Jolie Brise - the boat that changed Tom Cunliffe's life

[Music] i said absolutely [Music] well today we are on board jolly breeze one of the great racing yachts of all time she didn't start life out as a racing yacht she started life out as a working pilot cutter in the half but what a history she has had what a history and what a story she's seen so many things happen like a great old tree she's stood here she's sailed and history has slipped past her as the salt water has gone under a keel well we're going to have a good look at her today we're going to sail her we're going to attack her jiber we're going to heave her too and we're going to see her doing what she loves best just stamping along in a good breeze of wind she wins races still and she shows us all the way so let's get down to it and let's have a cracking day [Music] so well we're just towering up the gaff sun it's difficult to get it in but if we put plenty around the top the gaff saddle will carry it up with it and it'll grease itself and grease the mass as it goes if we do this the leather will last for years and years and years and also it keeps things quiet because at sea in calm weather the gaff moves around a bit it'll clink clink clink and it'll creak and it'll drive people nuts who are trying to sleep down below so a little bit of tallow absolutely does the job you can't beat it you know this is nature's way excellent it's some sort of animal fat it's got that smell to it i love it as with all gaff sales there's two halyards here one pulls up the front of the gaff the forward end of the gap that's called the throat halyard and the peak halyard pulls up the main body of the gaff in the aft end forward heli adheres the throat and that's a tough purchase we've got some classic swinging going on on the peak lovely to see them working as a team like this and nice not to be pulling it myself makes a change it's a big sale the the main boom i think is that i recall is 38 feet long and that makes for a substantial amount so what's happening now on the port side is that they're tensioning the luff that is the other end of the of the throat halyard and it's got a it's got a five to one purchase on it so when you add that to the purchase on the hauling end of the halide which is on the other side of the boat that gives you ten to one so we've got a couple of good strong men here heaving on this and that's giving you a lot of tension that's the luff of the sail the one you want really tight the topsoil is going up now and it's coming out straight out of the bag the topsoil fills in the gap between the gaff and the top mast in a mystical way and it does a lot more work than its size would ever suggest stretching the halyard getting is as hard as you can we've got the biggest guy in the boat heaving away and that's harrius joined in so they've got that nice and tight and now i think the next job is going to be to sweat up on the purchase this is the tack purchase and when you pull that up it makes the luff as tight as it can ever be and as with all sails what you need is a tight luff desperate for some headsets [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well this is what jolly breeze does best she's absolutely flying along the crew just take it in their stride because they've been doing it forever but i tell you what it's a while since i've been on a big pilot could have gone fast and it's an absolute thrill the sheer zest of 55 tons just piling through the water with all this rag up there all pulling sweetly one sail working with another it's a grand thing you can't beat it really this is how she won three out of the first five fastnet races and this is how today she continually wins transatlantic tall ships races you can't stop her being on board is something really special [Music] well i'm down below now in the aft cabin of jolly breeze and you can see all the high-tech stuff here this really is actually a high-tech ocean racer not what you'd think at all looking at what's on deck but i just thought i'd share with you a little bit about the history of this remarkable boat she was built in 1913 by a man called pomell in lahav as a pilot cutter now pilot cutters really stopped being built around about 1910 1911 around northern europe that was the end of it really but pomell built this boat right at the end just before the war and she comes at the end of a line of development which started probably in the 1840s 1850s when they started building purpose-built pilot cutters in france and you can see the development of the shape if you look at all the history but i just want you to have a look at the lines of jolly breeze they are sublime really nobody ever made a more beautiful heavy displacement boat than this when you see her out of the water so she comes right at the end of the line in fact she never worked for what she was built for which was to go out into the english channel to work down to the westward beat the daylights out of every other pilot cutter and pick off the best ships the best paying ships for her pilots never happened because world war one came along instead she worked the home waters for a year or so maybe two years didn't work out all that well really the job was over and she was sold to a a tunney fisherman from concano in the bay biscay he took her away and he fished with her for i don't know five or six years um not terribly successfully and then she got her break a man called eg martin an englishman had sailed across the channel in a half pilot cutter and he liked the boat very much and he was looking for a boat that he thought he could do some proper yacht racing with not round the cans racing real at sea take what weather comes racing the real thing and he was looking for a suitable boat and he ended up in concano and he saw jolly breeze and he thought that that's the boat and he bought her and he brought her back to england and he instituted what he called the ocean race and he and half a dozen other boats raced from cows to plymouth via the fastnet rock and that was the first fastnet race and jolly breeze cleaned up it was a windy old race a lot of the boats retired or hoped to or just generally had a rough time and jb just stomped her way through it and won she won two out of the next four fastnet races so actually