Ploughing a new Furrow.

In which Mark and Rachel become jovial landlord and landlady of the Plough at Normanton on the Wolds, Nottinghamshire.



It's a lovely country pub which had become a bit sad and neglected recently. They closed it for three days to strip all the tired old stuff out and redecorate it. The beer's good, the food's great and the atmosphere's exceptional, so so far so good.

A reet classy latte....




A few more pictures are here

Happily, the menu does include the BVI-influenced cheesy fries and gravy.

A Considerable Rewind!

Another memory of warmer days to brighten up a November evening. This is James aged about 12 sitting on a small boat that we rented for the week on Lefkas. We mainly pottered around to a deserted patch of beach and lazed around or snorkelled, although we were more adventurous one day and headed off to Vathi on the neighbouring island of Meganissi. It's only about five miles, but it felt quite an adventure on such a small boat.

One that got away.

This is Apostle, The Contessa 32 that I was seriously thinking about buying in the spring. Initial estimates made it look feasible to buy her in Florida and bring her back over here. She's a lovely boat and sails like a dream, but Mike, her owner, has been too busy to give her the attention she needs and so she needs a lot of work to bring her back to her former glories.

In the end I decided that it would simply cost too much to ship her over and do the work required. Hopefully someone will see the potential soon, cos she's gorgeous.

Ooh, Shiny

Well, they turned out nicely.

Four of the bits of wood that I've been sanding and varnishing.

Before:













After:








It almost seems a shame to expose them to all that nasty salt spray and sunshine!

Rewind

As we hurtle headlong through the cosmos towards winter, here's a picture of Missy relaxing on Kalos at Leverick Bay in the BVI. Taken almost exactly a year ago.


I'm not sure what expression that is, but she's definitely facing in the general direction of the bar at Leverick Bay, so it probably involves thoughts on whether her next drink is going to be a beer or a painkiller.....ooh, or perhaps a bushwhacker. It's tough being a decision maker.

Long Time No Post

Quiet times for poor old Moonshine for the last six weeks or so. Missy had to go into hospital for an op so she's not been up to all the clambering and bending of life on the boat.

She's coming along nicely now, but it's getting very late in the season, so it may be a squeeze to get a weekend in before the weather gets just too wintery.

We've had two force nine gales in the past couple of weeks, so Moonshine's been treated to some new fenders. Because she was moored on mooring buoys previously, she only had tiny fenders which aren't much good at keeping her off the dock when the wind blows.

Plan A was to take her out of the water for the winter. The marina offers free onshore storage to 12 month berth holders, which sounds a good deal......but there's always a but.

The boatyard who actually carry out the work charge for their services in getting the boat in and out of the water, plus they insist on the mast being stepped and charge for storing it.

"Free" winter storage, therefore costs £600! Somehow that doesn't seem like much of a deal. I'm sure that the money can be put to better use than having her sitting in a car park for four months.

So she's staying in the water for the winter and I'll take her out in March to get her bottom scrubbed and her anodes checked. In the meantime most of her exterior woodwork is sitting in the shed being revarnished. Four coats down, one more to go and then the current batch (most of the big bits) can go back on the boat all shiny and protected against the elements.

Here's me sanding back the piece of teak trim that covers the edge of the hatch cover and doing a good impression of an aged shoemaker or something.

At least the sea-dawg is doing her best to help!

Downhill racing.

Sunday was pretty exhilarating with the spring tide and the wind going the same way as us. The GPS showed us touching 8 knots on the return to Chichester. Great sailing, with the weather forecast dissuading enough people from coming out to make the Solent pretty quiet. We did see this splendid ship coming up the other way though. (Even if they were cheating by motoring into the wind).

Everything was pretty quiet on board, until we turned north to get into Chichester Harbour and realised that the downwind sailing was hiding just how strong the wind was as we suddenly heeled over. Good job the sea-dawg was at home. She wouldn't have been impressed.

This is a graph of wind speed from the weather station on Chichester Bar Beacon.

See the 30 knot gust at about 14:30? That's what hit us as we were rounding the corner. No wonder we were moving quickly!

Just to round things off nicely, freeflow into the marina began just as we were arriving, so we even missed the usual weekend afternoon queues, yay!

White Horses

The forecast winds duly turned up on Saturday morning, with 20-25 knots blowing in from the West. The skies looked pleasant though, with plenty of blue sky in between the scudding clouds, so off we set for our latest attempt to actually go somewhere.

We didn't have the most auspicious start - for the second time I had to get an unsuspecting passer-by to hold onto the bow of the boat so we could actually turn her up the fairway. (Moonshine only wants to turn her bow to the right when going backwards. All the berths we've been in so far have involved a left turn to get out. Add a wind from her stern to this and there's no way she's going to turn in the right direction). Once we got into the lock we got a stern telling off because we'd inadvertantly jumped the locking out queue. In the time between me listening to the VHF traffic to and from the marina and actually setting off, they'd started the usual wait-for-your-number-to-be-called routine. Ah well, I apologised profusely and it saved us an hour's queueing, so hey-ho.

