t want a divorce.”   ( It’s a thought..... but no.)

“ It’s just that I’ve been adding up all the bills from this Summer holiday ...”

She turned back to her book, muttering something indistinct which might have included the words “nothing better to do” and “promised to paint the spare room” but I carried on regardless. (...strange how your hearing alters as you get older..) 

 “Do you realise that the Greek ferry costs have nearly doubled in 5 years... and as for the petrol and hotel bills...Phew!   There’s no way we can keep towing “Four Sisters” to Greece every year.”

Ferry No 1. Dover to Dunkirk

Ferry No 2. Ancona to Igoumenitsa

Ferry No 3. Igoumenitsa to Gaios
(Notice how much more BLUE there is?)

  

To cut a long and only slightly acrimonious story short, my wife, who does not sail on cold water, absolutely refused to give up her summer with a suitcase full of books on the island of Paxos.  Over the last dozen years she has worn a groove on her favourite flat rocks at Glyfada beach and saw no reason why my sudden interest in small boats should prevent it becoming ever deeper and more comfortable. An alternative summer destination was therefore ruled out. Even the Scilly Isles were not even remotely an acceptable substitute and were laughed out of court. (Can't think why!). She enjoyed driving through France and Italy each year (although it would be better if we were not towing "that  damn boat") but if we want to fly to save money on the travelling  costs why not drag it out again next year - and leave it there? Perhaps in winter the Greek robins would cover it with leaves?

Unthinkable! “Four Sisters” had been designed and built by Matt Newland of Swallow Boats in Cardigan specifically for towing the 2,600 mile round trip each year.  Light, for shoving around the confines of hotel car parks but seaworthy enough to cope with the seas and winds of the exposed bits of the Northern Ionian – well, most of the time.  I love that boat. She is pleasant to live with, elegant and lightly built, rather like the wife, (..but made of epoxy-ply rather than  carbon steel!) There was no way I would leave her (the boat) out there for 10 or 11 months of the year to rot. Anyway, what would I sail for the rest of the year back home? The inescapable conclusion was that we needed to become a two boat family.  
Duw! There’s posh for you, Bronwen! 

The Lottery win having never exceeded a tenner, funding was going to be tight especially as it had to fit a number of criteria developed from my experiences when sailing in the area.  

• It had to be the sort of boat I could launch, single handed, from the sand and shingle fishermen’s slip at the back of Lakka harbour – once I’d wiggled it past the quayside tavernas, drying nets and sleeping dogs which populate the place. 
•  It should be RCD Cat “C”, at least, to cope with the seas; 
•  strongly built to stand the probable low maintenance and rough treatment;
•  stable enough to allow swimming and re-boarding;
•  deck space suitable for full length sunbathing;
•  shelter available for the hottest part of the day (37 °C this year!) or for occasional nights aboard and last but not least....
•  dry stowage for all those books.

I spent the best part of a year on the search. There are plenty of boats for sail in Greece right now – if you want an ex-hire 30 footer look no further - but it appeared that my kind of boat, whatever it was, had to be bought in the UK and towed out. That ruled out a couple of Sailfish, an old Jenneau  and a Westerly Nimrod. They all had rotting trailers. I soon found that, in sales-speak,  the term “needs a little tidying” means a hull like wet cardboard. “Must be seen!” means fifty quids worth of petrol on a damn fool’s errand and “recent survey” supposes a timescale of geological proportions. Mooning over the pictures of my “ideal” boat, (the BayRaider Expedition from Swallow Boats...the one Matt Newland designed after “Four Sisters”!), was a waste of time. I couldn’t justify the expense - and if I could, would I want to leave such a boat in Greece? Obviously not.   Old Drascombe Luggers were, perhaps, my best bet. I don’t like the rudder arrangement or the boomless mainsail but they are well proven and tough and, more to the point, readily available within my price range. Just to see if I could find one that didn’t need a deal of money to get it road and seaworthy, I logged on to Anglia Yacht Brokerage’s website and found this advertisement:-

For Sale: Deben Lugger Hybrid - “WABI”

She differs from the production Deben Luggers by having a heavier GRP hull with plywood sheaved internals/decks, a profiled dagger-board, larger mainsail and bermudan mizzen. She has large sea kindly decks, carbon fibre masts and a flying jib on a bowsprit. She is a case of ‘Function over Form’ and certainly performs extremely well with excellent performance.

