When Tony Bennett offered to write a story about a voyage he and daughter had undertaken, I expected a few words and pictures which I would pull into the website to fill a page. So much so that having made the decision to run the story as the lead article this month I put it aside unopened knowing from previous communications with Tony that it would be well done. On opening the files I was blown away by the amount of work Tony (and daughters, the sailing one and the computer one) have put into their story.
I hope you enjoy reading this story and learning about other parts of the world.
David [Jasper] Robertson
Editor

Minnie Moltok is a Mirror Dinghy, 3.3 metres short, 1.4 metres in the beam, with a hull weight of just 45 kilos (10' 10"x 4' 7"x100 lb). Her sail area is 4.5 m_ in the main and 1.9 m_ in the jib (49 ft_ and 20 ft_). The sails are very red. She has a pram bow and daggerboard and carries a gunter-rig. The main is loose footed. The hull material is 5 mm ply, stitched and glassfibre-taped using polyester resin. She was bought as a tender for a larger boat and as a learning-dinghy for the children, as they were then.

Minnie Moltok eager to be off. Mast in forward position. Livø in background.

Polyester resin does not bind so well to wood as epoxy resin, so when the glass-tape eventually began to lift (the dinghy had suffered a traumatic winter before our time), it seemed that a complete re-taping, using epoxy, and epoxying of the whole hull was the thing to do, along with various other strengthenings and improvements. The hull is varnished within and painted blue without. This particular Rome was not built in a day. My sailing-daughter has inherited the face-lifted dinghy.

Minnie Moltok seen from above (the mast is in fact straight) and below. Some people are enthusiastic about traditional, flat-bottomed boats, built of old shuttering-boards held together with three-inch nails, like the one between Minnie and the bridge, but give us a Mirror 11 every time.

Minnie has some extra gear which does not necessarily make her faster but makes her a better cruising boat. (In some of these pictures, some of this gear has not yet been attached.) She has a couple of extra blocks, or even three or four. To hold the gaff to the mast when the main is reefed, there is a rope parrel, running from a point beside the halyard's attachment to the gaff, round the mast, through a block on the other side of the gaff and down to a cleat by the mastfoot. A Block is fitted to the nock of the gaff, from which to hang an extra mainsail. From the mast-top a line goes down to the end of the boom, back to the mast-top, through a block and down to a cleat at the mast-foot, forming a double topping-lift, so the gaff lies nicely on top of the boom, when lowered. A rolling of the sail, a little string, and a pull on the topping lift and Minnie is uncluttered, giving space for rowing, tai chi, or musical-chairs.

Her mainsheet no longer comes from a hole in one side of the transom, up through a deadeye on the boom-nock and down through a deadeye on the other side of the transom, as in the standard boat, but runs from a block on a rope horse through a ratchet-block on the boom-nock and down through the block on the horse. We like to be symmetrical, among other things. Both main- and jib-sheet are cleated with primitive wooden cleats, a single with turning-horn low on the back of the daggerboard-case for the main and a double, higher up above this, for the jib.

The original way to adjust the daggerboard is with the help of a piece of shock-cord, but Minnie likes to have a wedge fitted to the shock-cord so her board can be securely held right up, when beaching, etc.

The jib has a downhaul, for those occasions when it has to come down now. This is of great use when approaching the shore, where things sometimes happen very quickly, particularly when closehauled. The crew prefers to have dry feet in cold weather.

The Mirror has two mast positions. The forward position enables the boat to balance without the jib, so beginners only have one piece of string to worry about. Minnie Moltok uses this mast position together with a bowsprit, from which the jib, and in former times a jenniker, is flown when carrying more than two adults. The balance isn't perfect, but when we huddle together for warmth when beating, the balance is improved. The forward position makes running more comfortable, too.

Fitting out. Mast in forward position, with bowsprit.

The charts hang in a plastic tube, held by two shock-cord rings, under the boom up to the mast. For some of this trip Minnie carried a compass several sizes too large, borrowed from another boat in whose cockpit Minnie could just about snuggle down. This was later replaced with a hand-held compass or two. The father wears a wrist compass.

Minnie has a couple of oars which live, crossed, on the foredeck, a whisker pole, a couple of fenders, 7_ kg of anchor gear, rope to tie up with, an extra main, an extra jib, reefed, kept on the foredeck, a fine square bucket that lives under the thwart, but which has unfortunately suffered sitting-damage during the circumnavigation, a bailer, a small and a large sponge, and lots and lots of string. She likes to carry a repair bag and some gaffer tape. If the Polynesians had had gaffer tape, they could probably have colonized the whole of the Pacific. Makes you think!