Category: Blog (Page 5 of 27)

Noble Life

October 4, 2013 /

Noble Life DVD; film by Simon North, picture of DVD by Matt Care

Through the post comes my copy of “Noble Life” the new film by Simon North, as premiered aboard Cambria while she was in St Katharine Docks recently. At 1 hour 42 minutes this is a good long one, a film to sit down and bask in while you are enjoying an evening’s relax, not one to fuss through quickly when you have a million and one other things on your mind. And it will reward that relaxed basking being a delicious and rich mixture of archive clips, stills, film and interviews in the barge context as Simon, narrating goes exploring and fact finding, trying to re-discover the barges and barge places he knew in the 60’s and 70’s.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and especially the more recent stuff which has all happened since I decamped to this land of no Thames barges. I have seen the Facebook stuff and read the comment, but felt I was sneaked in to the Dedication Service along with Simon’s camera, and taken along on the Sea Change Sailing Trust trip last year where they carried a token few bags of cement on the route of Cambria’s last trip in trade – Tilbury to Ipswich. Then, they carried cattle cake, Simon tells us. This time they had to contend with waiting to come out of Tilbury while a huge tanker chugged past, they enjoyed a visit from Air-Sea Rescue where a Sea King chopper winched a man down on to the deck for a cup of tea.

It was good to see Dick Durham aboard for the first part of this trip and there is some nice interview with him. There is nice interview too with Richard Titchener (of Sea Change) who talks through the reasons behind their choice of the barge and their reasons for doing sail training as well as more recently, their reasons for trying to buy their own barge (have their own replica built from new, which can be done for nearer £600k than our own £1.4 million price tag). Interviews too with plenty of other barge and Thames related heads – Hugh Perks, Tony Farnham, Jeff Gransden, Frank Spice (snr), Boss of Volunteers, Basil Brambleby, Bob Roberts’s two daughters and a former Thames Lighter-man among others.

There is also, as you’d expect, whole sections of high quality, beautiful footage of barges sailing and racing in recent years as well as plenty of archive footage of barges and dock activities, lighters rafted up like a log-jam, cranes, loading and unloading, pictures of barges deep laden and so on.

This is a DVD well worth adding to your own private archives and collections of barge ‘stuff’. It is only £13.00 and Simon can be contacted on artbargestudio@gmail.com. My copy and others were for sale aboard on the day of the premiere but that was purely for the premiere event.

Meanwhile, Thank You Basil for sending me this copy and thank you to Simon and all the team for producing such an interesting and enjoyable film.

In the Can

October 1, 2013 / / 1 Comment

New Newsletter image; design by Elizabeth Cottuli-Care

For my sins I have now inherited the task of creating the Cambria Newsletter a couple of times a year. Nancy Brambleby assisted by Boss of Volunteers, Basil, has been making this happen for all the years it has been in existence so far and thought it was time for some new, fresh input and blood and, as Basil phrased it, “bringing it into the current century”. As they think I have enough gift of the gab from doing this blog, I am their nominated successor. Of course, I am joking and I am more than happy to help out in this way, another contribution I can make from 500 miles away. There are not many.

Mine is the relatively easy part of assembling the text and coercing hapless would-be writers to string a few words together on our behalf and we have, so far, had enough of these to keep us going but if you have something to say – anecdotes, stories, comment, opinion, critic appraisal of barge films or books then these contributions are always welcome. I am very fortunate in having my good lady wife, Elizabeth here among whose many skills happens to be the use of Microsoft Publisher to create and design beautiful documents. This is one of the things she did for a living when we were in the UK. I am in awe. I hope you will agree that the finished document is gorgeous. She tells me she even borrowed the colour of the red sails from the new Trust Logo to use in the font for the paragraph headings; apparently there is a way to effectively “dip your pen” in an image on screen and adopt that colour. Way beyond me, but fair play.

Anyway, our first edition from the small village of Feigh in County Roscommon is now built, proof read, approved, converted back to the required .PDF format and pinged across back to Nancy and Basil for submitting to the professional printers. This has been created in a page order which will allow printing onto 2 sheets of A3, double sided so that it can be folded into an A4, 4-page, double sided booklet. We also have, of course, the website ‘version’ but the procedure is that we hold onto that until the hard copies of the newsletter, ex the print shop, hit the GPO.

