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Boats and Boating

Chriss

Chriss

New member
We have a very interesting Planes/Aviation thread and I know several members who have boats so how about a thread dedicated to boats and boating ?

I'll start it off.

We've just taken our 33 year old Cruiser out of the water for refurbishment this morning and last week we put her on a berth in Cobbs Quay in Poole in readiness for the lift at 08:30.

Yesterday an awfully nice chap reversing his Sunseeker into the next berth demolished our Swim Platform !
To be fair, it was very windy and he was very apologetic and immediately offered to pay for the damage.
Having said that, the Sunseeker had twin diesels plus Bow and Stern thrusters so it should have been an easy boat to berth.

Nevertheless, it could happen to anyone ! Just another job to add to the long, long list !

She should be out of the water for about 5-6 weeks.
Blue Horizon 1.jpg

PS : The lower picture was taken when we bought her. This morning the underside looked very different !
Will post some pictures when I can work out how to get them off my Android phone and onto the PC.
Bloody Windows !
 
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A few fairly numptie questions re boats and boating from me to get the ball rolling from a non-boaty person :)

The boat above looks great. What sort of sailing does one do in something like that? Something like a 2-3 hr pleasure cruise along the coast and back or a 2-3 day cruise to (not sure where you would get to in 2-3 days but you know what I mean) .. or a 2-3 week cruise around the Med and back?
 
Here's my little bundle of fun :) Thats not me driving by the way, that was on test!
 

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renmure said:
A few fairly numptie questions re boats and boating from me to get the ball rolling from a non-boaty person :)

The boat above looks great. What sort of sailing does one do in something like that? Something like a 2-3 hr pleasure cruise along the coast and back or a 2-3 day cruise to (not sure where you would get to in 2-3 days but you know what I mean) .. or a 2-3 week cruise around the Med and back?
Click to expand...

I'm crazy about high performance dinghies and racing them. It's my passion. So, my answers to these questions maybe slightly prejudiced ....:hmmm:

So to answer your question about the floating caravans ... sorry, I mean these lovely motorhome boat things that chug along filling the clean sea breeze with diesel fumes...

What sort of sailing does one do in something like that - One doesn't sail at all as they do not have sails. One just chugs along making lots of noise and smell.

Something like a 2-3 hr pleasure cruise along the coast and back - No, they head directly to the nearest sailing club and chug right through the middle of a race. They make special effort to ensure they bugger up someone's race by ignoring all the general maritime laws. Usually they wait until they are right in the middle of the race before handing over the helm to their 12 year old daughter.

Not sure where you would get to in 2-3 days .. - Oh not far enough. Ideally they'd all head to France :grin:

Of course, all above are posted with a huge amount of tongue-in-cheek and I'm sure Chris is a very considerate caraboat owner :thumbsup::thumbsup:

Where I race it's an estuary and clearly when the Romford Navy come out to play in their motorhome-boats, they inevitably have to chug through the deep channel which is slap-bang in the middle of our race course. To say it's annoying when you're hiked out on the wire with a kite flying to have to suddenly dump the sail and change direction because of one of these ploughing through the water over the 8-knot speed limit, without any regard to anyone else, straight towards you....yes, it is slightly annoying ....no, actually it's hugely annoying. Races are too often decided on these events.

The problem with all boating, including sailing, is there are no tests to pass to legislate who's on the water. There's nothing stopping anyone going out today and buying an extremely powerful speed boat and heading out into the water. I suspect Essex is extra bad for this but we have a huge amount of people out there on the water that really have no clue of any of the general maritime rules.

I use to teach youngsters to sail when I was in my 20's. We had a Wayfarer with about 6 kids in it once completely demolished by a small motorboat. The guys supposedly in control were on the deck drinking....

And then there's Jets Skis ..... I'm not even going to start on that subject.:mad:
 
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Reply To AJ3XX

Dear Andy

If you knew anything about boats larger than your little Laser 4000 you would realise than my boat is an all weather long distance semi-displacement cruiser.

