Teal is launched
By early June Teal was nearly ready for launching. The repairs to the transom, stem and sternpost were completed, primed and undercoated. The decks were sanded and painted, and looked smart. The first of three coats of cream paint was going onto the topsides... in just a couple of days we would be ready to hit the water. I found Arthur jacking level an enormous steel motor yacht that had been pulled up on the slip.
‘Launching? Got to get the prop off this thing... fetching another boat with the landrover tomorrow – and I’m meant to be retired.’ But for all his grumbling he would get her launched soon. There was plenty to occupy us in the meantime. We started antifouling the bottom of the hull, slapped some varnish on the mast and then dressed it firstly with the stays and shrouds and the new spreaders, and then the running rigging. I had to take the throat halyard crane off to slip the eyes of the shrouds down to the hounds, but the nut holding it on was rusted solid. The thread sheared off as I took the spanner to it. This was a real pain. It would need a new bolt welded on, and I didn’t have the kit handy to do that sort of work. I took the broken part along to Jim, who found a bolt and welded it up for me for a tenner – a good and solid repair, as strong as the original. Ah well - I could no longer boast that I had done the refit entirely without professional help.
The 8th June dawned still and hot. Really properly hot, positively sweltering. I could see the smart new paint cracking along the seams as the wood beneath dried and shrank in the heat. I set Catherine and Oli to work with more red lead to fill more seams under the waterline.
I had assumed the big tracked crane down by the water would be used to lift Teal from her cradle. No, no, said Arthur – the hill is too steep for it, and the tracks slip on the concrete. Up by the road was a tiny red crane, an ancient contraption that I had assumed had been put out to graze a considerable time previously after a long career of hard labour. All the while I had been in the yard she had lain there rusting peacefully, slumbering away with the nettles growing around and through her. But, like Arthur, for the crane old age was no excuse to take life easily. Late in the morning Jim struggled up the hill with a huge barrel of hydraulic fluid that he tipped into the creature. A little while later, after some preliminary snores and belches, she awoke, spluttering indignantly. I couldn’t believe she was up to the job. She looked so small, tired and old. But Jim had climbed into the cab and was wrestling with the controls. There was a lurch... she was moving, jerking and protesting. Jim – not a lightweight by any means – had to pull with all his might on the steering wheel to get her to turn, stripped to his waist and sweating profusely in the hot sun. As she turned to face down the hill Arthur stood close by with a couple of blocks to shove under the wheels should the brakes fail. It was a close thing, but she just managed to stop in time.
Watching her lift Teal was nerve racking. Surely the tiny red crane didn’t have enough weight to counterbalance my little, but surprisingly heavy ship? It looked like the back wheels were about to lift any second, tipping the whole caboodle over. But no, she was a game little thing, and somehow she made it. I was happier when Teal was firmly on the back of Arthurs trailer behind his solid, buisness-like land rover.
He took her down to the waterside and left her there for an hour or so while the tide came up. We took the chance to antifoul the patches on the hull where she had rested on her cradle, and to go nervously round with the tub of red lead putty to stop once again any tiny crack that might still be able to let the water in.
Arthur jumped onto the big crane down by the water, lifted my little ship gently from the trailer, swung her round, and slowly began to lower her so that her keel kissed the water for the first time in 6 years. How much would she leak? I had heard of old dried-out wooden boats being launched and disappearing straight under water as the water poured in sheets through the seams. I had made my helpers go round the boat three times now with red lead and I thought she should be pretty tight, but it was such a long time she had been out the water, and this game was new to me – I didn’t know what to expect. As her keel gradually submerged I could hear the sound of gushing water. Damn. Where could it be coming from? As soon as she floated I jumped on board and looked below. Phew – it was only a small fountain from one of the toilet seacocks that I hadn’t fully closed. I turned the valve and the gushing stopped. The odd drop was trickling through between the planks here and there, but she was remarkably dry, and as the wood swelled up most of those leaks would close up.
In the evening Peter came round to visit with 5-year old Ben and 3-year old Kate. We hadn’t been able to book the queen, so in her absence my god-daughter did the honours of the launching ceremony, pouring a small offering of sparkling wine onto the bows. We didn’t waste the rest.
Teal looked very different now she was afloat. Before, we had always been looking up to her, and noticed mainly her deep body – the solid weight of her stocky frame and the gentle curves of her underwater profile. Now that was hidden, and instead the eye followed the sweet understated sweep of her sheer above her low topsides, and the pleasing proportions of her uncluttered little coachroof. She looked so small now though! I didn’t like to think of being in a gale with a cockpit so small you could sit in it and dip your hand in the water without having to lean over.
It was nearly another week before we left Maldon, for even after launching there was plenty to do on the boat. The mainmast had to be carried down and erected in place, which we accomplished with a spiders web of ropes and tackles to heave it upright.
