Out on the Cambria

So. How does Dad decide to spend his first day of leisure? On the Cambria, of course! He's down there with mate Dave B today as it is a bit of an "all hands on deck" last few days preparing the barge for her first session of chartering, which she needs to do to get some money pouring back into the coffers after all the (£1.4m) spend restoring her.

This is a sail training session for disadvantaged yoofs, a character building experience for them with a bit of hard physical work involved. That, in theory, is Monday. The barge, in fact, still looks like a building site in the last panic stricken hours before the house buyers turn up. Dad and Dave are helping by dragging lots of no-longer needed tools and hydraulic jacking equipment up out of the hold / "classroom" to stash them in one of the sheds. This earns them a cup of coffee from the Project Manager, William Collard, and permission to stay on board while the barge is towed out of her moorings, taken a few hundred yards upstream, and then turned round so that she can leave for her charter in a more dignified bow-first direction. So Dad can hardly contain himself - he has technically "been out on Cambria" all be it within the Creek and only for an hour. Never mind, though.

Then the ol' bu***r came back and clippered us to within an inch of our lives. Well, within 5mm of our skin, anyway. We are now very white and super-cool doggies, ready for whatever the next few weeks of heat-wave throws at us.....

Deefs

St Trinians

Here's Haggis getting uncomfortably close to the newly dressed sails of Sailing Barge Repertor. These guys dress the sails each year in a noxious mixture of (in this case) red and yellow ochre, melted parrafin wax, lanolin, vegetable oil, and white spirit. The mixes are usually secret to the sail maker, and can also include horse urine which is, we are told, sterile and a natural bleach. This set are about to get dog urine, which probably works just as well.

And so, another nice long weekend draws to a close and Dad is in deep shock that he'll actually have to work a 5-day week. It's not on, he says! The humans console themselves with a showing of the new St Trinians film (well, not that new now, but you know what I mean). Gotta love a School Song that includes the lines "We are the Best, so Screw the Rest", and proclaims the School as "Defenders of Anarchy". Dad says his school song had "What's the tie that makes you one? Brothers all, The Name? ..... Sons of William Parker!" which does not convey quite the same ethos.

Deefer.

Marjorie and Repertor

Well, the forecast is giving 40 kmph winds so, sensibly, Steve (skipper / owner) is not going anywhere with SB Greta. Dad and Steve chat away, and in passing, Dad asks how he got on with the Swale Barge Match at the weekend. It seems that dramas and excursions were the order of the day.

2 barges collided, SB Repertor, who we know well, and has a steel hull, hit the side of SB Marjorie, making a 4 foot wide gash, and causing her to have to beach on the island to avoid sinking - see the following report in the Whitstable Lifeboat website news - the pictures look like something out of "Master and Commander"

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/whitslb/2008/9aug2008.htm

Greta withdrew from the match to assist, but already had a small boat in tow, and the lifeboat was there by the time they got to Marjorie.

Anyway, it all ended without injury (to people anyway) and both these barges are safe back in Faversham Creek.

So.... no sailing for Dad tomorrow - we'll try again later in the year. Good news for us - we should stand to get a good walk in!

Deefer

Jolly bargin' weather

Brilliant walk tonight. At the weekend, Dad had been down at his labours on sailing barge S.B. Cambria, and in idle moments they had been enjoying the sight of the crew of S.B. Repertor hauling their barge out of the sunken dry-dock. She'd been having her bottom cleaned and anti-fouled, but was now spick and span. These dry docks are converted Thames Lighters, so when they want to release the barge they simply open the cocks as the tide comes in. The dock sinks (or rather stays sitting on the mud) and the barge floats off. They then used one of her own winches to haul her out backwards.

The pic was improved by the falling snow swirling around. Dad decided to print it and give the boys a copy, so tonight we were on a mission to find Repertor and either hail the skipper, or nip on board to plant the (laminated) pic in a suitable position. That also meant we were at the boat yard as our own favourite barge (the one Meg and H have actually sailed on), S.B.Greta was being readied for a sail round to her Summer quarters, the fishing harbour at Whitstable. All her winter maintenance has been completed under her poly tunnel cocoon, so now she's back open to the elements and rigged up for sailing.

Ahhh barges.... Dad's in Heaven. Tonight, it being his birthday weekend he is being taken out for a meal, so we get a consolatory "tripe stick". These dried up leathery chunks of (presumably) gut are black and rough-surfaced, and the humans find them rather gross, but we dogs love 'em and chew and grind and slurp them out of existence. Then we come back for more.

Have a great weekend

Deefer