Tag: Ian Ruffles (Page 1 of 3)

Spring Maintenance

New kitchen; Pic by Ian Ruffles

New kitchen; Pic by Ian Ruffles

Today’s pics are both by Ian Ruffles. You can see that the winter has been fruitfully spent changing the galley area around, extending the worktops and cupboards. This to help make the galley more fit for creating the large amounts of servings of, for example, breakfast when the bigger parties of sail trainees are on board.

The poly-tunnel part of our winter work, though, is nearly done and Dave Brooks has posted this following call to arms to anyone who would like to help as we uncover the barge and get her fit again for sailing.

Dave writes ….

“We are now 5 weeks from leaving Faversham for the dry dock at Oare Creek. We have achieved quite a lot in the close season but now is the time for making the barge look the smartest she has been since she first left Faversham in 2011. This is the proposed schedule for the following weekends.

28/1. Painting Sprit, Inner Rails, Windlass (all buff)? Deck (blue) This needs to be concentrated on the foredeck back to the fore horse so that the Poly Tunnel can be disassembled and stacked neatly later.

7/8 Mar. Dressing Sails (Ian to confirm location) On the barge. More painting as above moving aft.

14/15 Mar. Dressing Sails if overrun or postponed due to weather from last week.On the barge Continue painting as before. Wheelhouse and iron work. Begin rigging out.

21/22 Mar. Removal of Poly-tunnel. Rigging out

28/29 Mar. Possibly moving to Oare. Gear Up.

Will advise what can be done at Oare after consultation with shipwrights.

Desperately need bodies for all these weekends. Please beg wives, girlfriends, family and friends to come and help, and pass on to anybody I have missed.
Please advise if you can make any of the dates.”

 

Mark Grimwade anchor, pic by Ian Ruffles

Mark Grimwade anchor, pic by Ian Ruffles

Meanwhile some bad news and some good news. It seems we have been broken into again and (reports Ian Ruffles) “Unfortunately yesterday when we arrived at the barge to continue our galley painting, we found the barge had been broken into again. As you can imagine us at Cambria Trust together with our volunteers this year who have worked so hard to get her ready for the new season are feeling quite upset, this has now put us behind in our preparations, so as per Dave’s post if you can give some spare time to help us that would be much appreciated.”  Stolen was the Flat Screen TV, the Surveillance box, laptop, hand held radio, money and, for some reason, a box of Weetabix. On the good news front, a gent called Mark Grimwade has let us have (back) an old anchor sold to him in the 50s by Cap’n Bob Roberts for use as part of a mooring at Pinmill. Thanks Mark!

 

Phil Latham Serial (Part 3)

Ian Riffles on Gloriana

Ian Riffles on Gloriana

I loved this pic of ‘our’ Skipper, Ian Ruffles ‘playing away’. The pic, supplied by Maggs Casey Kelly has Ian, who you may know is also the full time Skipper of the historic vessel Havengore (she of the moving Winston Churchill’s coffin up river and the first ever boat with an on board computer) and here gets to play with the Queen’s rowing barge, Gloriana. I see he’s in his working garb, though, so must have just been sneaking her about privately. He scrubs up nice when he’s on official business!

…and so to our third and final part of the Phil (Ginger) Latham series so without further ado…

Phil writes:

“One of our first visitors to arrive was Anne Roberts for a pleasant chat which was followed by a gratifyingly large number of the public including Ron Turner, ex-Superintendent of the Thames division and a good friend of ours in the sixties, who presented a painting of SB Cambria off the Sunk to Cambria Trust, and I hope they find a good place for it: The painting was done for him by an ex-mate Jimmy Penn. Also visiting, was an old gentleman in his eighties, of the same name as Ron who was third hand on the Will Everard at the end of the war, very clear in his memories and interesting to talk to, convinced that his year or so on the Will had set him up for life, kill or cure I reckon but it certainly appeared to have worked in his case.

Another visitor was the son of a previous skipper of Cambria before Bob took her over. Altogether a successful day and we “stuck it out” to the press at every opportunity about the role of Cambria Trust in the re-construction although not much seems to have been published. All day long it went on with many a moan, “typical Norwich organisation, you only know about something when it’s about over”.

