Bursledon Regatta August 29th 30th

Our local Bursledon Regatta takes place at the end of August (29th/30th). The regatta which celebrates it’s 139th year , starts on Saturday 29th in the Elephant Boatyard and has the theme “Pirates of the Caribbean” which should provide a colourful backdrop to the event.

On Saturday (29th) morning dinghy races run from Lands End Hard down river, past Hamble and Warsash villages and out around the cardinal buoy in Southampton water, before turning back to the finish at Bursledon.

In the afternoon the rowing races will take place in Bursledon pool between the Elephant yard and the Jolly Sailor pub. I’ll be racing Gato Nego against the Hamble gigs, as I did in the Hamble River Raid in back in May, so please come and cheer me on.

If previous years are anything to go by, the dinghy parade promises to be interesting, expect at least a couple of pirate ships to turn up for the parade.

Photo’s below are from last year’s regatta when the theme was “Camelot”. The winning entry was a castle complete with damsel in distress and working drawbridge – not bad for a 12 foot dinghy!!

The evening event kicks off with a torch lit dinghy parade, hog roast and music, followed by fireworks.

Sunday (30th) has the bigger yachts racing out in the Solent, as an additional attraction the Solent Old Gaffers will be attending the regatta to mark the 50th anniversary of their first race which was run from the Elephant Boat Yard.

I’d also like to extend a thank you to the regatta committee and the many sponsors who make this annual event such a success.

How did you learn to row?

I seem to be doing a lot more rowing than sailing these days, and certainly a lot of my posts (and indeed the blogs I follow) are about rowing. Which all got me to thinking about how I got started in rowing and how maybe others didn't perhaps get the opportunity to learn to row as youngsters and develop a skill which frankly I tend to take for granted.

There was no opportunity for rowing at school , but my Dad always messed around with boats on the Thames near our home. In my early years we had a collection of rather tatty wooden motorboats, all of which spent rather more time in the back garden than they did on the water. One exception was a small clinker sailing dinghy, which was small enough for me to row when I was around six or seven.

It was in the Sea Scouts that I really had the chance to develop some rowing experience (1st Datchet troop, which was actually based in Langley close to the Ford factory but who's counting) . The scout leader was an ex merchant navy stoker called Tony Mann, rough as they come, but good hearted with it.

We would go off to weekend camp (at every opportunity) to a site called Longridge near Marlow, where the Scout Association had an activity centre on the Thames. There we learned to row in wooded four man gigs. The Skipper would tell us, "you're Sea Scouts so it's up to you to show these green 'brussel sprouts' how it's done".

The routine was to come alongside smartly, at the command "way enough" oars were brought aboard, crutches (no such thing as rowlocks) fitted into holes in the thwarts, fenders put out and at the last moment the cox would ship the rudder, as the boat slipped to a halt alongside the main jetty and the "bridge" where the skipper would be keeping watch. Woe betide anyone who dropped a crutch or forgot to put a fender out, or the cox who dropped the rudder on the bottom boards with a thud. "Round again" and we'd set off to do it right next time; round again meant once around the island, about a 15 minute row. We all learned pretty fast and for those who were especially lax or lazy there was the occasional "volunteer" for man overboard drill!

For three or four years in my early teens, that's how I would spend summer weekends, cycling the 12 miles or so each way to go rowing at any and every opportunity. All too soon though the rowing gave way to other teenage pursuits, motorcycles and girls. For a while the rowing was forgotten. The university I attended was as far from the sea in any direction as it's possible to be in the United Kingdom, there was little scope for rowing other than the occasional hire boat on the river at Stratford-Upon -Avon.

It wasn't until I bought a small yacht a few years later than I realised how much I enjoyed rowing, there was as much fun to be had pottering around the anchorage in the tender, as there was sailing.

Thirty odd years later and those lessons are still with me, I find as much pleasure rowing along the river in the quiet of a cold winter day as I do giving it all in the local regatta.

So drop me a line - how did you get started?

Hamble Weekend Scramble

The holiday weekend plus the nice weather meant that the Hamble was especially busy. Having breakfast at the town quay made for a great opportunity to just watch the comings and goings on the river.

The Pink Ferry went backwards and forwards across the river between Hamble and Warsash with people out stroling, serious walkers and cyclists, all out for the day.

A steady and seemingly endless stream of boats went down river heading out into the Solent in the near perfect sailing conditions. Few were as striking as this classic racing sloop, which was enjoying the north easterly winds to sail out of the river.

One of my favourite boats, a Memory gaff-rigged sloop, inspired by the small fishing smacks of Brighlingsea on the east coast, they are built locally on the river.

Several dinghy fleets were racing over the weekend, here a Wayfarer slips along at low water close by the Warsash shore.

Down at the river entrance the full scale of the holiday exodus heading out into the Solent, just a little too much like rush hour.

Inevitably there were one or two problems over the weekend, this large motor cruiser went the wrong side of the red marker and ran aground in the shallows - the clues were all there in the foreground.

Talk about the weather

Talking about the weather is a very English thing and the past weekend certainly gave us something to talk about.

Saturday morning, fine and warm hinted at a nice day in prospect. I was busy with other things, so by the time I got down to the boatyard in mid afternoon it had turned cloudy and cold, a chilly wind had set in.

I walked home past the hard just as the members of the Dinghy Cruising Association were recovering their boats.

The small party consisted of a couple of Wayfarer's, two smaller boats which looked like Wanderer's (the smaller 14 boat also designed by Ian Proctor) and a Mirror dinghy.

DCA members had travelled from Guildford, Farnham and Bordon. Launching at Swanwick Hard up by Bursledon Bridge. They sailed, down the Hamble River and across Southampton Water to Calshot , returning a couple of hours after low water to recover their boats.

Gem the dog waited patiently while the boats were loaded onto the trailers.

We woke in the middle of Saturday night to hear rain lashing at the windows and the wind whistling down the chimney as the forecast gale swept through. Then Sunday morning dawned with clear skies and bright sunshine, so I took the opportunity for an early morning row down the Hamble.

The river was deserted apart from a few Sunday morning race crews getting their boats ready to race in the aptly named RSYC Frostbite Series.

Some of the local wildlife were making the best of the day; a group of crows had found a comfortable spot perched on top of the masts of a few boats in the river. These boats were all moored where a bend in the river gave them shelter from the wind. The crows were perched at the mast heads, high enough to catch the first rays of the low winter sunshine as the sun rose over the nearby woods. I counted 14, one or two per boat, of these clever crows.

With the rowing boat put away, I’d worked up something of an appetite so we went down to Stokes Bay to one of my favourite cafe's for a very late breakfast. On the water the local Laser fleet from Stokes Bay sailing club were out in force and enjoying the brisk conditions as the clouds which signalled the next depression swept in.

The local forecast was rain by 13.00 as the tail end of a depression whipped up from the channel, sure enough at one fifteen it started raining, by then we were sitting comfortably indoors.

If our weather was mixed, have a look at thye posting on South West Sea Kayaking just down the coast in Dorset.