Tag: Yachting Monthly

Dick Durham Podcasts

November 30, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Dick Durham Podcast

I think I have already mentioned these, but I am thoroughly enjoying the RSS feed from Yachting Monthly magazine, and in particular the periodic podcasts from our old mate (and Old Mate) Dick Durham. Try this link for starters – DD is now writing (and reading out; this is an audio podcast after all) his “Rough Guides” and this one ‘does’ the Essex coast.

http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/podcasts/dick-durham-podcast-the-essex-coast-is-the-subject-of-the-first-in-a-new-series-of-rough-guides-dick-durham-reveals-just-how-rough-it-is/

Having said that, either the RSS feed or my machine, is currently playing up and the fed items (podcasts, news, specials, boat reviews and blogs) all end up duplicated across all 5 receiving ‘baskets’ but it’s easy enough to delete the duplicates you don’t need.

Good Hunting.

Help our old Pal

October 20, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Yachting Monthly (MQ)

Just in from the RSS feed (Yachting Monthly) a piece from Dick Durham saying that the rebuild of Medway Queen has “stalled” due to lack of funds.

http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/news/537466/medway-queen-rebuild-stalls

The Cambria Volunteers always felt as one with the ‘Medway Queen lot’ and members of their team were regularly dropping in on us as we rebuilt, comparing notes on their own steel hull re-vamp, which had to be done the old riveting way to secure their own Lottery Fund money.

The Dick Durham article tells that there is something we can all do to help, if so inclined. There is a book “co-authored by Bob Stokes (Project Manager) and Richard Halton. Cover price is £12-50. The book can be purchased from the Visitor Centre or MQPS event stands or can be ordered by post or through www.medwayqueen.co.uk Please send orders and your cheque to “MQPS (Sales)”, 46 Brockenhurst Close, Wigmore, Gillingham, Kent. ME8 0HG”.

Thanks for that, Dick. Maybe some of our readers will buy the book.

Old Gaffers’ Ode

February 24, 2013 / / 0 Comments

If I may, a quick thank you for those welcome comments from Oliver Boyle, Nozz’s brother, and from Bill Nance. We always welcome feedback – apart from anything else it re-assures me that someone is listening!

Kinvarra fishing trip-boat Skipper

Meanwhile Dick Durham has found a superb poem as part of his Yachting Monthly writings, in this case coming to me through the RSS feed. “Yachting Monthly can reveal”, writes Dick, “one of the shanties which will be performed for the Old Gaffers Association’s 50th anniversary. It is written by cartoonist Mike Peyton, 92, who is an East Coast section member and the only original founder member of the OGA left alive. Performed by the Brandy Hole Shantymen, it is a poignant dirge of seven verses”.

Here is (part of) the The East Coast Old Gaffer: – you will have to go to the Yachting Monthly website or (gasp) buy the magazine to see the Ode in its full glory. I’m guessing from the structure and rhyming scan that it is sung to the tune of that well know folk song “I’m a rambler, I’m a rambler, from Manchester Way….” It goes along the lines of ….

“I’ve sailed all over, from Orford to Dover, Boulogne and Breskens as well,
I’ve brought up in the Quarters, and Walton Backwaters, been sick as a dog with the swell.
My blankets have often been sodden, in the bunk where I rest my old head,
But rather than pack up my sailing, I think I would rather be dead!

(chorus)

“I’m a sailor, a sailor from Maldon Town way,
I get all my pleasure when I’m under way.
I may be commuting on Mondays, but I sail my old gaffer on Sundays.”

Excellent, Mike Peyton and thank you Dick Durham for keeping us entertained. Fingers in ears, lads… and…. SINGING!

The picture, by the way is just a superbly bearded fishing trip-boat Skipper who caught my eye in Kinvarra (Co. Galway) whilst tracking hookers, so it is kind of Gaffer related even though it may have nothing to do with the OGA.

Of Calendars and MCZs

January 2, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Out with the old and in with the new. Down comes the old (Westie dog pictures) calendar from 2012 and up in its place the proud new 2013 Cambria Calendar. All the family birthdays get transferred in and any other significant dates added. It occurs to me that I should also be making more use of the Calendar on this website (New Year’s Resolution?) so if any of you know any significant barging dates yet which could go on there, please let me know – race dates, meetings, lectures, conferences or anything else the barge world might like to know about.

Yachting Monthly RSS feed screen grab by Matt Care

Meanwhile I am, as you know, following our former Mate, Dick Durham writing in Yachting Monthly via the magazine’s RSS “feed” of blog and news snippets. Recently he has written an interesting piece on MCZ’s (Marine Conservation Zones). These are areas of coastal and off shore water which Environmentalists are pushing to establish to protect whales, dolphins and all manner of marine life from the ravages of over use by any other ‘lobby’, development by wind farm construction and so on; a nice little source of conflict as you can imagine. The sailing and yachting side of this argument has raised concerns that the MCZs are too big and restrictive and might clip their wings and stop them sailing and mooring where they like.

Dick Durham reports that some common sense has been brought into this debate. “The coalition Government (reports Dick) is taking ‘sensible’ steps towards a phased approach to the Marine Conservation Zones the RYA says. The controversial issues were highlighted in Yachting Monthly’s analysis special in the December issue.

Caroline Price RYA Planning and Environment Advisor, said: ‘The phased approach that Government is proposing appears on the face of it to be very sensible.

