Boat Plans Building | The truth about offshore sailing

Boat Plans Building

IT’S HARD TO EXPLAIN to a landlubber what offshore sailing is all about. But William G. Homewood found a way to do it, after he had raced from Newport, Rhode Island, to Bermuda and back in a Ranger 26.

This is his description, as recorded in Richard Henderson’s book, Choice Yacht Designs:

“First, at home, you should go into the bedroom fully dressed and pour a bucket of water over your head. Put on your foul-weather gear and harness.  Prop up one side of the bed to an angle of 20 degrees, then pour a bucket of water over the pillow and bedding.

“Engage the services of a fork-lift (and operator) who will lift one corner of your house up into the air six feet and then let it drop down with a bang.  He should do this all night long, intermittently, without warning. Now, go to bed.

“After one hour of sleep it will be time to get out of bed, open the sliding door to the balcony, and peer out (checking the sails). At this moment a friend, well hidden, should throw a bucket of water onto the back of your head. Your jacket hood must be in the off position, as this will allow the water to run down your neck. . . .  As  you turn to go back into the bedroom, another well-hidden friend should club you over the head with a two-by-four. This simulates head blows from the  bulkheads. . . .”

There’s more that a landlubber needs to know, of course. You should fill your rubber boots with water and you should remember to throw up only on the lee side of the cockpit. You should preferably practice walking with one leg shorter than the other so as to remain upright on the slanted deck and you should develop arms like a gorilla’s so you can hang on to the handholds when a wave tries to wash you overboard.

You should also practice holding your bladder for at least eight hours because it’s impossible to get a hand on the outlet from your urinary tract when you’ve got a whole bunch of layers of clothing and waterproof pants on.

As for cheerful, sustaining hot meals — um, well, sorry feller. Ain’t gonna happen.

Today’s Thought

We have all sinned and come short of the glory of making ourselves as comfortable as we easily might have done.

— Samuel Butler the Younger, The Way of All Flesh

Tailpiece

Adolescence is a period of rapid change. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for instance, a parent can age as much as 20 years.

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

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Kayak Boat Plans | Earth moving for garden landscaping

Kayak Boat Plans

A topic that has vaguely troubled me for some years is the doubtful status in planning terms of engineering works carried out in a domestic garden in order to realise some of the more adventurous garden designs that are publicised on TV as well as in various magazines.

The General Permitted Development Order is of limited assistance here. Part 1, Class E permits the provision within the curtilage of (among other things) any building or enclosure, swimming or other pool, required for the enjoyment of the dwellinghouse as such. “Building” would include anything that amounts to a structure, so various built features could be included in the design, subject to the limitations and conditions set out in Class E. For example, raised decking (or any balcony or other raised platform) is ruled out if its height from natural ground level is greater than 300 millimetres. Class F also permits hard surfacing, and this is not limited as to its area (in contrast with Class E). [There are, of course, exclusions, limitations and conditions in Class E, which I have discussed in a previous blog post, and do not propose to repeat here.]

When addressing a meeting of SWENFORCE (South West enforcement officers) last week, I speculated that one might also rely on Part 2 in respect of fences, gates, walls and other means of enclosure, but an earth bund (which could in principle come within Part 2 if it performs the function of enclosure) would not be permitted development if it was wider than is really necessary to perform that function or if it does not in reality act as a means of enclosure. In some circumstances, it might be possible to argue that raised banking in the garden does in fact constitute a structure, and is therefore permitted development under Part 1, Class E, but the position remains uncertain.

What is certainly not covered by the GPDO is more extensive excavation, and other earth-moving, taking the form of engineering operations rather than building operations. And yet I can think of quite a few garden landscaping schemes, even involving fairly extensive earth-moving, which have produced an entirely acceptable garden landscape, and which have no appreciable impact in planning terms. It seems to me that there is a lacuna in this respect in the GPDO, and there should perhaps be an additional Class within Part 1 of the Second Schedule to cater for works of this type.

The enforcement officers to whom I was lecturing had not encountered this problem in the course of their work, and this certainly accords with my own impression that most local planning authorities turn a blind eye to what in theory might be unauthorised development in the garden, presumably because no-one ever complains about it. The problem is that if a jealous or resentful neighbour does complain, there may be one or two enforcement officers who will see it as their mission to charge into action over it.

I am only aware of one appeal decision that is in any way relevant to this topic. Enforcement action was taken by Greenwich LBC against works carried out in the rear garden of a house as part of a televised makeover of the garden (instigated and broadcast by the BBC no less!). However, this action appears to have been directed at the structures that had been built, including two cube structures and an area of decking, plus a structure made out of old telegraph poles. In practice, it seems that it was only the height of these that was a problem, and the inspector accepted that reducing them below 3 metres in height would be acceptable. The question of any earth-moving or other landscaping does not seems to have arisen in this case.

