The Renovation of the Anna M - a recapitulation.,

It has to be said that wooden boats pumping bilge water is as natural as peeing is to mammals,- the first boat which I owned was a 33' clinker-built half-decker called An Cnoc Mór, and my final season salmon fishing in her, off Donegal in the '70s, was an unforgetable battle with leaks, with nets that the fish could easily see in calm weather, frequently causing us to head west in the evening against the weather, from Teelin to Malin Mor or Glen Head. One had to fish at night. When I came back to the boat after going home in the daytime to get some sleep, the question was whether the electric pump had kept up, or would the water be up over and into the gear box?    

    A line was crossed in the Anna M one night in the Bay of Biscay, hard on a fresh to strong SW wind. It was in the autumn of 2002. I was awoken in my bunk by a loud thump and jolt as the boat hit either a bad wave or something more solid. After a while I could hear the bilge water sloshing around,- the electric pump was not coping. The hand pump was in a very awkward place under the cockpit (a mistake that I have taken care to avoid in the new Anna M!) , so it was no fun pumping our way to Galicia, where we hauled out in Portosin. 

    We discovered that there were thirteen cracked ribs on the starboard bow and you could push the planking there in and out by hand. We screwed a sheet of plywood with plenty of gunk under it over the planks and sailed down to El Rompido in Andalucía, where there was a Polish shipwright by the name of Michalsky who made a great job over-winter of rebuilding the whole foreward section with new laminated ribs. In March we set sail for the Cape Verde Islands for Tony Whelan to film humpback whales, with Simon Berrow and the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group,- see The Return of the Humpback Whale (2003).

    A trip to the West Indies followed, including penetrating some 40km up the Orinoco River in Venezuela. Back in Ireland, I settled down to taking dolphin and whale watching trips from Carrigaholt on the Shannon Estuary and from Sherkin Island in Co. Cork, but not before concluding that the Anna M needed a new deck, which she received at Liam Hegarty's yard on the Ilen River. There followed some good years, which included taking Nutan up the West coast of Ireland in order to make his photographic book The Islands of Ireland. 

    At last the old boat was actually earning a living for a few years, until in 2013, by now leaking fairly seriously, we decided to call it a day. Now in the happy receipt of a pension, Fiona and I sailed to Rome. We hauled out for the winter in Ostia, where I made some futile efforts to fix the leaks, and on the way back in 2014, found a birth in the Río Guadiana, between Spain and Portugal in the South. 

CEO's difficult decision.

    It was back in Sherkin, in July 2015, that I started writing this blog, and an idea of what was in my head may be found in the September post of that year, On Sailing the Gannetsway, after a cruise to Scotland. We sailed back to the Guadiana then, gave the hull some more attention in Olhão, but on the way home in 2016, off Nazaré in Portugal, I took the difficult decision to put the boat ashore and get to the bottom of those leaks.

 This involved taking the fuel tanks and engine out, also much of the cockpit, which was itself in poor shape. What we found was not pretty. There were many cracked ribs, and indeed in some places there was not a lot holding the planking to the keelson, especially under the cockpit where the worst leak had been. Only the water pressure was keeping them together, and when we trod on the planking, we could look through the gap between them to the ground!

After a few days cleaning out the filthy, oily bilge, I decided to take up with an old dream of a truly autonomous sailing boat, with some kind of electric drive. We launched into the project with enthusiasm, but.... Nearly a decade later I have a sound boat, but we are not much further ahead with the electric drive, all my available funds having gone into the renovation.

Alec Lammas and Stephen Colsman from Germany laminated many new frames, which we renailed with myself holding the dolly on the outside of the hull.

At that stage I was hoping to re-caulk the hull and vamoose, but concluded it would be difficult to do a good job. One thing led to another. Some of the steel floors, which hold the planking to the keel, were in poor shape. Fortunately Steve Morris, my old shipwright buddy from Kilrush (and originally from New Zealand), came and made a whole new set of them. He has become very well known for his work on wooden boats, including the Jeannie Johnston, and the Dublin Bay 21s which he has built, and I was very lucky to have his help and support for this entire project.

 

    

Steve and Alec thinking about Alec's ideas for an electric motor.

 

                                                 Steve also put in a couple of new planks that electrolysis had got at, but otherwise the acajou planks were in splendid shape. However we decided to rout out everything between them and glue in splines (strips of hardwood) between them, despite the immense labour involved. At one point, I had a Russian and a Ukrainian on the job, the Ukrainian having been wounded fighting the Russians. Poor bloke wasn't really fit for the job and didn't last, but Anatole the Russian, who had fled the 'mafia state' years ago, became a great stalwart for the Anna M. He had come from the shores of Lake Baikal in Siberia, and lives at Nazaré in a boat that he built himself. 

    It was indeed lucky we had him, because routing out between the planks and gluing in the splines was an immense labour, along with sanding them off. 

    We could have gone for varnishing or painting those lovely planks, but I didn't fancy maintaining that in my old age, and decided to go for an epoxy skin....

Firstly two layers of sheet glassfibre with epoxy...

