Tag: harwich

Sailing barge Edith May wins National Historic Ships national flagship title for 2012

Thames sailing barge Edith May has been named National Historic Ships national flagship for 2012.

In the year of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant, it seems particularly appropriate that the winner for 2012 is a vessel specifically designed to trade on the Thames.

Edith May is an 86ft barge built by J&H Cann of Harwich in 1906 for the coastal trade carrying wheat and grain products.

She also had a successful racing career before falling into sad disrepair in the 1990s before being purchased and then restored by her current owners.

The flagship of the year title is awarded to the owners of the vessel with the most impressive seasonal programme of public events in the forthcoming year, and is designed to promote engagement and appreciation of historic vessels in the UK’s heritage.

Each year’s flagship vessel receives a traditional swallow-tailed broad pennant to fly from the masthead wherever she goes to mark her flagship status, and a grant of £1000 towards the cost of keeping her in operational condition and opening for public viewing.

The judges decided that the submission from the Edith May was outstanding. Her extensive public programme over the coming season includes festivals, barge matches, public cruises and taking part in the Queen’s pageant.

Edith May is registered on the National Register of Historic Vessels held by National Historic Ships. She can be seen at her berth in Lower Halstow in Kent during the winter, and is also available for sailing charter trips on the Medway and as a static venue for events.

PS – on the subject of the National Historic Ships, there’s still lots of time to enter the annual photographic competition. Details are here and here.

Keep Turning Left film-maker Dylan Winter in the Walton Backwaters

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britain, cliff foot, coastwise cruising, dylan winter, fb cooke, harwich, keep turning left, oakley quay, walton backwaters, walton creek

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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Sailing fun on the East Coast

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Sue and Mike Feather took a series of photos of a race between a collection of gaffers from Harwich to the River Deben – and it looks like splendid fun to me. Follow the link to see some photos.

Mike also tells me that Sue and he were in the Old Gaffers race at Brightlingsea featured in Dylan Winter’s recent Vlog. Mike was the guy on the grey smack Transcur wearing yellow oilies and Sue was on the rib with Dylan taking photos. I’m beginning to wonder whether Dylan knows as many people as the Pope!

‘It was a really exciting race – lots of wind so very fast,’ says Mike. ‘Those boys put everything up in a blow and go like hell – bow wave coming half way up the stem and heaven help you if you broach with that lot up.’

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