In practice, even if the earth-works do amount to engineering operations, it is very unlikely in most cases that it would be expedient, under section 172, to serve an enforcement notice, and I would hope that common sense would prevail. I can’t recall off-hand if the NPPG repeats earlier ministerial advice to the effect that enforcement action should not be taken simply in order to ‘regularise’ the position where planning permission has not been obtained for development, if the development is doing no real harm in planning terms, but this principle should apply in any event.

The proper and permanent solution, however, would be an amendment of Part 1 of the Second Schedule to GPDO to permit engineering works for the purpose of landscaping a domestic garden. No doubt it would be necessary to set certain parameters, but this would be better than the continuance of the uncertain and unsatisfactory situation that obtains at present.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

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Boat Plans Butler | Use common sense in fog

Boat Plans Butler

IT’S NOVEMBER. The last of the spiders are drifting off on their silken threads, the air is cooling rapidly, and fog is creeping into the coves and straits overnight. Fog is dangerous for boaters who lack radar, as most of us do. Fog is especially frightening when you are caught out on a passage. What advice do I have?

Well, frankly, there isn’t much advice to give about getting caught in fog that isn’t covered by common sense. I mean, if you see a fog bank forming ahead, and you have a chance to turn back to a safe anchorage, do so. It’s the seamanlike action to take. Otherwise, you’re stuck with it.

Fog is treacherous. Go slowly and listen very carefully. If fog catches you out, try to get into shallow water and anchor there. Oftentimes that’s easier said than done, of course.

You should raise a radar reflector as high as you can, so other vessels with radar sets will see you. And you should be meticulous about making the right sound signal every two minutes or less. I have noticed that too many skippers are very lax about this. I have even traveled on a Washington State ferry that made no sound signals in thick fog, presumably relying on radar and AIS and clearance from Seattle Traffic Control, which can’t possibly tell the ferry if a small craft, invisible to radar, is in its path. There’s no warning for a small craft in the path of the ferry, either.

If you’re sailing, the correct signal is one long blast and two short blasts. That’s also the signal by a vessel not under command, or restricted by her ability to maneuver. The same signal comes from a vessel engaged in fishing, or towing or pushing another vessel.

If you’re under power, the fog signal (and the signal in any kind of restricted visibility, by the way) is one long blast every two minutes or less.

And one last tip — take along a horn that you can blow into. The fog horns that work off cans of compressed air don’t always work. I can vouch for that. I can also tell you that blowing the damn horn as loud as you can every two minutes is a pain in the you-know-what. You can’t go anywhere or do anything that lasts more than one minute, fifty-nine seconds. It puffs your cheeks out and raises your blood pressure. It makes you dizzy and produces black spots before your eyes. But it’s better than being run down at sea. So do it.

Today’s Thought

He that bringeth himself into needless dangers dieth the devil’s martyr.

— Thomas Fuller, Holy War

Tailpiece

“I’ve found out why production has slowed down since you got that second computer.”

“Good. What’s wrong?”

“The big computer’s shoving all the work on to the little computer.”

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Boat Plans Bolger | Epoxy warfare on my deck

Boat Plans Bolger

AFTER PAINTING TWO BOATS with twin-pack polyurethane paint, I thought I knew all about polyester urethanes. I was wrong.

After I had finished the second boat, the surveyor came along. Tap, tap, tap, he went, all over the hull and decks of my sweet little 22-foot Santana.

He approached me with a long face. “Bad news,” he said, “your deck is delaminating.”

“What?” I cried. “Impossible. I’ve just been all over it. Sanded it. Painted it. There was nothing wrong with it.”

“Come and listen,” he said. He tapped the deck and it made that sickening dull thud, instead of a nice bright ring.

“Omigod,” I said.

There was no doubt about it. Something was badly amiss. We pondered it together, and eventually I decided there was nothing to lose.

I took a sharp knife and cut into the deck. I pulled back a strip. It was all paint. The deck underneath was as solid as ever.

“The paint hasn’t stuck,” the surveyor said. “How did you do this?”

I told him I’d sanded down the old deck paint. I applied a coat of Interlux epoxy primer. Then, having run out of that particular paint on the weekend, I grabbed some more epoxy primer from my nearest Ace Hardware store, and applied that. Before it cured, I sprinkled sand over it, 30-grit sand from a local builder’s yard. When the epoxy dried, I brushed off the excess sand lying on top with a soft brush.

