Saturday Seagull

I don't normally repost other people's pics but this just made me grin and reminisce.

On the eveniing befoer our departure from Las Palmas, dressed for dinner we dropped into the dinghy, opened the fuel tap which just fell apart, petrol pouring into the dinghy. A quick fix with blue tac was affected and off we went. 

With no real spares we carried on with various ad hoc repairs up the Gambia river, then Barbados, Trinidad and Grenada where the engine eventually siezed going across Prickly Bay. 

Of course it could all have been down to our negliect and uncaring ownership, but I'm still firmly in the camp that thinks they make rather better anchors than outboards - with apologies to those who love em.

Fowey Boats

We were down in Fowey during June and couldn't help taking a few pics of especially noce or interesting boats, some of which have been featured before, but they are so nice why not show them again.

 Above Dolphin on the slip at the Bodinnick Boatyard skipway

A very nice and very well kept example of the Jack Laurent Giles famous Vertue, lots of information about the design here.

This loverly traditional boat could be a Polperro Gaffer, or a Plymouth Hooker or something entierly different, whichever was it looks fantastic and has been a feature of Fowey tharbour scene the past few years

 Not too small to be beautiful, classic harbour rowing boat.
 

Day sail to Yarmouth

With the glorious sunshine and settled weather, I decided to take a day off and go sailing down in the western Solent.

The wind forecasts were mixed, but all agreed that the day would start with light winds and sure enough as I left Keyhaven and headed southeast towards Yarmouth, it was calm with a gentle summer breeze.

At around 11 the wind had almost dropped away, there was just enough to goose wing and head east towards Lymington with the tide which would hopefully bring Yarmouth due south by the time the sea breeze filled in.

With quite a big tide also pushing eastward until around 11.30 so I wanted to be well up on Yarmouth and away from the Hurst narrows and the strong west going tide, so lack of wind wasn't a problem and made for a very relaxing helm.

The wind filled in for a perfect reach across the Solent and a great view of Fort Albert and the Needles.

Arriving on the beach outside Yarmouth it was a bit lumpy with all the passing motorboat wash, so no time for a leisulely lunch, I headed back out towards Keyhaven.

The wind had got up from the west and between the wind, the tide and the motorboats, kicked up some pretty steep and uncomfortable seas leaving Yarmouth and until I was well north and in the lee of Hurst spit on the north shore of the Solent. The Wanderer behaved impecabbly taking everything in her stride, riding up over the steep chop and waves and keeping a good speed. Alas I was too busy at the helm to take any photo's.

It was good to be out on the water, the wind got up to around 16-18 knots on the retrun which is about as much as I would want to cope with, I did stop hove to, to fully roll away the jib and take stock, the first time I have tried hove to which the Wanderer settled into very well.

It's probably around 5 kilometers from Keyhaven to Yarmouth as the crow flies, I should have taken a GPS track but I'm guessing I sailed around 12 plus Kilometers,  about 7.5 miles.
 

Aile Class

The lone reader might recall that I have a thing for open day boats. Some time ago I happened on a set of line drawings for this hard chined originally a Finnish bult boat which was adopted by the French Yacht Club Ile de France as their one design - the Aile class.

 I've always wanted a large model yacht in the window, and so with the realtive simplicity of hard chine construction and my lack of model making skills (or rather lack of patience) I set to during the first 2020 lockdowns.

It's quite a generous model standing just over five feet from the bottom of the stand to the top of the mast. And of course therein lies the problem, if I had put sails on I wouldn't be able to see out of the window.

 Aile Class - Facebook

Three are better than one

 Trimarans are interesting multihuls, rather than twin hulls I tend to think of tri's as a fast lightweith hull form with a stablising outrigger instead of a keel, only one of the outside floats should be in contact with the water depending on which tack the boat is on.

 

This is a home designed and built tri from Netley Cliff Sailing club, pictures kindly provided by Greg.

Greg explains

"Update on the mystery trimaran at ncsc….. I met the owner /builder yesterday busy fettling his machine..a really nice guy and a naval architect. He has apparently built numerous experimental boats and is bubbling with ideas…this one he created after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and is set up to cope with the problems he now has in sailing. 

He reckons that although the waterline length is only 8 ft it keeps up with 14ft dinghies. Obviously a speed freak ,he told me that he designed, built and sailed numerous world sailing speed record boats (including Jacob’s Ladder with a friend of mine) and that his last record was still unbroken at 60+Knots! If only every strange looking boat had a tale to tell like that"

 

I have a feeling that I've met the owner and builder many years ago when he and his wife owned a Nigel Irens designed Roxanne on which we sailed as crew in an Olf Gaffers race, and did quite well as I recall. 

 

Some impressive welding on the trolley wheel assembly

 

Solent Views

 Friend Greg took to the skies recently and sent a couple of interesting photos.

 

The first is Portsmouth harbour and the naval dockyard. We used to sail from a mooring in Bomb Ketch Lake up the Fareham leg of the harbour, it was a great place to sail from or even just sail around with loads of interesting things to see.

 The second is Newton Creek, the spit (top left in pic) has apparently been breached at high tides and certainly looks like a low spot has developed which could quickly change the nature of the creek if it continues to erode.

Pictures taken from a Jodel 105a Ambassador.

Ausonia

Rather cute traditional motorboat on the hard at Lymington

The beam is quite narrow and wine glass hull might be a litttle rolley, hopefully the long keel damps it down. That wheelhouse looks liek a noce place to watch the world go by or navigate in confort out of the wind and rain.

 

Shout out

Apparently that's the term to say thanks, and it goes to the Bugle Inn, Botley, where we dropped in for a birthday dinner. 

The food is always really good, (puds to die for) the staff are really friendly and having heard that we were there for a birthday, the chef very kindly gave us a cake complete with candle.

The Bugle is also open for breakfast so we will be going back to give that a try soon

Speaking of birthdays I noticed this John Surtees MV at the Festival of Speed is the same age as me, clearly a vintage year!