SPECIFICATION  Original black GRP hull with cream decks and white antifouling. LOA 18’3” Beam 6'3" Draft 14" – 4’ Dagger board Weight 500kg Approx RIGGING  Balanced lug yawl with Bermudan sprit boomed mizzen and flying jib on carbon spars. SAILS  Main Tan made in clipper canvas cloth by North Sea Sails with slab reefing. Jib Cream made by Lawrencesails with jib furler. Mizzen Tan made in clipper canvas by North Sea Sails. ENGINE  Mercury 3.3HP 2-stroke outboard. EQUIPMENT  Bilge pump and Sail cover. TRAILER  2008 model galvanised easy-launch road trailer with winch and jockey wheel.

I knew this boat! I’d seen it at Sea Fair Milford Haven in 2010. The second pre-production prototype of the Deben Lugger - and  “WABI” was going cheap. 

Definitely worth a look.

I arrived at  Rougham to a warm welcome from Alex Haig and an initial shock from “Wabi”. What was that ugly gallows for? The boat looked a bit rough and ready -  but used rather than abused – and I’d seen her sailing. Only from a distance, it’s true, but that big mainsail had presence and I never managed to catch her in "Four Sisters". (Not that I was trying...particularly hard!)

I was interested enough to arrange a second visit and a test sail on the Deben. 

On the day it was blowing F5 and a bit gusty so Alex launched without the jib or mizzen. Just full mainsail – and it’s a big one! I had my reservations about that but they evaporated as soon as I put one foot on board. It was like stepping onto a pontoon! I weighed 13 stone at the time (thanks for asking) and she hardly moved. We motored out, away from the moored craft, and Alex raised the mainsail. No expensive blocks, cars or battens, just sticks and string artfully arranged. These “sticks”, I noticed were all carbon fibre and, like the rest of the boat, over-engineered for their job to Lloyds “brick outhouse” specification (i.e. better than A1).  Archimedes, had he found somewhere firm enough to stand, would have approved of them.   I was expecting to have to throw myself around to balance all that sail but there was no drama at all, just rapid acceleration to 6.5 knots and a wake like a destroyer.  

Reader, I wrote the cheque!

Daughter Amy sails a re-painted "Wabi" at Carsington.

 After a few modifications and a couple of weeks weeks test sailing on Carsington Water, tarting her up with deck paint and Cetol 7 (and a new set of trailer bearings just to be on the safe side) we trundled off to Dover wondering how my old car would cope with the extra weight for the next 1200 miles. No problem at all! A touch slower in the Alps, a very little more petrol consumption – and remembering to choose hotel parking spaces large enough to avoid unhitching, was about the only difference.  Four days later – uneventful except for the discovery of an old family restaurant in Senegallia – we negotiated our way past waterside  tavernas, fishermen’s nets and sleeping dogs,  launched “Wabi” into Lakka harbour and set off for her first sail in the Ionian. 

 How would an East Coast lugger cope? Would she be a disaster? First impressions were good. We were only about half a mile offshore, heading south east along the Paxos coast when we were surrounded by dolphins. At least a dozen of all ages. More than we had ever seen together at the same time and definitely, we thought, a sign of local  approval. Neither of us thought to reach for the camera until they were off and away towards the Corfu channel,  but we did get one shot, somewhat blurred by over enlargement and spray. 

Dolphins !   (You might need a handlens.)

That big mainsail was brilliant down wind. Ease off the downhaul to let the boom move across the boat and you have a powerful, easily managed sail that had us surfing down the swell at 7 knots at times. Across the wind she reached impressively, the mizzen adding its contribution. She is twice the weight of “Four Sisters”, shouldering the seas aside as much as riding over them and maintains progress very well as you hardened up into the wind. She’s a bit wet in a strong wind, though!* Miss a gap in a curling wave crests and you’ll get a face full! Some kind of dodger would be an asset, even with an air temperature of 34°C. In an hour or two the "spray" won't feel so invigorating and you will need more than a soaking wet T-shirt to keep you warm.  
*(I later found out that, unknown to me or the previous owner, several kilos of lead ballast were hiding under the floorboards in the hold. Removing this will make her much more buoyant in the bows without affecting stability.)

