Nice picture from Mick Nolan!
Locking out of St Kat’s
Sue Fielder and SB Sara
With just today and tomorrow to go, we are heading into the closing stages of ‘Go-Live’ on the new website and our fond farewell to Sue Fielder and the team at Open Sandwich, the providers of the old site. Sue has sent me a rather nice email saying “(Director) Dave as he was then) may have told you but one of the reasons he chose us for the Cambria website development was because Bob’s Grandfather Thomas Fielder was the mate and Bob’s Great Uncle Charles Fielder was the Master of the spritsail barge, the Sara.
Between the wars they carried grain from Harwich to South Wales and coke from South Wales into Tilbury. They raced the Sara after the war to around 1953 (they won lots of races). In 1951 they were at the Great Exhibition in London – Bob and his sister where on the barge – see one of the photos – they look a bit cold!” Sue also sends us all “Best Wishes”
She encloses these obviously very old and treasured, scanned in photos of SB Sara and of Bob and his Sister. Thank you very much for that, Sue. Sara was, of course, a very famous racing barge with a fine string of win credits as one of the “Racing Horlocks” all through from 1903, 1907, 1928 and the 30’s, as well as post-war.
Arrival At Faversham (Video)
Mike Maloney, friend of Cambria maker of the “Red Sails” and “Sideways Launch” films has now posted on You-tube, a sequence of Cambria’s first arrival at Faversham back in 2007 just prior to the start of restoration. Posted under the banner “Cambria Arrives at Faversham” it’s made by the same team at Countrywide Productions. It shows the final tugging and shoving by the tugboat Jester, features Project Manager William Collard wandering about on deck looking like he knows what he’s doing (!) as well as plenty of other well know faces from the barging world including Catherine De Bont, Boss of Volunteers, Basil and Colin Frake. Soaring majestic music too! It’s on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmTi57esdZE&feature=youtu.be
if you fancy taking a look.
Today’s pic is another Dave Brooks one, this time of the pennant we received to mark the fact that we took part in the Avenue of Sail at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant. Nice one Dave.
Cambria, California, USA
Hands up who knew there was a town called Cambria in California, USA? Certainly not me. Who knew that the Rotary Club had a (huge) organisation with branches in USA and, in fact, all around the world, with 34,000 clubs worldwide and 1.2 million members? Nope, not me again. I am ashamed to say I thought it was just a British thing. I now feel humble at my level of ignorance of the group who are currently a major sponsor of our operations. I was surprised as anyone when the Rotary Club (UK, obviously!) presented us with this flag on the occasion of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant and our hosting of their group on the day. It is from the Rotary Club group from Cambria, Ca. Thanks to the local Rotarians and also to the stateside club!
Meanwhile I have now received from the BBC on line shop, my copy of the “Britain’s Lost Routes” series with Griff Rhys Jones. You will recall that this series contained the episode where SB Dawn is used to ferry a load of hay bales up to Horseguards Parade, having all manner of adventures along the way. If you are in UK you may be able to get this on i-Player but here in Ireland, where we don’t pay UK TV Licence fees, we are not allowed that, but happily, the BBC are willing to sell you the DVD of the series for £19.49 inc postage and it is, in my opinion, money well spent. I have only seen the Dawn episode so far and it is brilliant, with lots of Rhys-Jones tom-foolery and plenty of loving footage of Dawn in action, including plenty from overhead (presumably helicopter shots) and some below decks. In one hilarious sequence Griff cooks them a traditional bargeman’s plum duff and they all try it out, with varied (mainly ‘not much!) enthusiasm. Brilliant.
3 days to Go-Live on the new site……
5 Days and Counting Down
Just a reminder that in 5 days, at close of play on 29th, we will be moving full time over to this, our new website and the old site, hosted by Open Sandwich, will be turned off. I have been publishing (versions of) these stories on both sites. You will not need to do anything, as the address you have used to find the old site up till now ( www.cambriatrust.org.uk ) will find the new one after the change. Incidentally, this is post 698 in the series, so we should just about make the round 700 before the ‘techies’ snip the wires and disarm us!
Today’s picture is another of Mark C’s beautiful sunlit ones of Cambria dropping a sail at the end of a sortie. I always think barges look oddly ‘broken’ in this pose, but that’s just me. Cambria is currently moored ‘back at base’ in Faversham and is manned at weekends for visits by the public.
