Tag: Orwell

Sea Change Sunset

Sunset SCST

Sunset over Stone Point, picture by SCST

The latest report comes from Sea Change Sailing Trust who are currently out and about working with 2 barges, SB Reminder and SB Cambria. “On Monday”, writes Hilary Halajko, “we had a sail to the pyefleet in company with Reminder, then a barbie on stone point in a lovely sunset. Tuesday not much wind to so a very early 6am start to take the ebb out of Colne saw a porpoise near colne bar!.anchored just below burnham and then ashore to see “Ted” at the lovely Burnham Rio early evening. Today we came from Burnham over to the Orwell ,we were hoping to go into the Walton backwaters but thought better of it as the tide had started to ebb so currently anchored at stone heaps and expect to go to the backwaters tomorrow. Forecast looking decidedly windy for Friday night and Saturday so our idea of visiting Mersea town regatta has been shelved, who knows where we will go next!?”

Meanwhile, I hear that the barge-boat has now been fixed by Shipwright Morgan and the boys are working out the best way of re-uniting it with the Cambria.

 

Nick Ardley’s Swale

Barge and sailing book author and friend of the Cambria, Nick Ardley is first off the marks this time with his report and some superb pictures of the Swale Match yesterday. I publish here a love photo of Repertor and the newly restored barge Niagara crossing the line, borrowed from Nicks’s lovely website http://www.nickardley.com/ but I’ll leave it to you to nip across there and ‘read all about it’ and look through the excellent pictures. Nick generally takes his own sloop, Whimbrel out to go look at these matches, so he can position himself exactly where he wants and can get pictures you would never get from shore-based viewpoints. Nick grew up on the barge May Flower and has a life long love for and interest in all things barge and Suffolk/Essex/Kent sailing (he refers to it rather tongue-in-cheek, as ‘mud-larking’ and ‘ditch-crawling’) and if you’ve not yet caught up with his various books, they are well worth hunting down. Start your hunt on the website above.

Repertor and Niagara

Repertor and Niagara cross the line in the Swale Match 2012, picture from Nick Ardley’s website.

Meanwhile, Nick also chips in on the subject of the ‘stone heaps’ with a comment “The barge anchorage was not over the shingle spit running out from Shotley, but further into the Orwell close into the Shotley shore – almost opposite the Fagbury buoy. Unfortunately since the extension to the huge port on the Felixstowe shore the ‘mud’ has gone or been diminished by the channel running harder into what was a fine anchorage. I have seen barges using the ‘dead’ gound upstream of the port…
Th spit is not the Stone Heaps as far as I am aware, it is a natural geographical feature due to the run of two rivers. The name did refer to areas where ballast was dumped though – however ballast was mostly, latterly, landed ashore for re-use before ships had ballast water tanks…” Thanks for that clarification, Nick.

More on that Groundnut Oil

Cement loading

Cement loading; Picture by Sea Change

David Rye comes back on with some more info on yesterday’s post. “I believe,” he says, “the ‘Stone Heaps’ are off Shotley Point, where the Orwell and Stour meet – a well used barge anchorage in the old days. I don’t think that is exactly its correct name. As to peanuts and oil, my parents worked at the Erith oil works pre-war; a huge place and way ahead of its time when built. The barges brought the sacks of peanuts down from the London docks and took away the remains in sacks as cattle feed for the Kent and Essex farms. The oil was used for margarine. Barge crews came ashore near the Erith Yacht Club for stores and ‘refreshments’ in West Street, namely the ‘Trafalgar’ and ‘The Ship’ pubs”

Thanks very much for that, David.

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!

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