Being a lugger she doesn’t point quite as high as you might like - if you are used to highly tuned racing dinghies, that is. I felt at the time that more area to the mizzen sail would help, a notion reinforced by my inability to get her to lie head to wind and sea when left to her own devices with the mizzen pulled in hard – something “Four Sisters” does to perfection, despite the cabin windage.  “Wabi”  has a keel that deepens towards the rudder, which I thought might be encouraging the bow to weathercock. This trait would be a problem if there is any hitch when raising that big mainsail. Even streaming to leeward, a half raised sail will drag her broadside-on to the wind and seas – not a pleasant prospect – so I kept the outboard ticking over,in gear, keeping a flow of water over the rudder. She’s a very stable working  platform in these conditions, heading into the wind with the rudder centred and locked, at around one or two knots and she’ll keep it up until the petrol runs out! (Again,  I found out later that she will sit perfectly well head to wind. I just needed to drop the dagger board! Production Deben Luggers don't have this problem as they have a   centre board. Wabi is a prototype, after all.)
 The jib – almost as big as a Genoa – is set from a Wykeham-Martin Furling gear on an unstayed CF bowsprit (stiff enough to hang elephants from). It adds at least a knot on a reach and helps point higher on the wind but, unless you want to muck about with whisker poles, is not much help on a run, of course. The only problem we had with it was when mooring bows-on in Lakka harbour,in the locally approved fashion. The bowsprit keeps “Wabi” a metre away from the quayside. Too far to jump with the dock lines!  Removing it on the water is simple enough but on one occasion we had to be rescued by Dave ***** skipper of “Rhea” when I got myself into a knot with it and drifted aground. (Thanks again, Dave!) If the crew isn't in the mood to "play sailors" it tends to spend most of its time on the foredeck getting in the way of serious sunbathers.

I was only  once disappointed with “Wabi’s” sailing abilities and I found out later (inevitably) that it was  my fault, not the boat's.  We had sailed south-east, the length of the island and across the narrow channel to Anti-Paxos. The wind had been F 3 to 4 and rising - as it does through the day – but as we crossed the exposed stretch of water between the islands  it became obvious that the swell would be sweeping across Lakka harbour mouth even more  strongly by the time we returned to the unsheltered north of the island.  I was not the only one of that opinion as, by the time we had looked into the tiny port of Agrapidia Bay, the super-yachts were leaving the  honey-pot sandy beaches of Vrika and Voutoumi  in ones and twos and  tripper boats were being rounded up. It was all too busy so we cut our losses and sailed back across to the main island for lunch at Moggonissi, a deep and very sheltered anchorage with a taverna! 
Some hours later we were back on the water heading north, and found that the wind had veered and freshened to the extent that we could not weather Nissos Panayia at the entrance to Gaios harbour. We were reaching at 6 knots, back and forth, exhilarating sailing but making very little progress towards our destination. We could have pointed higher with a reefed mainsail, perhaps, but a trip to the mast across a bouncing foredeck with no hand holds did not appeal. (Next year I will rig slab reefing lines back to the aft end of the boom, as I have with “Four Sisters”.) 

It turns out that I did not need to reef at all. 

Wabi’s tack downhaul is adjustable for different sail configurations and I needed to move it further forward on the boom. (Thanks to Alex for spotting that.) Thirty seconds to check and reposition it would have made all the difference!  As it was,  I gave up, started the blameless Mariner 3.3hp 2-stroke and motorsailed inshore for a lee. 
Dropping the mainsail we continued motoring out into the headwind and swell, with the mizzen set as a steadying sail. It had to be at this point that we met with “ Golden Odysseus”, an Atlantic Skipper 53, heading in the opposite direction, towards Gaios.  Kosta and Kate, the owners, live aboard and run her as a charter boat (one I can heartily recommend if you like your food as much as the sailing) and I would have dearly liked to have shown “Wabi” off at her best, with all sails set. I was mollified by the fact that they were motoring, too, and remembered Kosta saying “You don’t mess about with an angry sea. The ocean is always the boss.” ( It has more gravitas in the original Greek.) 