Ryan’s Sunrise
A beautiful sunrise photo posted on Facebook by Cambria Shipwright Ryan Dale
Sluices at Faversham Creek
Faversham Creek Trust have today published the following news story and some pictures about the ongoing work to improve the Faversham Creek and to keep it open and navigable.
http://favershamcreektrust.com/author/favershamcreektrust/
“Thanks to work recently completed by Medway Ports, the sluice shutter on the Creek Bridge gate is now opening automatically at each low tide, sending a surge of water down to purge the gut-way of the Creek. The effectiveness is being monitored by Medway Ports to establish whether a second shutter should be used to increase the flow. At present, the flow moves across to the Town Quay side, before straightening up down the gut, but a second shutter, on the other gate, might straighten this up. By alternating the shutters, it might be possible to purge the wider area here. Medway ports are also planning for the gates to be opened in time for the Nautical Festival, 21-22 July.
That has all got to be good news for Faversham Creek. The Creek Trust are also involved in a campaign to convert a disused riverside building (The Purifier Building) into workshops and an educational facility for apprentices in the Maritime Trades.
Tricia loves a Power Station
It’s become something of a standing joke on the Facebook barge-orientated pages that our friend Tricia Gurnett of the Society for Sailing Barge Research gets wound up by the fact that power stations spoil the view from the river(s) and so often get into the background of barge photographs. This started last year when Cambria was alongside St Andrew’s Wharf in Gravesend and then later moored just off shore on the trot moorings. She was in such a position that it was hard to avoid the big Tilbury power station on the north bank of the river. We published a few pictures with Tilbury in unawares and Tricia started gently ribbing us. Soon, naturally, we were doing it deliberately to tease her, with captions along the lines “and another shot especially for Tricia Gurnett” or even, in some cases deliberately framing Tilbury in bits of rigging, through ratlines or life belts etc. All good clean fun.
Today’s picture is a lovely one by Mark C and has something in the background which may strike you as familiar. Sorry, Tricia G!
Sea Change Sailing Trust Website
Chasing up an enquiry by Boss of Volunteers, Basil yesterday as to whether we might link the new website to that of the Sea Change Sailing Trust (http://www.seachangesailingtrust.org.uk/) who, under the Skippering of Richard Tichener and the First Mate duties of Hilary Halajko, frequently use Cambria, I went for a small explore of that site. I’ve been there before, of course but I have to say I was very impressed. It is a superb, informative website, easy to use and packed full of fresh recent stuff. It runs a regularly updated blog (which is half the story anyway; there’s nothing worse than a blog last updated 6 months ago!) which takes centre stage on the front page of the site and contains frequent links to albums of photographs and chunks of video of their exploits.
Most recently, for example, there is a clip of video in which Richard T talks about the Sail Training activities and the intended outcomes. This is on
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fjpuaaj4crn85nk/Richard%20talking.mp4
Further down, there is a nice long clip of the barging fun itself accompanied by some excellent music, which I wish I knew the precedence of (tempted to try to get hold of it). That is on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XIb9aY9cDQ4
If you are doing nothing for the next few minutes, go take a look. Excellent!
In more general terms, if any reader thinks we should be linking to any other sites please let us know. We are happy to consider anything and that is, after all, how the internet is meant to work, after all; as a network of interconnected sites allowing you to browse sideways as well as in and out so that you can ping about for ages, never having to go back to your first Google (or whatever) screen.
Go Live is 29th June!
A nice shot here of Denis Johnson perched at the end of the bowsprit taking yesterday’s picture aft at the bow wave. This one is by Dave B, so thank you for that, both of you, Denis for risking life and limb in the cause of good pictures and Dave for bravely watching while standing with feet firmly planted on our nice big wide strong safe deck!
On the subject of website changes, I have learned today some good news. Although the new web site will technically be running on a shiny new fast server as the new address www.cambriatrust.org.uk, we, the Trust, still own the old website name that you have all been using up to now www.CambriaTrust.org.uk . Therefore it has been possible to keep that name and have it re-direct your searches behind the scenes to the new site. So you, the reader, can simply carry on using the same shortcuts or search words you have always used and you should, as at ‘go-live’ date start to pick up the new website. Cathy C, in charge of the Cambria Shop, along with Mark C have also now been given access, so that by go-live you might have some of the shop functions up and running.
Lastly, when we checked our calendars, we found that the pencilled in suggested go-live date of 1st July was a Sunday. So we have changed this to the last working day before that, Friday 29th June. By the end of Friday we should be up there, readable and with the search-targets for Google etc turned on.