Disappointingly not much to report from our intrepid passage to the wilds of Cowes. We had the tide with us all the way, but the wind absolutely on our nose, so we got plenty of tacking practice and plenty of water over the decks. Mark looks like a natural on the helm, though. I'm not 100% sure where we were just here. We don't look at quite the angle that we spent most of the trip.



Just to prove that we actually got some distance from Chichester this time, here's Portsmouth complete with Spinnaker Tower on the left and a Napoleonic fort in the foreground.


We eventually arrived in Cowes at about 5:00, rafting up at East Cowes Marina on the outside of four spiffy 42 foot yachts, and definitely looking like the poor relations. On our return from the pub we were greeted by the owner of Teflon II, who we'd tied up to. He was most put out that the marina had dared to tie up a 27' boat next to his 42' Moody, claiming that we were scraping his sides. (We weren't, I'd checked for two hours before we headed pub-wards and even moved his fenders lower to make sure that we weren't). He should have been pleased that the contrast with Moonshine was making his boat look even flashier than it was.

Racehorses

A three day weekend with lots of stuff planned, but Missy wasn't feeling well so Plan B had to be put into effect. Missy stayed and home and watched old movies for three days, with Clemmie the sea-dawg hanging up her lifejacket for the weekend to keep her company. Paul down to the boat with old mate Mark with some serious wind forecast for the weekend.

We were civilised on Saturday and got booted and suited for a day at Goodwood races. Here's a picture of the people there. I didn't bother with any pictures of horses, because all the ones that I put money on came in some hours after the rest of the field. All, that is, except the one which was leading all the way round until a couple of feet from the finish line. At which point the horse that Mark had backed got itself half a nostril's length in front. Hmmph.

Still, it was all in all a good day, despite Missy's absence.

Fair winds

Sunday was a lovely day for sailing. Up at 8am, walked the dawg and got a newspaper, cooked bacon rolls and coffee, tidied the boat and snook out of the marina towards the end of free flow so the tide was with us. (About the first time we've managed that trick - we've spent a lot of time going the wrong way so far!)

To be honest, we didn't do much, but it was a very nice day to be on the water not doing much.

Mark seemed to like it, anyway.










How about this for a fine, upstanding crew?




So all in all a very pleasant weekend. We didn't make the Isle of Wight this time, but there's always next time!

There are a few more pictures here. (Sailing, plus a few others.)

In which Missy finally enjoys a day on the water.

There has been a conspicuous lack of on-the-water pics and stuff over the past few weeks, because we haven't been anywhere. We're being very cautious when there's just the two of us and the wind's been slightly too strong to venture out.

This weekend, however, we had reinforcements in the shape of publican-to-be Mark. The plan was to head off to Cowes on Saturday for our first proper sail. Unfortunately nose to tail traffic on the M3 meant that Mark didn't arrive until 2pm, so we missed our slot in the lock (even after the massive two hour wait for 30 boats to get through!) Fortunately, Mark arrived just in time for them to call us to let us know that we'd made our way back to the top of the queue

We didn't fancy risking getting into Cowes as darkness was falling, so it was a motor up the harbour and then a sail sorting run for an hour or so before sailing back.

With a bit of tweaking, Moonshine actually sails rather nicely. It looks rather splendid all goosewinged out. If there are any proper sailors reading, Mark did manage to get the kinks out of the main eventually.

Even the sea-dawg seemed to enjoy it.



Saturday evening was very pleasant. The queues to get back into Chichester Marina were as long as those trying to get out, so it was getting late when we finally got tied up. Fortunately, we were the last-but-one group to order food before the exhausted kitchen staff at the Crown & Anchor at Dell Quay put up the shutters for the night. They'll be praying for rainy, miserable weather over there before the summer's out.

We'd walked to the pub but, after a few pints, the return journey wasn't looking like much fun. Unbelievably, the landlord offered us a lift home when we asked him if he knew if any local taxis would take us and the sea-dawg. What a nice man!

Fat bloke berates dog

This one's apropos of nothing at all, but I'd say it's time for that bloke to go on a diet.

Not the run of the mill stroll

There I was, yelling at Clem to stay out of the mud while we were on our way from the Marina to Dell Quay for a quick half or six, when these came over the horizon....




Scared the bejayzus out of us.

Turns out they were doing a private display for a wedding party. Some wedding!

They were still doing their stuff as we arrived at the Crown and Anchor. This is their penultimate fly-past.



Nifty capture of them passing the setting sun, eh? Very artistic, I thought.


As a comparison, here's Clemmie's Earobatics on a windy evening.





