This website has many more readers during the week (sorry employers), and it’s nearly the weekend and time is running out.

I’ve entered a competition to win a self steering wind vane, which if I’m to do what I intend to with the boat, I really need. The voting is open to the public, and it closes on Sunday. Despite a comfortable start to the voting, it’s now getting very close, so I really need your help.

A massive thank you to everybody that has voted already, but please consider spreading the word a bit if you can. If you haven’t voted, I’d be so very honoured if you could spare five minutes to support the adventures of Kudu.

You need to register with MrVane.com (don’t worry, they will not spam you. The people behind it are real sailors too).

****How to vote****

1. Visit http://www.mrvane.com/?q=user/register and fill in your details. If you don’t have a boat, but are interested in sailing, then just mention that.
2. You will get an email with your new password in it.
3. Log in to the site with the username/password in the email. You can use the link on the email, of click here
4. Go to the voting page (here), and if you think my vid is the best, vote for it at the bottom.

Everybody who votes goes in to a draw to win some nifty LED lighting too.

Voting finishes on Sunday, and I really need your help with this. I can’t do it on my own no matter how much effort I put in, so if you’ve enjoyed my videos or the posts on this site, please help me continue to make even more adventurous films and blog content.

Back to getting covered in sawdust for me then! Have a good weekend, and thank you sincerely for any votes.

Nathan

Please read this post. It could make all the difference to the future travels of Kudu.

Mr Vee, the very forward thinking wind vane manufacturers, have released a new product. It’s called the Y&B, which stands for yellow and black, and although there’s no official explanation as to why, I presume it’s down to the fact that it’s made of carbon fibre and fibre glass. It weighs 10.5kg, making it by far the lightest self steering system on the market.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, Mr Vee decided to promote their new product with a competition to win one of these new wind vanes. The task was to produce a video on the theme of yellow and black, which was no more than one and a half minutes long. The videos would then be opened to public voting, and the winner gets a self steering system.

Your support. Please please please please.

The voting opened today, and it closes on the 30th Jan. Your vote could help me win this system, and with a wind vane on the back of Kudu, I can really go places, and continue to write about, and film it.

If you have a spare 5 minutes, please register with Mr Vee here and once you’re signed up, vote for a video (hopefully mine, but that’s your choice) at the bottom of this page.

Mr Vane is not the kind of company that will spam you, so don’t worry about junk emails. They also make some amazing products, and as you can see from the website, they have a very personal approach to the business of sailing.

As a bonus, everybody who votes will be entered in to a draw to win some LED lighting.

Please vote. There’s absolutely no chance I can afford to buy a self steering system this year, so winning this would make a huge difference to me.

Thank you,

Nathan

I’ve just discovered that Amazon do nautical charts, and they’re cheaper than the chandlers shops.

New charts are a couple of quid cheaper (as well as having free delivery) and most of the charts have even cheaper alternatives if you don’t mind buying second hand. Bonus.

Anyway, if you’re in need of some charts for the coming season, have a butchers here.

It all comes with the added bonus of giving the Kudu project a tiny (I made £40 in the whole of 2010) bit of commission, which is very much welcome at the moment. Not that that’s why I have drawn you attention to this; I just thought I pass on my new found money saving tip.

It is proven beyond opinion that Robert Tucker’s Corribee design is a true classic of the British boat building golden age. The design has proven itself time and time again, and even to this day remains an incredibly popular boat. Indeed, Mr Tucker had many great design to his name, including the circumnavigating 19ft Caprice. It is certain that in the 1960’s and 70’s, Britain was one of, if not the, world leader in yacht design.

Sadly, this pioneering attitude doesn’t seem to have made it to the factory floor of some boatyards. When I had Vreli, my Tyler’s Cinder 22, I thought it was home finished because of the diabolical quality of the interior (not just beautifying trim, but bulkheads and other important structural areas), but having since found a few pictures of the factory finished models, I’m starting to wonder if it was indeed home finish at all.

My own Corribee has revealed faults too. In 2009 I was sailing off the Norfolk coast and was shocked to experience hideously loud bangs which sent equally violent shudders through the boat. A subsequent investigation revealed the lead ingot ballast was free to flop three inches from side to side in the encapsulated starboard keel. It had been as such since it left the factory at Newbridge.

