Caption Competition

I hadn't really noticed the traffic cone when I took the picture from Warsash hard, but it begs a caption.

Bring on your best

Hamble View

It's 15 years since I took the header photo for Bursledon Blog from the viewing point above Hacketts Marsh.

Not much has changed, a few different boats on the river.

Getting ready for the season

Hamble River SC had a work party day to get all the boats prepared for the season. Joseph and I joined what was a really good turn out of volunteers down at the dinghy park.

It was mostly a case of getting everything out of winter storage, rigging all the boats, marking up with new stickers and noting down what was missing - bungs, sail battens and a few main sheets.

Richard as always dis a great job of organising everything including a complete revamp of the storage racks.

The club have purchased 6 RS Terra dinghies secondhand over winter, together with 6 paddle boards, which expands the fleet and certainly the Terras offer a good step up from Optimists for those kids who don't have the weight and size for a Pico.

Site of historic significance

To mark it's centenary I've been digging into the history of our house, which was built for the local strawberry trade, but long after the trade's peak in the late 19th century, which really started with the coming of the railway. Locally the station at Swanwick was specifically built to transport the "Strawberry Coast" summer crops to London before the advent of refrigeration.

We have a covenant on the property which forbids "the sale or serving of alcohol to agricultural workers".  It seems a bit hash since anyone else it seems is welcome to come around and get thoroughly legless, which just goes to show the value of the strawberry crop.

After sufficient research I decided to erect a plaque.

Spring morning on the river

Following the mini heatwave in February the weather for the past few weeks has been cold with frequent gales, but at last the sun came out with a very gentle breeze, perfect for an early morning Sunday row down the river and an opportunity to admire the mud exposed by the big spring tide

 
Stopping off at the cafe, the town quay was showing signs of life with walkers  and cyclist taking the ferry across to Warsash and a few racing boats heading out.

Who needs an outboard, the Hamble lifeboat crew showing how to scull a tender.

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"Gato" pulled up on the foreshore at low water, while I drank my coffee and watched the paddle boarders out on the river.

Winter Mooring Blues

This small yacht had come ashore in Keyhaven recently and washed up on the shore.

Fortunately Keyhaven is very protected, it would be a very unlucky boat which managed to break from it's mooring and float out of the harbour, perhaps on a very strong outgoing tide, but it would be more likely to run aground or hit one of the other boats.

The boat is well kept and lack of damage suggests that it had only very recently come ashore. Lets hope they got it off and afloat safely, especially so as there was a very high spring tide the following week.

Foxy

Came for a look around on a frosty morning.

There are quite a few foxes and deer in the woods behind our house, we often see them in the field before the trees and they come into the garden from time to time.

He or she seemed to be undisturbed by me taking photos from the kitchen and even the cat didn't seem bothered.