Has anywhere you have sailed choked you up?

We motored in to the Mulberry harbour at Arromanches and the hair stood up on my neck as we turned around, I did not fancy anchoring and swimming ashore too spooky.

The other is north west of Les Sept Isles the resting place of HMS Charybdis.
 
Arriving in Rodney bay. It took 4 years of building and preparation to get there and finally see the scene that had been my screen wallpaper for those 4 years.
 
Nothing exotic but...

My late grandad was a bargeman, sailing the Oak between the Kent and Essex coasts before ww11. He used tell me tales (some of them tall no doubt) of the Thames estuary.

This summer I sailed to the Medway for the first time and my Grandad was very much in my mind. I kept thinking 'he would have seen this from his sailing barge' etc.

Put a right lump in my throat and a tear to my eye.

Hope he would have approved of the sail trim. Doubt it though, he would have no truck with plastic boats! 'No weight in 'em'.
 
Making landfall in La Coruna by identifying the Roman lighthouse the Tower of Hercules.

The crossing of Biscay was my first real open ocean passage and a test of my nav skills which up till then had just fixed the position of my garden many many times. .

I was humbled to realise that I was following in the wake of so many sailors who would have made the same identification for a safe landfall pre GPS and chartplotters.
 
Perhaps not choked me up as such but I was extremely taken by sailing in the Whitsundays earlier this year. Many islands are national parks and are untouched. Those that are developed have some, but limited, visual impact.

I kept thinking of James Cook and the crew of the Endeavour sailing through there in 1770. It is very easy to place yourself in their shoes - or whatever they wore on their feet in those times :)

It is a truly beautiful place.
 
One thing I did notice about the seas where we have been and old naval battles were fought is that they are pretty shallow. Were the old naval boats very adept at fighting in shallow water, were the boats quiet shallow draught as oppose to the other forces they took on or is it just a coincidence.
Some of the places were quiet bum squeaky even though I have modern charts and a depth finder. Trafalgar is all over the place when it comes to depths and quiet a long way off the point.
 
Nostrodamus said:
One thing I did notice about the seas where we have been and old naval battles were fought is that they are pretty shallow. Were the old naval boats very adept at fighting in shallow water, were the boats quiet shallow draught as oppose to the other forces they took on or is it just a coincidence.
Some of the places were quiet bum squeaky even though I have modern charts and a depth finder. Trafalgar is all over the place when it comes to depths and quiet a long way off the point.
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I'd suggest two things:

  1. Naval battles usually took place at "pinch points"; locations where you could be pretty sure of locating the opposition.
  2. Often the name of a battle is taken from a location some distance from the actual battle site - it was just the nearest well known place.
  3. Draughts varied according to the navy; Dutch warships had shallow draught to cope with the Durch coast; British ships had much greater draught. HMS Victory draws 28' (8.75 m), and that is probably a maximum as she was one of the largest classes of warship in those days. Frigates drew much less, of course.
  4. In general, warships of the Napoleonic or earlier age would only have known the water depths if it was fairly shallow - they had to use a lead line to measure it. Even the "deep sea" lead would only go down a couple of hundred metres.
 
AntarcticPilot said:
I'd suggest two things:

  1. Naval battles usually took place at "pinch points"; locations where you could be pretty sure of locating the opposition.
  2. Often the name of a battle is taken from a location some distance from the actual battle site - it was just the nearest well known place.
  3. Draughts varied according to the navy; Dutch warships had shallow draught to cope with the Durch coast; British ships had much greater draught. HMS Victory draws 28' (8.75 m), and that is probably a maximum as she was one of the largest classes of warship in those days. Frigates drew much less, of course.
  4. In general, warships of the Napoleonic or earlier age would only have known the water depths if it was fairly shallow - they had to use a lead line to measure it. Even the "deep sea" lead would only go down a couple of hundred metres.
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Just gives me so much more respect for those sailors having now sailed through those waters.
It brings it home when you visit Gib and see some of the graves there from the battle.
 
Nostrodamus said:
Cheaper than the bar bill when going out with you for the night :D
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Its just gone up too! Our favourite, the Marina Inn, always good food and wine and cheap, shut down last night. Landlord put rent up by 5 grand a month. So they told him to stuff it. Now there is no income at all, highly unlikely any business will replace it, wrong location for huge rent.

Ranty a bit but its sad to see such a nice place with great staff to go. :(
 
Many places have done that.

The first time a pod of dolphins came to play around my boat; off The Lizard.

Raising Barbados after first Atlantic crossing.

Getting the boat going again after a bit of a trashing from hurricane Luis.

Sitting in the cockpit in the Caribbean watching a full eclipse of the moon.

Being escorted by pilot whales.

Timing a night massage to IoM so that sun rose just as we reached Douglas.

Do we need another thread for the moments where rather than a lump you just have an ear to ear grin? E.g:

Surfing down a wave in a wind acceleration zone

Taking a RIB through the Swellies at full chat
 
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