Tag: Hilary Halajko (Page 1 of 2)

Back to Work

Barnet Hill Lifeboat Crew

Barnet Hill Lifeboat Crew

Well, our brief and lovely ‘holiday’ in St Kat’s Marina is all over, and the barge locked out on Wednesday morning early, got tugged down to below the barrier, and set sail in a favourable wind (Skipper Ian Ruffles had said “I don’t mind a bit of North but I don’t want anything with an ‘E’ on the front of it!”) for Gravesend Pier which they tell me they were able to get alongside under sail power for the first time. Normally they’d get close and then warp in, though Hilary Halajko of the ‘Sea Change’ team tells me that they have managed the sail-in a couple of times in the past. Cambria will by now have picked up her next Rotary Club charter which, as well as having a lovely time, move her down to Gillingham Pier, so she’s back to real work for a small while, till the end of the season.

Boat Owners' Prize Giving

Boat Owners’ Prize Giving

Dave Brooks asked me to Thank the Management of St Katharine Docks via this blog, for the superb time we all had during our stay and to thank the 15 volunteers who all helped us to achieve the overwhelming success we had there. This both in terms of  visitors seen come through the barge, but also in record money raised in donations, in shop sales and in the raffle for the Jeroboam of red wine with the hand-painted (Cambria picture) on the bottle. I would also like to thank the shanty singers, the Barnet Hill Lifeboat Crew (pictured). These guys volunteered to sing their shanties all around the Marina while dragging behind them one of our deck-sluicing buckets on a rope to raise money for us. On the Saturday afternoon they then came aboard and did us an impromptu concert from our wheel house even though one of them was running a bit tight for time on his train journey up to Barnsley. They were excellent, and raised for us a brilliant and very welsome £161.97. Good job lads!

More from them on http://barnet-hill-lifeboat-crew.weebly.com/

Quite an Impression

Stormy skies into Wells

Stormy skies into for the tow into Wells next the Sea; Picture by Soraya Sharif

Our old girl seems to have made quite a good impression at the Wells Harbour Day, thanks to the team at Sea Change and the helpful harbour staff. The Wells on line news  now carries a superb write up and a collection of excellent photos showing the tow into the harbour, the photos taken by a variety of photographers.

The newsletter is on http://www.wellsharbour.co.uk/na529.htm

My favourite picture has got to be this lovely stormy skies shot by Soraya Sharif. Thank you to the Wells Harbour staff and to Soraya for allowing us to use it and to Hilary Halajko for clearing that for us.

 

Wells Harbour Day

Wells Harbour Day 2013

Wells Harbour Day 2013

Hilary Halajko of Sea Change posted this lovely picture of Cambria at the Wells Harbour Day, dressed in all her finery. “Cambria”, says Hilary, ” is the centre of attention at Wells Harbour Day. Lots of visitors interested in learning about Sea-Change and two of our current young crew are from the town”. Thanks for that Hilary.

 

It brings me neatly on for another date for your diaries. Cambria will be at St Katharine Docks (London) from Friday 6th September round to Sunday 15th September as part of the St Katharine Docks Classic Boat Festival. She will be open to the public from the Saturday morning, ‘crewed’ by volunteers from the Cambria Trust to show her off to the public. She will be locking in on Friday pm/night while still on charter with Sea Change Sailing Trust, Skippered by Richard Tichener, with Hilary Halajko as First Mate, with that batch of trainees enjoying the excitement of a lock-in on the final evening and night of the charter, so she will be off limits to anyone not involved with that specific charter till Richard hands her over at around 10 am on the Saturday.

 

Hopefully we will see you there?

Diamond Jubilee Medway Video

Tracking the Cambria, Picture by Hilary Halajko of the SCST

Tracking the Cambria, Picture by Hilary Halajko of the SCST

This was rather fun – based on our new fancy electronics on board, Hilary Halajko has been able to post a screen shot from the recent trip up the East coast. Says Hilary ” We have just anchored off Great Yarmouth after a 14 hour passage from West Mersea. Not bad going and a fair wind until Lowestoft. Bit roly poly here!! A tow up to Yarmouth tomorrow and then off to Wells all being well ha ha!” Thanks for that, Hilary.

 

Meanwhile I have come by a nice new video DVD currently for sale via the Edith May Trading website (link from our useful links tab) or on board Cambria. It is the commemorative DVD for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medway Barge Sailing Match 2012. I believe this is a first commercially available barge video from film maker Simon North (and well one to him!). It has commentary by Hugh Richard Perks and includes plenty of interview footage with the barge folk taking part, which I always think is excellent ‘record’ material for our archives.

