JennyMorgan

That particular event did happen in the US but with you hand on your heart, can you assure me that black and white are treated with equal respect in the UK? Personally I regret that folk are regarded as black or white.

Even minor, un- elected quango leaders!

I do, with caution!

I hear mention of September . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Perhaps Barnes should underhandedly re-brand their day boats as 'borrow boats'. You pay £80.00 per hour or whatever to park your car and Barnes will let you 'borrow' a boat for the corresponding time for absolutely nothing. So simple!

In syrup served with double cream?

That reminds me of the mythical BNP!!

It has to happen! We need a non political topic that can run and run!! Plus what else will you do with yourself?

That could be several years away, but at least Grendel will have a new project to occupy himself in.

She's moored up on Oulton Broad at the moment.

Unfortunately perhaps, but with people not able to go to the likes of Benidorm or Faliraki this year, Norfolk's hot spots are also being inundated. Not exactly ideal, especially as Norfolk is not geared up for it, indeed nowhere is.

Almost as nice as the Broads!

I can remember my father berating the fact that boats had gone up to a thousand pounds a foot! Mind you, a few years ago . . . . . . .

We probably saw each other then! For tuition we sailed tan sailed Wayfarers. If it was tuition aboard a customer's boat then it ranged from the Silhouette upwards, an S&S 44 centre-board Yawl being the biggest that I taught aboard. At that time in life I had a BSA Bantam and an Austin A47, a Spitfire was beyond the means of a humble sailing instructor who was actively supporting the Anchor Bleu and otherwise saving every penny towards getting married. We ranged all around that harbour and up onto the Downs on that Bantam, halcyon days that neither of us forgot.

They did indeed, they handled well, were sea kindly and most of them looked good, for a synthetic boat! I always thought that they had an edge on Westerly. I had a regular once a month customer based at Birdham Pool who's idea of heaven was to sail down to East Head in Chichester Harbour, where we would lie for the weekend. He had the 26 which was an amazingly spacious, by my standards, boat. In the two years that I sailed with him we never crossed the bar, East Head was his comfort zone. I also had a regular customer who had a Silhouette, one of the plywood ones. He was a once a fortnight man, he never left the harbour either! Actually I always enjoyed sailing that boat, much to the amusement of other staff members. There were a number of people on our books like that, glad to pay for friendship and our ability, no one else to sail with and lacking in confidence and experience I suppose.

Fingers crossed for you!

£2,700.00, Perry, you done good!

Kevin Taylor, Pegasus Yachts, told me his biggest competitor was himself, too many second hand boats out there.

That there are very, very few Westerley's on the Broads surely speaks volumes! I rather fancy, for full standing headroom, a Macgregor 26, plus it sails pretty well and can take on being grounded. https://asa.com/news/2017/07/24/cruising-boat-spotlight-macgregor-26m/

A good friend of mine had a Golden Hind bilge keeler, she was a lovely boat and it didn't need the skipper to be on a promise and the boat with a gale under its transom for it to get a shunt on. I was always a great fan of the Maurice Griffiths school of thought and his books are great favorites of mine, along with Black Sailed Traders and the Art of Coarse Sailing!

I never did. I'm going back to the 1960's, early 70's when I taught sailing and seamanship on the South Coast as well as delivering various boats. I did actually own a Nimrod, bought off a customer. He'd nose dived it and just wanted rid of it, she did sail well, I liked her. Westerlies of the time were over-built, which was no bad thing, but performance was not inspiring, at least not the ones that I sailed. I must admit to letting out a groan when the office told me that I would be sailing a Westerly, circa 1960. I always fancied an International Folkboat but that was not be.

A glutton for punishment?

Not an aquatic caravan then!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denys_Rayner

Those early Westerlies were pretty darn useless as sailing boats! Always thought of them as being attractive though. There's one for sale on Oulton Broad at the moment. They also built a dinghy with a lid on it called the Nimrod, another attractive boat that actually sailed well until water accumulated in the cabin, as inevitably it did, when it would attempt an alarming nose dive. The cockpit in the early models was not isolated from the cabin, as was the case with early Drascombe cruisers although, thankfully, they didn't nosedive in the same alarming manner. I never thought of Jack as being a woman's man!