 

Lulu from Belfast icing the cake,

then comes the icing on the cake, loads of epoxy fattened up with microballoons and colloidal silica,- 

and Toly (Anatole) on the job.

 

 

We ended up with two different batches, and colours, of microballoons...,

but it was all the same when she was painted!

 

Meanwhile, a lot of work went on inside the hull, with the rebuilding of the cockpit and the cabin. I had my own ideas about all that, more with practicality in mind than anything else. Instead of huge cockpit underseat lockers, used mainly for carrying spare cans of diesel and other junk, and a hell-hole under the cockpit with very difficult access to the steering etc, we now have two quarter berths, a more roomy saloon, and a smaller cockpit (I saw breaking seas fill the old one on a couple of occasions) with a bridge deck for steering.

   

The beautiful but somewhat rickety old wheel has been replaced by a functional metal one which drives the new hydraulic steering, so one can steer with some shelter on the bridge-deck and actually see what is in front of the boat. One had to stand on the deck aft to do so previously. I was delighted with the new set-up on the passage from Nazaré. The cockpit is also much better for fishing purposes!  Indeed the whole cabin is more basic now, but there are less fancy bits of gear to go wrong, the galley is much more liveable, the new heads functional, and the forecastle, though it has lost the second loo, has a work-bench and more space.

 

  John O'Mahoney of Belco Marine Electronics came out to spend a few days aboard rewiring the boat, and now, on the mooring here in Moaña, we have loads of power for domestic consumption. It would be great to pass the surplus into a battery bank for propulsion, but I do not imagine it would get us far! I am still hanging on to the original idea of using the power of the wind through the sails and the propellor for this. 

    If tied up in a marina of course it should not be a problem to recharge, and there is the possibility of a little diesel generator, but I tend to think the real answer will be some kind of fuel cells (hydrogen, methanol, ethanol, ammonia?) It's all of course more complex than Alec and I bargained for initially. Nonetheless, if we just wait for some top-down solution, we are likely to be waiting too long. God knows, oil could be three times the price it is now this time next year, and anyway I am an old man in a hurry. Eightieth birthday this coming November! 

    Just one other facet of the renovation, which has taken a good deal of effort lately, is that of the rig. Apart from the forestay, the standing rigging had all been up since before I owned it, and way longer than is recommended for stainless steel, which indeed I regard as a somewhat unreliable and brittle material.

For instance, the stainless steel rod to which the baby forestay was attached just parted on our recent passage. Besides, all that rigging was both a lot of weight aloft and above all, prohibitably expensive to replace. In one of many strokes of good fortune, Ian Major, originally from South Africa but having built his boat in England's West Country, turned up and parked his boat beside the Anna M, and he had used the plaited Dyneema synthetic rope for his rigging, which is extremely strong and easy to neatly splice. 

    I bought two coils of Dyneema and Ian helped me to set it up for the lateral shrouds.I bought some galvanised chain at the agricultural coop for the downhauls, which Alec derided but is supposed to have 1.5 ton breaking strain, though my big bolt cutters can cut it, which is very handy. I have left the stainless steel fore and aft stays, which are very heavy and at present carry sails with hanks. If I can ever afford it, the whole suit of sails will be overhauled.

    I have already spent way more than I should have on this boat, but what are old men for, if not for dreaming dreams? Besides sails and autonomous drives, I dream of a whole new Christian civilisation, if only we can get through the coming few years,- a much gentler, slower and more organic civilisation, with everyone more self-reliant and responsible, with open and accountable institutions. 

    The EU for instance is vital, but must take subsidiarity much more seriously. We should be encouraging regionalism, Western, Central, Eastern and Mediterranean being obvious starting points. I am an enthusiast for a Western region centred on the 'Celtic triangle' of Ireland, Brittany and Galicia, - by no means exclusively! Cracking this problem of how to power small craft seems a pretty good place to start,- we are talking of rebuilding the whole culture, but what could be more basic than navigating that old Bay of Biscay, as people did for ages before we found out what hydro-carbons could do,- and how destructive reliance on them could become! 

    Meanwhile, there is the best of fun to be had juggling such problems, but for me there is a bit of a race on, between someone coming along with a decent offer for the Anna M, and the other possibility of a partner coming along who wants to use her as a research, development and demonstration platform for alternative power. I tried in Portugal, and continue to do so in Ireland, but am currently focussing on Galicia and Brittany.

    Meanwhile, it was a huge relief to get the dear old boat sailing again, saying goodbye with grateful thanks to Nazaré. The passage to Moaña was splendid, and it was fantastic to find a mooring and a friendly welcome here. I get the impression that these are real sea people, who positively enjoy looking out at a wooden schooner moored off their town. I want her to repeat the trick, with a new electric drive, all over the Gannetsway!

Off Moaña

I am writing this aboard, off Moaña, hoping that I might find someone interested in this project, for instance at the Centro Tecnolóxico do Mar in Vigo or the University of Vigo's Centro de Investigación Marina. I am also pursuing interest in Brittany.