she won three out of the first five she went to america and there she won a class in the bermuda race and possibly would have won overall except for a bit of bad luck she became a famous racing yacht and through her the ocean racing club was formed which very rapidly developed into the royal ocean racing club that we have today probably the most famous ocean racing club in the world by the cruising club of america so there you are that's something of the history the early history but what happened after that well she passed through various owners and ended up with a portuguese gentleman called senor lobato who loved the boat and really looked after her and he kept her for ages and then when the portuguese revolution came along and it was going to be very left-wing he was concerned that the boat might be seized as being a symbol of riches and wealth and power and he didn't want that to happen so he offered her for sale and just in time she was bought by some english people who brought her home and she soon came into the ownership of dances school in wiltshire and there she has been ever since and they've looked after her they've used her for sale training and she's done a fantastic job the current skipper toby maris who we've been sailing with today he's had her for 25 years and with his mate adam i think well i think they're probably the best partnership the boat has ever had eg martin would be proud of them and to serve on board is a privilege i skipped the boat myself in the 80s and it changed my life once you've done 10 knots in this boat you never look back there's absolutely nothing like it [Music] [Music] the great thing with these boats is always to make life easy on yourself don't fight it because it will beat you every time what you've got to do is work with the boat and work with the wind if you haven't got a great big winch like a dustbin that's going to make everything easy for you instead you've got your own sensor timing and that's worth a dozen winches sometimes we're changing the jib what they're doing they're getting the jib ready to go now when they got their sheets roved and ready to go and the halyard on we'll get the word and then they'll hoist it up it's critical that the jib has a tight luff because as anybody who sells any gaffer or anything else for that matter knows if you haven't got a tight jib left you might as well go home the boat's never going to sail so by killing the apparent wind it makes it a lot easier to hoist the sail when it goes up if you're not careful and it takes charge it'll have you over the side it'll just put you into orbit it's a big big sail very powerful just think about it 55 tons of boat here two and a half thousand square feet of sail and not a winch on board and she wins races still today all done with seamanship and timing well toby the weather man said there'd be a bit of breeze at lunchtime we finally got going there's water pouring in this coppers here oh thank goodness for that listen um you've been driving this boat for 25 years freight yeah yeah 25 years and you know are better than probably anybody ever has and you've also sailed all sorts of other boats same as i have we know what we're talking about here listen what i'd like to know your take what's been lost and what's been gained in that hundred years when it comes to boats of a size but i think i suppose the the the bits that have been lost in my opinion are the sea carniness of the boats the modern modern boats you know they're lighter they crash around a bit more uh what's been gained is these days to see a couple out sailing a 60-foot boat yeah you still think that's quite clever but actually it's not that clever so you can you don't need great big crews you don't need super strong people everything's got lighter and they've got winches on they're easier to maneuver there's bow thrusters there's furling head source furling in mars ferning all that sort of thing so i think that and that probably sounds sad in a way but one of the good things about that is i think um amateur sailors are going a lot further afield than they used to so those have been the gains but then the losses yeah the whole rig it's very organic isn't it you know it's it's very fixable there's nothing in here that you can't understand you can see everything that's happening i don't suppose anybody ever sat down with a load of strain gauges and slide rules and calculators and worked out how big everything had to be somebody just did it by eye a long time ago we're from experience do you do you carry much stuff away um no not not really no i'll tell you what we so in the 25 years that i've run her we've broken the top mass twice um once was in the mediterranean top mars was very old and honest you know we were expecting that to happen yeah probably it wasn't much um and then the other one was in the atlantic in very extreme conditions in an uncontrolled job but that's been been really it no no we don't um not much stuff goes and and the boat seems she's in good condition um the school are very good they you know our maintenance program is proactive so each year we like to come out the vote out of the out of refit in better condition we went than the previous year um but no i think that just when they built this boat you know years and years lifetimes of experience and they had a very good idea of they knew what they were about really tom they did and i remember when this boat came to me in 1981 i couldn't believe what a thoroughbred she was this was quite spectacular and i remember looking up at the topmost toby and um i'd been sailing a bricks and trawler before that and i used to look up at the top most on that and it was waving about all over the place it always looked as if it really went along for this life and when i looked up at jb's even though we're having a laugh about it just now it wasn't what it should have been but it already looked as if it was there to stay they got the rigging sorted you know yeah i believe they would have carried top master things like that away on quite a regular basis yes um with jb that's a proper spa up there that's not designed you know that's expected to stay up there yeah um and you know it does we've got a lot of kick going up and down that these days yeah um so no the the rig is just