KNOW YOURSELF— BE WILLING TO CHANGE"

by Ed Boden (Kittiwake’)

A happy compromise is the most significant feature of the Vertue’. She is heavy enough to carry an astonishing amount of gear and equipment without demolishing her performance and yet not so heave as to defy manhandling. She is large enough for a way of life ‘yet small enough to be unpretentious and even a source of wonder.

She can be fitted out to suit Spartan requirements or to suit elegant tastes. She is reasonably comfortable offshore and can still give them a scare around the buoys. She can be made to sail herself for thousands of miles (even without a vane gear) and yet is easily manoeuvred under sail in a crowded anchorage. The list is long, and to top it all she’s a truly handsome little boat.

The first principle in fitting out is "Know yourself’. As people’s attitudes vary so do their abilities to cope. How many (wives in particular) have been put off because more time was spent varnishing than sailing? Yet to others varnishing is artistically and irritably one of man’s nobler pastimes. So the first principle is Know yourself’.

Kittiwake’. Sail No. 50, falls somewhere between Spartan and elegant but is fairly utilitarian. Also, her owner being a hopeless ~ckrat, she is loaded with a marvellous assortment of gear and belongings which accounts in part for no toilet or auxiliary engine. she is equipped modestly with racing goodies most of which help her wind performance. Her rig is of the simple masthead variety using aluminium spar and stainless rigging with Norseman terminals. she has a good assortment of sails from spinnaker to a three.

‘Kittiwake’ originally had a Stuart 8 auxiliary and a Baby Blake marine toilet but when their useful lives were at an end, according to ‘Principle’, they were removed and not replaced. The amount of useable stowage opened up thereby more than compensated for the questionable loss of convenience.
Engines can be a great help, they can also be a terrible nuisance. Rarely are they a necessity’. If one is committed to a tight schedule and a boat is a weekend recreation an engine is easily fitted, but by the same token stowage for all one’s worldly belongings is not required. On an extended voyage where it might be used for 0.1% of the time, an engine becomes quite a different matter. The argument that an engine is a safety factor can easily be countered by the fact that more yachts have come to grief with engines than without. Unquestionably an engine robs one of the satisfaction of having made port entirely under sail. Even if it is not, the satisfaction is diluted just by its being available. It comes once again to knowing oneself.
A very useful piece of equipment, for extended voyaging at sea. is a steering vane. They come in all shapes, sizes, and qualities, and some work better than others. The Vertue’ has an advantage over many designs in being well balanced and having an outboard rudder, making a simple, dependable and inexpensive gear quite feasible. Kittiwake’ was sailed for more than twenty thousand miles before being fitted with one. It is of the simple, cal axis, offset vane sort very much like Hasler’s design but the mechanism is handmade from stainless plate and uses Teflon ings. The vane is Dvnel covered plywood and the mahogany tab ~e trailing edge of the rudder is about twenty per cent of the area ie rudder. It was made as lightweight as practicable commensurate with strength in order to keep the weight on the stern to a minimum and to increase sensitivity. It has steered Kittiwake’ fully in winds that were barely detectable to Force 7 and the time it was in any danger was from a strong squall of about F10 when the vane itself began galloping’. In some respects a A piece of equipment aboard ‘Kittiwake’ which gives an amount of pleasure is a Stereo Tape Recorder with two speakers mounted on the main bulkhead. The unit is an X-5 portable putting out two watts per channel and, when turned up easily vibrates the whole boat and fills the cabin with sound. 1 selection ranges from Strauss, Chopin, Ravel, et al through Beatles and other pop to several recordings made in the Pa Islands of various picking’ ‘n’ ‘singing’ groups.Power for the Stereo unit and lighting is from a twelve volt battery which is charged by a Honda 300 petrol generator, but plans are afoot to rig a small diesel generator. Surprisingly, the electrical system has given practically no trouble to date. Standby lighting Kerosene lamp. Cooking is by Primus (Kerosene).

My dinghy is self designed and built. Stowing on the cabin, under the main boom, between the mast and the short dog house. Seemingly impossible, it is actually three separate boatlets which. match end to end, making a quite handsome skiff over ten feet long and when nested together to stow in a space less than four feet square
It possibly represents a breakthrough in dinghy design. The criterion for selection of a dinghy is to have the largest that one can handle. For example, if one cannot stow it, it is too large. If it cannot row an anchor out in a blow, it is too small. If one can not carry or drag it up a beach, it is too large. And so on.

The combinations for fitting out a Vertue’, or any boat for that matter, are infinite, and by pinching ideas from one another the process becomes kaleidoscopic. What works well on one boat can be a terrible nuisance on another. So, the most important thing ‘Know Yourself. An important corollary is "Be Willing to Change".