 

It is chock full of gorgeous, sumptuous footage of barges jilling about and then sailing as you’d expect but seemed to me of especially high quality and lovely colour. This might be down to Simon using much better kit than was used previously in barge film, but it ends up as delicious as film made by the likes of Mike Maloney in his Red Sails film. There is a lovely sequence of Repertor smashing through some size-able waves. It is 40 minutes of almost pure delight. Almost? Yes, if I am permitted three very small niggles in the interests of doing a fair review. One is the repeated over-use of the same short burst of a rock-guitar ‘break’. The second is a short sequence where the camera is on Hugh and he is indicating over his shoulder that a barge is beautiful, perfectly balanced, close to ‘art’ but we do not see the barge for several minutes, which seems a bit off to me. Finally there is a sequence in the middle where the camera man suddenly goes all ‘Channel 4’ throwing us about in random panning moves and alarming zooms, just for a few seconds but enough to jolt you from your savouring of all the lovely barge film which goes before and comes afterwards.

All in all, despite my three niggles, well worth a purchase and well worth a look. Well done Simon.

 

An Outright Win and Hilary’s on the case

After my last post in which we drew attention to the tracking software, you may know that on that day, on the Passage Match 2013, Cambria, with Richard Tichener as Skipper and Hilary Halajko as First Mate (Cambria is back in the hands of the Sea Change Sailing Trust), recorded another heroic Outright Win.

Also, you may recall from last year that when Hilary is in the chair, this blog gets well supplied with Cambria Updates, for which many thanks, Hilary.

Passage Match 2013

Passage Match 2013; Picture by Dave Brooks

The first of these is up on Facebook today and reads, “Update from sea change on Cambria. It’s been a very busy few days, we left Maldon on Wednesday evening with a fair wind so no need for a tug. A gentle sail to anchor just below the doubles and then underway Thursday morning bound for Pin Mill. A lovely sail, 7 hours from Maldon to anchor just below the SBA buoy. As we approached Harwich Harbour, Reminder was coming out of the backwaters and Mirosa getting underway from the Stour. So a lovely sight for anyone watching. We were able to launch the topper dingy and along with a rowing the barge boat everyone spent a pleasant hour or so in the setting sun with Mirosa anchored above us and Reminder above her.Those brave enough went for a swim, jumping off the bowsprit, that’s the easy bit, getting back aboard not quite so easy!!
On Friday Gus came to tow us to the blocks, no wind which made it easy to get there. Then 2 days of pressure washing, scrubbing, and anti fouling and boy did she need it, she was absolutely covered in barnacles!! The upside of being on the blocks is that we eat out in the Butt and Oyster!!
This morning Jonathan came to tow us off the blocks and down to the clamp house. A stiff sea breeze made it very difficult to pull her off and in the end we needed the barge boat and outboard alongside to make any headway. At the point when Jonathan shouted that his engine was overheating we already had the main and kedge anchors ready!!! we didn’t make it as far as the clamp house but were able to anchor in a spot where we could sail away before Jonathan’s boat finally packed up!! Bright sunshine a great breeze and tacking down against all those people who were sailing back up to return to work tomorrow, lucky us! We are now anchored just above Shotley Marina getting ready to go ashore for a BBQ , We are the luckiest people in the world right now!!”

We are green with envy, Hilary! What a way to earn a living!

6.41 Minutes of Pure Joy!

A bit of a breathless and exited post today, my fingers rattling off the keyboard like maggots with St Vitus Dance. Please do yourselves a big favour and, even if you never ‘do’ You-Tube, go click on the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WWOMFxF6P8

FB screen

Screen Grab from Sea Change’s Facebook Timeline.

This is a short video film about the use the Sea Change Sailing Trust make of SB Cambria (Reminder also makes as appearance) in their work supporting Youth Training. As well as lots of nice footage of the barge itself, it includes interviews with Richard Tichener and Hilary Halajko plus some of the trainees involved in the sailing trips.  There is footage of them loading the token cargo for that cement delivery they did in the Summer and even the RAF helicopter guy being winched back off the deck to his bright yellow helicopter. You also see ‘Stretch’ showing some trainees how to use charts and trainees going aloft (on the safety line), steering and hauling on ropes.

It is geared towards a new Sea Change campaign where they are trying to raise funds to buy their own sailing vessel (barge?) which they can configure permanently for their own purposes.