about right um i think it was at the the end of a line and it interests me occasionally tom we go across to france and we um race against the mary fernando yeah which is the other the other lahar pilot yeah she'd be about 10 years before this was she i think a little bit more maybe 15. okay yeah and the difference in performance is extraordinary yeah and you think well okay they look quite similar but actually if you race a 15 year old yacht against another fifth you know a new one there's going to be a big difference yeah and actually i've as you know written a book about pilot cutters and in that book there is a picture of jolly breezes lines and about how they've evolved from the very early pilot cutters in the in the 1850s in the half and you look at jb and the the lines that the hairs stand up on the back of your neck because they are perfect absolutely perfect you can't believe those sweet lines toby i really enjoyed coming off the dock this morning and having to drop the pick i mean to drop the pick to swing around on that i mean that's nobody thinks about doing that sort of thing now especially whether him up on the bow with that great big anchor and he's winding that windlass and and doing the job you make it look so easy um driving a boat like this round in modern harbors we've had quite a lot of practice between us um and i do say practice makes perfect i've got to be honest with when i first started skipping the boat we wouldn't have done maneuvers like that we might have waited on the dock longer for the tide to turn um but he it's a very good crew i've got on here and that's that's half of it really in fact more than half a half of it the skill in terms of actually maneuvering the boat isn't very much it's it's the crew work around around the rest of you the anchor going down at the right moment it coming back up again um you say that toby you know i mean they've got to drop it but you've got to tell them when and that's the point and you've got to completely understand the balance of the boat and how this how she's going to react react in a crosswind when she's not going anywhere what's going to happen to the bow how that stern's going to dig in all those things are in your mind that just don't happen with a modern boat because you wind the wheel around and that's where it goes yeah that's that's that's yeah yeah very very true but has there has been a few years to tom if i couldn't if i couldn't drive the boat after 26 years then we'd all be in a lot of trouble wouldn't we we would we would but i think the point to make is that it has taken a long time and there's a lot of there's a i mean you didn't arrive here as a tyro did you no you knew what was what so i think that there's that there's a there are very high skill levels in making it look easy with a boat like this well thank you people shouldn't forget that if they're in the way [Laughter] thank you thompson so we're setting up for a jive now main sheets coming in a bit of cows here for the moment just sorting ourselves out timor's even in the main sheet that's the first thing there's a number of things to do before we can jibe i've got to concentrate on the helm and not do it too soon the main sheet's coming right in and when the main sheets in the leech of the mainsaw and the topsoil will be holding up the top mass because we've got to let the the runners go the running back stays on the top we're just setting up the new one now on what's going to be the new wet weather side the old one will be let go in a second when they've got the new one on everyone yeah ready to take it around tom okay here we go the wonderful thing is that with the main sheet pulled right in on this great big heavy boat she just stares stairs like a dinghy we're going to come through the wind in a minute jump on the yankee jib tops going front there all the rest of the sails are going to have to be manhandled round because they're great big sails and here comes the giant keeping my head down out the way don't get garrotted jive is just about completed and we're bringing her back up towards the wind to get a bit of apparent wind which is what we now need to get her moving some mains away that's it and we'll be off in a minute as soon as that for sale comes across and the main sheet comes back in we'll be on our way just lovely just he's the helm and she just takes herself slowly up there i sit here like god almighty and the crew are working their nuts off making it all happening comes the main sheet getting the bottom out of the way and we're steadily coming up david's heaving away on the jib top we're almost on course and it's going to be uh it's going to be a close reach this is probably the best the best we'll make sailing this boat as you do with absolutely no winches or any sort of power assistance of any sort we're thundering along here you know with 55 tons of boat absolutely ripping along a lot of people have been pretty anxious now when you're sitting here as a cucumber i mean how do you get on with having no mechanical assistance you've got to plan ahead a little bit further um you you really learn to unload things and i think a lot of yachtsmen will always think well if there's a problem sticker into wind sticker in the wind which is kind of dingy sailing most of the time on here if we've got problems we're going to go down downhill downwind get all the pressure off everything um and yeah we're just a little bit more careful um you can't fight the boat you just can't fight it so you get it to try and do what you want to do that's how we work it it's very interesting about turning downwind because i don't think anybody probably taught you how to do that and nobody ever taught me but we've both reached the same conclusion i can remember so many times something bad happens up forward my reaction now as a man who does this time with gaff rig is turn it downwind get it all behind the mainsail and it's a baby isn't it yeah yeah stuff it head to wind and you've got a tiger by the tail and also on here we you know our speeds are good enough that when we do go down we're going to drop the apparent winds so much um you know i mean we could almost even demonstrate that right now if you like tom yeah we could couldn't we like that yeah why don't we do that let's do it