All on a mobile phone of course, so not the greatest quality.

I'd actually got the phone out to take a picture of these, because we'd been wondering what kind of crop it was in the field.

Polite Pavla

Pavla's normally such a nice girl. I guess we can blame the hot evening and lack of sleep, rather than the several Fosters for this.....

All Stations, All Stations.....

Phew - legal. I finally did the VHF radio course at the weekend, so I can now use the VHF on the boat almost legally. (I can't actually licence the radio itself until I get my certificate). I can now look forward to happy days requesting radio checks from Solent Coastguard on Channel 16 like everyone else. Hurrah.

Positano pics

A few more Positano pics are here on fotopic.net. Not very good, but they're from my phone. The digi camera batteries died after two hours on the first morning and I'd forgotten a) spare batteries b) the charger.

A question: How come my phone can take pictures for days on end, while also managing to work out where we are in the world, make phone calls and access the internet, while my Fuji camera lasts for about three pictures before expiring while being expected to do nothing but capture images?

Pompeii

Saturday was Pompeii, a hell on earth of scalding heat and choking ash. It must have been pretty bad in 79AD when Vesuvius erupted too.

A late-June day with the thermometer up in the 90's and not a cloud in the sky is probably not the best time to go and visit Pompeii. The preservation of a first century city is incredible, and it's a wonderful, wonderful place, but it's a hard slog in the sunshine. The numerous Pompeii dogs have the right idea, find a shady corner under a tree and wait until the sun goes down.

The Picnics in the Harbour recommendation is to go in September when it's probably easier to appreciate the insite into life almost 2000 years ago that the city provides.

OK, philistines that we are, the high spot of today was dinner at Ristorante Max back in Positano.

We ate in the garden, the surroundings were lovely, the service attentive, the local wine chilled and delicious, and the fish soup like this.

Positano - Friday

23rd June 2006

Not much to report about Friday. A late start, a meander down towards the beach, only interrupted by a stop for caffe and pizze in the lovely garden of the nearest restaurant and a little light exploration of the town. Shopping heaven if you like lace and shiny stuff on your clothes.

We eventually found ourselves down on the beach where we spent the afternoon people-watching. The bay is obviously a popular stopping off spot for super yachts, so it's a great place to try and play spot the celeb. Our only hit for the weekend was Peter Weller (Robocop, 24) who was getting married on the Sunday, ah well.

Positano - Thursday

22nd June 2006

A weekend away from Chichester Harbour and Moonshine and down to Positano on the Amalfi Coast in Italy, for a few days at La Tavolozza, a B&B owned and run by four generations of belle signore. The B&B is amiably and capably run by Celeste and the view from the balcony looks something like this:


We flew out on the BA 6:30pm flight which got us into Naples at around 10:00pm. This meant that, by the time we'd picked up the little blue Micra from Avis, we were heading southwards at close to midnight. Not ideal normally, but it did mean that the decrepit autostrada and the hair-raising Amalfi Coast road was pretty empty. It also meant that Missy and her mom couldn't see that we were driving along a narrow and winding road perched over a several hundred foot drop to the Tyrrhenian Sea most of the time.

The road is an amazing feat of engineering, being blasted out of solid rock on seemingly vertical cliff faces, with more hairpin bends than seem feasible. It's quite exciting when the car's heading one way while the headlights are still illuminating large amounts of nothingness in a completely different direction.

We finally arrived in Positano at just after midnight. Since there's only one road in Positano (it winds downhill and then winds back up again) it wasn't difficult to find La Tavolozza. We dumped the bags, parked the car in a local parking garage (cost nearly as much as the rental itself - ouch) and were extremely pleased to find that we were 50 metres from a bar that was still open and still had some food left. After the journey, a cold beer and a toasted ham and cheese sandwich were like nectar and ambrosia.

Big church, little church

Sunday dawned bright and clear. I know about the dawn part of that, because for the third Sunday morning running, I got to see the sunrise. What a considerate dawg Clementine is. For some reason she's been deciding that, when on the boat, sunrise is potty time. It looks like this. It's very pretty. It's very tiring. If she does it one more time, she's sleeping in the car.

I took Missy and her mum into Chichester later in the morning so that they could go to a service at the Cathedral. It's very beautiful. They didn't pick a great day for oratory though. The sermon was by the cathedral treasurer who, although undoubtedly is a fine upstanding man, did rather focus on the minutiae of church finances. Still, the view's nice.


After lunch (crab sandwiches at Dell Quay), we headed down to Bosham to see the saxon church (and eat ice creams). The church contains stones from a Roman basilica that stood on the site and is one of the few saxon churches in the country, with a continuous history of some 1600 years. Pretty impressive.