Nice one Sea Change and the Team there. Good luck with the campaign.

Goodbye to Our Young Trainees

Hilary H from Sea Change Sailing Trust, in what’s coming towards the final “Cambria Watch” for this Season reports that they “came from Swale to West Mersea early yesterday and avoided the bad weather including the torrential rain! Cambria had a short sail up to Osea today ready to go up to Maldon on Saturday’s tide, where they’ll have a goodbye meal at the Curry Nights restaurant then the big clean up, hopefully before we say goodbye to our young trainees!!”

Ipswich

Cambria in Ipswich Dock, photographed from the deck of SB Melissa; Picture by Sea Change.

The photo is of them moored in Ipswich Docks and is taken from the deck of SB Melissa.

 

Thank you for all the reports, Hilary and tales of your adventures. Thanks too for choosing to use Cambria in this good and brilliant, beneficial way!

Dean up the Topmast

 

Dean up the topmast

Dean up the topmast, Picture by Sea Change Trust

Meanwhile all is quiet on the Cambria if the lack of “Cambria Watch” reports is anything to go by and this has given the Sea Change Team a chance to send one of the lads (Dean) up to the top of the topmast. He has supplied this dramatic picture which Hilary has captioned “Dean at the top of the topmast oiling squeaky blocks!” Fair play, Dean! I’ve only ever been as far as the hounds, but we were motoring along at the time, in the 2011 Swale Match so that was far enough. 

Timeliness and Zeal!

When it all goes quiet in the snug tonight and you need one of those ‘pup quiz’ style snippets to lob in to get the conversation going again, try this. Did you know that on Cambria’s final trading mission before being laid up in 1970 and, in fact, sold by Bob Roberts, to the Maritime Trust to begin her ‘career’ as museum vessel, (before we rudely woke her up again and made her go back to work!) her cargo was Groundnut Cake? Groundnut cake is part processed peanut kernels used as a good source of protein and fibre in cattle and animal feed. These days it is mainly produced in India where, for example, the Raja Fat and Feeds Pvt Company say of it “India accounts to be one of the largest groundnut producing nations. We at our company use high quality nutritious groundnut for the production of our groundnut extraction cake. We are the most famous groundnut cake manufacturer and its supplier, established in India. We impeccably manufacture extracted groundnut cake under strictly controlled conditions. Our groundnut extraction cake is high on protein and in other nutritious values. We cater our products timely to our customers with zeal to satisfy our customers up to the utmost level” There! Impeccability, Timeliness and Zeal! What more could the average cow require?

Cement cargo

Cement cargo for Cambria, Tilbury to Ipswich, photo by Sea Change Sailing Trust.

Sea Change are today on a mission to recreate, as far as possible, this last cargo trip from as close to the original Tilbury wharf as they could get, which turns out to be a cmenet dock, to as close as possible to the destination as possible, in Ipswich and carrying what ever cargo could be arrange, which turned out to be some roadstone aggregate and cement sample bags sourced locally.. This was loaded on board using a crane-lifted box and transferred to a pallet in the hold by the lads on the training trip. The picture is of the cement bags and is supplied by Sea Change.

Hilary Halajko’s latest “Cambria Watch” update runs, ” Our passage yesterday was a very pleasing 10 hours. Anchored at stone heaps and awoke to a bit of fog this morning. Underway for a short sail to the clamp house ( river Orwell). Late afternoon row and dingy sail to the beach for a couple of hours. tomorrow we lock in to Ipswich wet dock to unload our cargo and then hit the town……..for a meal out!” Your blogger has to admit to not knowing where “stone heaps” or the “clamp house” are so I will have to do some googling. Meanwhile, remember, stay impeccable, timely and zealous!

Rum Puncheon

Sea Change Beer Delivery

Sea Change Beer Delivery, l-to-r, Richard T, Hilary H, One of the trainees, Stretch and another trainee.

The crew of the recently completed beer deliveries mission posted this lovely picture of themselves along with the caption, “Sea Change crew after the successful completion of their wonderful beer delivery exercise. Well done to all who took part.
These barrels were bound for the Rum Puncheon in Gravesend.”

Nice one Richard Tichener, Hilary Halajko, ‘Stretch’ and the trainee lads from Sea Change. From all the reports you seem to have enjoyed yourselves immensely, done a lot of good and used the barge for a brilliant and genuine purpose. I don’t suppose the Sea Change lads will ever forget their experiences. I know that you use some of the trained lads back to help train more crew, so maybe we’ll see these two back on board in the future.

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