Tin-Tin Treks North

Tin Tin Treks North

By John Simpson

Some time has elapsed now for me to write about Clive’s last fight with life. It has been a bit raw to write before. He bought his secondhand 43-foot yacht from another Scotsman at Moody’s at the top of the Hamble in the UK. Then, at the beginning of March, he asked me if I would help to sail her back to Scotland.

Our early legs were great, making many quick miles due to a named storm blowing through just before we left. Heading east from the Solent, we were lucky to have Lisa onboard; she is a very fine crew but would only do our first leg.

Clive needed treatment for his cancer every two weeks in Aberdeen, which meant we did quite a few miles in hire cars, scooting from north to south and back again.

Few serious problems occurred with his Ovni 435 Tin Tin particularly as she had been a charter boat before Clive bought her from Ron Flockhart. Berthing her was easy. Though I did experiment with her keel lifted in Lowestoft, we were immediately blown sideways onto another boat. Leaving from there was dodgy on leg two as we were poorly charted, the banks changed, and his plotter was not updated fully. We left before dawn to catch the tide with a big swell after an easterly gale, which was not very comfy; we might easily have lost her with the shifting banks there.

At Hartlepool, we lost the engine morse controls after locking into the marina. This was alleviated by a local shipwright who saw our plight from his own boat and towed us into a berth with his flubber. We left a bit late from there and just got away with her keel and rudder well raised by slithering down the mud bank after the lock, watched by the lock staff in total amazement.

Given the cold, mostly north-west or northerly winds about Force 4–6+ after Clive’s latest chemo, during many of the early parts of each of these legs he natu-

rally felt very poorly. Those early passages were mostly on my own whether driving to windward under sail or motoring; she was a tough cruising yacht. The autopilot did most of the work. I would just duck under the sprayhood, which was okay, then do the odd trip below to check on Clive, to make a brew, and eat some scoff.

It felt very quiet down there. Often, I would start the heater to keep him warm until he felt better from his treatment. If we arrived early enough and we’d found a good fish restaurant, we ate very well. Arriving later, there would still be a curry house or even a Chinese restaurant still open. My wife, Janet, had fallen and hurt herself during our first leg, but my sister stepped in, giving me her car to get home from down south to Argyll rapidly.

After that, on our three legs, we had easily driven Tin Tin into the north of England to Blythe, then had to head back a few miles to Newcastle due to bad weather; we couldn’t leave her at Blythe. Another of Clive’s friends, Doug Cameron, joined him from Newcastle to Peterhead, which I felt rather bad about, but he understood Clive’s illness a lot better than I.

Worked out well for us after all, as it was the start of my wife’s Alzheimer’s. This was also probably a blessing for Clive because he was forced to skipper Tin Tin more, and he got to know her very well. Clive took a long break plus small refit at Peterhead, which allowed his family and friends to go onboard his new toy.

After that, it felt much easier continuing the journey as we both understood his boat more, plus the weather was mostly kinder. I joined him again at Peterhead to take her to Inverness and the start of the Caledonian canal. Because I was still coaching and examining sailing, I didn’t have time to go through the canal. Stuart, and then his wife Linda, joined us for these last legs. Finally, Clive finished his long struggle from down south to where he had planned to keep her in Arisaig on the west coast of Scotland. His voyage round about two-thirds of Britain had started off in spring with the cold North Sea, then ended three and a half months later in much warmer, balmy Hebridean waters after visiting twenty-three ports. We’d met many interesting characters in these places, sailing round the UK coast. This type of voyage is often more difficult than crossing an ocean, and many of these fine yachtsmen reflected this. Clive had a giant soul; his tough Highland spirit carried him through the tough times.

A few weeks later, we took Tin Tin out further west to St. Kilda, and you could positively feel his joy. This was his wonderful penultimate summer. The next season we did some more cruising on the west coast, but he left us soon after, his cancer finally took to his brain.

