intheboatshed.net

Dylan Winter on gaffers and smacks

The gifted Dylan Winter has excelled himself this time with his latest short YouTube video series Keep Turning Left. In this one he drools over a series of gaff-rigged yachts and smacks, and praises the English for their amazing reasonableness.

Hopefully someone, somewhere will one day have the vision to commission him to do a series of properly budgeted videos - if nothing else this hugely enjoyable series must be a great advert for his skills and screen persona. Maybe the lucky man will even be offered the rich prize of a book contract!

It seems churlish to say it but one thing I slightly regret is that chooses a lot of Irish music for these videos. Maybe he knows and has rejected the wealth of great English traditional music that might seem a more approriate accompaniment to videos that are at least for the moment centred on the English coast, but my feeling is that the Scots, Irish and Welsh will no doubt get their turns later…

PS - I was delighted to find this exchange in the comments to this video on YouTube:

‘What are you watching,’ my wife asked. ‘You’ve got that look on your face.’

‘What look?’ I replied.

‘That look that says I want to be doing what they are doing - you’re not watching porn on that thing are you?’

Clouds and light in the Swale towards evening. Click on
the images for larger photographs

We took a trip to Oare this weekend and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, as despite a less than wonderful weather forecast we had some near perfect sailing conditions, interesting light and cloud, and some good looking old boats. I can’t imagine a more powerful reminder of why we like to sail.

Julie’s shot of the Thames barge Mirosa. The object on Horse Sand
to the left is a beached yacht with someone on board - hopefully
they were there to clean its bottom rather than simply stuck.
I should add that a sizeable group of seals were basking on the
beach just 100 yards away from him. I wonder if he or they knew
about each other?

Julie’s photo of the (hopefully) careened yacht

How about this? Barge yachts are a rare sight nowadays,
but were popular in the 1920s and 30s. I’m sorry I couldn’t
get closer, but we were moored at the time. I’d love to hear
more about the boat - is she the one that Classic Boat
featured some years ago?

Thames sailing barge Will

Will and Mirosa moored in the Swale

On the way home we dropped into Lower Halstow to check
out a cruising destination and found a pleasant, out-of-the-way
sort of place, with some fine old buildings, an old quay
next to the church, and the barge Edith May in the process of being
restored. I don’t know who’s doing it, but good luck and
more power to their elbows!

Norfolk’s local ITV station has an interesting scrap of film shot at Horning regatta in 1908. One striking point is that the scene is very different from the one we know today - not least because it’s so devoid of trees.

Dig the steam-powered pleasure boat, elegant racers and smart standing-lug rigged sailing boats, not to mention cruising boats very like the types still sailed in the area today.