Snowy weather in the winter!

I take so long to write these blogs that they are nearly always a bit less than topical - apologies for that!  I started this at the beginning of this week when arguments were raging  about the weather!  Apparently it has been the coldest day of the year so far.  Great, get rid of some of the germs.  I am old enough to remember going to school in 1963 when we were "snowed in" for 3 months.  My school was never closed, sadly!  

The River Brue at high tide

But life on board Britannia when the boys were little was sometimes chilly.   I remember the winter of 1975/76 when we had a berth on the River Brue in Highbridge in Somerset.  We were sitting on a mud berth in the river, the tide flowing in from the Bristol Channel with a rise and fall of 40 feet, the second highest in the world.  We moored up against a very long wooden jetty, crossing the mud flats which was about twenty yards long and twenty feet high where it reached the channel.  For 12 hours a day we sat comfortably on the soft mud.  However, during that winter, the mud froze and so did the tide on its way in and out.  The sea froze around us and you could hear the ice cracking when the tide turned.  The boat, normally toasty if in salt water, was quite cold.  We had a wonderful little cast iron pot bellied stove   that burnt anything and throughout that winter we foraged for wood, using a collapsed, broken down jetty nearby.  With some surprise, when Spring arrived, we realised that we had burnt the whole of this long jetty..  hopefully no-one else noticed it's gradual decline.  The stove is no longer, having gone the way of the majority of her interior, sadly.


Again, on a mud berth at the mouth of the river Axe at Uphill in Somerset, 1978/9.  Same thing happened.  Poor Gareth was just crawling and because he was so low down, we had to make sure he hadn't turned blue and constantly had to lift him up so that he could enjoy the warmer air at the top of the cabin.  We put all our old coats and blankets, and sheepskins on the cabin sole to give us a little more insulation.  


And then, in Bristol, we were out of the water, on the hard for nearly 2 years whilst Sam was doing her first major rebuild.  One winter was particularly cold - a few nights were minus 18 degrees F.  During that time we had to boil a kettle of water and then unfreeze the standpipes in the yard in order to fill our 5 gallon containers with fresh water.  The calor gas cylinders had to have the hot water treatment too when it was below freezing!

River Axe, Uphill 1979

Haydn, and Bonnie, Mylor

The most vivid memory though is because of the time of year.  Christmas has always been a bit of a challenge for me, but the best Christmas ever was spent in the middle of Mylor Creek - stranded on the mud when the tide was out.

We arrived in Mylor harbour, Cornwall in December 1976. A quiet sail around Lands End from Padstow found us safe in Mylor on December 23rd. We tied up against the quay and were told by a confident local fisherman that we would be safe and sound there unless an Easterly blew, but winds from that direction were extremely rare - he said!. Well, you guessed it, 12 hours later, on Christmas Eve, a vicious East wind piped up, rapidly becoming a full gale. Whilst the tide was receding Britannia received a terrible pounding and we thought we were going to lose her. The noise of the wind and of Britannia crashing against the quay wall and the sea bottom as she was grounding was terrifying. We had no insurance, Britannia was everything we had. We knew no-one in Mylor and had nowhere to go. Haydn was just 3. Sam just had to keep our home safe, there was no other option.


As soon as the tide was right out and Britannia was grounded, Sam checked further along the river and we made the decision to take her there as soon as the next tide came in.

Whilst Haydn and I went to the pantomime in Falmouth, -  a wonderful production of Snow White -  Sam made all the necessary arrangements to move Britannia as soon as we could. So, as she began to float again that evening, we warped her around in the dark, and once floating free, we let go the warps and drifted for about half a mile under bare poles as far as we could go down the river until we were sheltered from the wind. We anchored in the mud in the middle of the river and waited until the tide went out again. The mud was soft enough for us to lie upright, so relieved and happy we managed some sleep!

Mylor Creek after the storm

Next day was Christmas morning.  The dawn was calm with bright clear blue skies and no wind!  Suddenly we heard a knocking on Britannia's hull and to our shock, looking over the side, we were confronted by 2 local fishermen who had waded through the deep, soft mud by pushing a dinghy in front of them. They had brought us some goodies and had come to see if we were OK! I believe a few drinks were imbibed....an act of kindness indeed.

Plastics in the ocean

Today is a big day.  The United Nations at their summit in Nairobi are discussing the growing problem of plastic islands in our oceans.  At last, and whilst I am struggling to write a press release for Britannia moving from Gweek to Devon tomorrow, I am also listening to discussions about plastic on the radio.  As always with issues of waste/recycling/reuse etc, there are so many different arguments that is hard, as a layman, to know what to do.  Instinctively, though, I think that we have to reduce our consumption and our waste, and if we do not produce anything that cannot safely be disposed of without doing harm to the environment, then we won't go far wrong.  

