It was during an e-mail exchange with reader Mike Pollard that we began to suspect he was a small-boat sailor of a different stripe. He’d inquired about our new 11' 11" SCAMP design, and before long the conversation turned to subjects like exposure, flotation and passagemaking.
Turns out that among other venturesome voyages, Pollard, a Liverpudlian, has crossed the Irish Sea in a 14-foot Wanderer Dinghy, and again later in a tiny inflatable sailboat called a Tinker Traveller. He might be best known, however, for his aborted attempt to sail the Tinker from northern Scotland to Iceland. Fourteen hours and forty miles into the North Atlantic, a wet, cold, and tired Pollard was rescued by the lifeboat service.
News of his “foolish stunt” was met with universal condemnation by members of the mainstream media. When Pollard’s wife suggested Mike’s boat might have been overloaded with stores, specifically cans of beans, Glasgow’s Daily Record titled their article: “Mayday! All Heinz on Deck! Beans Sink Sailor Who Tried to Reach Iceland in 12-foot Dinghy.”
We were confident Mike would find Small Craft Advisor readers a much more receptive and empathetic audience, and we were sure he’d have many interesting thoughts to share.
SCA: You’ve made some remarkable passages in little boats, but you’ve also had plenty of experience in larger ones (trans-Atlantic, etc.). Was there a specific moment or experience that convinced you that small boats might be capable of these serious voyages? Pollard: Hassle is probably the biggest issue when I consider introducing anything into my life, physical or mental. For me the smaller the tool that will do the job the better it suits me. For example, I’ve been a hang glider pilot for 37 years and some of my most memorable flights have been in the Owens Valley, California. Had I not been able to break the glider down to seven feet and chuck it in the hold of a 747, I’d never have been at 20,000 feet with my friend looping around me in a Twin Astir sailplane.
Boatwise, anything on a mooring is out. Look at the average marina and see how much movement there is on a daily basis (here at least). A Hurley 22 cured me forever of wanting to own a “big” boat. Even my 14' Wanderer became too much. I got my Tinker because I could roll it up put it in the back of my car and it lives most of its time in a spare room. It also means I can fool around with it anytime at my leisure.
Many years ago I was inspired to build a 38-foot Hartley Golden Cowrie with an ambition to sail around the world. I got the armature built and meshed before a bit of sanity prevailed and I postponed plastering. I figured I’d better dip my toe in the water before committing myself to a concrete monument to failure. Consequently I flew out to Teneriffe and hitched a ride to Fort Lauderdale. I saw more than my share of, shall I say, disenchantment and disappointment (not to mention the derelicts and drunks) which was enough to disabuse me of my world-girdling plans.
However, I figured that I could have my cake and eat it by going small and sailing relatively long distances over open water. That way I could live a sort of normal life whilst still satisfying my yearning for adventure. I was bang on there, as there can’t be many people who’ve had a Minke whale circling their 14 footer!
As for the capabilities and safety of small boats you can’t go far wrong than to read of Bligh’s open boat epic, or Frank Dye’s adventures. For further inspiration of small boat voyaging look to the Polynesians who’d think nothing of sailing a canoe 100 miles to an island overnight for a laugh—no instruments either. However, the daddy of them all is Tom McNally (Record holder smallest boat across Atlantic—Eds). The sad thing there is that he’s never published a book on his voyages so really he’s never gotten the credit he deserves.
So I guess you can sum up my philosophy as living by the KISS principle—Keep It Simple Stupid!
You’ve also done a lot of hang gliding. Are you predisposed to risk-taking to satisfy an appetite for adventure, or does something else motivate you?
Well, apart from not going offshore would limit the pleasure you might otherwise enjoy in being able to wave to the passengers of a SeaCat as it cruises past you at 40 knots twenty feet from your bow ... It’s obvious I am predisposed to risk taking, but that doesn’t mean I have some sort of death wish. After all I’ve been a hang glider pilot for some 36 years and am still here after flying many hundreds of hours, up to 20,000 feet, British team etc.
My whole life has been punctuated with unusual occupations and side roads, going from a nascent career in research chemistry directly to working on a farm 60 degrees north in Shetland when I was 22, then a farm worker, slaughter man, builder, part-time lobster fisherman, and trawler man.