This Newsletter is all about giving some reward back to, and maintaining our contact with, those faithful subscribers, funders and donors who are not on the internet. There are still many of them and some have been contributing since way back, when the barge was first out of trade and in the hands of the Maritime Trust. We all think it is important to stay in touch with these people and hence have not given up on hard copies and gone totally electronic. I hope you all enjoy the newsletter when you receive it, and I would welcome any comment, favourable or negative. We want to get this right for the readers and we can evolve it using the feedback. Also, I’d re-iterate, please do send in any contributions ready for the next edition.

Thank You

2013 Championship results

September 24, 2013 /

Cambria racing 2013; Picture by Susan Martin

I think it was Annie Meadows who first flagged this up in Facebook, that the Sailing Barge Association (link from this site) have now completed and published the results of the 2013 championship.

http://www.sailingbargeassociation.co.uk/championship2013.html

We did OK, coming 6th over all but, inevitably, could have done better, especially later in the season where I am told that some topmast rings (onto which are laced the tops’l) had become distorted in a bit of a blow during one of the charter trips and do not always slide up and down the topm’st properly, making it tricky to get a good ‘set’ on that sail. Excuses, excuses, I hear you say!

Whatever the case, the championship was won outright by Niagara with Edith May 2nd, both barges managing this by dint of scoring in every race bar one (the Passage Match for Niagara and the Blackwater for Edith May). Well done those crews and those barges! 3rd equal overall were Lady of the Lea and Repertor, with Edme 5th.

Our 6th was a score of 24 (Niagara had 40) , 6 from the Medway, 5 from the Passage, 5 from the Thames, 3 from the Swale and 5 from Southend.

Say the Sailing Barge Association, “Overall it was a good turnout at the Matches this year. 22 barges actively participated, with an average attendance of 10 barges per match and the 150th anniversary Mark Boyle Memorial Thames Match attracting an impressive 16 barges and other vessels following.”

Thank you to Annie and to the SBA and also to the racers themselves who give us such a cracking spectacle every year. I understand that the Thames Match may not happen in 2014 because in the absence of the late Mark ‘Nozz’ Boyle, there is not a viable committee, so if you know different and think you could take over the running of the Thames Match then please get in touch with the SBA.

Thanks too, to Susan Martin who took this lovely shot of Cambria doing her stuff in, I think, the Southend Match.

Locking Out

September 17, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Locking out of St Kat’s at the end of the Classic Boat Festival

Cambria’s 8 days in St Kat’s is now over and Maggs Casey Kelly sends us this very nice picture of ‘us’ in the locking out. Maggs tells me she is sorry to see us go and we have certainly enjoyed ourselves, feeling well looked after and getting the chance to show Cambria off to way more people than would normally see her. I was there for the first weekend, of course, but Boss of Volunteers, Basil has now caught me up on the further adventures.

The remaining days of our stay were a bit quieter than the first mad weekend, with a footfall of around 60 on the weekdays and then some busy weekend days, when 700 souls came round each day, so that we estimate that well over 3000 people were shown around during the stay.

On the Tuesday our hold played host to the premiere of the latest Simon North (barge) film “Noble Life” which saw another 30-40 aboard and where plenty of copies of the film were sold. I have asked for one for myself and I will review that for you when I get my copy. Being the biggest vessel in the Festival and that having the biggest possible meeting-space, we also played host to a drinks party for all the boat owners in the Festival, apparently attended by 50-odd folk. I bet that was a bit crammed below decks but I understand they all had a good time and enjoyed their chatting and yarning.

Now it is all over and Ian Ruffles (Skipper) and the crew have sailed Cambria down to Gravesend Pier where they had the usual fun and games getting the anchor to ‘stick’ while they sorted out lines and came alongside. There is no bite on the river bed there and we end up paying out yards and yards of chain to try to create some friction while the barge drifts downstream on tide or wind, threatening to mix it with the mooring buoys. I gather we have 130 yards of dolly line and we needed most of that length this time to get a line ashore so that we could dolly-winch ourselves back upstream to the pier. The joys of engine-less barging. Fair play to Ian for knowing what to do!

