Snapper season has hit with a vengeance. The local ramp carpark is overflowing with monster 4 wheel drives, people parking everywhere, queues of stink boats coming and going on the jetties. Friday I was thinking of getting the SCAMP out, but even on a Friday it was way too busy for me. I have decided to avoid the little local beach for a while as well, as the last few times I have launched there, I have had run ins with people invading our local seal's personal space. So, what to do?
I have been reading Colin and Julie Angus's book "Rowed Trip" which recounts their journey from Scotland to Syria using rowboats where the waterways are possible, or towing the rowboats behind them with bicycles.
Their expedition rowboats are three times longer than Barca, and loaded with camping stuff must be at least three times heavier. But they were probably a third of my age when they made the trip, so I figured it all should sort of even out - a bike trailer for Barca should work. As part of our downsizing I have been looking darkly at Ozzie's bike trailer, thinking it needs to go. But then it occurred to me it might make a good trailer for Barca. And what do you know, with a few modifications like a longer drawbar, it does!
Road trials so far are good, it works, I can get down to the revetment beach no worries. I will just have to pick the tides.
I should really not have been faffing round with this, with so many jobs to do on the downsizing moving project, but I told myself it is an adaption that will get me through Snapper season without too much aggravation, hopefully, and it will be very useful in our new place where there water is all a bit further away.
One dimension I had not anticipated with downsizing is all the strange shreds of the past that get unearthed as you sift through the nooks and crannies where you have hidden stuff.
I am working through a bag that my brother Mike passed onto me, that I have never really looked at. My mum's water colours, dad's degrees, his B Ed thesis on teaching mathematics, pages from my great great great grandparents Bible...
Three Harriet's on one page, nice to see our little Harriet continuing the line.
There are my paternal grandfather's papers from his houseboat Waterlilly that the family used to sail around Shanghai around 1917.
Thanks to the marvels of Google translate, I can see this is telling officials that Hardy Gu, my grandfather, is a gentleman of good character, and instructing that he should be treated with courtesy. There are other papers listing all the places not to go thanks to martial law and civil unrest ... Makes sailing on the Bay look very tame.
And there are my disgraceful records of wooden boat association committee meetings.
I do suspect my heart is not really in committee work.
So much stuff, the thinking about it is harder than actually doing something with it.
But, we are making progress. Derry went off to a new home, to live in a neat, dry garage with a Eureka canoe for company and a nice young family ... Better than being out in the rain being crapped on by possums, but still a lot of good memories going with her. Ewaste collection at the council depot today, a pile of stuff gone. Poisons collection next weekend. More books to the Brotherhood...
I wake up at around 1 am most mornings, and often can't get back to sleep as my head starts running through all of the things, a lot to process.
It seems overwhelming but if we keep on chipping away, just doing the next thing, with luck we will come out the other side.
Our front porch has been ripped out, pending replacement, leaving a large, cavernous hole for potential trick or treaters to fall into. So I put Barca in the driveway, manned by my dry suit, nursing a scythe. It looked pretty spooky, so spooky in fact that only one small pumpkin, aided by mum, was brave enough to raid the box of treats up fro'rard. Hey ho. I had fun setting it up.
In between the solid round of tasks - maintenance, lining up the finance, shredding, clearing, ferrying stuff to the Brotherhood, selling stuff, I have managed to get out in Barca a few times. A row for half an hour is plenty to achieve that feeling of well being that getting out on the water and a good row can bring. And Barca has been a hit with some of the regular swimmers down there - Kate and Leonie both took the boat out for a short spin, and Kate liked it so much we lined up another day so she could get out for a longer row. I thought she might be heading for Portarlington but luckily she came back.
Looks like Derry the Skerry has found a buyer. A chap left a deposit last weekend, brought his wife back to inspect and approve, and is picking up Sunday morning.
I think I will move the Kayak on too simply because of space. I got out for a paddle and sail last week, and it was fun, but I discovered a bit of rot in the deck. I can't maintain too big a fleet. And maybe it will be easier. I recall the Dylan Winter account of the chap who was paralyzed with indecision trying to decide which boat of his large fleet to take out - wound up a vegetable, had to take up golf according to Dylan..
Meanwhile we have been having fun on grandparent duty. Little Hattie is coming along super fast, and we are all getting a bit more adventurous now the weather is warmer. We walked to Newport Station and caught the train to Williamstown beach, Hat's first train ride. She was cautiously solemn but took it all in her stride. It was a good expedition. She is a lovely being, the highlight of our week, though it takes us a day or so to recover from the minding.
Hey ho, 91 days to go from today till first open day, and we are sure to have many days thanks to festivities, commitments and heat where we won't get much done. We are chipping away, but the mountain ahead still looks daunting. https://w2.countingdownto.com/6638072https://w2.countingdownto.com/6638072
and to settlement, getting the keys for the new place:
Last Saturday we bought a lovely old house in Williamstown. Chris our son in law did a nice watercolour of it to commemorate the occassion.
It is tiny compared to our current house, and some radical decluttering of 26 years plus worth of stuff is now underway. Plus trying to catch up on 26 years delayed maintenance on this place for selling. Plus all the processes for buying and selling.
I am working 12 hour days, hope we can get there. It is stressful. I read a nice article of a lady in her 60s who packed up everything, let out her apartment, and set off to cycle the world. She had two mantras: "It will all work out" and "Do the next thing".
Hopefully here is a countdown clock to first open for inspection
The Welsford boat population on Port Phillip certainly is increasing at a healthy rate. Must be something in the water. There are three Navigators down this end of the Bay, plus Campbell's Pathfinder, a Hopper's Crossing Houdini, Liam's Penguin down in Corio Bay, and Vince in Williamstown is building a Pilgrim, plus the SCAMP contingent - two local on the water plus Geoff's up in Learmonth and three on the way. We need to organize a Welsford boats day. There would be a great photo opp.