After all of this excitement we closed down until the arrival in the evening of the Flying Folk Association. These folks arranged themselves up forward and started singing, mostly un-accompanied, one after the other; though there was one man with a “squeeze box”. Bob would have been right at home. One of our casual, non-singing visitors mentioned that he lived in one of the flats opposite and Mark said that he hoped there would be no trouble about noise. “Don’t worry about that”, said our visitor, “I’m chairman of the residents association and I’ll soon sit on any nonsense of that sort”. There goes the effect again.
Now some people may object to my term “ditch crawling” but since the end of commercial use, the Wensum at Norwich has silted up somewhat, it never was deep and we used to slide most of the last mile or so up to the berth behind the tug who just stayed in the middle and let us elongate our arms heaving on the wheel.
Thursday night / Friday morning was designated for our re-negotiation of the rail bridge. Our muscular young bridge operator was once again on duty, so to our “green layby” until the Broads tug showed up at sparrow cough; the plan was to get down to Yarmouth in one day but this depended on a early start to save the last of the flood tide at Haven Bridge.

All went well to start, but picking Mark up in our boat at Brundall where he had left his tug proved to be a bit fraught but we captured Mark and importantly our boat too. Sorry Mark, but there are priorities in this life! We had been joined for the trip down river and the re-rig by Niel Goldie but had lost Stretch at Malden for several days. All went well until Reedham Approaches when the railway turned true to form and couldn’t swing for us as the trains were running behind time, whereupon traditional fault lines appeared in conversation on board; luckily not forwarded by the Skipper to the bridge operatives or we might still be up above Reedham. When eventually we got the swing we arrived at the same time as a fleet of traditional sailing cruisers, who unfortunately lost the draught in the bridge hole and the Skipper got his down river edition of the “Kiniptions” but no contact, just as well. On entering Breydon we lost the services of our escort launch and were again joined by the larger “ with attitude” vessel for our onward voyage.

Now came another delay for Breydon road bridge and time was getting tight for the flood tide, however the effect worked again and I swear the bridge opened wider this time , but who cared, we were still lowered flat and so to the Haven bridge and the last of the flood. I’ve seen coasters take the bridge on the ebb and it’s scary, just watching, especially if you are moored just below the bridge and worry about receiving the vessel, or what’s left of her as a result of wild steering. However, all was well and we moored up on our berth at Heritage Quay. So, up mainmast and topmast, what a jolly life it is ditch crawling! Serious thoughts about C4 explosives but calmed down by a visit to the headquarters bar.
Saturday was up mizzen day, which went very well and out bow-sprit which was a bit of a pig, especially the cat’s cradle of rigging now associated with it. Getting the bolt back in went very well, the alignment being perfect first time. The rigging took longer; it is a well-known fact, that rope left to itself will spontaneously knot and this lot had had the best part of a week. In my time it was much simpler its purpose not being to stop silly sailors, or in this case young beginner from falling into the “ogin”. OH No, it was there to stop expensive sails from going ogin-wards. In those more heroic days before risk assessment,’ elf and safety’ and duty of care any right-minded skippers regarded one as more or less expendable but a good sail as being harder and longer to replace! After assisting Tom in unravelling the mess I began to see the old boys’ point of view, as long as it wasn’t extended to me!
Sunday was re-dressing the mizzen and housekeeping generally. The wind was veering into the West with a half promise of North West, a sailorman’s dream in Yarmouth. I was really tempted but my rail ticket was paid for and my ferry return for Monday evening. I’d sailed in and out of Yarmouth several times but cannot recall freight when we had managed a double, so when the Skipper and Tom insisted on carrying my bags for me to the station a vision of Prison Governor and his Chief Warden escorting an unlamented inmate off the premises flashed across my mind, no pure imagination! But I’ll always regret not doing the passage back especially as I received a text from Niel confirming her arrival at Mersea on Tuesday morning.

That’s it for the coastal cruise this year. All good healthy exercise if you don’t weaken.

All the best and may the effect be with you.
Phil Latham

“June 28th / 29th 1966: 150 tons of mustard seed in bulk, ex-Loch Garth, Royal Victoria Dock, for Coleman’s Wharf Norwich. Sailed June 30th from Erith arrived Yarmouth July 2nd, arrived Norwich July 6th and discharged July 7th. Sailed light from Norwich on July 12th.”