now she's going to just point us straight downhill to give us a little demonstration about the apparent wind could it she's bearing away you'll notice that he hasn't had to ease the main sheet let's not talk like she's going her own way and she's happy enough to do that and that's you know that's a wonderful thing try doing that with a modern boat with that amount of heal on forget it and here we go everything's going to unload now time couldn't be good completely different oh my sweet life yeah look at that so look i think if we've got a problem that's what we do no win today is there no definitely we were making all that ourselves yeah prime seamanship mate that's what people need that's what people need let the boat talk to you anyway we go back yes back up come on give us up we're ready now adam yeah skipper says give it some so there we go we start to feel the power coming back on again she'll take a minute or two to get going and we'll be over an area again i'll be looking at your eyes looking down here i know isn't that a wonderful thing you see right now it's all right isn't it because we haven't got going so the apparent wind's not there but she'll start generating her own wind in a minute and start flying and the goldfish will be swimming along the deck down there yeah goldfish but as long as they're not enjoying it it's no sense right well toby has generously agreed to heave the boat too now which is a very easy thing to do in a pilot cutter and it's one of the things they do best of all the great thing about these boats is that they actually stop as well as they'll go and it's a great gale survival tactic just to heave to put the boat through the wind let the head sails come aback and she'll sit there like a duck and you can put as much or as little sail up as you like to suit well at the moment we're sailing along on a full sail because it's a lightweight day so we're gonna have two with an old shooting match up and see what happens so toby's heaving two he's got the helm right hard over the only thing that we have to do is ease the lee side topmass runner so that as the boom comes across because we're tacking through the wind and we're leaving the head sails right where they are nobody's touching a headset sheet they will come back in a while and when they come aback they'll try and push the boat off the wind toby will put the helm down in a while it'll take her a while to lose weight this is the trick you've got to let her lose weight first and then when she's almost stopped because these head sails are all stopping her now instead of sucking her forwards and when they stop and the boat stops toby shoves the helm right hard down to leeward and lashes it down and the boat will find an equilibrium and then she'll sit here all day while we have our lunch or tell jokes or just go below and pour ourselves a whiskey if the girl's blowing hard and that's the way to do it back in 1981 the master who was running the boat for the school asked me if i would take the boat down to spain for him with three of his students and perhaps make up the crew with some mates of my own and i said well why do you want me to do that bill and bill parish said to me he said we want you to take some money and we want you to spend it on wine in the rioja region and we want you to bring the wine back and slap a sticker on each bottle and we will sell it on behalf of the school the parents will buy it they don't mind if the prices have been inflated and the money that you have made will go to support the ship and i thought well what a noble enterprise so i signed on straight away pound and pint nobody got paid we always did it for fun and uh which is the way it should be with a boat like this they handed me 2 000 quid 2 000 pounds and away we went me and my pals and three of the excellent students some of which i am still in touch with and we took her down to spain and we had a good look around spain and in the end we couldn't find where to buy the wine and finally we were standing in front of the yacht club and the commodore came out senior organo and he said that is the famous jolly breeze and we said what it is yes sir and he said well what are you here for and we told him and he said i will arrange this and he did and two or three days later 200 cases of the finest rioja arrived and we spread them out in this saloon they came right up to here and my little daughter who was uh how old would she be she'd be about three at that stage she's now director of national historic ships i should say in those days she was a little three-year-old girl i have a picture of her sitting on top of the wine cases here and we sailed back to england with the wine we had the most wonderful passage home we ran up the channel we had a gale of wind in the biscuit we had to heave to and stop for a while while a gale blew through and she took that in her stride no problem at all isn't it great to sit down here and listen to the rattle of the guys laying the boat up on deck they're just putting everything away i love that sound people walking on the deck of a good wooden boat and when we came into the channel we finally got a wonderful fair wind and we ran up channel we came past the casquettes in the dark and we ran 40 miles and four hours on the walker log i've never been so fast in a heavy displacement boat in my life before or since and we overtook two coasters going past the casquettes what they must have thought as they saw the single green light come up a stern and then turn to white as we rode away up channel and i realized then how jolly breeze had won all those races and she's still doing it but she changed my life because a year later i went out sold my house and went out and bought myself a big bristol channel pilot cutter and sailed away to the arctic points west and a new life and it all started with jolly breeze she changed my life as she has changed so so many and will continue to do there is nothing like a great ship for shaping the world [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Tom Cunliffe - Yachts and Yarns

Views: 140,378

Rating: 4.9445405 out of 5

Keywords: Jolie Brise, Sail Training, Tom Cunliffe, Sailing, RORC

Id: ZzyGJeQg7bc

Length: 30min 32sec (1832 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 01 2020