Recent content by TJ1982

We were walking the Welsh coast path yesterday morning, as a weekend on the water didn't appeal. Dodging heavy squalls at Nash Point, we were a little surpirsed to see someone making their way up the channel. Didn't look at all pleasant out there.

Having researched several small inflatable tenders, we settled last year on a 2.0m Honwave. I've only seen them in slatted floor form, which ours is. Key reasons we plumped for the Honwave were (a) the thickness of the PVC, and (b) the large diameter of the tubes. Our Yamaha 2.5HP outboard...

On the matter of whether to plump for an electric windlass for a new (to the OP) boat, we were recently faced with the same question. We’ve a 20kg Rocna on 60m of 8mm chain and envisage spending most nights at anchor, when permitted to leave our mooring. For us, operating our SL manual windlass...

I don't know the latest on the fuel barge - we understood it was to be reinstated around end-March but, under current circumstances, that's obviously not happened. We've been buying diesel (for heating) from the Sainsbury's petrol station, which is pay-at-pump. Fresh water is available on the...

I have one of these, exactly as depicted by OP. Can’t recall whether it was from Jimmy Green or elsewhere. In any case, it proved – as intuited by earlier posters – to be a PITA when weighing anchor, mostly involving hanging off the bow through the pulpit rail trying to avoid being boshed in the...

Many thanks for your responses… we’ll follow up on a couple of the suggestions. We’re hoping that a few hours of instruction will supplement our own learning and help build confidence. We’ll no doubt make use of Dartmouth’s deepwater pontoons while sparsely populated over the next three months...

Hi All, Following the recent purchase of our 36-ft sailing yacht, SWIMBO and I have been considering our preferred modus operandi for mooring, close quarters handling (with matrimonial wellbeing an important factor). Adopting an approach proposed by others in an archived thread, we’ve agreed...

Yep... another vote for Andy Schell's podcast... it's now called 'On The Wind'. Production is usually good and, if you look through the back catalogue, Andy's had some great interviewees - RKJ, Nigel Calder, Suzie Goodall, among others. I also listen to Matt Rutherford's 'Single-handed...

I had an 'anchoring too close' situation recently in the Fal. Mobo arrived shortly after us, even before we'd uncorked the bottle, and drifted uncomfortably close even before they'd set the anchor. Drawing from observations made within this parish, I slowly & deliberately started hanging...

What an excellent idea... I may well affix a patch to my brand new dinghy, just to devalue the boat to thieves. This is our approach - and, for periods when we're rowing the dinghy, rather than using the outboard, we've fixed to the wire to the dinghy using a D-shackle with hexagonal pin...

No experience of SO lifting keel, but I'm pretty sure that Edith Gray - the ultimate Bristol Channel boat - was for sale when the dog walked me past her at the Underfall Yard last weekend. Halves?

Several years ago, when involved with pyrotechnics for concerts, etc., I knew an electrician who was commissioned to fit a bespoke intruder alarm on a tour bus. He devised a system that, among other things, set of a 12-volt smoke pyro within the bus, filling the cabin with thick grey smoke. Not...

Well, perhaps they were having a particularly busy day. I can only comment on that one occasion, since that was (and is) our one & only experience with either of them. Our disappointment arose from the misrepresentative advertising of the second-hand boat show, rather than the brokerage...

SWIMBO and I are going on Wednesday, though only because we’re in London on other business and it’s a convenient distraction from work. We’re not expecting any of the (few) sailing boats on display to suit our circumstances as future buyers, but a few interesting events in the theatres make the...

We participated in Sunsail's Lefkas flotilla for two years before taking a bareboat charter from Dubrovnik. If memory serves correctly, the Croatian flotillas are a ‘Level 2’ – as against Level 1 in the Ionian – presumably due to possible volatility of winds in the Aegean (albeit that we...