East Cowes kerb appeal

What a great address

Side view of the house, complete with mural  - just great.

First signs of Spring on the river

 I'd been abroad for a week, before I left the daytime temperatures were around 4 or 5 degrees, getting back home things had warmed up and spring is clearly on it's way.

 Not before time, seems to have been a long winter.

Calms

Fine settled weather, great for rowing, kayaking, cycling and riding motorbikes - not so great for sailing

Below Bursledon pool looking more like a mill pond.

 

French classic day boats

As an avowed day boat fan, I can't pass up the opportunity to check out interesting day boats when we're visiting new places.

These first three all have small cuddy cabins, I think the French call them Peche Promenade but that seems to also apply to any small boat. These are three although individually different are very much in the small yacht category, wooden constructed and maybe with the exception of the middle one reminiscent of small pre war designs.

The cabin/cuddy is a really useful feature, great place to stow clothes and equipment, boil the kettle, shelter if it gets rough and cold assuming you can sit and steer from the companion way, or just retire below on the mooring for a snooze.

At the other end of the scale this seems to be a racing class, interesting canoe stern.

Slightly larger than a day boat and probably a local fishing boat, the hull form is very similar to the two smaller open boats below, so maybe evolved for the local waters around Noirmoutier.

These last two are very similar and there were several others along the rivers of the same size and shape, the area has extensive oyster beds so perhaps they evolved from that trade or local fishing.

Overall not dissimilar to our local Itchen Ferry but with perhaps a little more gallic flare.

Gone fishing

When you just have to fish from your favorite spot, even though there's a huge spring tide

 

Cariberia

That's one snappy paint job

Troll 26

Interesting sports boat built by Chantier des Ileaux,  Noirmoutier to a design by Italian naval architect Paolo Bua the Troll 26.

It's described as "8 meters long by 2.50 meters at the main beam, 1.80 meters draft, simple, sleek and elegant, this boat is perfectly designed for day trips, fast, friendly & technical."

The owner was involved with the build, Chantier des Ileaux say "which underlines the shipyard's philosophy of transforming a dream into a concrete project by combining the nobility of wood with the latest innovations in Strip Planking".

Another lovely, more traditional looking day boat built by the same yard the Indigo, who's looks somewhat disguise  it's performance. It sports a NACRA profile keel, flat top mainsail, carbon bowsprit and asymmetric spinnaker to go with the clinker (lapstrake)  planking. Really nice.

 Worth a look at some examples of the other boats the yard has built here https://www.chantierdesileaux.com/bois-composites/realisations/

Hamble Wrecks

Up river between the railway and motorway bridges the eastern bank of the Hamble is undeveloped and home to a few disintegrating wrecks

Above the remains of what looks like a plywood constructed yacht which as far as it's possible to tell probably looked quite pretty in it's day.

 The bows of a steel barge or lighter, as late as the post war years and maybe in to the early 1960's barges were still in use ferrying bricks and other products from the Bursledon Brickworks.