Then I painted on two coats of Interlux twin-pack polyurethane. The result was magnificent. Better than new. Much better. Until the surveyor came along.

We poked around the deck some more and found that we could peel the new deck off by hand. Large chunks of  it came away as we togged. The epoxy and polyurethane and sand had formed a thick pliable skin — but it was not attached to the old deck. Underneath this skin, and on top of the old deck, was a sweet-smelling layer of some kind of liquid chemical.

“Aha,” said the surveyor, who was a smart man. “Incompatible epoxies.” He explained that the Interlux epoxy and the Ace Hardware epoxy had not liked each other. They had not got on well together at all. One of the other had revolted and formed this liquid layer that had prevented the top layers from sticking to the deck.

So I pulled off the new layer of deck paint like you’d peel the skin off a banana, scrubbed the whole deck down with acetone, and started again, this time with two epoxy coats from Interlux. And this time it worked. But it was a hard way to learn that different epoxies hate each other so much. I always thought epoxy was epoxy. Anyway, for someone who thought he knew all about twin-pack polyurethane, it was a humbling lesson.

Today’s Thought

Good painting is like good cooking: it can be tasted, but not explained.

— Vlaminck, On Painting

Tailpiece

“Johnny, who was the roundest knight at the Round Table of King Arthur?”

“Sir Cumference, sir.”

“Very good. And how did he achieve his great size?”

“From too much pi, sir.”

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Plywood Boat Plans | Common sense about the Green Belt

Plywood Boat Plans

I get the impression that there is a gradual dawning of realisation, not only within certain think tanks but also among ministers and their advisers, that Green Belt policy has been allowed to get out of hand, and that far too much land has been designated as Green Belt, with the result that there is no longer sufficient land readily available near existing towns and cities to meet the urgent requirement for house-building where it is needed. The penalty is a chronic housing shortage and spiralling house prices, particularly in the South-east of England.

The original object of establishing the Green Belt was to discourage uncontrolled urban sprawl into the open countryside around our larger towns and cities and to prevent the coalescence of two or more large neighbouring towns. No-one would disagree with that broad objective; but two undesirable elements have crept into Green Belt policies over the years.

First, the Green Belts have been expanded to a far greater extent than was originally intended and to a far greater extent than is necessary to achieve their objective. For example, the Metropolitan Green Belt around London was intended to be about 12 to 15 miles deep. In some places it is now well over 30 miles deep. I recall, for instance, massive extensions to the Green Belt in Surrey in the 1980s for which there was no need and no objective justification. Our Green Belts now encompass huge areas of land that ought never to have been incorporated in them.

There needs to be a fundamental review of the extent of the Green Belt throughout the country, with a view to reducing substantially the extent of their designated area. This review should proceed on the presumption that extensions of Green Belts that have occurred within the past 35 years should be reversed unless there are very convincing reasons for those extensions, having regard to the primary objective of the Green Belts.

Local political pressures are so strong that it would be impracticable for this to be dealt with at a local level. This is an exercise that will have to be carried out on a national level by central government. Notions of localism are simply going to have to be suspended, if not abandoned altogether as totally unrealistic in face of the dire housing crisis facing the country. Local planning authorities should be required to revise Green Belt boundaries in accordance with the conclusions of this departmental review.

In future, there should be a very strong presumption against further extensions of existing Green Belts. There should, on the other hand, be regular reviews of both the inner and outer boundaries of Green Belts to examine the desirability of removing further land from the Green Belt if changed circumstances require this.

The second undesirable element that has crept into Green Belt policy is an entirely unnecessary and inappropriate rigidity in the treatment of development proposals, which seeks to resist all development in the Green Belt unless either it is deemed to be ‘appropriate’ development or exceptional circumstances can be demonstrated. This rigidity has been further compounded by the unfortunate wording of the relevant policy guidance in the NPPF, compared with the wording of the former PPG2. [See Europa Oil and Gas Limited v. SSCLG [2013] EWHC 2643 (Admin) and Fordent Holdings Ltd v SSCLG [2013] EWHC 2844 (Admin), referred to in this blog on Friday, 1 November 2013 – “Inappropriate Development in the Green Belt”.]

Rather than this increasingly inflexible approach, the advice in the NPPF should be amended to indicate that within Green Belts development should not be permitted which would prejudice the objectives of the Green Belt and/or which would compromise its openness, but that in determining applications for development in the Green Belt local planning authorities should examine the contribution that the application site in question makes to the Green Belt (in other words, its ‘Green Belt value’). It would thus be the impact of the development on the Green Belt as a whole that would be the determining factor, rather than the ‘appropriateness’ of the development in the Green Belt (in land use terms) or any question of exceptional circumstances being required to justify the development. The essential point is that Green Belts are not and never have been intended to create wholly development-free zones in the countryside.