This week we managed to get a break in the windy September weather to launch Stephen's lovely Navigator "Rakali"
The Navigator certainly is a lovely boat, but I think I am happy with the SCAMP, which is a good old geezer's boat, easy to rig and handle, sheltered and not too demanding to sail. I love the ergonomics of that deep cockpit with the cuddy to hang onto - I hope it is a boat that I can keep sailing for years to come. For the sort of sailing I like, the SCAMP is pretty good. A lot of boat for the size. Here's a still from Chris' video of Anjevi barreling along in quite sporty conditions on Tuesday - my hat managed to jump overboard in a gust before we had even left the jetty.
The question of size is actually becoming quite relevant as we are thinking about down sizing. One boat on a trailer will be stretching the boundaries of the available space, two is not an option. Which means some hard decisions looming.
The mountain of stuff we have accummulated here over 26 years is extremely daunting, and so far I seem to have been running round in circles not achieving very much. But at least we have begun. And we have begun the process of getting some outstanding jobs around the place fixed. If we are successful at the auction we are really going to have to get cracking though. I am glad I got an entry in Anjevi's log for September at least.
It was a lovely early spring day today, light North Easterlies, no commitments, so I got life jackets and oars and Oz and I set off pushing Barca's new cart for its first trip down to the beach. The cart has some issues, and it was a real work out getting down there, but once there we set off on a circumnavigation of Wise's Reef.
It was a rising tide, about 2 hours before a not particularly high tide (0.7 m). There was not much wind, and it was possible to get reasonable idea of what was underneath the surface of the water. There is a gap in the reef, and I rowed Barca backwards carefully through there. We didn't hit anything.
Once through, we pretty soon ran aground on what seems to be a sort of clay bank that runs along behind the reef. The tide was running with us noticeably, flooding in through the gap. I tried pulling us along a bit, but the novelty wore off that pretty quickly. So we just sat, and let the rising tide pick us up and carry us along to the next bit, bump, stop, wait, repeat. According the Charles Stock, this sort of progress is the origin of the expression "Touch and go". Could be. Whatever, it was extraordinarily pleasant way to spend a morning.
Eventually. we got really stuck, with no prospect of moving for a while, not too far from the beach, so I pushed us ashore so Oz could have some shore leave.
He seemed pretty pleased about that arrangement. I towed the boat along the beach for a bit on a long line, nicer to be walking on the sand than in the mud a bit further out, which has a nasty black underlayer, perhaps left over from an oil spill sometime in the past. Closer to the jetty near the Seaholme Beer Drinkers/Boat owners club (as far as I know, none of them own a boat ) the water gets a bit deeper, and we could set off again to complete our circumnavigation.
The eponymous Mr Wise was still around till recent times, though I have not seen him in the last year or so. It is not often you meet someone with a geographical feature named after them, though I am not sure how official the name is. But everyone here knows it as "Wise's Reef".
It was an easy row back, round the outside of the reef, much easier than the course through the shallows. I loaded up the cart ok, though it seemed even harder to push. Crossing the Esplanade, we had to hurry as a car was approaching fast. I hit the gutter, and Barca slid off the cart with an impressive crunch. To make it all more interesting, as I was getting organized, being distracted, I must have put my hand on a bee or wasp, as I got stung on the left hand. I was about express my feeling with a few choice anglo saxon natuical terms, when two nice older ladies came rushing up to help. Definitely no cursing. One held Ozzie, the other lifted up the boat while I realigned trailer, and tied on the extra line that I should have tied on in the first place. It was really nice of them to help, it restores my faith in the general goodness of my fellow humans.
The other piece of news is that my article on building the scamp has been published by Practical Boat Owner. It doesn't look too bad, and who knows, it might actually encourage someone to build a SCAMP, which would be something.
And last of all, Peter Murphy alerted me to a cameo appearance by me in another video. Well there you go. An odd bit of editing, but there you go, there I am, about 0.28
Today, August 26th, is International Maritime Sea Dog Day, so here's to you Oz. He often doesn't think much of some of our maritime pursuits, but he goes along with it good faithful sea dog that he is.
I have finished "Barca" and launched twice now, once before paint job, just to check that Oz and I would fit in it. There is plenty of room for him. I am not sure how we will go getting from SCAMP to Scraps and back again, but so far so good - it is a fun little boat. I launched again at the WBA sailing day, with a coat of paint and a name plate screwed on - a more official launch.
One nice surprise is that Barca fits in the back of the Subaru Forester. It is way easier than getting the boat up on the roof. I drove to Albert Park Lake on Sunday with the boat in the car, and nearly gassed myself with the paint fumes. But it was a nice first real try out. Barca certainly handles very nicely, I am sure I will have fun with it, and it will certainly be fun for grand children.
The weather last week was lovely, and Chris suggested a sail over to near Webb Dock for a lunch at anchor. It was a splendid sail, and I am very glad we seized the opportunity, as the weather has definitely packed up this week - the allegedly mythical Equinoctial Gales are upon us I suspect.
You can see from the video that Oz is much happier on the SCAMP - he is grinning his head off as we are getting ready to cast off, unlike the dour expression in the smaller open boat.
Now I have more or less finished Barca, it is catch up time. I pruned the vines and the fig yesterday, and mowed the lawn. Today a bit of a tidy up sort out day, slowly finding things I have hidden over the last couple of months.
Fingers crossed we get some more quiet days so I can continue the Barca experiment.
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