Rowing a Walkabout

What a great day rowing, starting with a brisk row down Chichester Harbour with Langstone Cutters in the Clayton Skiff Gladys. Here she is being brought in from her buoy behind a Teifi skiff.

Back at the Dinghy Cruising Association meet at Cobnor, I joined Tony Waller in his Shearwater faering to pop across the channel to the Harbour Office so he could get a licence for a few days on these fabulous waters. £3.50. What a bargain.
On the way back, we succeeded in breaking his new leeboard and the pushpull tiller broke off. So we had to return under sail controlled (a bit) by oars. Luckily the wind was light or we would have scratched a lot of paintwork.

Finally, I got to go out in a brand new Walkabout, built by Paul Smithson to the design by John Welsford, albeit heavily modified to make it more of a sailing boat than the original rowing/sailing hull. He added an extra strake to build the hull up, removed the decks and the mizzen, and the side flotation tanks.
The carbon fibre mast and balanced lug drive her along nicely, and she rows well too with a pair of 9ft 6in oars from Collars.