Category: Racing sailing craft

The entrance to Whitby Harbour, captured by Dylan Winter

It’s usually about this time of year that I start dreaming of sailing in good weather.

Sometimes my dreams settle on faraway places, but this time my eye has been caught by this little video in which Dylan Winter of Keep Turning Left fame captures the dramatic and impressive entrance to Whitby, a place I know well from playing at the town’s remarkable folk festival.

Walking out onto the arms of the harbour, I have often wondered how it looks from a boat, and now we know. Some day perhaps I’ll do it myself…

If you don’t already know it, Keep Turning Left is well worth keeping an eye on – Dylan is clearly Marmite to some people, but for the rest of us he’s entertaining and often illuminating and a very good with a lens – if I ever sail into Whitby, I don’t expect to get half such good images.

PS – While poking about at KTL this morning, I also found an ancient TV film about the Tobermory race of 1968. More summer sailing dreams just made for the middle of winter!

PPS – The Peggy Bawn Press folks (see comments below) have informed me that they have some oline background on this race, and they do – an article by director Louis Miller, no less! Read it here.

 

The Shannon One Design on Irish television

My thanks to Ginny Jones of Vineyard Sailing for spotting these videos about building and sailing these lovely clinker-built racing dinghies. Read more about them here and here.

As usual with these things, I want to have a go at sailing one – preferably this summer in a perfect breeze among lush green landscape and an sun twinkling on that Irish river water… One day!

Lyme Regis to be the new home of Bantry Bay gig Intégrité

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Lyme Regis is to be the home of the 38ft Bantry Bay gig that represents Great Britain in the two-yearly Atlantic Challenge.

In addition to the Atlantic Challenge, Intégrité will also take part in a new venture, Atlantic Challenge England.

The sail and oar-powered boat was built by the late John Kerr, boat builder and founder of Atlantic Challenge GB, in his workshop in Llandysul, West Wales in 1992.

Real greyhounds of the sea, the Bantry Bay gigs are wooden replicas of late 18th century longboats, and are modelled on an existing original gig left behind in Bantry Bay, Ireland by the invading French fleet of 1796 – if, like me, you don’t remember the story of the French attempt to invade Ireland in that era, there’s a page of information at the Wikipedia.

Some 55 of the boats have been built, often by communities.

Taking care of Intégrité and racing her is to be  sister project of the town’s Gig Club, an will have its own committee who will undertake fundraising and oversee the storage, maintenance and management of the gig in partnership with Lyme Regis Development Trust. I understand local boat builder Gail McGarva is very much involved, and that the project is also supported by the Lyme Regis harbour master.