As Iconic as you Like

September 16, 2013 / / 4 Comments

Tower Bridge in the background as Cambria locks out of St Kat’s

Thank you very much Maggs Casey Kelly who looked after us so well while we were at St Kat’s and now provides these lovely images of Cambria locking out of the basin. I don’t think it comes more iconic than this!

Tom Browning (Apprentice Part 3)

September 15, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Tom Browning, Shipwright Apprentice, photographer unknown.

As the barge comes to the end of her stay in St Kat’s and tonight, locks out bound back to Gillingham Pier and her duties as charter-vessel for the Rotary Club sponsored Respite for Young Carers, a nice email has come my way from Faversham Creek Trust. Faversham Creek Trust, you will know, are setting up a new Apprentice Training Workshop in the former (gas) Purifyer Building on Faversham Creek, in the back of the Morrison’s Carpark.

Their website at http://favershamcreektrust.com/ has news that “Sailing Barge Centaur, owned and managed by the Thames Sailing Barge Trust will benefit from a £100,000 Lottery Heritage Funded refit in Tim Goldsack’s dry dock at Oare Creek. She will be worked on over the next few months by a team of local craftsmen which includes the Faversham Creek Trust’s first apprentice, Tom Browning.

Tom, achieved his level 2 apprenticeship with Simon Grillet, during the Cambria restoration at Standard Quay, in 2011. He will commence his level three training through work experience on the Centaur, combined with technical training at the Purifier Building.

The Trust are delighted to support the Thames Barge Sailing Trust in their restoration and outreach programmes, that do so much to keep alive our local maritime traditions, and this is exactly the type of job that we want apprentices to be involved with”.

Nice one, FCT and it is brilliant to know that ‘our’ Tom is carrying on with you guys and on the barges. One of my favourite pics of the Cambria restoration is the one which has been used in brochures etc, of Tim Goldsack and Tom sighting down the port wale of the part-built Cambria – it just says it all to me about the training up of young lads, keeping these old traditional skills alive down the generations as well as the amount of ship-wright-ery which is ‘by eye’. Unfortunately I cannot now find a copy of that pic (which was not one of mine, I should add) so this rather poor one of Tom will have to suffice. Simon Grillet, I know, at the time was hard at work on the Morayshire, and I would love to know whether that panned out OK.

All the best Tom, Tim, Simon and the Faversham Creek Trust.

Richard Weekes: Volunteer of the Year

September 14, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Good luck today to the ‘crew’ on board Cambria for the last weekend of the St Kat’s Classic Boat Festival. If the weather here is anything to go by (blue skies, bright sunshine) then they may have a very busy time on their hands and could top the thousand visitors mark. That’ll be all staffed by unpaid volunteers which brings me neatly round to today’s subject, this year’s Volunteer of the Year, Richard Weekes.

Richard Weekes is presented with his Volunteer of the Year trophy by Patron David Suchet (l) accompanied by Skipper, Ian Ruffles (r).

Richard has been with us for years. Regular readers will remember the rebuild phase where I called him “My Oppo, Richard”. We were partnered up together on the volunteer rota for the open weekends where we showed the public around the Visitor Centre and the viewing gallery every 6th weekend. I ‘knew’ there were a dozen or so of us but during that phase, Richard was the only one I ever saw, so if I needed a ‘person’ to give a sense of scale to a photograph, or hands holding a paint brush for a blog picture, Richard always had to stand in, so that his daughter even joked that I was Richard’s ‘personal photographer’

Richard then piled in during the painting phase, joining the gang of us each weekend but then also coming down during the week too, to quietly slap a coat of black on a leeboard, or some gloss green on a winch in the old buildings. He has basically carried on ever since when he has been able to get access to the boat. You know what they say about these Navy types – if it moves, salute it; if it doesn’t move paint it!

Richard has his own Cambria and Bob Roberts connection which, if memory serves, had Richard on one of the Navy ships accompanying the likes of Bob Roberts on Cambria to Dunkirk for one of the anniversary (25th?) gatherings of Little Ships. When Bob and his Mate were to be invited aboard the Navy ship for a drop or two of rum, it was Richard himself detailed to go fetch Bob and bring him aboard, and then later to assist the rather more ‘tired and emotional’ Barge Master back to his barge.

