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.