Paddle to Portchester

One of my favourite picnicking spots is Portchester Castle, built by the Romans, transformed into a modern fortress by the Normans, and used by English kings as the springboard for expeditions to bash the French, such as Edward III's venture to Crecy.
The huge square outer bailey is beautifully grassed, with a cricket square, and is a complete suntrap. Yesterday we rowed there in Solent galley Sallyport and Teifi skiff Millie, for strawberries and cake.
As a destination, however, it has drawbacks. The obvious one is the distance - eight miles - but the worst one is the need to through the narrow channel that separates Portsmouth from the mainland.

Port Creek is traversed by several very low bridges including a railway bridge with several very large and very alarming notices drawing your attention to the high voltage rails. Sallyport approached it with understandable care:

The creek only fills about three hours before HW, and spring tides come up to within inches of the rail bridge and the bridges under the Cosham roundabout. So timing is critical if you want to get through.

Unfortunately, we can only get the boats in or out of the water at Langstone about two and a half hours either side of high water, and it takes about two hours to get to Portchester, so you don't get much time to relax over the strawbs.
We got back with about 20 minutes to spare before the water disappeared.

The Longest Day

Dawn: Malcolm Knight and friends get up at 3.30 for to row their lovely traditional skiffs on the Thames to Kingston for traditional bacon butties.

Evening: Langstone Cutters row their traditional Solent Galleys across the harbour for traditional ruby murray at the Bombay Bay in Southsea Marina.

Dusk: Sallyport heads for home and a traditional pint in the Royal Oak. This picture was taken at about 9pm.

Cordless Canoe Challenge 2014

More eccentric engineering from Beale Park. The Cordless Canoe Challenge run by Water Craft magazine has one basic rule: all the power must come from battery-powered tools. As last year, the solutions are many and varied, ranging from the brutally practical, through elegantly stylish right the way to the frankly attention-seeking.

Slade Penoyre brought Ayrspeed again (above), with the added feature of a wing with four cordless drills powering model aircraft propellers. He calls it the 'Lancaster configuration'. Once again, Ayrspeed failed to live up to its hugely impressive and innovative power train but effortlessly stole the show.

By the way, the inflatable sailing dinghy behind Ayrspeed was exhibited by Ian Thompson of Nestaway Boats. It is a Dutch design and Ian says it sails much better than it ought to.

Umpire and MC Moray MacPhail rashly opined that a boat with a gearbox would never win this event, but was proved wrong by a group of students from Southampton University and a boat called Chicken Nugget for some reason. It has a lot of gears but obviously the ability to gang several drills and bring the speed down to a rate more appropriate for a screw propeller paid off.

And for lunch...

I had Springbok yum yum.

Help a Hero

To Richmond Bridge Boat Club yesterday to coach a crew in training for the Great River Race. To get to the club we passed a slipway where, according to the club's Steve Kemsley, a small boy nearly drowned last week. Nobody had noticed, assuming the slowly-turning mass to be a log blown in by the wind, but one man realised what was going on, dived in and rescued the lad.

He had to walk home in a sodden suit, but his biggest loss was his iPhone. So the Boat Club has launched a fund raiser to replace it for him. 

Every one of us might need someone like him to be around at some moment in our lives, so let's give generously.

ALL'S WELL...
Steve Kemsley writes:

Dear all, Following my entry on here a few weeks ago, I have now spoken to the man again. Mark Edwards MBE (Master boat builder) knew him and put us in touch with each other.
This time I was able to express my thanks to him in a much more coherent way and also tell him how many people now knew of his selfless deed. - 81,216 people have read our original post, and Rob The White Cross Pub @WhiteCrossPub tells me that almost 90,000 have seen his Tweet.
The rescuer was very grateful for all the good wishes and wished to thank you all for your comments. He was pleased that the incident has raised some awareness of the the river safety issues at Richmond. Something that the RBBC is very keen on - having made several rescues in our first year and aided others who have got into difficulty on the river.
The rescuer's company has replaced the phone and so luckily he is not out of pocket - which is a huge relief, as not many people could afford to write off £700 on a new phone just like that. I will close the Crowdfunder page and thank those that offered cash - they will not have their accounts debited.
As a token of appreciation, Rob at the White Cross has set up generous bar tab for him next time he goes in. 
Once again, thank you Sir, you did a very good thing. and also thanks also to every one for spreading the word, especially Rob, and for all of your comments, they have been read by the person and have been appreciated. Thank you.

Steam at Beale

The Steam Boat Association of Great Britain always puts on a great show at Beale, showing off their superb engineering skills in some great-looking boats.

This year they threw down an irresistible challenge for steam men: to build a steam powered outboard. The entries were eccentric to the point of absurdity and almost as unreliable as infernal combustion, but were absolutely awesome. All the machines were fastened to the back of SL Chimera II, which also provided the steam from its kerosene-fired boiler. In the pictures (above and left) Mike Robinson's truly imposing machine provides some forward motion. It must be the first beam engine outboard in the world. Not only that, it uses the Newcomen cycle developed for pumping out Cornish tin mines in the 18th century.

John Barnard adopted a much more practical approach by converting a lawn mower engine to steam and connecting it to a paddle wheel made of old bookshelves. It powered the boat nicely across the lake but showered all behind with a copious deluge. Total cost of construction: £17.
Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the winner. Ian McAlpine designed and built a four-cylinder cruciform engine, drive leg, gearbox and prop entirely in his workshop, a frankly amazing achievement as far as I am concerned. And it worked impressively well. An alarmingly frank and very funny official Society report is here.

Manned Model Ship at Beale

Model warships from Victorian battleships to nuclear subs have featured in previous Beale Boat Shows, and this year it was the turn of HMS Plymouth, the ship on which the Argentinian forces in the Falklands surrendered back in 1982.
As I took this picture, there was an animated discussion between the blokes next to me as to whether it had a man in there or not. They concluded it was impossible. Ten minutes later, the 'skipper' was climbing out onto the bank for his lunch.

Tiniest Boat at Beale

This is Cwch Bach, or 'Small Boat', exhibited at Beale by Classic Sailboats of Caernarfon, north Wales. I got a row in their nice Whitehall-style Menai 14 rowing boat last year, but I dared not get in this one. Builder Adrian Richardson is made of sterner stuff, however, and was spotted sculling her with one of those tiny oars over the transom.