Interesting rowing boat

Spotted at the rowing club in Treboul in France.

Clearly designed for coastal rowing and the often rough waters of Brittany, this is no traditional gig. It lo row.oks more like an Australian surf boat, fast and wet to row.

Ashlett Creek

With a glorious sunny day but not much wind I sailed and rowed Tosh over to Ashlett Creek. Yachting World recently described it as "one of the Solent’s most 
delightful hidden treasures." I probably wouldn't go that far but it's a nice quiet spot nestled between the oil refinery and the now decommissioned power station

Highlights of the creek are the tidal mill building which is past years was the club house for Ashlett sailing club and did a very fine sausage sandwich with chips and beer, sadly it seemed to be closed the last couple of times I've been there, but the Jolly Sailor pub is open and the small quay accessable at high water still seems to be free.

To port on the way in is Ashlett Saing Club, who have a visitors pontoon and have always been very friendly and welcoming.

The creek entrance is very low lying, now improved by a couple of new buoys.

It's an easy sail from Hamble or rather would be were it not for the  Sunday motor boats powering up and down at high speed creating huge wash.

Repairs

Back in2016 Hampshire Countryside  Service closed the river footpath for about four months to effect essential repairs, which reapairs consisted of piling sand and gravel on top of the existing short stretch of path where it passes the old Crab Lake car park. It was no surprise therefore that within a few short months and a couple of gales the repairs were badly damaged.

There have been a couple of stop gap and clearly temporary repairs made since 2016,  so it was a welcome to see in September major repair work being undertaken, even if it did involve a further path closure.

Alas those of us looking at the  way the wooded sidings had been arranged thought, that isn't going to last long, and sure enough into the first week of October and substantial parts of the surface have been washed away by the recent high tides.

Doesn't take much imagination to realise that water was going to get in under  and over the wooden shoring plans and wash away the relatively soft sand and gravel.

Appreciating this is a small example,but our councils and local politicians endlessly claim that more money is needed for front line services, yet demonstrate a reckless waste in the use of our taxes by not doing the job correctly the first tor second times. It would come as no surprise, if when the current problems get worse, the Countryside  Service will want to close the path on health and safety grounds.

The above shows the results of the almost total lack of maintenance to this highly used public amenity during the past 20 years.

Going, going ....

Gone,

The turbine hall at Fawley bit the dust (literally) last week.

Friend Malcolm was passing on his boat, there were two big flashes and the roof fell in, seconds later they heard the shock wave, which was in his own words a "Flipping big bang."

More classics

Not all the classics at the Birdham Pool festival were boats.

Ariel's famous Square Four motorcycle produced between 1931 and 1959, my dad had one for a short time when I was very young. I seem to recall it broke down a lot.

Inisheen - David Moss Catboat

I received an email from Richard Gregson at specialist broker Woodenships asking if he could use a photo I took some years ago of the very lovely David Moss Catboat Inisheen.

Browsing some of the boats for sale (Richard's site probably gets far too many visitors like me) I noticed that she's sold and hardly surprising, if I didn't already have a catboat I would have been tempted.

The picture was taken on the Beauleau river back in 2003 or 4, I used to organise an Old Gaffers race from Buckler's Hard up to the top of the navigable top of the river for small open boats.

Richard still has plenty of other nice boats for sale, including a very nice Ivan Jefferies built gaff cutter down in Chichester.

Impasse

Joseph  had gone off to his friends so Mrs BB & I decided to walk along the river to the marina cafe for lunch, forgetting that it was midday high water and a strong southerly had been blowing for a few days.

The river path was completely flooded as was the dinghy park at Swanwick hard.

Fortunately we have more than one marina with cafes and this one, although close to flooding was still open(sand bags were at the ready.

Over at Lands End Road water levels were getting very close to spoiling the day. When I was a teenager my mum went mad when I tried to bring a motorbike into the kitchen (it was the middle of freezing cold winter), she would definitely wouldn't have been happy with a steam boat  floating around the larder.