Tag: Blackwater

Decima Website

A new website today from our own Master Shipwright Tim Goldsack and his own barge, SB Decima. It’s on http://sailingbargecharterdecima.com/index.html and I have created a link to it from our useful links tab. It’s a nice clear, fresh website, well laid out and easy to use. It advertises that you can charter Decima for family group bookings, day trips, “Art Trips” where you can spend “the day with local artist Mike Lang who will either show you the basics or offer help to improve your skills”. There are also Bird-watching trips – “come for the day and enjoy a unique opportunity to get up close to the wonderful wetland birds of the River Blackwater” as well as “Evening trips with local musicians offering traditional sea-shanties or whatever takes your fancy whilst sailing down the Blackwater”. You can also compete in the annual Barge Match races or go on “Afternoon cream tea cruises”.

SB Decima website screen grab

SB Decima website screen grab. Image ‘borrowed’ by Matt Care

I was also interested to read the bit about Tim himself, much of which I did not know. “Tim Goldsack”, says the site “always knew he had to own a sailing barge one day!  He has been sailing ever since he was a young boy, since the nineteen-sixties when he lived with his family on S.B. Ernest Piper on the River Medway.
His family then moved to the depths of Cornwall, where, throughout the nineteen-seventies, Tim sailed various dinghies and yachts with his father, and then on his own.
Moving back to Kent in the early eighties Tim was re-acquainted with the sailing barges of the East coast. A family friend, Owen Emerson, took him under his wing, and taught him how to sail and repair Thames Sailing Barges.
Tim has since become a Master Shipwright and worked on many of the remaining fleet of barges, and other traditional sailing craft. He and his team of shipwrights have recently carried out the complete restorations and rebuilds of the Sailing Barges ‘Dawn’ and ‘Cambria’. These are the largest traditional wooden vessel restorations in Great Britain at the current time.
Tim gained his Barge-Master’s License in 1989, and has since that time skippered various barges, as well as buying Decima in 2003 and restoring her to sail.
Tim continues to restore and repair traditional vessels, whilst skippering Decima during the sailing seasons”.

Nice one Tim. Good Sailing

 

Blackwater Match

As promised, a report by Dave Brooks on the Blackwater Match
Dave tells us, “I desperately wanted to beat my previous record of 23 barges in a blog but can only manage 20 and one of them is unnamed.
Blackwater Match 2012; Picture by Dave Brooks14/07/12 saw 10 barges competing in the Blackwater barge match. There were three classes made up of Bowsprits, Edme and Marjorie.
Steel Barges, Repertor, Reminder and Decima and then a curious class made up of Edith May, Ardwina, Pudge, Cabby (racing as a stays’l) and Lady of the Lea and Phoenician
The start saw Edith May crossing the line first followed by Cabby and Pudge, looking good. It was nice to see her racing again.
Then the steel barges were led away by the Repertor, followed by Reminder and then Decima.
Edme led the only other Bowsprit in their class, Marjorie, away. It was a reasonable start with a little bit of wind and Edith May showed a clean pair of heels heading
and out past the Bradwell Power Station.
We headed off and like the following barges Hydrogen, Wyvenhoe and Nellie we tried our best to follow the fleet. We caught up with stragglers at Bradwell Marina
where we found J.P. Lodges new but unamed little barge on blocks in the yard. She looks really good and it will be nice to see her when she is finished and of course
named.
Our next stop was St.Peters on the Wall, one of the oldest Saxon churches in the British Isles. By now the wind had died away and it was difficult to tell what was actually
happening. Making our minds up that some of the barges were on their way back we returned to Bradwell Marina for a pint and waited, waited, waited, but still no
barges came.
We decided to head back up river to the finish where unlike at Bradwell you can get a better view right down the river. This paid off and we could see Edme leading Edith
May and Repertor back home. As it was these three were the subsequent winners of their classes. Edith May was rightly satisfied by being the first Stay’l barge home
beating the Repertor by 15 mins and 25 seconds. Had both barges started together this would have been an interesting match.
So back to Maldon to watch the barges returning where the Thalatta, Xylonite and George Smeed were all in attendance. Thalatta and Xylonite are hoping to be competing
in the next match, the Thames on the 28th July. (I could have grabbed a gratuitous 21st here by mentioning a challenge from the Thalatta to our own girl, two mulie rigged
coasting barges in a head to head, but that would have been crass.) By now the rain which had been an irritant all day had stopped and the sun was out making it a pleasant evening on the quay as the barges returned home passing the hulks of the Scotia and Oxygen in the backwater behind”.
Nice report, Dave, so thanks for that.
Dave Brooks’s picture was taken just before the start.

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