Of course, these small boats where made to a price point, and because of that I don’t expect Halberg Rassy quality finish, but it seems that some of these British boatyards (at least Newbridge and Tylers) employed either incompetent, or more likely, lazy staff.

Take my latest discovery, for example.

The wooden pad under the mast compression post had gone a bit soft, so I set about replacing it. In doing so, I lifted the cabin sole boards, and while they were off I noticed the floors were all wobbly. Using ONLY my hands, and anybody who’s met me will agree I’m not the most powerfully built of chaps, I pulled them all off the hull.

The floors were held to the hull with two single layer pieces of roving. This is a pathetically weak construction at the best of times, but whoever put my boat together seems to have been particularly apathetic on that day, because as you can see in the picture above, it wasn’t even wetted properly. There’s bone dry roving there! Considering these men were supposed to be competent craftsmen, using a material that by 1976 was very well understood, I cannot believe for one moment that whoever was doing this job didn’t notice that what he’d done was entirely faulty. This is not once piece of roving, they were all poorly bonded. I should have not been able to pull the floors off the hull at all, even with just a single layer of properly wetted fibreglass.

Fortunately, both Tyler’s and Newbridge seem to have been very competent at moulding the hulls, but if this was the quality of work after that process, I must say it’s little wonder that both Newbridge and Tyler’s eventually went out of business.

I hope the few British builders that are left in business employ less bone idle staff.

Although I couldn’t get to the London Boat Show this year, those of you that did might have seen Oliver Rofix. He’s a 25 year old planning on sailing around the UK this year, but unlike me, he’s planned it properly and is raising money for something which has directly affected him.

In 2005 he was diagnosed with a rare form of Leukaemia, but with a lot of support from various establishments, and I should think an unimaginable amount of determination from himself, he pulled through after a bone marrow transplant and lots of chemotherapy.

Oliver has since done an outstanding job of refitting his 18ft boat, and on the 2nd May (oddly that’s exactly two years after I went for a wonder up the coast), he’s setting off on a round Britain sail to raise support for the Anthony Nolan Trust.

Please show him your support if you can. I know there’s constantly a stream of people raising money for various charities, and it seems that sailing around Blighty is all too common (although I assure you it’s not an easy venture, by a very long way), but this bloke has fought a battle against odds and pains that I certainly can’t begin to imagine, and I think he deserves some respect and support for coming through it with the determination not only to live his own life to the full, but to try and give more people the chance of doing so.

Oliver’s site is here, and I’d suggest reading this page; I’m not the most emotional of chaps, it must be said, but even I had to wipe a tear after reading that.

www.olivers-travels.co.uk

Since it’s that time of year again, I thought I’d offer a little present to you all.

I went out with the camera this morning to capture something I’ve never seen before. All the shots were of a (formerly) navigable stretch of the River Ribble.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNb3f52z2Jg

Happy Christmas from me and Kudu!

I’m ill, so this post will be kept fairly short I should think. Probably about the length of time it takes me to drink the rest of my Lemsip… or blacksip, as I prefer since Lemon is a horrid flavour.

When I woke up this morning I did so to -2. That is not -2 outside, that is -2 degrees centigrade inside the cabin. Minus two in my bedroom. Outside was a further 5 degrees down the thermometer. I had the alarm set for 0730, but the chill woke me with a shiver closer to 0500. Even under a down sleeping bag and a thick duvet, I was too cold to get comfortable. No point staying in bed then, was there. I got up and went for a shower.

Even the showers were struggling with the freezing temperatures. The icy water it sucked up from underground pipes could only be heated to a lukewarm rain, even with the heat dial turned to maximum. Still, lukewarm was better than freezing, so I stayed put for half an hour in a soapy trance.

Mercifully, I’d managed to get some work for today, so I spent the entire day tucked up in a cosy warm office, drinking free coffee, and getting involved in some rather interesting marketing work. Just after 1800, I left the office, and wondered back to Kudu where I found the cabin temperature sitting at -3. I don’t know how long it had been below 0, but given the outside air temperature hadn’t risen above 0 all day, I suspect for quite a while. Now I have a water tank and associated pipe work on the boat, this gives cause for concern. I flicked the fan heater on, and went for a wonder around the picturesque snow covered boatyard. 15 minutes later, I got back to find the on board temperature had risen to 4 degrees. That’ll do.