We motored on, our only worry being how long the built-in tank on the outboard was going to last, there being no option for using an external tank with the little Mariner. However, Loggos harbour was only 10 minutes away and we dropped anchor behind its breakwater, a favourite spot of ours, for a rest, wring out our soaked t-shirts and refill the tank. We knew that conditions were unlikely to improve on the next stretch to Lakka harbour and, had we been sailing “Four Sisters”, I think we might have tucked in amongst the fishing boats outside the “Taxidi Bar”  and scrounged a lift home. Despite it being wet and bouncy out there I wanted to test “Wabi” out a little. I knew that, in the event of engine failure the rocky coast was an unforgiving lee shore but I was confident that we could hoist the jib quickly enough, douse the mizzen and run back to Loggos without too much drama so we upped anchor and stuck our noses out of the harbour.  By now the wind had eased a little but the sea was, if anything, angrier. No massive waves but a host of 4 to 5 footers of short wave length, rearing up as they feel the sea floor and breaking whitecaps, all wanting to come aboard. Successfully steering for the gaps and flat bits was rewarded by less of a soaking but even so, as the sun dipped below the hills to our left, we were beginning to think that Factor 50 was less protection than we needed against wind chill, even with an air temperature still well up in the thirties. A spray dodger and waterproof jackets might have been useful.   Just as the sun touched the horizon Lakka harbour entrance opened up but we continued plugging into the wind and waves at 4 knots until we were almost past, (in the locally approved manner)  then looking for a smooth, turned hard left and, at 90° to the swell, legged it -  6.5 knots at full throttle – into the lee of Cape Lakka before the next breaker got to us. Phew! 

Sunset !  We find a lee behind Cape Lakka

   The harbour was crowded with sheltering  AWBs, flotillas and super-yachts moored all over the place and filling the fairway so we had to weave in and out between them, wiping the salt out of our eyes and acting nonchalant – as if we always sailed in F6 winds at sunset.  We squeezed into our accustomed spot next to “La Bocca” and, happy with the little lugger’s performance in its new role, turned our thoughts to the welcome smells of grilled fish and lamb on the spit blowing across the harbour, along with the odd tablecloth,  from Yanni’s Restaurant.

 First impressions. Is she going to hack it in the Ionian? 

• "Wabi" is true to her name. (It's Japanese, apparently: "....also refers to quirks and anomalies arising from the process of construction, which add uniqueness and elegance to the object..Functional, rough and ready." (From Wikipedia)  Not a name I would have thought of for an East Coast Lugger but it suits her.) She's a good seaboat for her size and inspires confidence when the going gets bouncy. 
• She stands up to her canvas well and she WILL sail to windward in a blow – but the skipper has to know his boat!
• She is a bit wet in a short chop. (Maybe taking out the lead ballast will help when she's loaded up with camping gear, but a spray dodger and a knuckle on the hull would probably do the trick.)
• That big ol' barn door rudder is just the job. No problem launching or beaching her for a picnic.
• The dagger board works well and takes up less room in the cockpit than a centre board. Pulling it up for shallow water doesn't cause any great trauma or much lee way as she has a long straight, keel. 
• The Dagger board gallows is a bit of a problem. It does the job but is in the ideal place to act as a hand hold when moving between the cockpit and the foredeck. It wasn't built with that in mind and one day it's going to be ripped out of its screw holes by a clumsy sailor trying to avoid that overboard experience!   Also its as ugly as sin. 

• 

  It works but it ain't pretty!

   The obvious thing to do is replace the ply  gallows with a stainless steel version, incorporating a transverse handhold and, perhaps a spray dodger. It'll probably be a trip hazard until we get used to it.

Stay tuned for more Mods, wrinkles and improvements (so called) when I get time to write them up!