15th May: Here comes Seascow?

While on watch at NCI Stone Point I happened to mention that I was thinking of getting hold of the rig from a Mirror dinghy or similar dinghy with a gunter sail rig.  The idea is to be able to sail along the Itchen River  by lowering the yard to get under the bridges.  By chance the other watchkeeper said he might have rigs from old Mirror and Lymington River scow dinghies.

It turned out that the one rig he had was from an LR scow and that I was welcome to have it.  So on 9th May I drove home from Lepe with the mast and spars sticking out of the open roof of the car.  The sail is a standing lug rig and by good fortune the wooden mast fits into the extra mast step I’ve created to take the Lightning dinghy rig which I also have.

The bridge clearances for Northam Bridge , the railway bridge, and Cobden Bridge are 4.2m, 4.0m and 4.1m, all with respect to a 5mCD value for HAT, so I should be able to get under them all by scandalising the mainsail by lowering the yard.  I think this will be more practical than using the Lightning mast which has to be raised and lowered on the water.

How powerful will the sail be?  The balanced lug mainsail is 75 ft² (7 m²).  The full size Lightning 368 rig is 7m² and the smaller one which i’ve used on the Seafly is 5.7 – 5.8 m². That is enough to get the Seafly planing, but of course it is a more efficient sail. The full Seafly rig is 120 ft² (11.14m²) so about 1.6 times the size of the scow rig. However it still suggests that the latter will have to be treated with care in windy conditions. Interestingly the weight of the 11’4″ Lymington River Scow is 100 kg (or 220 lb) whereas the Seafly at 14’9″ is 240 lb. The extra length at about the same weight suggests the Seafly will go well enough with the scow rig. It will be interesting to see how balanced she is and how well she tacks.

The last time I tried to use the Torqeedo in 2024 the battery had failed, so on the 15th May, as well as trying out the rig, I tried running the Torqeedo at the jetty.  Battery (1) seemed to work, then came up with Error 43 (battery exhausted) and the remaining power dropped to zero.  Switching off and on, it still showed zero but worked for a short time while saying “drive slowly”.  However Battery (2) still seemed to be working OK.