Sail with New Freebooters

I first heard of  Greg from Rick Willoughby, who has been a major technical contributor to Greg’s attempts on human-powered boat records. In those days, Greg was planning to pedal across the Atlantic alone - but gave up because of bureaucratic hassle over permission to land in Europe. I can’t remember hearing of early sailors or aviators having that kind of problem - maybe it’ s all to do with anti-terrorist laws…

Greg jacked in the rat-race in his thirties. It sounds as if he was a typical overweight, stressed-out company man - he shed 50 pounds while training for a triathlon. Now one of Greg’s jobs is giving seminars on motivation. He’s certainly well-qualified to do so - take a look at the goals Greg has set himself. Already the holder of the world 24-hour human-powered land record, having pedalled 647 miles, he is now in his far more complex waterborne phase. The current trip of about 400Km is a warm-up for the main 4,300Km  trip from Tofino, BC to Hawaii. Let’s hope Greg and his colleague are still as good friends at the end of it all.

Here’s wishing you both success!

All of the above, actually - and also a superb French magazine devoted to maritime history. Based in Brittany, of course, and the site also sells books and nauticalia.

The French word chasse means hunt or chase. Marée originally referred to the tide, but took on metaphorical meanings connected with an activity that was tightly linked to the time of high tide - the landing and distribution of fresh fish in shallow harbours before the days of refrigeration.

Chasse-marée - the man

Marée became the name of the load of fish landed at each tide, so chasse-marée became the job title of a wholesale fishmonger - a man who bought from the boats as they landed in coastal ports and delivered as far inland as he could while the fish remained fresh.

Chasse-marée - the cart

A pack animal such as a donkey or pony with a couple of panniers on its back couldn’t get the fish very far from the port where it was landed, so it was superseded by a specially constructed light cart - little more than a wooden frame for hanging baskets of fish - pulled by teams of four small horses driven hard in relays in the same way as mail coaches. Paris was the destination, and at its peak the network extended along the French coast from Fécamp to Calais.

Chasse-marée - the boat

In Brittany, particularly in the south around what is now Morbihan, sea fishing was a two-tier trade. Fast luggers bought fish at sea and carried it to the mouths of the Loire and the Gironde, selling their loads at markets in Nantes and Bordeaux. As Paris became wealthy in the 19th century, three-masted Breton luggers bought fish from boats operating further north and delivered it up the Seine estuary to markets in Rouen.

As you can see from Remi Jouan’s Wikimedia Commons photo of Corentin on the left, the rig of some of these boats was modified to make them handier when moored to crowded quays. Both bowsprit and bumpkin can be raised out of the way when not in use - quite a space-saver on a 50-foot boat.

UK newspapers have been publishing a steady stream of reports of the nonsensical consequences of Health & Safety regulations and the way they are interpreted, but this is just one facet of a worldwide trend towards regulation and micro-management. Mainland Europe is suffering, too - and it is affecting the operation of tall ships and other historic vessels.

Have you noticed that some tall ships fly a black flag with a question mark on it, rather like a pirate flag? Here’s why.

Back in 2000, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) issued recommendation No 1468, which asked European Community governments to:

• Support and encourage private bodies which preserve historic vessels
• Encourage the display of these vessels for the general public
• Encourage further development of a system of mutual acceptability by the maritime authorities of nation states of standards for the safe operation of traditional vessels

In 2000,  most important European seafaring nations reached consensus on the basic rules for the operation of traditional vessels, and agreed to mutually recognise national provisions in this field. They issued a Memorandum of Understanding intended to ensure that traditional vessels and their crews could move freely in and out of European ports and national waters.

However, very little was done. For example, modern fire safety regulations for commercial ships forbid the use of wood below decks: any port that enforces this regulation will refuse access to almost every traditional ship.

In 2008, the Baltic Sail Conference, held in the ancient Hanseatic port of Rostock, issued the Rostock Declaration calling on all responsible persons to:

• Use their influence to solve the problem of the acceptance of national regulations for traditional ships (on international voyages)
• Use their influence to urge governments to work together to establish a European Maritime Policy for traditional ships.

Want to know a bit more? Take a look at the Black Flag flyer

Vincent Riou’s sponsor PRB has decided to seek compensation for the uninsured damage and recovery costs which resulted from Riou clipping the keel of the upturned VM Matériaux when he rescued Jean Le Cam during the 2008/9 Vendée Globe. The cost of shipping PRB home and repairing the damage to her rig has been assessed at around 750,000 Euros, and PRB are seeking to sue whoever they can to recover this: the race organisers, VM Matériaux, even Jean Le Cam himself.

At first sight, this sounds as if America’s Cup attitudes have spilled over into round the world racing, but I believe the situation is totally different. America’s Cup litigation is all about a struggle between very rich and powerful men - PRB’s move may be about financial survival in the current economic crisis. PRB is a small business, and its recent sponsorship experience has been financially painful. It is behaving like a US company one step away from filing for Chapter Eleven protection from its creditors.

The problem is that the case is addressing a taboo subject. To quote Yachting World’s Elaine Bunting in her recent blog post:

This dispute is over who should bear the financial consequences of saving a life at sea, something that until now no-one has dared publicly place a price on.

The unspoken worry is that potential rescuers will become litigation-conscious in the same way as landlubbers, and ‘cross the street’ to avoid getting involved. A far cry from the attitude displayed by Captain Ferro, master of the 113,000 ton tanker Overseas Yellowstone, in the recent rescue of the 38-footer Fleur during a storm off the west of Ireland. As reported in the July 2009 issue of Yachting World

… he had never been involved in such an operation before, and was proud to have helped

This despite the fact that his own ship was in ballast, with seas rolling over her and putting his own crew at risk.

On the face of it, PRB doesn’t stand much chance. It made the commercial decision not to insure for anything other than total loss of the boat (as did many Vendée Globe competitors). Full insurance is available, but it’s expensive - for a very good reason.

My feeling is that, even if PRB were to win even partial recompense, the negative publicity would outweigh any temporary financial advantage. I can’t believe that they don’t know this. This could become a very sad affair.

Jim Murrant, author of The Boating Bible Manual of Seamanship, includes an excellent video of what happens when you use various different means to fight an oil or fat fire in a pan on a galley stove. Just about everybody knows that you should not use water, but this video shows how much better it is to use a fire blanket to smother the pan than to use a powder fire extinguisher.

The problem is that fire extinguishers send out a powerful jet. Although the video shows the fire extinguisher killing the fire instantly, it also shows chunks of the pan’s contents being blown all over the galley.