Well, this year the Cambria Trust has decided to acknowledge Richard’s unstinting hard work as a volunteer, by presenting him with a very nice trophy. The presentation was performed on board at St Kat’s yesterday afternoon by our esteemed Patron, David Suchet himself, in company of the current Skipper, Ian Ruffles. Well done, Richard. You earned it. We are all very proud of you.

St Katharine’s Dock Classic Boat Fest

September 12, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Cambria against the Tower Hotel at St Katharine’s Dock, Pic by Matt Care

You’ll know if you have been following this blog, that ‘we’ are currently moored up in St Katharine’s Docks right by Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. We are part of the St Kat’s Classic Boat Festival so we are open to the public (free of charge) for the 9 days from September 7th through Sunday 15th. We are in a prime position just inside the lock entrance on the right, the first boat you come to and we can be seen for miles when we have the big logo topsail up and glowing in the sunshine; we can be seen from way across the river by anyone walking on Tower Bridge and we can be glimpsed through the access (road) archways to the flats and eateries around the basin.

We are being very professionally and helpfully looked after by Maggs (Margaret) Casey Kelly who is Office Manager for the Marina Office, as well as being a Cambria Volunteer and sometimes female ‘bosun’ on charter trips where we have female carers and sail trainees. The ‘office’ is also a lovely building right by the lock which contains showers and loos for berth holders as well as an Italian restaurant upstairs – luxury! St Kat’s management have also set up a nice discount for ‘boat owners’ during the festival on production of the ‘card’ when you go to eat at the marina-side eateries.

Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster drop by, Unknown Photographer – I will find out.

Having not done St Kat’s before we were not sure what to expect, though being in tourist London and having this huge, red-ochre, 75 foot advert flying, we suspected we might be busy. We were not wrong. On the first Saturday, the barge had only just locked in and been moored up, the crew (Richard T, Hilary and ‘Stretch’) had handed their young charges over to their shore-based ‘responsible adults’, tidied the barge and handed ‘us’ the keys. We were just getting ready with gang planks etc and doing a bit of shopping as the first ‘tourists’ started to arrive. They were quickly pouring on in queues and the flow went on relentlessly right round till 6 pm. Myself, Basil and Nancy Brambleby and Hugh Perks were on the ‘staff’ and we could not really manage the gang plank and count but we think we ‘saw’ anything from 700 to 1000 souls through.

I love this bit – proudly showing off the barge, rattling away enthusiastically about her importance, history, coming out of trade, the museum years, the rebuild and Lottery stuff and the present uses – you can just see the delight on people’s faces when you tell them about the Respite for Young Carers and the Sea Change Sailing Trust work. Cambria is just plain seen as a GOOD THING, a real hit in terms of ways to spend Lottery money. The children (and the big kids!) love to hold the ships’ wheel and we were able to get pics of whole groups by using their own cameras. They loved to try the hammock we had slung below decks (Thank you Richard T!) and were impressed by being able to sit in the old Skipper’s cabin aft and to tour the “new yachty bit” for’d – delighted with the galley, the cabins and the way the showers are slotted in among the curved timbers in the bow.

Matt Care gets some rest on the Monday – rain and Monday stopped play a bit. Pic by Tricia Gurnett.

All life seems to pass through there. There were old men remembering their associations with the London River and how run down was St Kat’s after the war, smart ladies whose Grandfathers had been barge skippers, children of all ages, shapes and sizes and everyone in between from a Turkish lady eye-ing me through the slit of her yashmak, to the buffed ‘pretty boys’ with their fake tan and their matching ‘Jedward’ quiffs, a Taiwanese lady who asked some very tough and searching questions – she obviously knew her barges, all walks of life, colours and creeds. We even had the team from the ‘Cambria’ pub in Brixton drop by.

On the Sunday we were more together. We’d lost Hugh but we had been joined by Dave and Julie Brooks, so we were able to used the counter-clicker and we know we saw 919 people. Again the flow was relentless, only easing at around 18:30 when we were meant to have shut up shop. Several pots of tea were made but left to go cold and stewed where no-one had time to pour a cup and all of us had cold, un-drunk mugs of tea or coffee parked on various bits of barge. We were all elated but exhausted by close of play and delighted to have a nice quiet meal in one of the local restaurants and share a bottle of wine.