As she's built on a hull designed as a Pilot Boat for the North Sea, she really can cope with pretty well anything that the sea can throw at her short of a force 11.

I've done lots of long distance sailing in a Southerly 48 including crossing Biscay in a force 8. When we put Blue Horizon on her swinging mooring in Poole Harbour it's inevitably the sailing boats coming back under power that come too close and set us rocking uncomfortably !

Also, just because you're racing your laser across the harbour, when you jibe, you don't have an automatic exemption from the collision rules. There are many times that I see sailing boats racing in the only channel deep enough for motor cruisers yet the sailors never even give that a thought and allow the power boat space and time to pass.

Not all motor boat owners are brainless morons !
 
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Good reply!! I've had endless little plastic dingoes jibe directly in front of me when we had an old 1890's day boat on the Thames.
 
Dear Chris,

If you took the time to read my post with a different frame of mind you would see that it was unmistakably a bit of fun. It clearly says it's written with a 'huge amount of tongue in cheek'. Instead you have decided to read it as a direct poke at you and your boat, which it most definitely wasn't. That's a shame as CS has always enjoyed a bit of banter before. :thumbsdow

Similar to the forever raised subject of Cycling vs Car road use on CS, there is a similar tension between motorboat owners and dinghy sailors. In a light hearted way, I tried to tackle that subject so your new thread about boats and boating might also cater for us meagre little laser owners. In fact, if you took time to actually read my post, you'd note that I clearly go on to raise the subject of many boat owners lack of experience and ability on the water but direct that to ALL boat owners, including us poor little Lazer owners.

To answer your other points raised:

Yes, as a sailing instructor I am well aware of the collision rules thank you.
Yes, I do have some knowledge of big-boy boats too and frequently crew racing yachts - even have a Cowes trophy somewhere
No, I don't race in a harbour, the nearest harbour to us is about 10 NM
No, there is nowhere in my post where I say 'all motor boat owners are brainless morons' you made that up
Yes, you have a very big boat - well done you :thumbsup:

I'm well aware of how frustrating it must be with us deprived 'plastic dingoe' sailors jibing all the time but believe me, with three sails up and hooked on a wire, it's not something we do just to p1zz off motorboat users. For us we are racing. We may jibe due to wind shift but mainly because we're on a course. Like any type of racing, it's very competitive and takes a huge amount of concentration. There's very limited visibility (downwind) through three sails and at my club, we have the added problems of strong tides and sand banks. But again, if you read my original post, our problem is not colliding with motorboats and to be fair, where I sail we don't even have any close calls, but for there to be a little bit more consideration and training from motorboat users. We continually drum awareness into our new sailors during traiing to ensure they do keep clear of motorboats. Again, as said in my post, I've raced all over the UK and Essex is particular bad. Having idiots plough through the water over the 8-knot limit right through a race is stupid and dangerous. My issue is; any lottery winner can buy a power boat and head off down the coast without any training - that's simply not right.

Likewise, any Lottery winner can buy a F430 and then drive it without any further training and I'm not sure that's right either ..... see other thread about 24 YO experience of 4 hour ownership and lasmppost crash
 
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Chriss said:
Will post some pictures when I can work out how to get them off my Android phone and onto the PC.
Bloody Windows !
Click to expand...

Dropbox.

Just install it on both, set syncing to be wifi only *unless you have an unlimited data package*
Works seamlessly.

If I take some photos of my car in the garage, by the time I've walked to the house to put the kettle on, there synced to my desktop.
Next time I boot my laptop, there synced there too. Dont need to think about it. (Well, not until I fill my allocation of space, but am only at 40% so thats a problem for another day..)

(dropbox is also handy if you have the pdf manuals and other data, as that also shares across machines, so I can for example, access the Workshop manual on my phone - if I am daft, my tablet if I am equally daft, my gaming desktop which has the biggest screen, my work laptop if I am feeling idle, or my ancient garage computer where I probably need it.. )


Nice boat/ship/craft or whatever is the correct terminoligy btw. :thumbsup:
 
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