‘The RYA has been resolute in insisting that a MCZ should be no larger than required to protect the habitats and wildlife features which it is intended to protect and that the scientific basis for designating a particular feature for protection should be sound.

‘We are pleased therefore to see that Ministers have recognised that they need to have a strong evidence base when looking to designate sites, from both an ecological and socio-economic perspective”

I have to admit to being firmly on the Environmental side of this one, being a card-carrying “Whale and Dolphin Conservation” member but I am somewhere in the middle ground – we do need the conservation zones lest we end up with over used or abused chunks of environment just off shore, but yachtsmen and sailors also need their water to sail on.

If you are interested in this debate and would like to know more, then the site is on

http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/news/533305/government-taking-sensible-steps-over-mczs

Have fun.

Forgotten Sailors

December 7, 2012 / / 1 Comment

Metal rigging blocks under repair; Picture by Nancy Brambleby

The work carries on behind the scenes. These are some of the metal rigging blocks which are being dismantled for cleaning, greasing up and painting, in this case by Boss of Volunteers, Basil. There’s a lot of this goes on out of sight through the winter. Mark (Nozz) Boyle tells me that some folk even slacken off all the bolts they can get at on things like mast cases and deck winches, grease and re-tighten, just so that they do not seize up and rust over the years. I don’t know if we are being THAT diligent on Cambria but if you get bored over the winter, please do volunteer!

My RSS feed from Yachting Monthly has a nice item today written by Dick Durham about the tragic level of suicide (jumping over board) due to loneliness and feelings of being badly treated among modern merchant seamen. “Merchant seamen,” says Rev Andrew Wright, quoted in the article on

http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/news/533186/forgotten-sailors-jumping-overboard ,

” – once held in high regard – are now among the forgotten lost souls of the workplace”

The Rev is determined to raise their profile and has been working alongside the MCA (Maritime and Coastguard Agency) to that end.

The chaplain and director of operations at the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, and honorary chaplain to the Isle of Wight for The Mission to Seafarers, Rev Andrew Wright takes up a new post as Secretary General in February 2013.

I will let you read the full article if you are interested.

Of RSS feeds

November 25, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Dick Durham in Cambria’s aft cabin, picture by Matt Care

I am currently very much enjoying the RSS feed I have set up from Yachting Monthly magazine (for non-techies, it is yet another form of publishing; the magazine decides what snippets of news to ‘feed’ into this system and you sit there waiting for it to arrive). I have Yachting Monthly in my feeds partly so that I never miss a Dick Durham blog. Dick is, of course the last Mate on the Cambria in Captain Bob’s last trading days and is now a sailing writer among other things. One of his outputs is the blog in Yachting Monthly which is always short, pithy and generally able to raise a smile.

This month’s one has him bemoaning the fall from grace of a the West Mersea Yacht Club Bar as follows;

“The children were kicking crabs along the pontoon, the last time I came ashore at West Mersea. Legs missing and nippers raised they fell back into the ebbing tide, not to be fooled again by easy meat on a string.

The yacht club bar – long my favourite on any coast – and one which has a painted board declaring Visiting Yachtsmen Welcome, was staffed by a plump, unfriendly young woman who asked my companion, Martyn Mackrill, dressed in reefer jacket, pink trousers and sailing boots, if he was a yachtsman. He is. ‘Which club do you belong to?’she asked.

The level of beer poured, hung by the thread of its meniscus to the imperial measure…

Something is rotten at the heart of Mersea City and environs these days and so we walk instead, across the Strood, to the excellent Peldon Rose.”

The feed also brings snippets of yachting related news, most recently about an attempt to raise money to fund a UK branded boat in the next Clipper race, some guys getting injured crashing their yacht into a wind turbine, and a love-lorn Turkish guy who sailed 2500 miles from Turkey and “turned up off the north Devon coast in his effort to become reunited with Courtney Murray from Liverpool who once served him a kebab in Cyprus seven years before”. (http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/news/533121/yachting-stalker-arrested-by-ukba).

It’s a nice lively magazine and , if you are interested in RSS feeds, then I should look it up. Good hunting.

Dick Durham casts off

August 7, 2012 /

We have a ‘celeb’ aboard Cambria for the first part of her current historic trip to reproduce the barge’s final cargo-carrying run, Tilbury to Ipswich. None other than Dick Durham, her last Mate and now writer for Sailing mag “Yachting Monthly”. Dave Brooks reports, “Today the Cambria and her Sea Change crew left Gravesend with a certain Mr Dick Durham aboard bound for Tilbury Dock to load token cargo. Tomorrow she will leave Tilbury around 7.00am bound for Ipswich in a rerun of her last ever cargo passage in 1970 under Bob Roberts with Dick Durham as mate. I am pleased to say he looked quite at home on the old girl as he helped throw off the mooring lines. Unfortunately Dick can’t make the full trip due to other commitments but will sail down river with them for a while.”

Nice to have you aboard, DD – it always feels a bit weird inviting Dick aboard; almost as if we should be asking his permission to be there! Incidentally, Dick writes a very nice blog from under the wing of the mag, at http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/blogs/1/dick-durham but it is web-fed, so you will need to add it to Google Chrome (or whatever web browser you use). I added it as an RSS feed, if that means anything to you.

Dick Durham casts off the stern warps as Cambria departs Gravesend. Photo by Dave Brooks.