Pretty pictures.

I often used to think that the only reason most readers turned up when I published a new post was because I always tried to include 3 or 4 new photographs from my files. Last year, possibly even the year before, I ran out of new sailing photographs because I wasn’t getting any sailing at all although luckily I took hundreds while building the Pathfinder, I thought it might make an interesting post to publish and talk about some of my favorite photographs because they represent some of the best moments I have had in the last few years.

1, My ‘Maurice Griffiths’ moment in the Walton Backwaters in 2018.

This was the year that I made the mistake of buying an old classic gaffer which even then was something like 80 or 90 years old and needed nearly all of it’s frames replacing. It had no modern gear whatsover and whatever I tried I couldn’t make it go upwind in a lump channel sea. My project that year though, was to clean it up and set it up for offshore sailing in Ipswich, where I bought her and sail her around to my home mooring in the Tamar river upriver of Plymouth. The boat pictured isn’t the boat I bought but simply the boat that made the view of the Walton channel at sunrise on my third morning of the voyage and just before I made the crossing of the Thames estuary.

2, Still life with coffee and wood shavings.

Of all the photographs I took of the Pathfinder while I was building her the best 3 (in my view) were the ones I took just as I was finishing the main construction and of those this captures the moment (long hours actually) when I was fitting the skegs and at the same time shaping all of the plank edges with a sharp plane.

3, French leave – my Hunter Liberty alongside in Port Launay at the head if salt water navigation in the river Aulne upriver of the eastern end of the Rade de Brest, north western Brittany. This was definitely taken in 2019 – that was the year I left the NHS and all-but ran out of the building shouting ‘Freedom’ and then within 24 hours I was aboard the Liberty and putt-putting down the Tamar into a very cold night. I had a very bad few hours in a wind against tide situation just south of the French coast and then a few weeks later I was here, deep in rural France and just about to go for a beer at the local cafe and bar.

4, At anchor……somewhere

The western Solent I think aboard Inanda the Deben 4 ton Gaffer which, at the moment, is the only classically built (leaky) and gaff rigged pocket yacht that I have ever owned. She was at her best beating up the Thames in light weather and her worst one night in heavy rain at anchor to the east of Dungeness point – she leaked through her cabin top and sides that I was in my survival bivouac bag below drinking serial mugs of coffee until the rain stopped.

5. The Joy of sailing. SV ‘Joy’ at anchor in the river Dart. No explanation needed really : a great looking boat in my opinion and at anchor in a picture perfect scene late one afternoon in a really good river almost ‘designed’ for sailors in relatively small yachts.

6. Waiting for the tide Exe bar, date and voyage unknown.

One of my favorite photographs taken from the little Liberty. The Exe estuary with Topsham upstream represents the usual eastern limit of my normal cruising ground with the Liberty. I spent a lot of time there including a whole winter moored just behind the barge at Trouts boatyard in Topsham. It’s an unusual picture of the Liberty because it was such shallow draft that I could normally get anywhere that I could still see water and not sand except here, the tide is still running out quite briskly.

7, On the beach, Morgat, Brittany France 2019

The other aspect of the Liberty that I came to appreciate during my 110 days living aboard while cruising in Brittany – the ability to run the boat lightly onto a beach, in shelter, with haul-off anchor out in deep water and get out over the side and walk into town to do my food shopping and top up with drinking water. I have a whole series of this kind of photograph, with the boat ‘parked’ on a beach anywhere from Ruan Creek in the UK to several places in southern Brittany which, thus far, is the furthest I have been with one of my own boats.

8. In Ruan Creek – my all time favorite anchorage in south west England. On the beach again, or rather the soft sandbank that runs down the middle of Ruan creek just to one side of the main channel. The tide is going out and my partner Jackie has come out for a wade in what remains of the tide. As with other genres of boat pictures I have many taken in Ruan creek because I usually treated myself to a quiet night up there every time I was in Falmouth. During one windy autumnal trip I was at anchor, higher upriver for 4 windy days until I could escape to the Percuil river and a beach mooring at a place called Place.

9. The end, any guesses ?