Landlubbers

Another weekend on the boat, but this time we were just like proper marina-dwellers and didn't venture from the pontoon. Missy's mum is with us for the first leg of her summer tour and she gets very prone to motion sickness, so bobbing on a small boat wasn't ever going to be on the agenda!

It did give us chance to explore some of the countryside around the harbour on another beautiful weekend. We liked it - the sea dawg would like to see some nice cool, dank weather, though.

After an initial attempt to connect a breather line to the diesel tank (I abandoned the struggle with chafed knuckles after about 30 minutes. I can see why it was left off) we headed across the fields for a walk to Itchenor, it's about three miles each way and has the advantage of having the Ship at the end of it. There's not much point in a walk without a pub somewhere along the way, after all.

I didn't get too many complaints about the length of the walk in the heat, but I think that says more for the forbearance of Missy and her mum than my judgement. They did both sleep for quite a long time after we got back, though.

Second Sunday.

Sunday free-flow at the marina started at 10:30 so, with no lock to negotiate, we didn't have much of an excuse not to bite the bullet and try our first two-handed sail with Moonshine.

So it was on with the sea-dawg's lifejacket, plenty of scratching of heads about what order to slip the mooring lines, and off into the not-so wild blue for a brief jaunt.

With a southerly breeze and our lack of experience we motored up the channel rather than getting the sails up. Heading into the wind was more pleasant for Clementine, who isn't enjoying the current hot weather at all, poor thing.

We headed out to East Head and the throng of anchored boats gathered there, before working out that with the tide starting to ebb quite quickly, if we headed out over the bar as originally planned we were going to be out for hours. (maximum ebb over the bar six knots, maximum hull speed of Jaguar 27 6.2 knots or thereabouts) We thought it better to turn around and try our first attempt at actually sailing in the shelter of the harbour, so a quick spin around and just the genoa up, and we were hurtling along on a reach at all of 2.5 knots. Hmmm, mainsail? Yay, 3.5 knots. First observation from someone who is only used to 37' and larger charter boats - isn't it easy to get the mainsail up on a 27' boat?

We had a lovely, if too brief, sail back towards the marina, with everything becoming altogether more peaceful without a two-cylinder diesel rattling our fillings. With a fairly light breeze we saw almost six knots over the water, which bodes well for future travels.

We locked back in (not quite the M25-like queues of last Sunday) without too many dramas, filled her with diesel (and found that a breather pipe has been left off the fuel tank after her refit, so we found out that a small amount of diesel makes a very large mess in water. something to be fixed next weekend) and got back onto the pontoon with a big sigh of relief.

Hey, we now know that we can sail two-handed :-)

Two-timing

Second time on the boat. Second wedding anniversary. Just the two of us this time. Second post on here.

It was a jaded pair this time, too. Friends round for cocktails and Missy's determination to perfect the mambo #5 margerita (tequila, lime, sangria, midori, cointreau and heavens knows what else) didn't make for an early Saturday morning start.

We eventually arrived at the boat at around 3:30pm, with the temperature around 30deg C, and England making hard work of beating Paraguay 1-0 in Frankfurt. With the tide at rock bottom and just the two of us we didn't feel brave enough to take an afternoon jaunt around Chichester Harbour, so we did what most of the marina-dwellers there seem to do - we went to the bar for a couple of beers. Well we needed to book a taxi for later and where else is guaranteed to have taxi firm numbers?

Our celebratory anniversary dinner was booked at Purchases in Chichester for 8:45. Very nice it was too. A warm summer evening, dinner in the walled garden with a fountain burbling in the centre, G&T's, good food, a pleasant bottle of Pouilly Fusee (and of course excellent company) , then back to the boat for a nightcap in the cockpit watching the stars and satellites overhead as the sky gradually faded to black. Life can get pretty good sometimes.

First Post

Last week we bit the bullet and bought this. Her name is Moonshine and she's a 1972 Jaguar 27. We've seen a lot of tatty boats over the winter, but Moonshine has just had a comprehensive re-fit, with a new engine, new standing rigging and new interior upholstery, so she's looking rather smart. (Although perhaps not the custard-yellow anti-slip paint - that may have to go sooner rather than later).

We've just spent our first weekend on her and, after spending lots of cash in the chandlery up the road to buy some safety gear, we ventured out into Chichester Harbour on Sunday afternoon. Busy, isn't it?

Highlights of our learning curve were the summer beginning as we arrived, getting out of the dock and back in without damaging anything, and managing to lock in and out without drama.

Lowlights (minor ones) touching the bottom twice on the way out of the navigation channel (When the sign says 2m depth in the channel, that doesn't seem to be strictly true!) and once out in the main channel (Oops. We live and learn).

Clementine the dawg seemed to acclimatise to life as a sea-dawg quickly and looks very smart in her new red lifejacket.

So, onwards and upwards. We're keeping our fingers crossed for a summer of fair winds, cold beers and picnics in the harbour.