2013 gear down, Photo by Basil Brambleby
Our gear is down. I have these nice pics from Boss of Volunteers Basil. You can see that the bowsprit is now inboard (left of pic), the mainm’st and topm’st are lowered within their tabernacle and propped aft by the main horse, while the mizzen mast drops forward and is leaning on a prop by the crab winch near the photographer. The smaller spars (mizzen gaff, mizzen boom and the tops’l headstick) are stashed below decks along with huge piles of sails and ropes. It is a big job but now it’s done, its all down and we can get at everything for servicing, stripping and repainting, oiling or varnishing. We are obtaining our own poly tunnel to keep out the weather while we work.
Meanwhile, a date for your shiny new 2014 diaries, that’s the Cambria Trust AGM on Saturday 18th at the same venue as this year, London River House in Gravesend at 12:00 noon. Please do attend if you can make it. It is the members’ and subscribers’ main chance each year to hold the Trustees and ‘Management’ to account, to give them good feedback if you like or don’t like how the barge is being used and run or you simply have suggestions for how we could do things differently. It is also a good chance to ‘network’ and meet plenty of other barge-folk, to chat and yarn
2013 gear down 2; photo by Basil Brambleby
Finally, I am on a mission to bring our e-mail ‘mailing list’ up to date. We have apparently failed to send the normal email to everyone advising them that there is a new newsletter. I will obtain a list from our Membership Sec (Cathy Chapman) and compare it to the list of users on the CambriaTrustSecretary account and sort out any discrepancies. I will then send an email to everyone and see what replies we get. In the mean time if you suspect that your email address is not on the list or it is incorrect, please email to CambriaTrustSecretary@live.co.uk including your real name.
Thank you for that. Have a good run in to Christmas.