Thames Festival Classic Rally at St Katharine Docks, 2009

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Jim Vandenbos’s mobile phone photos of the 2009 inaugural Thames Festival Classic Rally. If anyone else has photos they’d like to share, please email me at gmatkin@gmail.com

The first Thames Festival Classic Rally at St Katharine Docks, London last weekend was a success and seems likely to be be repeated next year.

I couldn’t make it for reasons not unconnected with my broken ankle, but my pal Jim Vandenbos dropped by to see Lord Boris’s Thames’ Festival after the cricket at Lords finished early.

Among other things he was keen to see the rally at St Katharine’s Dock and beetled over to take a look. When pressed for numbers he guessed that there were something over 30 classic boats in the dock, including Arthur Ransomes’ Nancy Blackett as seen in the novel We didn’t mean to go to Sea, and a very nice Uffa Fox Fairey Marine yacht. He also says there were a good number of visitors strolling around the dock.

If Jim’s right, I’d say 30 boats was a good, healthy number.

Event organiser Ian Welsh told intheboatshed that the rally had been a success. ‘It went very well indeed, the entrants loved it and so it seems did the St Katharine’s people – so fingers crossed we’ll do it next year again. We already have lots of ideas for next year.’

More photos have been posted by the organisers on their website.

The rally also made The Times – see the story here.

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A Southern Broads photo album

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Rockland Broad 470

Dusk at Rockland Broad. Click on this photo and the thumbnails below for much larger images

We’re just back from our honeymoon – a few days on the Southern Broads, an area of water neither of us had visited before. Even though we saw few sailing craft it’s clearly a great sailing area of largely empty rivers, often with nothing but reeds to interfere with the wind. Not that we were sailing this time, you understand – with my broken ankle, a motor cruiser from Oulton Broad turned out to be an ideal way to take a holiday.

Here are some of our snaps for your entertainment.

For more posts relating to The Broads, click here.

Yare scene Yare cows Surlingham Broad 2

Two scenes from the river Yare; the dyke leading to Surlingham Broad

Yare high water Waveney houseboat Yare mist

The Yare at high tide; a houseboat on the river Waveney; early morning on the Waveney

Rockland Broad 2 Yare windmill 2 Approaching Reedham on the Haddiscoe New Cut

Rockland Broad; windmill on the Yare; approaching Reedham on the Haddiscoe New Cut

Yare sailing Yare wherry

Sailing on the Yare; wherrry on the Yare

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Claude Worth in the Bay of Biscay – continued

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Claude Worth Biscay 44

‘But as we rowed up this crowded harbour we came in for a perfect storm of rough but quite good-natured chaff from both the men and women… As French was a foreign language to most of the fishermen also we got on fairly well… But I can imagine that yachtsmen with short tempers and an exaggerated idea of their dignity might not have fared so well. If a man has corners to be rubbed off, by all means let him sail to Concarneau.’

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Claude Worth Biscay 37 Claude Worth Biscay 22 Claude Worth Biscay 42