    Very many people have been involved in the decade-long saga of getting this far. It was of course complicated by covid and all the mayhem that went with it, and also by myself undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. However I learnt a lot and made many friends, and looking back on it, it was all good experience. I'm dubious about thanking everyone by name, because there will be some left out. In fact I will save it for another post, dedicated especially to them all!

Nazaré to Moaña

On the Feast of St James, Anna M sailed up the Ría de Vigo with a glorious NNW breeze, and we dropped anchor in the Ensenada de Moaña just above Vigo on the north side of the Ría. It had been an epic three weeks, since we had landed in Nazaré unsure of whether we would even be able to extricate Anna M from where she had been so long stranded while her hull was virtually rebuilt. I would never have managed without the help of our Cristíona and her friend Romain from Lyon. Happily for me, Cristíona took on the management of money and she is very good at firmly charming people into cooperating!

    In the end everything fell into place remarkably well, Ian from South Africa helping with the rigging, Tole from Siberia with last minute woodwork like installing the cooker, and of course Alec who moved the Anna M on his zaney trailer, hoisted up the masts and finally got the hydraulic steering working. We had several strokes of what is commonly called luck, especially Victor who drives the travel lift going on his holidays after he had lifted us into the water, so we were able to stay on the waiting pontoon for a few days while we got the rig up, the steering sorted, stores in and many smaller jobs done. Eventually, on the afternoon of July 23rd, we sailed off the pontoon, and squeezed out through the awkward harbour entrance with a bit of help from a fisherman whom I had primed with a bottle of Irish whiskey.

Leaving Nazaré

    With mixed feelngs of gratitude and relief, we soon left Nazaré behind. The west wind which had made it difficult to get out of the harbour was perfect for sailing up the coast, keeping out well due north with the North Star to steer by. As forecast, the wind veered more NW for the second night, and we ended up raising the Portuguese coast north of Porto sooner than I had wanted, so we had to take a few tacks after Viana do Castelo, before getting a bit free of the wind for a splendid sail up the Ría de Vigo.

    At Moaña we were welcomed by a friendly marinero from the marina, who put us on a mooring of theirs in the sheltered corner just to the north of it. We just had time to get everything straightened out in time to get home for the clan gathering in Clare,- a handy enough 9 hour journey from boat to house. This effected a remarkable change in climate, the temperature falling from 30 degrees + to 20 - . Actually I'm not sure which I prefer, they both have advantages and disadvantages, and I suppose one is lucky who can enjoy the luxury of hopping from one to the other now and again.

    However once you're trying to work in anything above the mid 30s, it's definitely not fun, and it is very delicious to come back to our cool, green garden. With a national emergency in Spain as we left because of wild fires, I occasionally find time to dip into the debates around our response to climate change etc. Why it should be so difficult to adopt a simple, centrist position (like my own), remains a bit of a mystery. I suppose it comes down to money!

    There may well be plenty of oil and gas still to be extracted, but human appetite for energy appears insatiable and there is after all a finite amount of them. When they are gone, they are gone indeed. If we were to depend on them entirely, the tensions involved in access to them, which are very bad already, would only get worse. Altogether they seem irretrievably involved with graft, power hunger, not to mention plain ordinary filth, and that's before we get to their role in climate change.

    I happened to tune into an interview with an American professor called Scott (never discovered his full name) on Triggernometry who seemed very reasonable, but then he came up with the statement that 'there is no such thing as renewable energy', which seemed to me foolish. He was making the point that batteries, electric motors etc also require a lot of stuff from the ground, but it seems to me that they are hardly limited resources in the way hydro-carbons are. We shall get better at recycling materials for solar panels and so on, but there is no recycling fossil fuel. 

    He also seemed assured that we have the right to go on endlessly demanding more and more energy, while his mind didn't stretch to the possibility of a civilisational collapse. It seems to me that we should always keep such a possibility in mind, along with the inevitability of our own personal demise and that of the entire world, but all this need not depress nor terrify us. For one thing, it should teach us to value and enjoy each and every present moment with its many gifts, such as the beautiful great shearwaters that winged their way past us the other day. We all need to slow down instead of everlastingly hurrying nowhere, and in the case of sailing boats, the presence of a diesel engine is destructive in many ways.  

    Our recent passage without auxiliary power was a case in point. No smelly and expensive oil required, no vibration, smell or pollution, more seamanship required and hence satisfaction derived. I do not however want to do without technology, I just think we should be much more serious about developing the intermediate stuff, which is not to deny that a diesel engine can be a very useful bit of kit. Let those who want to use them do so, but let us also show that the use of them could be more enjoyable if there was not the same pressure attached, and that the alternatives could be much more fun.    

    So I remain very interested in the idea of a company to research and develop the alternatives for sailing and fishing craft, but as for the Anna M, while in my view she would provide an ideal platform for such work, I have brought her as far as I can with my own resources. I shall go on working at her in little ways, but she still requires serious investment if she is to be put to serious use again. With my eightieth birthday coming up, I have to put her on the market, but how delighted I shall be to help with realising the dream if others come out of the woodwork to carry it onward!