More Smuggery

Paul Zink, creator of the Clovelly Scull, has put the North Devon coast up for the title of Loveliest Rowing Waters on the Planet.
As with previous entrants, he makes a point.

Hi Chris,
I guess we've all been enjoying this summer's exceptionally good weather. The photos above were taken while out rowing my Clovelly Scull in idyllic conditions along the North Devon coast between Clovelly and Hartland Point. I think I must challenge Brian Pearson's claim that the waters out of Keyhaven are the loveliest on the planet. It takes a lot to beat the north coast of Devon and Cornwall, that is if you like rowing on the open sea with spectacular cliffs on one side and the sea horizon on the other with only the occasional porpoise, dolphin or seal for company as well as the likes of razorbills and shearwaters demonstrating their flying skills. In contrast there are days when rowing is very definitely out of the question. The photo on the right was taken just around the corner at Hartland Quay during a winter storm. Maybe Brian could have been out rowing from Keyhaven on that same day!
I do have to agree with Brian that Keyhaven is a great place for rowing. It is certainly my favourite out of the various places in the Solent area I have visited. While providing sheltered water in the various creeks and behind the spit it is also a good launch point for rowing over to the Isle of Wight or just going to have a bit of fun with the overfalls in the Hurst Channel during the flood tide.
Trust all is well with you,
Paul

Another major delight of Paul's home waters is the row to Lundy, also known as Puffin Island, a distance of 14 miles. The huge tides in the Bristol Channel makes this a row to be timed with care.
Last weekend Clovelly Pilot Gig Club held their annual Lundy Row. Nine pilot gigs rowed to Lundy on the Saturday morning, spent the afternoon walking the island and the evening in the Marisco Tavern. They rowed back next day, arriving in Clovelly just in time for the Red Lion to open, so a typically rowing time was had by all. There is a full report here.

Fame at last!

Paul Zink of Clovelly Sculls entered a picture of me rowing a Clovelly off Clovelly back in September in British Rowing's Winter Rowing picture contest, and it is featured on their website (it's a slideshow - you may have to wait a while for it to come round).

So, tit for tat, here is a picture of Paul and John Rous, co-owner of Clovelly Sculls, out on their boats on that occasion.
Paul tells me that some final technical details have been ironed out and production starts in the New Year.

All done by Mirrors

Chris Waite, who is a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity like the Shipwrecked Mariner, was sporting a self-designed rear-view mirror at the Amble up the Hamble on Saturday. It was knocked up from an old belt, an old TV aerial and an old wing mirror. However, Chris was disappointed with performance as he reported on the HBBR forum:

"Despite the proximity of the mirror to my eye, the view is still quite limited, so it is necessary to move your head around to check the wider view of approaching impediments. The added problem is that everything is back to front, so all your head movements need to be reversed to obtain the necessary information. This then has to be translated to pulling on the oar that will move the bow of the boat the other way to the way you are seeing it as you are not only sitting the wrong way round, but looking backwards as well and having to move your head rather than your eyes as they need to stay fixed on the mirror and ingnore the oscillating view astern, in order to scan the scene ahead.
My ageing grey matter could not cope.
Not even slightly."

I have never really liked mirrors. They don't give a good enough idea of what is ahead so you have to look round fairly frequently anyway. The closest thing to a useful mirror is on the Clovelly Scull, where it is mounted on a bipod mast so it is just above your head, so you get a good view straight in front which is handy for both navigation and spotting immediate peril. The mast is also a good place to mount a GPS.
This is Paul Zink demonstrating it.
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Clovelly Scull at Langstone

Paul Zink brought the prototype Clovelly Scull to Langstone today, on high spring and a stiffish southerly breeze bringing up white horses in the harbour.
Last time I tried the Clovelly Scull on the Hamble, the water was mirror-smooth, so it was interesting to experience how stable she feels in a chop.
The wind also highlighted how useful the retractable skeg is. When it is fully retracted, the boat broaches to quite forcefully, but dropping it by releasing the conveniently-placed rope brings the boat back on track instantly.
The picture shows how difficult it is to photograph an interesting boat without getting a screen full of behinds.

Rowing the Clovelly Scull

Paul Zink brought the prototype Clovelly Scull to the Hamble river today to show what it can do. And what it can do is impressive: it is fast, stable and reassuringly buoyant. An ideal boat for offshore rowing, in fact, though the conditions were not challenging as you can see from the pictures. Glassy smooth, in fact.
The wide, mussel-shell shape and tall vertical stem combine to create a hull of real character. The broad beam creates a lot of initial stability, so there is none of that uneasy wobbly feeling you get in a racing shell, but the double ended shape creates very little wake and she is easy to push along at five or six knots.
But the feature that intrigues all scullers is the sliding rigger. The seat is fixed and the rigger slides in channels at the bottom of the boat, so instead of sliding your whole body up and down, you simply move your feet.
This has several big advantages, the main one being that your weight stays at the centre of gravity of the boat and the pitching movement of sliding seat boats is eliminated. I can watch the stern of my Sprite shifting up and down markedly as I row, but the Clovelly Scull's canoe stern moves hardly at all.
The rigger itself is very high tech, a carbon fibre wing that is stiff and light. The rigger can be easily removed and carried in the boot of the car, making the boat considerably lighter and much handier for lifting onto the roof rack.
Another novel feature of the boat is a bipod mast for a front-view mirror and a GPS. I have always been a bit sceptical about mirrors. People recommend them all the time, but until today I had never seen anybody actually using one.
The mirror on the Clovelly Scull is slightly concave to give a wider field of view, and the mast positions in right in your line of sight. It is strangely addictive - at one point I suddenly realised that for the last few minutes I had been looking in the mirror all the time, not just giving it an occasional glance. It is really useful for spotting upcoming posts that would otherwise pose a signficant on-your-back-with-legs-waving-in-the-air risk, but it is difficult to judge distances so you still need to look round.
It is also dead interesting to watch the speed on the GPS, even if it is just telling you how idle you have been.
The hull creaked slightly as power was applied, possibly due to flexing of the GRP hull against the GRP deck. Not a problem really. The boat has a skeg that can be retracted by pulling a cord. It did not seem to make all that much difference to tracking but it might be more effective in choppier seas.
Ruth Wake of Langstone Cutters, an experienced sculler, took the boat out and came back enthusing about its speed and stability ("I nearly caught a crab and was surprised how easy it was to recover" she said) and muttering something about wanting a pink version.

Max Taylor, who has only rowed fixed seat boats, also took it out and took to it like a natural. He also came back with glowing reports.
The first boats are under construction at Rossiter Yachts in Christchurch, who make most of the boats that are being rowed across various oceans right now and also produce a coastal four. Prices have yet to be fixed.