This piece of information has been copied from Bob Robert’s Cargo Book, and appears to be the last trip SB Cambria made to Norwich. BJB

Saint Katharine Docks

Cambria at Night

Cambria at Night

At least once a year I like to get back to the UK and clap eyes and hands on Cambria and any other barges I can locate. Last year and this, my opportunity came as she was moored up in St Katharine Docks as part of the Classic Boat Festival which was, in turn, part of Bo-Jo’s “Totally Thames” event. There are other barges ‘living’ in St Kat’s (Adieu, Gladys etc) but we moor up in a ‘pole position’ just by the inner lock entrance and Marina offices, dressed over with bunting and, if Skipper Ian Ruffles thinks it is safe, flying our huge logo’d tops’l, the mizzen sail and with the brails on our mains’l loosened to let the red sailcloth down as far as the sprit pole. We look magnificent and can be seen for miles – certainly by anyone walking across Tower Bridge – so we are a big draw for the show itself and always get plenty of punters on board.

 

prows

The Royal Nose contrasts with the Sailorman. Gloriana and us.

We staff up with a goodly collection of volunteers (Thank you everybody) manning the access stairs, guiding people around, working in the shop (brilliant new range of hats, polo shirts, mugs etc), selling raffle tickets and, this year, selling teas, coffees, home made cakes and so on. I generally go ‘guide’ and they tell me that I have a natural gift of the gab and a way with the guests (Blarney, maybe?) as I waffle away happily about loads, freeboard, spritsail rigs and respite care. This year we saw record numbers through the barge, easily knocking last year’s proud ‘thousand a day’ record into a cocked hat. We started tentatively on Friday pm – we weren’t meant to be open yet but it was a sunny afternoon and a few tourists were starting to gather against the rail near to us. That was 45 folk shown round, but on Saturday it went a bit crazy in the sunshine, with 1705 people getting the tour. On Sunday we ‘did’ 1125 ‘real’ people and then at 4 pm we had to close the ‘shop’ while Cambria’s deck became the venue for a Prize Giving Reception for the boat owners (another 71 heads!). The prizes were bottles of fizz and these were doled out to some light hearted and fun categories dreamed up, judged and presented by former Mate of Cambria in Trade, Dick Durham. There was champagne for best ‘dressed over all’ but also best fairy lights, best “dog and deck furniture” , for ‘Traveling Light’ (a Belgian sailor who had forgotten his clothes) and to ‘Spirit of the Show’ ( a boat owner found some jewelry left in the Marina washrooms and managed to return them to their owner). All great fun.

3up

Portwey, Cambria and Gloriana

The volunteers were exhausted from all those hours on our feet and speechifying  but St Kat’s is now all very done up, with nice apartments in all the buildings and chi-chi restaurants and cafés on all the quays, so it was lovely to retreat to an eaterie, sip our wine and watch the craft and the lights reflected on the water. These were all sunny days and balmy evenings; we were very lucky with our weather.

Now it’s all over for this year and I hear from Dave Brooks that the barge locked out of St Kat’s this morning on schedule at 08:00 and is under tow down to the barrier, from whence it will set a few sails and head for Gillingham Pier ready for the next charter. It was a very successful event, so if you were part of helping or even if you were one of our very welcome guests and visitors, then thank you very very much. It is pure joy to be aboard, to show off the barge as we do.

 

Mark Chapman’s Medway Video

Huge apologies to Mark Chapman. There I was shouting out for bits on the Medway Match and Mark reminded me that only on the 14th June he posted me a link to his on-barge video of the Match. I had used it in Twitter, so some of you may have seen it, but had failed to post it to here. It is a superbly evocative thing – Mark has video’d with the sound on, so we hear all the on-board noise, winch pawls clanking, Skipper Ian Ruffles shouting instructions and other crew (Mick Nolan and Reggie Andrews) comment, the wind and the waves. As well, there are, of course, all the lovely visuals, barges alongside and behind us, the river and shoreline. Occasionally, Mark points the camera inboard, so we can see deck activity. Let that tops’l draw! Can you pull the main brail in a bit! Wind this wang in a bit! Is our bowsprit clear of ‘is mizzen? Nice and gently – we’re in his shitty wind now!  Lee HO!