I can’t be bothered to cook; I’m not feeling energetic enough to undertake the gymnastic contortions that are involved in washing up and preparing food on this little vessel, so I’ve made do with some cheese and crackers, washed down with a cup of ‘blacksip’.

It has now been well over an hour since I first flicked the fan heater on, and we’re up to a balmy 6.9 degrees in the cabin. I think I might be leaving it on all night this evening.

I’ve got the final few pages of Roger Taylor’s Mingming and the Art of Minimal Ocean Sailing to finish, and he’s currently approaching the Arctic Circle in a boat not too dissimilar to mine. In modern sailing literature, he has an unrivalled knack of painting an imagination consuming scene, and it’s all the more realistic when I can feel the Arctic chill as well!

Still, on the bright side, at least I ain’t stuck at Heathrow!

I’ve just written a letter of complaint to McDonalds, and so I thought I’d share it here to because I have no doubt they won’t do anything about it.

Dear McDonalds,

I live on a boat, which because of a winter refit is currently under a make shift shed. The area I’m in is currently experience some quite heavy snowfall, and so at 0200 on the 18th December, I awoke to find a rather substantial layer of snow on the roof of said shed. I then spent a grueling 45 minutes clearing the snow of the roof in an effort to stop it collapsing under the weight.

With great effort the shed roof was cleared, and I was in need of a drink, and rather fancied one of your burgers, so I decided to visit your 24 hour restaurant at Preston Docklands in Lancashire, of which I am a regular and faithful patron. Because I had recently sold my car, I made the journey on foot.

I patiently queued behind a car full of obnoxious drunk people, and while I presume the driver was not inebriated so, I couldn’t make any guarantees given his desire to wheel spin in the queue with the engine at its rev limiter. My turn came to place my order, but alas, I waited for another few minutes before coming to the conclusion that the drive through order kiosk was weight activated, and my 9.5 stone was incomparable to a car full of obnoxious chavs. I walked to the payment window, and attempted to place an order, only to be refused because I was “not in a car”. I pleaded with your staff member, but he insisted that if he served me he would get in to bother with his manager. I asked to speak to his manager, and he refused to draw his attention to my request. It is worth noting that I did not once raise my voice, or display any signs of anger whatsoever. After all, I wasn’t a drunk chav in a Volvo and decent people don’t behave as such.
I asked if they would serve a motorbike, to which your staff member said yes.

I walked back to my boat, through the heavy snowfall, and donned my motorcycle protective clothing, before riding back to your establishment. Now, I wouldn’t have bothered, but given all this walking in freezing temperatures, the drink and burger were starting be be more of a necessity than a luxury, and I didn’t have any food on my boat, and little water, in which to satisfy it.
Firstly, have you any idea what it is like to ride a two wheeled vehicle in 4 inches of snow and ice covered roads? I presume not, so take my word that I don’t recommend it, and I shan’t be attempting it again. To make matters worse, I ran out of petrol about 500 meters from your establishment. I appreciate that this is not your fault, it’s owing to a leak I hadn’t previously spotted, but I wouldn’t have been risking my life on the road in the first place had your ridiculous policy allowed me to make a purchase on my first visit.

Eventually, and somewhat exhausted, I made it to the restaurant drive-thru (we don’t spell through like that in Britain, by the way). I would also like to point out that PUSHING a two wheeled vehicle through 4 inches of snow and ice covered roads is also not advisable unless part of a triathlon training regime.

Now a shade past 0320 in the morning, I finally managed to place my order, but due to the difficulty in doing so whilst wearing gloves and a helmet, I asked the (same) staff member if I could park the bike, and complete the order on foot, to which he agreed! After all that effort, I ended up placing the order on foot anyway. You can imagine my inner turmoil at this point, but again because I’m a decent chap, I simply and politely pointed out the ridiculous nature of this policy. My reasoning fell upon deaf, or perhaps empty ears, and I was told the policy was there due to health and safety.

I presume I don’t have to point out that forcing your customers to ride (or push) a motorbike, or even to drive a car in heavy snowfall is somewhat less safe than standing at a window and conveying and order.

Having now pushed the bike all the way home through the snow, I also presume I don’t need to tell you just how annoyed I am with your ridiculous policy. You seem to be quite happy to server joy riding reprobates, but not decent honest customers because they happen to be propelling themselves as nature intended.

My faithful and regular visits to your establishment have thus been revoked.

Regards,

Nathan Whitworth