From there I returned south where I was mainly involved in construction and have been self employed ever since (I now convert bathrooms for the disabled). Oh, by the way, if you need another pointer to my character, the house I live in with my family I built with my hands—all trades. I also incidentally built the hang glider I flew in America for two consecutive years.
So, after that potted history, why do I fly hang gliders and sail little boats?
When people are asked this question it is seldom answered satisfactorily, generally it is passed off with the insouciant “because it’s there,” nonsense. There is no simple answer to the question, and no man or woman doing silly stuff should shirk from that responsibility when what they do has an impact on society, they should at least try to explain the unexplainable.
So. The average club hang glider pilot can competently sit in the lift produced when wind strikes a cliff and is diverted upwards. He can stay there unchallenged all day (literally) so long as the wind is constant. The same thing applies with the average dinghy sailor sailing round the cans or bay sailing. However, things change radically when that pilot pushes the nose up and shifts his weight into a thermal and decides to leave the safety of the hill and start a cross country flight. The same thing applies when an open boat sailor decides to leave the safety of an easy landfall for an adventure. The whole philosophy changes, as the stakes are so much higher—and so are the rewards!
Sitting in ridge lift our pilot can relax and just enjoy the view and the experience, knowing he can safely top land back from where he launched, or if the wind switches off he can easily reach the bottom landing field. So it is with the daysailor —generally in reach of launch, or a beach round the headland if things turn nasty.
I’ll continue with the flying analogy, as the parallels with open boat sailing are obvious and the question is on my attitude to risk in general. I have known hang glider pilots who have been flying for 30 plus years and have never gone cross country, which is fair enough, as cutting the umbilical and leaving the hill for a destination you are uncertain of is a proposition that most club pilots shy away from. Ah, but when you do, when you do! There is that exquisite moment when you have to make a decision as you circle higher and higher and the sun spins past your wingtip and the soft grey of cloudbase approaches.
You can see the safety of the top landing receding; but punching back into wind will cost you height and you might get dumped in dirty air behind the ridge and crash. The window of opportunity is small, and most will turn back, as they always have, but a minority will take the moment and turn it into something that may end in a life affirming adventure. For you see, if you make a mistake you will pay for it instantly—not catastrophically—but you will lose height, and height is safety as well as the engine to make distance. Also, every landing will be an emergency landing and your skills must be up to your ambition.
Then there is the hassle factor. You might fly from the northwest to the southeast coasts of England (it’s been done) or you might make a mile or two from launch. Getting back is a big factor, which will be a drag on the initial decision, as most cross country flights end up in a failure of the anticipated distance or goal set. That may be the case, but that initial slipping of the leash, the freedom and exhilaration of that moment, is still worth the flatness of failure. But if you are strong, in that flatness lies the nascent and sprouting seeds of ...I did it... so long as the courage to slip the leash is burnished in reflection.
So then we have slipped that leash, and we are on our way, and this gets to the nub of why I sail, fly, work for no one, am an atheist, think politicians should be banned from the memorials commemorating the wars they started, and accept responsibility for my actions whilst accommodating the opinions that differ from my own.
Sorry, I got a little side tracked there, so: Have you ever tried to sit in meditation and tried to exclude extraneous thoughts? Well neither can I. Why? Because you can’t. And because it’s unimportant! You can’t because internal imagining is mostly a swirl of points that, when grabbed, slip through the fingers and you are back with half closed eyes wondering if you’ve left the keys in the car.
It may be possible if you are a buddhist monk with a lifetime to devote practicing detachment, but that is unachievable and pointless for the average Joe. So, accepting the premise; where am I going with this? Well, whenever you take off on a hang glider, or pilot a small craft leaving the safety of the hill or coast then that’s where why I do it kicks in. There is freedom, real freedom in focusing on a single objective, and taking off on a hang glider or setting off on a small-boat journey focuses the mind wonderfully—it’s meditation in motion!
Finally, there’s always the tantalising notion, the indefinable moment when a man might consider himself a seaman rather than just a sailor, but I’m a long way off that!
After your experience with the Tinker Traveller, how do you feel she performs? Do you consider her particularly seaworthy? What modifications have you made? The Tinker is a wonderful little boat. She was designed to be a multipurpose boat: Stand alone dingy with engine/oars. Recreational sailing dinghy. Lifeboat (with optional inflatable canopy)
The design has now been discontinued after some 10,000 boats. It was the only alternative to a liferaft (with the optional inflatable canopy) allowed in the OSTAR.
