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.
The months run away like wild horses over the hill. Since my last post, just about a month ago, it has all been a bit of a blur, post COVID maybe, or maybe just getting older. But looking at the Scraps pictures, I can see I must have been doing something. That's one good thing about boat building, it gives some sort of physical marker of time's passage ... and with luck you get a boat to use at the end of it.
I have quite enjoyed this little boat build. It looks very salty, and being small, the steps are relatively achievable with small bursts of activity. I went from the Turkish delight look stage (when the epoxy is sanded it takes on a whitish powdery appearance) yesterday, with the boat all sanded, to the shiney stage with the last coat of epoxy on the outside today. Epoxy inside tomorrow, then paint, then launch. With luck, we are nearly there.
Thanks to Chris' help, a couple more legs of the round the bay challenge have been completed, not without some excitement. Our first attempt to get across to Clifton Springs was rather more exciting than we anticipated.
The winds were much higher than the forecast, but Anjevi did a great job. We didn't make it into Clifton Springs on this attempt, as the Torqeedo clogged up with weed.
Undaunted, we tried again the next week, from Avalon this time, with much better weather. We managed to get into Clifton Springs, and I managed to break the shear pin on the Torqeedo, but it was a long but much more relaxing day. If at first you don't succeed, try try again.
For completeness, I should probably go around Corio Bay in the SCAMP, launch at St Helens and make sure to cross our course from Avalon. Then the next leg is to launch at Clifton Springs and sail round to Portarlington and back. Then a leg from Portarlington to Queenscliff, if that's not too far to do in a day, maybe split at St Leonards, and that's the Western side of the Bay done. Logistics for the Eastern side are a bit trickier. There maybe some overnights required.
Hey ho, hopefully the next month sees "Barca" the Scraps launched and a bit more round the Bay progress. Perhaps the two are not unrelated.
My log tells me I have been on the water on 61 days in the SCAMP since launch, and covered over 500 Nm. Great little boat, it has more than lived up to my expectations. Good boat Anjevi.
Well, I hope so. The last week has been a bit of a write off, but I got a clear RA Test this morning and I am feeling a bit more lucid.
I haven't been able to get out, beyond the daily shuffles with Oz. We go and inspect the shifting sands down towards the revetment each day. The big excitement this week was Frank's red dinghy taking on water. The pelicans were very worried. He has emptied it out now and the pelicans are very relieved.
I put together a flat pack book case that Anne got for the hallway ... and managed to put all the rear panels on back to front. A clear illustration of the level of alertness this week. Took 5 times longer than if should have, but we got there in the end.
Meanwhile, I kept chipping away at the Scraps project. Hopefully not too much evidence of mental vagueness encapsulated in epoxy for posterity.
Scraps is a clever design, the seat acts as a sort of check to keep the frames more or less in the right place. The side panel and bottom panel seem ok on a dry fit. Glue tomorrow.
I was imagining rowing from the revetment beach out to the SCAMP at anchor today. Hope we get to give that a shot, it might open up some interesting possibilities.
June nearly slipped away without an entry in Anjevi's log. Couldn't let that happen. Luckily last day of the month the forces aligned - weather, car, commitments - so I got Anjevi out for a splendid sail. 5 miles due south, a comfortable tack, and nice sunshine in the cuddy to keep the crew happy
I nearly got self steering going. I have re-read John Letcher's book on self steering, I will make a serious attempt next time. For longer cruises, being freed from the tyranny of the tiller would be welcome.
Lucky I did get out, and lucky I got down to Bunnings for some ply and some wood, as on the weekend my COVID test confirmed that I have not managed to dodge the bug. Anne caught it at a funeral the week before, and I have been sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop. It doesn't feel as bad this time round but it seriously interrupts my sleep, which has its own knock on effect.
It has definitely led to some very slow cognitive tempo. There have been long interludes of me standing blankly trying to figure out what to do next in the shed while working on my current project, the John Welsford "Scraps" dinghy. It feels like real boat building.
I hope I can use it to ferry Oz from SCAMP to shore and back. And get it on and off the roof of the car without too much faffing round. Both might prove unworkable, but it is helping me get through the plague days.
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