Monday was a whole different kettle of fish – Monday and rain, so we only saw 6 people round the tour all day, but that was a relief rather than a disaster and gave us a chance to watch some old videos of barges, wander round and look at other boats, or catch up on some kip in the hammock. Moored alongside us came the Dunkirk Little Ship, New Brittanic with her superbly stereotypic new Ozzie owner, Greg. I had to head home on the Tuesday morning and missed rock legend Rod Stewart and his wife Penny Lancaster dropping by and nicely and generously allowing us to take pictures with our staff and the barge in the background for Facebook etc.

That’s probably enough for this post, but let me put out an URGENT call to arms for anyone reading this who can make themselves available for all or part of THIS SATURDAY (14th September). Due to the Colne Barge Match clashing, we are a bit short of staff to man gangplanks and look after the public, so if you can help out please get in touch with Basil or Dave B, use email CambriaTrustSecretary@live.co.uk for example. You will love it and be proud to have been there.

Thank You.

Sea Change’s Last 2013 Cambria Outing

September 3, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Cambria under Full Sail in the 2013 Southend Match, picture taken from, we think, Pudge

We were passed this superb picture of Cambria going like a train with all sails beautifully set by Richard, Hilary, Stretch and the Sea Change Crew. The picture is taken from, we believe, SB Pudge and comes from the Thames Sailing Barge Trust. Hilary tells us that they had a bit of fun but didn’t do so well this time. Posting on the 27th, she said, “Currently anchored at West Mersea. Had a blast at the Southend match and a very creditable 3rd place in the bowsprit class as no other coasting barges present. Underway yesterday at 5pm tacking all the way to the Spitway and anchored in the fog here at 2 am! 3 handed was fun apart from winding up 2 shackles of chain against the wind and tide! Up to Maldon today possibly a visit to the Queens Head our HQ this evening!”

All good things must come to an end, and Sea Change are now on their final 2013 charter on Cambria, though they stress that Sea Change carries on on the SB Reminder all through September and October and into early November. Hilary again. “Last Cambria trip of the year for Sea Change. Maldon to St Kats. A fair wind away from the quay so no towing charges today! beautiful sunshine, I feel a BBQ coming on and maybe a bit of swimming?”

Thank you so much to the Sea Change team for looking after and using our old girl. We are proud to be part of your good works. It is brilliant that this vessel is used to do so much good. I thank Hilary too for all the Cambria Watch write-ups.

Dave Brooks reminds us all that, “The Cambria Trust are excited to announce that Cambria will be attending the Classic Boat Festival at St Katharine’s Dock London. She will be open to the public and trust members will be on hand to guide and answer your questions. Dates 7th to the 15th Sept.”

The early part of that includes me, your blogger, so that this may be the final post from me till I get back to Ireland. Maybe I will see you on board?

Not always a Favourable Wind

August 24, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Anyone out there unkind enough to think that these Sea Change trainees should not always have favourable winds and beautiful sunshine; that they should experience some PROPER ruffty-tuffty barging weather to give them a realistic experience, might draw comfort from Hilary’s most recent “Cambria Watch” posts on Face Book. On the 22nd, she posted that they had had “A frustrating sail yesterday as we had the wind on the nose and a foul tide for what seemed like forever. I never want to see Sizewell again as we spent a long time either just stemming the tide or going backwards as there was nowhere safe to anchor! The wind died about 11 pm so our intention to carry on to Brightlingsea died too and we anchored on the shelf at Harwich. There is an up side to everything though and we have all had a good nights sleep. getting under way again soon and this time hopefully we will get to Brightlinsea although there is little wind. We’ve had rain this morning first time in ages and my berth is soaking wet!!!!”

Oops – we may need to sort out that deck caulking again.

Today, even worse, she posts “One word. DRENCHED” and then “I hear Southend pier is flooded, rain not due to stop until tomorrow morning….hmmm…..”

Rachel from Sea Change coiling warps on a nicer morning than those described here. Picture by Hilary Halajko

Oh Dear, you Sea Changers. I hope the weather improves for you soon.