You don’t see a sharpie in the UK too often, and a Clapham-style Nonpareil sharpie’s even rarer – even though they’re clearly a good form for large areas of our coastline.
From memory, this particular boat for sale was designed by Colin Mudie and has been used for pleasure trips – but would nevertheless make the basis for a very nice centreboard cruiser, and would therefore would be perfect for the East Coast.
Heck, if I had the time to work this boat up into a suitable cruiser, I’d certainly consider buying it…
Here’s a Keep Turning Left video about tides, caulking and why Dylan could not have a wooden boat because he isn’t a good enough person… I think a lot of us might be in that category!
As so often with Keep Turning Left, the clip’s funny and opinionated, and the boatbuilder at the centre of it all shows remarkable good humour despite the film-maker’s prodding questions.
Dylan tells me this saintly man is Brian Upson, and that he runs a boatyard at Slaughden Quay, Aldeburgh. More power to his caulking elbow, I say.
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Round Britain slow sailer and film-maker Dylan Winter has put up an 18-minute piece of film about sailing around the Walton Backwaters, and about the explosives dock at Oakley Quay.
The video is part of his ongoing Keep Turning Left video project and is his first paid-for film download – for the princely sum of $0.99. There’s a taster on his homepage.
Dylan calls the new video 18 minutes of pleasure and the next best thing to sailing. It seems a trifle hyperbolic as claims go – but as we emerge from yet another nasty winter of bad weather and grimmer news and disasters, I’d say that he definitely has a point.
Just looking at the taster, clock the lovely yawl pictured in evening light early on – do I recognise a well known and recently built Alfred Strange yawl? I think perhaps I do…
The Backwaters are a small area of estuary packed with islands and channels, and make an interesting sheltered sailing areafor visiting boaters with a series of quays and settlements around its perimeter. I haven’t been there myself, but it’s definitely on my agenda, and it happens that I’ve been reading about the area while travelling to work in London this week, along with the sad, tired army of London’s commuters.
My companion on the train has been FB Cooke’s unconventional pilot Coastwise Cruising, which turns out to be as refreshing as Dylan’s film. For more on Cooke, click here.
He starts for the Backwaters from the Stour, and as he setsoff I can just smell the sea and the hot summer day to come.
‘After studying the chart we come to the conclusion that we must start at about 8am to make sure of carrying the ebb out of the Stour and down Harwich Harbour to the Cliff Foot buoy… It is a jolly morning, with just a suggestion of haze which means heat later on. We are sorry to say goodbye to Wrabness, but at the same time we are anxious to visit Walton Creek and Hamford Waters which on the chart look intriguing.
‘Getting our anchor, we start away down the Stour close-hauled on the starboard tack.’
Ahhhhh! I think Dylan and old FB Cooke have a lot in common…
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