Tag: SB Decima

Decima Website

A new website today from our own Master Shipwright Tim Goldsack and his own barge, SB Decima. It’s on http://sailingbargecharterdecima.com/index.html and I have created a link to it from our useful links tab. It’s a nice clear, fresh website, well laid out and easy to use. It advertises that you can charter Decima for family group bookings, day trips, “Art Trips” where you can spend “the day with local artist Mike Lang who will either show you the basics or offer help to improve your skills”. There are also Bird-watching trips – “come for the day and enjoy a unique opportunity to get up close to the wonderful wetland birds of the River Blackwater” as well as “Evening trips with local musicians offering traditional sea-shanties or whatever takes your fancy whilst sailing down the Blackwater”. You can also compete in the annual Barge Match races or go on “Afternoon cream tea cruises”.

SB Decima website screen grab

SB Decima website screen grab. Image ‘borrowed’ by Matt Care

I was also interested to read the bit about Tim himself, much of which I did not know. “Tim Goldsack”, says the site “always knew he had to own a sailing barge one day!  He has been sailing ever since he was a young boy, since the nineteen-sixties when he lived with his family on S.B. Ernest Piper on the River Medway.
His family then moved to the depths of Cornwall, where, throughout the nineteen-seventies, Tim sailed various dinghies and yachts with his father, and then on his own.
Moving back to Kent in the early eighties Tim was re-acquainted with the sailing barges of the East coast. A family friend, Owen Emerson, took him under his wing, and taught him how to sail and repair Thames Sailing Barges.
Tim has since become a Master Shipwright and worked on many of the remaining fleet of barges, and other traditional sailing craft. He and his team of shipwrights have recently carried out the complete restorations and rebuilds of the Sailing Barges ‘Dawn’ and ‘Cambria’. These are the largest traditional wooden vessel restorations in Great Britain at the current time.
Tim gained his Barge-Master’s License in 1989, and has since that time skippered various barges, as well as buying Decima in 2003 and restoring her to sail.
Tim continues to restore and repair traditional vessels, whilst skippering Decima during the sailing seasons”.

Nice one Tim. Good Sailing

 

SB Decima

SB Decima

SB Decima; Photograph (and copyright) by Catherine De Bont. Published with permission.

Today’s picture is a superb one of Tim Goldsack’s ‘iron pot’ barge SB Decima taken by Catherine De Bont. Tim, Catherine and Decima all have long and deep associations with Faversham and with Cambria. Tim, of course is our Master Shipwright who managed, and personally did much of, the rebuild of the barge. He has also skippered her in racing, notably when all we volunteers were allowed ‘out to play’ last year. Tim owns the Decima, a ‘tin pot’. I was always curious as to why a shipwright so skilled at working in wood, would own a metal hulled barge but he tells me with a wry grin that it’s all down to the costs of maintenance. Decima has long been associated with Faversham, being previously owned by Faversham resident (and something of a local celebrity), ‘Beefy’ Wildish, still remembered by many of the locals now of ‘more mature years’. Bit of a character, by all accounts. The trophy for the Stays’l Class in the Swale match is named after him (real name Percy Wildish) and, to quote Tricia Gurnett in her Barge Blog (http://sailingbarges.wordpress.com/tag/percy-wildish-cup/) “In the Staysail Class Niagara and Repertor were neck and neck at the finish, with Repertor one second ahead.  After a protest on the matter of something earlier in the match, Repertor was given a 5 minute time penalty, giving Niagara the victory.   Decima was 3rd, getting the Percy Wildish Cup which was fittingly presented by “Beefy” Wildish’s son.”

 

Catherine herself has, of course, a huge association with Cambria and barges (and sailing craft generally of course) not only from her “Barge and Smack News” and other articles in the glossy mag “Traditional Boats and Tall Ships” (http://tallship.typepad.com/my_weblog/wild_news/). She was on board as they brought the old Cambria into Faversham on Hop Festival Day 2007 and it is she who slings the mooring rope ashore in all the videos of this event, including the clip used by Mike Maloney in the “Red Sails” film (http://www.cwideprods.co.uk/red-sails/). She is a major contributor of barge related news and snippets and photographs on the Facebook networking site. Thanks for the photo, Catherine and may your lens never get smeared with salty water.

Not a Lot of Wind

Still windless start to Colne 2012

Still windless start to Colne 2012; Picture by Ed Gransden.

Oh Dear. Not a lot of wind for the Colne Match then, judging by this picture taken at the start from Edith May and posted onto Facebook from the deck by Ed Gransden. Also in the picture, Tim Goldsack’s SB Decima and the Sea Change Barge, Reminder.

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