It is an exceptionally seaworthy craft, with two outer chambers and two inner (which will keep her afloat if both outer tubes are punctured). The chisel bow is worthy of mention, especially in the light of the latest comments on the Scamp’s bow. There doesn’t appear to be a lot of buoyancy in the narrowness of the tubes forward but when in a heavy seaway and the boat slides down the face of a wave, the nose punches into the trough, lifts dynamically like an aircraft elevator and shakes water off its shoulders very elegantly. It has a daggerboard through the thwart and standard rope stayed marconi main and jib. It has a short bow canopy to accommodate some bits and pieces.
Buoyancy: Buoyancy is the number one advantage for this as an expedition boat, that and its stability, for no matter how much water is taken on board it will not sink. It is as stable as a catamaran and tends to glue itself to the side of a wave with little tendency to tip. The one mistake I did make on the Iceland trip was to leave the daggerboard down to slow drift when lying to sea anchor which introduced a tripping moment with the anchor line over the side tube (I believe if you really want to wind James Wharram up, ask him about modifying his designs with a stub keel!).
Thats it then in standard set up, but I parted company from that many years ago. After the Iceland failure (and after licking my wounds) I went back to the drawing board and radically redesigned all major components.
Shelter: The inflatable canopy did not work as it was too much hassle to erect/deflate/erect etc and I knew early on in the trip that it would be only of use when sitting out a storm. What I needed was an instant up/down cockpit cover, and after much work I can now be securely out of bad weather in a matter of seconds.
Sail: The standard rig as supplied works really well, but I really did not like the boom interfering with the minute cockpit space, and although there was roller reefing on the jib there was the usual faffing with the main. What I wanted, again, was as near instant reefing as possible with a boomless sail. I settled early on a lateen rig, and whilst it worked well on the Iceland thing, getting the sail over on the other tack involved lowering the boom onto my shoulder, breaking the mast, moving the boom to the other shoulder and popping the mast back together again. Sounds complicated, and it was, but I could make it work—even to the extent of fishing a lure and catching fish whilst tacking (masochist or what?).
Anyway after dozens of experimental sails I finally have gone back to the lateen set up, only with two sails which works superbly. I can adjust the centre of effort to balance the boat really well and in light airs the boat will sail for a hundred yards without touching the tiller.
Self steering: In my opinion self steering is the single most important item that makes small boat voyaging possible, indeed it makes tough little trips more pleasure than pain (which hand steering certainly is). I’ve hand steered for some 1500 miles and it was pure bloody misery, so self steering became a priority.
I designed a very simple set up, which, when the course is set, a lever cinches the vane up and a pin actuates directly on the tiller turning a semi-balanced rudder. As the whole boat and steering is very light there is no need for trim tabs, servo etc.
So, the above covers the four most important elements of the modification necessary to turn a simple sailing inflatable into something capable of long passages.
Other Stuff: Another vital element is the parachute drogue. I don’t like the standard drogue supplied, so have always made my own, with a diameter of about two and a half feet which stops the boat dead in the water. The recommended deployment is over the side tube so as to present the maximum buoyancy to an oncoming wave. That recommendation was obviously determined by wave tank testing with the survival canopy in situ, but it does not work when the situation demands its deployment in a real situation. What happens is that when a wave coming at you breaks, it breaks over that tube and half fills the boat. The ideal position for me is under the bow to take advantage once again of the up elevator effect. Retrieval is easy with a separate rope on a hard eye leading to the cockpit.
The short bow canopy was extended by Henshaws to cover the entire area forward of the mast supporting bulkhead.
There is a cylinder type radar reflector atop of the mast with an LED light cluster over that. The lights, made by Bebi deserve a little article on their own, which of course I shall do at a later date.
You predicted SCAMP will become a classic and told us there is a breed of sailor out there who will see her as an expedition vehicle. What specifically did you find attractive about her for that purpose, and what might you do to make her more nearly perfect? Looking at all the designs of small boats one can find on the Web I started with the Nutshell. It’s a lovely little boat and why John Welsford was inspired to design the Sherpa, and John surpassed himself there—it’s so pretty! I looked at the boat and it ticked all the boxes: Simple. Small. Practical. Beautiful. Modifiable. Massively buoyant.
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