{"id":2250,"date":"2008-10-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=2250"},"modified":"2009-04-15T08:28:03","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T13:28:03","slug":"s_logs-dashew-dashew563","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/s_logs-dashew-dashew563\/","title":{"rendered":"Lymington, UK"},"content":{"rendered":"
Lymington: Another charming (if crowded) English sea port. The Dashews meet up with legendary yachting writer Dag Pike, and check out an interesting boat storage facility.<\/div>\n

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Lymington is another charming English sea port, albeit very crowded. Within the small harbor reside 1600 yachts, and three big ferries. There are two large marinas, and hundreds of boats sharing fore-and-aft moorings as above. You need lots of fenders to cruise in this part of the world.<\/p>\n

Wind Horse<\/em> is berthed at Berthon’s, where the original British competitors were built for the Isle of Wight race against the schooner America<\/em>. When we accused them of building slow boats (actually the term was "losers") we were informed that America<\/em> missed a mark of the course and should have been DSQ.<\/p>\n

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A short walk from the boat yard has you heading into town…<\/p>\n

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…passing the town grid which sees a lot of use for maintenance projects.<\/p>\n

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Saturday the main street is blocked off and it becomes a giant swap meet. There are folks selling fresh fruits and veggies.<\/p>\n

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And lots of other goodies as well.<\/p>\n

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One stall is selling nothing but tidbits for dogs, and there are lots of customers on parade with their owners.<\/p>\n

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People watching is the best part of the market. We particularly liked the outfit on this English gentleman.<\/p>\n

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We used to think two story buses were for tourists (they certainly are in the US). But here they are in everyday use. This one almost ran over Steve as he was taking the photo.<\/p>\n

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A short cab ride away is the Hearst castle, construction of which was undertaken by Henry #8. It has been in use since the 16th century, defending from the war mongers on the continent. We thought this canon would look cool on the foredeck of Wind Horse<\/em>. Linda prefers the Hearst Castle in which Bill Hearst had his parties (the one in San Simeon, California).<\/p>\n

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Dag Pike is the dean of European yachting writers. Although we have been corresponding for years (having cooperated on several projects) this is the first time we’ve met. Dag had just finished as navigator on the winning around Britain powerboat race, at age 75.<\/p>\n

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And had the very first copy of his latest book with him.<\/p>\n

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Every time we go into town we walk through the huge boat storage facility which abuts Berthon’s marina. There are lots of interesting things at which to look, including several twin keel cruisers. These are common here and very convenient for sitting on the bottom between tidal cycles.<\/p>\n

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We thought we would show you the steering gear on this 50 foot (15m) power boat. Talk about tiny rudders. These will work in moderate conditions at speed, but in big seas or maneuvering at slow speed they are on the small side.<\/p>\n

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Since we are picking on rudders here is something else we do not like, a partial skeg. The lower portion of the rudder is a natural line\/net catcher, and then the debris jams between rudder and skeg. If you are hard aground, and damage the bottom skeg bearing, you have lost the use of your rudder. And you probably have a severe leak as well. We much prefer a properly engineeredspade rudder.<\/p>\n

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With all the (really) old unreinforced stone buildings around you know this area is geologically stable. Still, this centuries-old system of supporting a hauled yacht is surprising to us. <\/p>\n

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We have asked about it and have been assured that it works, even in big wind storms. Yachts with deep keels have more conventional shoring.<\/p>\n

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We have noticed quite a few dinghies with inboard wells for their outboards. We had one of these on a dory built for the family in the late 1940s. The inboard well protects the outboard from being pooped and assures clean water flow to the prop in choppy conditions.<\/p>\n

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We’ve mentioned before how many large RIBs we have seen in the UK and Ireland.<\/p>\n

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This one is is used by its owner as an all weather commuter between Southampton and Cowes on the Isle of Wight. It is 33 feet (10m) long, just 8.5 feet (2.6m wide) and weighs four tons. There are a pair of 315 HP Yanmar diesels and flat out it does 53 knots! Throttle back to 30 knots and you have a range of 500 miles.<\/p>\n

Wind shield wipers are activated by a control mounted on the steering wheel (automobile fashion) so you can keep your hands on the helm and throttles.<\/p>\n

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The hulls were built to beat the Round Great Britain record (which they accomplished). As the owner puts it "Speed is only limited by the bravery\/stupidity of the driver. Assuming your internal organs survive you can almost always go flat out. The only sea keeping issue is downwind, catching big waves in front." <\/p>\n

Long and skinny works for warships, commercial transport, high performance Ribs, and our own designs (stamp out fat boats).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lymington: Another charming (if crowded) English sea port. The Dashews meet up with legendary yachting writer Dag Pike, and check …Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}