Gareth 6 years old on Canna looking at Britannia 1985

Plastic pollution is not a new issue, though.   I saw at first hand the problem of plastics polluting the seas when we lived on the Isle of Canna, nearly forty years ago.   As well as being a real eyesore on these beautiful Hebridean beaches, plastic rubbish caught up in the seaweed on the tideline had a much bigger impact.  The islanders had traditionally farmed Canna the natural way.  Being 25 miles from mainland Scotland, they had to be self sufficient and were inter-dependant.  When we lived there in 1984, there were only 18 adults - our family increased the population to 22 adults and 2 children!

  Canna is a small island, 6 miles long and about three quarters of a mile at its widest point.  It was essentially a farm, grazing highland cattle and sheep and growing their own crops to feed the stock.   For years and years, the farmers had hauled the dried seaweed from the beaches to spread on the land as fertiliser, but sadly, that practice had ended as the seaweed was so contaminated with rubbish that did not degrade, that they could no longer spread it on the land and there were not enough people to beach clean or separate the rubbish from the seaweed - they did not have the time.  And anyway, what could they do with it?  No bin men came to Canna! So the result was that artificial fertilisers had to be bought in and shipped from the mainland,  and that continues to this day.  Sad isn't it?   But I am delighted that at last the issue is being spoken about, and people are looking for remedies.  It's not too late to change our ways, and this is just the beginning, so today is a good day.   

In Homage to the Whales

Being nearly 70 I'm not of the generation that “does” instant messaging, texts, whatsapp, instagram – I can just about manage a facebook page occasionally and twitter always gets the better of me.. Which is why I have taken nearly a week to write about this, which is very dear to my heart. I need time to think about things, a plodder who doesn't react instantly! Well, that's my excuse for writing this a week after the event.

There was, thankfully, a huge public reaction to last week's episode of “The Blue Planet” where a pilot whale mother was filmed refusing to let go of her dead baby. The reason for the death was most probably a high level of PCB's in the mother's milk, which effectively poisoned the calf. This in itself is more than sad, but I also recently learned of something that has affected me personally.

Britannia in 1992 in the Sound of Sleat, between Skye and the mainland

Between 1982 and 1996 we sailed Britannia on the West Coast of Scotland, taking passengers every week to enjoy the beautiful scenery and abundant wildlife. Every year we made several sightings of a large pod of Orcas, more than 40 creatures, and I now learn that they were known as the West Coast Community Orca pod. They are the UK's only resident pod of Orcas. I didn't know that then. When we saw these magnificent creatures, we were full of wonder and awe and felt hugely privileged to be able to view them so closely, hear them blowing and, yes, smell them!

Apparantly at the beginning of 2016 a female orca was washed up on the shore of Tiree, a small Hebridean island. She was identified as a member of the now dwindling West Coast Community Orca pod. Her death must have been excruciating as she had been entangled in fishing rope, which had prevented her from swimming, ultimately causing her to suffocate. The West Coast pod now has just 8 individuals, 4 males and 4 females with no calves having been observed for 20 years!! If that isn't bad enough, on examining the female's body, - she had been named Lulu, - it was discovered that:

"The levels of PCB contamination in Lulu were incredibly high, surprisingly so. They were 20 times higher than the safe level that we would expect for cetaceans to be able to manage. That puts her as one of the most contaminated animals on the planet in terms of PCB burden, and does raise serious questions for the long-term survivability of this group (of UK killer whales)."

Dr Andrew Brownlow, head of the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme.

It is not just plastics that can be seen in the ocean, making hideous and lethal plastic islands. The ocean is downstream from everything, and much more still needs to be done to ensure that PCBs currently in landfill sites are locked-in and secured so they can’t leak out into streams, rivers and estuaries.

The chances of survival for the remaining members of this pod of orcas is slim, and if they are unable to breed or keep their calves alive, they will soon become extinct. This is heartbreaking and a tragedy that need not be happening. We do not need plastic! We must stop producing anything that cannot be disposed of safely and without harming the environment. We must all work together to stop polluting our seas and our beautiful planet before it is too late, as it is for this iconic West Coast Community of Orcas.

When Britannia is sailing again, she will be a flagship for raising awareness of the state of our oceans, and for us, Board members of Britannia Sailing Trust, the tragic tale of the West  Coast Orcas makes us even more determined to get our historic boat back to sea and working, to try to make a small difference.