There is one other issue that also needs to be addressed when considering Green Belt boundaries. Over the years a number of anomalies have been created by inept drawing of the Green Belt boundaries. There are quite a few examples, for instance, of the Green Belt boundary cutting across the middle of a residential curtilage. This makes no sense at all, and should be corrected. A related problem is the drawing of a thick line on small-scale maps, with the result that it is impossible to tell with any precision where the Green Belt boundary actually lies. This is an issue that can be addressed by local planning authorities right now, without having to wait for any change of ministerial policy. In their Delivery DPDs (or equivalent DPDs, following adoption of their Core Strategies), local planning authorities should take the opportunity of ironing out anomalies of this sort in the detailed Green Belt boundary at a local level. This is an issue that must be urgently addressed, and not merely in relation to recently fixed Green Belt boundaries, but also in respect of boundaries where these anomalies have existed for a good many years. Local councils really must grasp this nettle, or face the possibility of challenges by way of judicial review if they fail to address the point in their second stage DPDs.

Revision of the NPPF (and/or of the NPPG, as appropriate) should reiterate the principle that the Green Belt boundary should be established on a strong defensible line. This should be a clearly defined and reasonably permanent physical feature in the landscape, such as a river, road or railway. Drawing the boundary across the middle of fields or gardens is totally unsatisfactory, and even field boundaries may not be sufficiently permanent to form a reliable long-term boundary. At the very least, the Green Belt boundary should exclude existing residential development (except in settlements where the Green Belt ‘washes over’ the entire village) and this exclusion must extend to the whole of the residential curtilage. What is required is not a straight line but a clearly defined and readily defensible boundary, even if this may look untidy on a map.

The knee-jerk reaction, both locally from the NIMBYs and nationally from the usual suspects, such as the CPRE, whenever any reform or relaxation of Green Belt policy is suggested must be ignored. These people have become accustomed to regard the planning system as a useful tool for resisting change. But such protests should not deter either this government or its successors after the General Election next year from carrying through this necessary reform of Green Belt policy, so as to enable the essential expansion of housing development around our towns and cities.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

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Boat Plans Bartender | Sorting out the urethanes

Boat Plans Bartender

I’VE DONE MY FAIR SHARE of painting boats, both wooden and fiberglass, but I was only vaguely aware of the difference between polyester urethane and acrylic urethane. However, I was looking through some notes the other day and came across a copy of an e-mail that explains things quite nicely.

I believe I originally found it on the Cape Dory bulletin board. In any case, it was posted by someone called Brandon, of Fort Lauderdale, who owned a 1985 Cape Dory 25D called Seamona. Here is what he had to say:

“The difference between the two, without getting long and boring boils down to this:

“Polyester urethane molecules are much smaller than acrylic molecules. So when they cure, the polyester urethane forms a tighter matrix, which gives a harder, more abrasion-resistant film, with better chemical resistance than acrylic.

“Acrylics are more forgiving in application, trap less dust, and are buffable. When an acrylic urethane is buffed, due to the lower cross-link density the melting point of the resin is much lower, i.e., it is softer. When buffing is carried out the resin-rich layer "melts" and reflows into the scratch. It is possible to retain an intact resin-rich layer at the surface protecting the pigments, and not losing significant thickness. The edges of touch-ups can be blended carefully in the same way. Long-term performance is not affected, as much of the resin layer remains.

“With the polyester urethane, the paint is a very hard, rigid film, and to get rid of a scratch you need to cut deeply into the paint, leading to the exposure of the pigments. This looks shiny to begin with but the long-term performance of the finish is now compromised.
“I am currently following the build of a 95 footer in Viareggio, Italy. We are using Awlcraft (Snow White), and almost finished painting her. I am happy to use the acrylic because we have found fairing issues on the hull, even with the white paint, and with the acrylic we can re-fair this 6-square-foot area, reshoot the area, and blend in. We dont have to repaint the entire 95-foot topside as we would with the polyester!

“OK . . . so maybe I got long and boring.”
Today’s Thought

Paintin’s not important. The important thing is keepin’ busy.

— Anna Mary Robertson Moses (“Grandma Moses”)

Tailpiece

Mary has a cool, cool gown,
It’s almost slit to bits.
Who gives a damn for Mary’s lamb
When we can see her calf?

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