Ultimate 20

I was having a cup of tea at the cafe in Hamble on Sunday morning when this sports boat went past, thinking it looked familiar I went back trough some old post and sure enough the name Redrow came up from a holiday in Fowey a few years ago.

Looking none the worse for her partial sinking and rescue by the Fowey lifeboat back in 2014, Redrow is an Ultimate 20 which I have to say looks like a fun boat.

The design called for a monohull with multihull performance, which offers a dry and stable platform with safe interior space for kids or crew. It is also lightweight and  trailerable, with dinghy like responsive and handling, oh and all that  with the cockpit comfort of a 30 footer which is a pretty compelling package.

Ultimate 20 Class Association.

LOA: 20 feet, 10 inches LWL: 18 feet Beam: 8 feet, 6 inches Draft - keel down: 5 feet Draft - keel up: 9 inches Displacement: 1,260 pounds

Hidden gem

Spotted on the pontoon at Hamble Point, sadly what looks like two J70's were in the way.

If the weather is nice this weekend I'm going to row down and see if she's still there so I can take a few pics from the water. Gotta love that clipper bow.

Cold harbour ferry

Walkers and cyclists hunkered down for a cold and breezy river crossing, makes me feel chilly just looking at this photo, roll on spring.

Sailing Sunday

Sunday dawned bright but with a brisk north easterly but despite that there were more than a few folks out sailing. Out a cat head a bunch of Opi's doing some race training.

The Warsash dinghy fleet were getting ready for a lively start in the river.

But there was a bit more room as the single handed fleet started to gather..

A down wind start, the front runners got their asymmetric's up just after the gun, heading for Southampton water.

By there time the gun went for the single-handed fleet there was a good mix of Toppers and Lasers.

Further upriver the local Foxers were well into their race, as we passed the dinghy park we chatted to a friend who had had an early swim and hadn't made the start, he looked freezing.

We came home feeling as if we should be making more effort to get out frostbiting, but then again we came home, lit the fire and decided that a fresh walk was good enough.

Victory

We've been down to the Portsmouth historic dockyard museum again this time to visit the Mary Rose. When Erica and I last visited it was being sprayed with preservative to stabilise the timbers after nearly 500 years under water. Today the ship's remains are housed in a purpose built and environmentally controlled museum which is really worth a visit.

While we were at the dockyard we couldn't resist a trip around HMS Victory, which admittedly was looking slightly sad with most of her spars removed for repair and re-rigging.

By contrast the hull is looking very tidy, having been recently painted and undergone a fairly major overhaul to the way she is supported in dry dock to prevent the hull from collapsing.

A figurehead of the great man Admiral Horatio Nelson

From the deck of the oldest to the latest ship in the Royal Navy, HMS Victory is still in commission as a serving navy ship, while in the background the latest aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth.

Note to self

In all the years I've lived and even longer visited the area I've never taken the hovercraft over to the Isle of Wight, so as a reminder I took this picture from Southsea common that I need to get around to it in 2018.

View from the Warrior

Erica managed to get a special offer annual family pass to the Portsmouth historic dockyard museums which included our recent visit to the submarine museum and  HMS Alliance . Joseph and I also took an opportunity to use the tickets a while back to drop in on the ironclad HMS Warrior across the harbour in Portsmouth.

I've been on Warrior a few time over the years including for a wine tasting, but the scale and sheer audacity of the ship never fails to impress. Sadly there was a lot of work going on to restore the badly rusted bulwarks on the port side so the best views were looking out across the harbour from the bridge deck.

Down below things are unchanged showing what the ship was like while in service, it was a shame to discover that all the guns (not called cannons aboard ships) are in fact fibreglass replica's, even if they do look very authentic.