Howth 17 sailors are nothing if not optimists writes W M Nixon. They need to be, sailing a fleet in which the five oldest boats date back to 1898. Yet as reported on Saturday, everything was going fine with all six boats of the “Flotilla for France” road-trailed in record time to Vannes at the Morbihan in southern Brittany for the biennial Festival of Sail, in which an astonishing 1400 boats of all shapes, sizes and rigs (including 14 Dublin Bay Water Wags) will be taking part.
On Sunday,in the hot afternoon sun, the wheels came off the Howth 17 schedule ever so slightly. But as usual with this crew, it was all right in the end. A mobile crane had been optimistically booked for just one hour to launch all six, and step their masts. Perhaps being a Sunday, they wouldn’t have found any crane driver prepared to commit three hours to this sort of thing. Be that as it may, that’s what it took, for these boats need to be handled with care. And while their masts may be short, they’re heavy and tricky items, with a lot of rigging of all sorts for such a short spar.
However, they’re now all rigged, everyone is in recovery mode, and they’ll be having their first Morbihan sail this morning. Meanwhile, we hope the word doesn’t spread in the Morbihan Crane-hire Community that the Awkward Squad are in town. For in a week’s time, this “Flotilla for France” will have to be un-rigged and lifted out again. But being Howth 17 sailors, they won’t worry about that until the time comes.
For such short masts, the Howth 17s’ sticks take a surprising anunbt of rigging. The crane had been booked for one hour for the tntie aunc-and-rig operation, but it took three. Photo: Judith Malcolm