His big heart and optimism are still with me whenever I am feeling down. The fact is that we were quite different as a Highland Scot and a professional sailor from Essex, but it never made any difference to us—except when watching rugby at either Twicker’s or at Murrayfield, then we could fall out quite badly supporting our teams. Perhaps that helped us to not be totally at odds most of the time, or was it just that we had both been world travelers, seen a lot of life, and recognized what was important?

Personally, I would not buy an aluminum French Ovni yacht. I prefer faster yachts that I can single-hand easily. But, if I was heading right up north or south for some ice,they are perfect for these adventurous voyages and an Ovni would certainly be on my list. It was fascinating meeting voyaging people sailing round the UK that season; most were heading south to the sun. Many of them have impressed on me our island’s ability to give them this freedom for travel, particularly those doing it on a small budget with scruffy, often cramped craft. We were lucky to enjoy their company.

Clive’s maiden trip would be a remarkable achievement for anyone, more so for someone who had almost no intestines left. But he summed it up with his Scottish way, “I’ve got a very small tail pipe now, John. Dinna, you worry how often I have to go to the loo, after eating.” What he did was quite remarkable.

Ten days later, Clive, Stuart, and I took Tin Tin from

Arishaig out to St. Kilda and back during a ten-day passage for her first west coast jaunt. I will never forget the smile on Clive’s face nor his joy when walking on a bit of virgin sand in Village Bay with a huge number of seabirds around. One stage, we were running down to the south to Skye with his Tin Tin spinnaker set, watching a sea eagle being mobbed by smaller buzzards in Loch Bharcasaig in Skye. We even tried to fish (illegally) in the shadow of the Grey Corries at Loch Coruisk in competition with Stuart when we had dropped the pick overnight in Scavaig. It was brilliant being able to show him some of my favorite spots on the west coast.

My mate Clive was not a normal man from the NE of Scotland. He had worked offshore all round the world and was incredibly good at surveying to find oil. Having worked offshore most of his life being paid big money, he would then stay ashore for equal periods of time. Great fun, special times would be freshwater fishing for salmon or trout in either Scotland or New Zealand (he had a Kiwi mum) in extremely fast rivers. Often, he was away supporting Scotland or the Lion’s rugby tours in Oz, NZ, or South Africa. He loved many women, but his offshore at sea and a traveling lifestyle did not lead him into any long-term relationships.

We had some problems with his older Ovni, but what a fine cruising yacht. Though quite technical, it was mostly easy to fix with an excellent manual. We had a wee Morse problem in Hartlepool, and another tiny fault in Scarborough before that with the bow thruster, which took us about three hours to fix. The electronic self-steering let go on the way up the Forth into Lossiemouth, having lost hydraulic oil from an old pipe connection. Plus, the aft bog went wrong, but these were all minor problems, especially for a ten-year-old bareboat ex-charter yacht.

The lifting keel and rudder gave this boat another special dimension, which is why this concept of a ‘cruising yacht’ might be the way to go, provided you can afford one and want to push out your cruising parameters into ice, shallow water, etc. It would keep you very warm; they’re beautifully designed long-distance cruising yachts. It is one of the warmest, quietest, most efficient yachts for the size I have ever sailed on.

The French, the French, what is it with the French?! They are always pushing design things on, as perhaps they have always done. Obviously, some are by computer design, but then they say: “Let’s go and see how this works offshore?” Perhaps because I have an Anglo-Saxon brain, these concepts are way beyond me—but I don’t lose any sleep about that. About the Author:

John Simpson grew up on the Thames Estuary at Leigh-on-Sea and was lucky to sail as a boy with his parents on an old sailing smack and race dinghies. (GP14s and then Flying Dutchmen in his late teens. Once married with children, he made my living from racing, delivering, coaching, and examining yachts (sometimes worldwide). He also did several fun trips single-handed with a Hurley 22 during the ’80s, crossing the Atlantic three times,until retiring in his late sixties.