Post 999 - one more to go!

Another day of Garden assessing for Dad, one of which is Whitstable Castle, no less. On our dog walk we call by Cambria and go aboard so that Dad can have a cup of coffee. The barge is all open and the kitchen is now all set up for making coffees and teas. You could actually nip aboard and knock up a full roast dinner if you had the ingredients with you handy.

Later Dad goes off sailing on the Swale with 2CV Llew, on his 20 foot motor-sailer (mini-yacht) "Kestrel". They motor down Oare Creek and out through Faversham Creek into the Swale in a decent breeze but as soon as they kill the engine and haul up a few sails it goes dead calm. They sit around for a while and then breeze starts to come in fits and spurts from random directions (a "flukey" wind, as we salty sailor-dogs call it).

Eventually it decides to blow from one direction for more than a few minutes and they can get a bit of sailing in, Llew helming and handling the mainsail, Dad nipping about the cockpit winching in the 'Genoa' (big fore-sail) sheets as they tacked a few times. It's not a very big tide today, and Llew's is a mud-berth, so they have to head back home (Dad at the helm now) before the water all drains away, but they are sailing from about 15:30 to 17:00, so Dad is happy. Mum instructs him to come home via the wine shop and the "chicken to spatchcock" shop.

Post 1000 tomorrow!

Have a great weekend

Deefs

Crane Out

Dad's final day off (for the moment) so we get the treat of 2 walks, the first being a normal walk to get ourselves out from under Mum's feet at (workday) breakfast time. Then Later Dad must take his car to Standard Quay in Faversham and walk us home, leaving the car there so that when 2CV Llew goes to move his boat from Oare Creek to the Quay they have a car at either end to retrieve cars by (if you get my drift). The plan is to bring Llew's boat, Kestrel, to Iron Wharf for her annual crane-out so she can have her bottom scrubbed.

On the 'drop off the car' mission we get walked back past the SB Cambria's new moorings and very splendid she looks too free from her trusty lighter dry-dock and bathed in morning sunshine. Haggis is wandering past in this pic. The other two pictures are of the Kestrel, one motoring down Oare Creek towards Faversham Creek, and the other in mid crane-out.

The Cambria's refloat is believed to be going on Meridian (ITV South East) news tonight at 18:00. Look after yourself.

Deefski

The good ship Kestrel

Some pics then of the good ship Kestrel moored to her recent long-stay moorings at Hollow Shore down by the most excellent pub "The Shipwrights' Arms" (Dad reccommends the Goachers Ship Wreck if you are keen on real ales at all).

Sorry these are only mobile-phone pics.

In the dog pic, I am nearest the camera, Haggis is looking intrepidly out to sea (well out across the creek anyway). The guy in the cockpit earnestly scrubbing is 2CV Llew himself fitter-in-chief of Dad's own "Clara Bow" car.

I suspect Dad may get kinda involved in this boat and go on some sailing missions there-in. He used to whizz "Larks" about on gravel pits in Cambridgeshire as a student, so he knows his way around spinnakers, booms, cleats and gybing, but Kestrel has a load of bigger-boat stuff like coffee-grinder winches, shrouds, auto-helm and a little Mercury out-board (which Llew has yet to service). We'll see. Even Llew's dog Rosie (she of the beer and tea drinking fame) has never been out on a boat with him before, so it could be quite entertaining.

Watch this space

Deefski

Happy Easter

A couple of vaguely barge-related pics just to keep your appetities whetted. The planky tarry one is SB Cambria from low down on the starb'd bow, somewhere near where the waterline will be when she is (re) launched at the end of this year.

The brushes are just brooms well lathered up with the sail dressing concoction, and the van is
just a good way to advertise the SB Greta

For Mum it's a few days off allegedly for Easter but she is nose to the grind stone trying to complete yet another Open Univ. essay which has run close to the deadline, Dad is having a comparitively easy time and enjoying a rare long Easter break. He took us down to the Hollow Shore where 2CV Llew has just taken ownership of a nice little 20 foot sailing cruiser.

The previous owner of this boat bought her and tried her out once but maybe frightened himself and promptly gave up, and she has been moored up for 2 years un-used. Her cabins is a bit damp from being closed up to condensation all that time, and her decks, sheets and sides are well greened up with algae. Today's job (in between sitting on Llew's "sundeck" (some old plywood boards by his caravan) and drinking coffee) was to give the girl a good scrubbing with soapy water, and to open all the hatches to let her dry out thoroughly.

She is called "Kestrel". 20 feet long, she is described as "very beamy" by those in the know - she must be about 7-8 feet wide at the widest point. She has a fibre-glass hull and aluminium mast and boom. All the sails and gear are intact and in working order (though we guess could use unfurling and airing). Dad is promised some sailing outings in return for his deck-scrubbing. We do not know if we are invited.

Haggis has been out with Megan on the SB Greta, and both of them as young dogs, spent some time on a river cruiser owner by one of Dad's chums (from which viewpoint they shouted at sheep on the river bank apparently). Plus we have all been narrowboating, of course, so we're all clued up on nautical affairs.

Have a great Easter.

Deefski

Butterfly Wharf

Dad takes a lieu day back for the weekend cover he did last weekend and, fortunately it's a blue skies, sunny one. We have a leisurely awakening and a long slow breakfast. The garden is full of birds enjoying the spring sunshine. At one point we are let out and we disturb the sparrow hawk down on the ground by the bird feeders. She shoots off down the garden curving away towards the trees round the Rec - we don't get a clear enough view to see whether she has anything in her clutches.

We head for the Terrier Heaven of Conyer creek - all low growing thorny scrub, rabbit-grazed sward and rabbit scrapes. Dad is curious. He knows of two Thames barge hulks rotting away against the seawall, now visible only as the skeletal remains of stem, sternpost and a few bottom frames. He'd been told these were SB Landrail and SB Kestrel (SB is Sailing Barge), but now finds that there are 4 barges listed as hulked at Conyer in the records, 2 "above Butterfly Wharf" and 2 below.

We are not 100% sure where on the ground Butterfly Wharf starts and stops, but it may be the sticky out bit you can see in my 2nd picture, which is on the very end of Conyer Creek before you get into the Swale proper. Dad's two barges are definitely "above" this (ie further from the sea) and might therefore be, in fact SB Dabchick and SB Band of Hope. If there were 2 barges below this "sticky out bit" they are long since almost destroyed by time and tide.

Right adjacent to the lower end of the possible wharf is a sticking up chunk of well rotted serious wood which might just be a stem-post/apron, with a few planks leading off which might just be planking around a barge's stem or transom. One other sliver of metal sticks up which might just be a shroud-eye fixing. Who knows? We're not even sure the sticky out bit is Butterfly Wharf.

Ah well - keeps Dad amused for hours and gives us plenty of time to scurry around the rabbit scrapes and thorn scrub.

Have a good weekend

Deefski