Great seamanship: unstepping a solid wood mast solo

Tom Cunliffe introduces this extract from Steve Pickard's tale of cruising through the canals of France – and an ambitious plan to drop his yacht's mast solo

The late Steve Pickard was the very essence of a cruising sailor. Never a high-aspiration man, he did not round Cape Horn or sail the Northwest Passage. Instead, he operated relatively modest craft in Europe and the Mediterranean.

Often sailing with his wife, Deirdre, he managed this with a high degree of originality and wrote about it all with a unique style that could only be his.

His published work includes Imray pilot books of South Biscay and Mediterranean Spain, as well as further cruising accounts that are well worth seeking out. Like me, he was a member of the Royal Cruising Club and it was with sadness I learned through the club of his recent transfer to the Port of Kingdom Come.

He was born in Manchester as I was and, like me, went sailing against the odds.

In this extract from his book More Ramblings Under Sail, we join him as he is about to enter the southern French canal system in Lone Gull, a classic Maurice Griffiths-designed yacht which he had rescued earlier in the book from cockroaches, human as well as insect, in Tunisia.

Extract from More Ramblings Under Sail

I’d had no intention of going ashore, but a little domestic problem forced an excursion. From the vaults of the supermarket I had bought a couple of glass bidons of Merlot. I had been dipping into this over the previous couple of nights and now there was a crisis, either drink the stuff at a much faster rate before the air killed it, or decant it.

The problem was that there were no empty water bottles aboard, or full ones for that matter. Reasoning that the walkers in constant evidence ashore must get through a lot of water and that there weren’t bins all over the cliffs, logic led to the conclusion that a cluster of houses in plain view must have a large bin nearby. Arriving at the little square where the bins revealed themselves to be, I found every inhabitant of the little houses out playing boules.

Fortunately the refuse bins were double banked so feigning an interest in the game I worked my way to the last one and then as I walked back, this time on the blind side, I managed to grab a couple of empty Evian bottles on the way.

The wind howled through the Calanque during the night but Lone Gull and myself slept soundly, me partly because I knew the anchor fluke to be lodged beneath an old mooring chain, but there was no need to fret about that now. Next morning campers stirred in their bivouacs and what was to be an eventful day began. Creeping round the sheer cliffs I made my way to the shallow passage that lay inside the Isle Marie off the Pointe Rouge and, with a strong current beneath me, shot through the 30m passage into the Rade de Marseilles.

Where to go was the big question of the day. I would have preferred to sail round to the Grau du Roi on the other side of the Rhone Delta after a night in Carro, the last refuge this side of the Golfe du Fos, but the forecast north-westerly Force 6 for the next day was a little daunting.

I decided to make for St Louis de Rhone and there drop the mast prior to the run up the Rhone. I toyed with the idea of refuelling in one of the little harbours to the west of Marseilles but rejected the idea. As I could just lay Cap Couronne, the lighthouse that marks the entrance to the Golfe du Fos, I pressed on.

No sooner had the Cap been rounded than a strong breeze sprang up from the south. For the first time since leaving Cannes, the wind was free and fresh. Lone Gull romped along seemingly eager to give up the blue water in favour of the brown. But she wasn’t going to give up sailing for a while, as I was about to discover. It suddenly occurred to me that this enthusiasm might be due to the low shores and shallow waters – did the old girl think she was back on the East Coast?

Rounding the endless and constantly changing sandbank that obscures the entry to the St Louis canal the wind was brought abeam and, with every sheet and wire straining, Lone Gull rushed up this channel to arrive breathless in the basin where, as I knew, there was plenty of room to luff up and furl the sails.

Into the river

It was my intention to go through the first of the Rhone locks which lie in this basin and then, on the quaint old quay (that used to be called Bayles and then was known as Messians) have Lone Gull’s mast lifted out.

I had used this place several times before and the usual drill was to encourage the proprietor to stop playing cards and drinking Pastis with his friends and come out and operate the electric crane. Imagine my dismay then, when I discovered that not only had the card school disappeared but with it the crane. Intelligence revealed that bankruptcy and health problems had brought an end to what had been an institution.

I looked at the Rhone with its white horses charging up-river and had a mad whim, I would sail up the river to Arles! I knew there were no bridges before Arles but there were other obstructions. The lockkeeper confirmed that there were high tension power cables spanning the river but he did not know their actual height. I could not believe that the efficient French engineers would have slung them so low as to imperil my journey so, without further ado, ran back to the boat.

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It was hard work in the lock with the Force 6 gusting in and, once discharged onto the river side, it was just like the open sea getting the main up on the bucking deck. But once up and with the jib poled out, the GPS gave me 6 knots over the ground and the short waves broke harmlessly in my wake. It wasn’t long before the first of the high tension lines loomed up, it looked high but these things are so difficult to judge.