Another job was to get the loo working. Teal had come with a type of sea toilet that operates on a vacuum principle – after doing your business you close the lid to create a seal, and pump away lustily. The pump pulls your doings out, and the vacuum created by their going sucks in seawater through another pipe to flush. They generally work well, but I’ve never really liked them as the seal on the lid always seems to leave a slightly unpleasant slimy residue on the seat. So when I’d been at a boat jumble not long before and seen a second-hand Baby Blake for sale for a bargain 45 quid I had snaffled it quickly. Baby Blakes are the Bentleys of Bogs; magnificent Victorian contraptions of chromed bronze and porcelain. They retail new for a staggering 900 quid, so I thought I’d got myself a bargain, even if most of the chrome was wearing thin. After stripping it down to clean it up, I discovered why it was cheap - it was unfortunately missing a vital part. The valve in the pump should consist of a heavy bronze ball that sits in a hole just a little smaller in the plunger. On the down stroke the ball lifts, allowing one's doo-doos past; on the up stroke, it sits in the hole and forms a seal. Clever. It’s far sturdier than the usual flaps of rubber in these things – but in my crapper the ball had vanished. I had been meaning since I discovered this to ring Blakes and find out what a big bronze ball would cost. But I have a suspicion it would have cost more than I had paid for the loo, and in any case I was running out of time for such niceties. In the end I nipped up to a sports shop in the high street and bought a golf ball. It fitted perfectly. It's still there.
It was Oli who helped build a new pedestal for the Baby Blake and bolted it on. Sadly he was a little over-enthusiastic with his spanners, and tightened one bolt a little too much, so that the porcelain cracked. At the time I glued it together, and that repair lasted almost all summer – after the glue did finally fail and the bog was out of action for a few days I added a big jubilee clip to hold the broken bits together.
Oli got some sad news around this time though. His grandmother suffered a stroke, and the prognosis was not good. So he wouldn’t be able to come on the North Sea crossing after all. I was sorry to see him go, for I had been planning to take him and Julian with me as my first crewmembers. Sadly, she died while Julian and I were at sea.
Putting back all the deck fittings that we had taken off for the fibreglassing took some time, not least because the fibreglass now covered the original holes for the fittings and so we didn’t know where to put them! Attaching the spars and leading all the running rigging also involved a deal of guesswork as I had never seen her rigged, and the old bits of rope that I had pulled off the mast were so manky and rotten I hadn’t bothered to note how they were led.
Every day Teal looked a bit more purposeful. One day Julian and Rachel were helping with the rigging, and Richard came up to help for the evening. I had spent some time during the day sorting out the compass, which had a large bubble in it. I vaguely recalled reading in some ancient nautical tome that neat alcohol was traditionally used to fill compasses, but I didn’t have any. I had some meths, but I was reluctant to use too much of it in case it turned the compass purple.
I carefully took out the little filling plug, and I did pour a little bit of meths in to see if it did mix with whatever was in there. But then I had an inspiration. Surely white spirit would mix with the alcohol and so I could top up the remainder with that? I poured some in, but was disturbed to find that it didn’t mix with the liquid that was in there at all, it just formed an unpleasant murky layer on the top. That would never do. Perhaps this compass wasn’t filled with alcohol. Perhaps a little paraffin would mix with whatever was in there? I tried some: no, it made it even worse. But I hadn’t recently completed a chemistry PhD for nothing. I knew what was needed when liquids didn’t mix – a bit of surfactant to create an emulsion. I added a few drops of washing up liquid, gave the thing a good shake, and inspected it. Ah, that was better. Perhaps a little cloudy, but at least it was all mixed up now and the bubble had gone. I screwed it back into position in the bulkhead and forgot about it.
Richard was keen to go for a trial sail, and it was an evening high tide so Teal was just about to float. We got the oars out – there wasn’t a breath of wind – and gently drifted upstream with the last of the flood.
We couldn’t get far, as there is a bridge only ¼ mile upstream of the boatyard. On the way back we hoisted a jib, though I’ve seldom seen a stiller evening. So much for Teals first sail. We enjoyed it though, drinking beer and chatting in the warm still evening.
We berthed facing out into the river, as Teal's bowsprit had been perilously close to the boat in front when we had rigged her, and we would have a lot more room by turning her round. The sun had set now, and it was getting dark. Richard glanced at the compass.
“Is that really south?” he asked curiously. I had never really thought about it. “Well, yeah, guess it must be” I replied. The conversation turned to other things, but in the back of my mind something was nagging me. Hang on a minute... I’m sure the sun rises over there where the barges lie, and it’s still light upstream.... we must be pointing north. The compass was 180 degrees out!
The following day I took the thing apart and solved the mystery. The cocktail of solvents I had added had attacked the glue holding the two little magnets onto the compass card, and they had fallen off. The card didn’t care where it pointed any more, and so just turned as the boat did, and as we had turned 180 degrees between leaving and berthing again, so had it.
It was easy enough to glue the magnets back on with some silicone sealant, and I replaced all the liquid with water with just a bit of meths in to lower its freezing point, as there seemed to be nothing in the compass that would rust or react to water. I suspect the liquid that was originally there was actually just water with a bit of antifreeze. Whatever it was, the water and meths worked perfectly well as a replacement