Mark Chapman Medway Video

Mark Chapman Medway Video

24 minutes, 16 seconds of pure joy! Thank you very much to all involved and especially to Mark for the edit and production. It all comes flooding back.

The link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTZ6OdH5aK8&feature=youtu.be

 

 

The Cambria Cup

The Cambria Cup

The Cambria Cup

There is a nice piece from Dave Brooks in the Facebook feed today along with some lovely pictures of the Cambria Cup (pictured, reflecting Cambria’s deck). Dave says…

“The Cambria Cup was first won by Sailing Barge Cambria in the 16th June 1928 Medway Barge Sailing Match Coasting Class, when A.B.Finch skippered the barge to first place ahead of Alf Everard 2nd, Remercie 3rd and John Bayly.
On the 26th May 2012 Cambria re-won the cup in the Coasting Class, when Cambria Skipper Ian Ruffles brought her home ahead of Lady of the Lea and Phoenician in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medway Match.
Ian and Cambria retained the cup the following year, 18th May 2013 beating Lady of the Lea, Ardwina and Orinoco.
On the 7th June 2014 Cambria will again try to retain the cup in the Coasting Class why not come along and watch.”

So there’s a date for your diaries!

Winter Maintenance Pictures

Nothing particularly newsy today, just a fine collection of pics of winter work I have been sent over the last few weeks, which I will post in here as an album for you to enjoy.

They feature…..

1) A nice useful collection of blocks found for us by Skipper Ian Ruffles, which are now being ‘serviced’ ready for either use in the barge’s rigging or as demonstration ‘models’ for sail training.

2) Main companionway, all nicely boxed in.

3) Our lovely new (anchor) chain box under construction and complete.

4) The rigging back up after our little try out of the poly-tunnel. She is back into dry dock soon, we are currently queuing up behind Lady Daphne, who needed some work doing on the main mast deck

5) Skipper Ian Ruffles

6) Long term Volunteer and artist Steve Richards with his fine wheel cover. Steve is responsible for the fine line drawings of barges we use in our merchandise, as well as a ‘montage’ style painting of the story of Cambria in her Dolphin Museum days, among many other art works

 

Covered Up

Just a quick post today to show you that the guys have now finished the poly tunnel – the cover is on! These two pictures were taken by Skipper Ian Ruffles and posted on FB by Dave Brooks. This was mainly to try out the cover and make sure they could make it work. It is actually only going to be on for a couple of weeks as we will then be headed for the dry dock and raising the gear again ready for the new season, but at least we know we have a working poly tunnel for the 2014/5 winter. Well done the winter re-fit team and thank you for sharing the pictures.

Snug Winter Quarters

Moored alongside Faversham, Cambria has now taken delivery of our new poly tunnel, our winter cover which will keep the barge snug and safe from the weather while our volunteers get on with jobs such as cleaning and painting, which we are getting few opportunities to do as this succession of powerful anticyclones spiral through; another is due overnight with its predicted lashing of coasts by wind and rain and tidal surges. We are , of course, hunkered down in Standard Quay, miles up the Creek from any of that violent wave action but we still get the wind, rain and scary tides threatening to lift us high enough for us to sneak a chine onto the quayside concrete. Happily the tides have not recently come ‘that’ high – we draw 2-3 feet even when empty, so the tide would need to be 3 feet above the concrete – and also we moor where there are massive baulks of timber leaning up the wall from the Creek bed, we rise gently up these ‘fenders’ and slide back down into the Creek as the tide goes out. That’s the theory, anyway but out here in Ireland, 500 miles away, I am always pleased to know that we have Skipper Ian Ruffles checking our warps and SB Greta’s Steve Norris keeping an eye out from his own barge moored nearby.

The polytunnel is currently being built in situ by Ian Ruffles. Mick Nolan, Basil Brambleby and Maggs Casey Kelly, and it is from Maggs that I have been sent these fine pictures of the work. Thanks you Maggs.

Locking Out

Locking out

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!

Richard Weekes: Volunteer of the Year

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

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.

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