From the size of the trees on the bank I put the least height at 20m but still clung to the bank. There was, of course, plenty of clearance and I later learned that much bigger sailing boats made the trip up to Arles for regattas and other festivals. Having safely negotiated the first it was reasonable to assume that the others would be constructed to the same clearances.

There were two more in the next few miles and then just long and sometimes slow reaches. Hoping to reach Arles but, defeated by darkness, I sounded my way out of the channel and anchored in 3m. Morgiou to Arles! It hadn’t been what I intended but it had certainly been a varied and interesting day.

Looking for cranes

I slept well despite what might and did promise to be another interesting day on the morrow, for on this day I must find a way of getting the mast down. ‘Getting the Mast Down’ is a weakness I suffer from. I feel that the compleat sailor must be able to do this on his own and I have, in the past, suffered the consequences of practicing this art, but I get ahead of myself.

In the perfect tranquility of the river anchorage I ate my breakfast and, once underway, found myself to be on the last bend before Arles. I had hoped that the yard to the south of the town that repairs peniches would have a crane, but this turned out not to be the case. Nor did any other visible enterprise on the seaward side of the Arles Bridge.

I had a dim recollection that the lock that gave onto the now closed Arles a Fos canal had steep walls and lay in a cut that would protect me from the north-westerly wind that was now whistling down the Rhone.

With only one slight grounding on the way, I motored at dead slow ahead into the cut and, oozing my way onto some mud that seemed to correspond exactly with the draught of the boat, found myself alongside a wall that measurement revealed to be 7m high. Nearby were some steps that led to the top of the wall and the lockkeeper’s booth, fortunately empty. I began to feel a little smug satisfaction, what could be better than this set-up for mast lowering?

Still in the shade of the wall, I ran about and unbent sails, coiled ropes and freed all the rigging.

The mast was stepped on the keel and this was the source of my only worry, the thing had to be raised 2m out of the cabin before it could be lowered.

Once the mast wedges were freed, it seemed to wave about in an encouraging manner. Up on the wall I considered just getting a sling round it and giving it a tug. My insouciance in the matter of its weight was due to three causes. Firstly, I had once owned a 6-Metre whose 46ft mast could be lifted by one man, though perhaps that’s why it broke so often.

Secondly, Eric Hiscock had said much the same thing about the mast for Wanderer II, about it waving like a reed and being as light as a pencil. Thirdly I had on board an article from Yachting Monthly written in 1938 when the boat was new and it said quite clearly, and I quote, ‘Streamlined hollow spruce spar’.

I decided to do the thing scientifically, I had plenty of time, and to this end I slung the short spinnaker pole over the wall in a bight of the kedge warp and raised it by the other end of a stout warp tied to a lamppost. Guys were run from the jib of my crane to bollards on the wall. From the crane jib depended a five-part purchase, the last part of which contributed nothing to the lifting power but enabled me to operate the thing from the deck.

Back on deck I had some misgivings, mainly about the point of balance which had to be lower than I would have wished because of the 2m initial lift, but I decided to have a go. I strained and heaved and, after the slack had been taken out of the system, the mast came up an inch or two.

This wasn’t going to be easy but retreat would be ignominious. I renewed my straining and heaving and the mast came up another inch or two. The sun meanwhile, anxious to have a look at what was going on, forsook the shelter of the wall and beat down on the scene of activity.

After a little more swigging and belaying I realised that the cleat I was belaying on would soon be out of reach so I rigged another block and ran the fall to the windlass. Tailing with my teeth and cranking with both handles the work was a little easier but the groaning of the rope on the drum told of huge forces in play.

I stopped and reviewed the situation. The mast was now 1m above the sole and, with another metre to go, hung like a huge lance poised to strike the vitals out of Lone Gull who cowered below.

I could not understand where the difficulty lay, not realising at the time that the 42ft mast was solid wood from truck to keel. I ran about and did what I could in case of a sudden failure in the present arrangements and then, thinking, ‘Do or die!’ once more bent my teeth and biceps to the windlass.

In what seemed like an eternity the heel of the mast finally swayed out of the cabin top and with a couple of guys to control the out of balance forces I rested it clear of the hole, the danger was past, the worse that could happen now was for the thing to topple into the cut like a felled tree and after the stress of the previous three hours, I doubted that I would bat an eyelid.

Lowering away and controlling the heel, down she came in a controlled manner until, and I still don’t quite understand it, the mast, slightly past the horizontal, ran out of its sling and cleaving the water, impaled its truck into the innocent mud. As I said, I didn’t bat an eyelid.

Nothing had been damaged, least of all the mast. A little later, after the skimpiest of tidying-ups, I motored under the bridge and over to the Halte Nautique where, completely exhausted, I did nothing but lie and pant for the rest of the day.

All worries now relegated to recent history I woke next morning full of pleasant anticipation of the antiquities of Arles, a town whose charms never fade.

Buy a copy of More Ramblings Under Sail from Amazon.

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