What did you do Today 2018

Somehow I wonder if this is really a rant about inconsiderate yachtie versus fishermen although it started out that way. if it was then i could point to all the poorly marked crab pots around our coast & the real danger to life. Or I could point to the discarded fishing net that caught in my prop meaning that I had to sail across the Channel at night having 4 near misses with ships & then being towed into Dover to be lifted & have it removed at not inconsiderable cost.

But I accept that as a hazard & get on with life

However, i wonder if your comment & the ones that follow, are really ones about inconsiderate !!""$$, who , like you say, have absolutely no consideration for others; & that goes for just about everything & not just the poor old "Yotties"- & a "Yottie" is not one who helms a motor boat by the way. Sailing boats are actually quite quiet. That is - to some- the attraction ,

Edited By Sam Longley 1 on 08/04/2018 09:35:22

I think we're getting mixed up between commercial fishing and angling here. Certainly, most of the dangerous rubbish that gets washed up within a couple of hundred yards of my house comes from commercial fishing - tangled nets and lengths of wire-cored trawl warp which could easily foul a propeller. This stuff is a danger to wild life, too - I've seen drowned seal pups tangled in lumps of commercial fishing net.

I totally agree about badly crab pots and bits of discarded fishing nets fouling the props of sailing yachts - an absolute nightmare, especially at night. Mike is right that is not only a danger to Yotties lives but also to wild life. If one could link the danger to the culprit and punish then that would be good but in real life that is impossible.

My comments were not exactly a rant, but more comments on what I had observed in everyday sailing jaunts, and of all those who 'sail' upon the water whether by sail, motor or paddle, and their interaction with each other and with the amateur or 'hobby' fisherman; we are all persuing our hobby and at our own expense, but the lack of consideration to other engaged in their hobby on the same waters I found to be staggering and often arrogant and certainly not in the spirit of the sea, where seafarers traditionally considered and helped each other. For me it often spoilt the enjoyment of what should have been a lovely day - sailing with nice company and especially if the sun was shining and the winds fair and not fierce!

Commercial fisherman are something else but at the end of the day they are trying to earn a living; the seafarers I refer to are not.

We sailed a Prout catamaran - the peace and quiet under sail was most valued, with the bonus of being able to hoist the drive leg out the water when the engine was no longer required adding to the experience. There were times when nothing could beat it, brilliant days out.

And I totally agree that a Yottie is not someone who helms a motor boat. I was trying to be very kind. Motor motor boat drivers are generally a much lower form of seafaring life it seems, and in many ways I blame the dealers who make little of the problems of handling a boat - "oh no trouble at all sir, just like driving a car". Many of them do not take the trouble to learn the theory by attending the Yachtmaster evening courses or try and learn the skills of practical boat handling - witness one dosy 'skipper' in a 40ft gin palace trying to pick up a mooring buoy in Newton Creek next to me one sunny Sunday afternoon and making a complete bollocks of it despite having twin screws and a bow thruster to help him, pathetic!

Idiots aside, it's different vessels for different leisure purposes, isn't it? From my workshop I can see a neighbour preparing his sailing yacht for the summer sailing season. Any day now the crane hire company will lift it into the water in one of the local harbours, and I can't think of anything much more pleasant than sailing in the Moray Firth on a warm, sunny day. Envious? You bet I am! On the other hand, when I used to charter rod-and-line fishing boats there was only one thing better than a big diesel engine I saw in a boat. and that was two of them side by side. I knew some highly professional charter boat skippers who would have been greatly insulted if told they were a lesser form of life. I take ChrisH's point about idiot gin-palace owners, but driving a powerful charter boat safely is not an easy task, as I found out on the few occasions one skipper allowed me to "drive" and navigate under his supervision. Mind you, that was before sat nav, and one of the hardest bits was interpreting what the Decca Navigator was telling me.

Edited By Mike on 08/04/2018 12:29:48

Back from my little holiday with my brothers in South Wales. We spent two days mountain biking in Afan Argoed. Yesterday we did Y Wal (the Wall)

They are a bit better at it than me so I came back a bit lighter - by a tooth cap and a fair amount of flesh

I'll spare you a photo of my knees...

Neil

Just wasted an hour going to the local tip to offload some byproducts of my latest extension work. Split into 5 bags (to make it easier to handle) with some broken cement in the bottom and topped up with used cement bags, bits of wood etc. Foolishly I thought they should go in the inert waste skip which brought a demand for £3 a bag. This after queuing for 10 mins, then having to "go round" again (another 10 mins) to allow the lorry in. This also made me too late to get to Screwfix on the way back, so it was a complete and glorious waste of time.

In fact, it seems we are allowed 10 bags a year if you apply for a free permit, whoopee. In which case obviously I will have to rebag the concrete bits into fewer bags.

When the local councils negotiate the contracts for handling domestic waste, they seem happy to take us for a ride. Last year I was turned away for turning up in a hire van, despite having only a few small items of domestic rubbish (broken chair, a branch that blew down and some plant pots). No vans allowed. So I had to take it later in my then almost new car. Now they have started to charge for green bins. I guess we are "making savings".

Murray

I cherish a memory of a family trying to get their brand new gin palace into St. Catherine's Dock yacht harbour. Trying to moor outside waiting for the gate to open, the good lady was creating merry hell about the fender socks getting scuffed on the quay.

If you ever go to Whistler in the summer, they use the ski lifts and ski slopes for mountain biking. It's ideal - special racks for the bikes and marked out courses for the descent. I'm too old for that now, as falling off hurts a lot more and it takes longer to recover. Some of the trails are so steep I'd need my rubber underwear anyway....

Murray

Good, but any more and only your feet will stop you falling between the gaps in the manhole covers on the road!

Michael W

Another riveting experience today on the traction engine front wheels. The rivets where the heads are formed against the T-ring rather than a spoke seem to form better heads for some reason:

Two front wheels are now fully riveted:

Two more to go.

Last week I watched it rain, and snow, up north with the glider. Towing a trailer when there is snow on the road and only two thin wheel tracks to follow is "interesting". The only day we flew was Friday, and the field was wet, with the result that I got the car and glider stuck. Here's a selfie, with my new smart dog 'n' bone, taken at about 8000ft over Wooler (Northumberland):

Andrew

Andrew, do you think the tee ring steel may be a bit softer than the spoke material which is giving the better heads? Maybe the heat of welding annealed it and could also explain the slight bulging where the rivits has spread the ring.

Riveting wheels is a job I hated and drilling the strakes and riveting seemed enless,if I had started on the wheels and not invested my time in building the boiler I would not have continued.Now I am building the rockerblock IC engine and today I finished the drilling and tapping on the assembled chassis a lot easier than building wheels.

Frank

All is not lost, at the moment I'm involved with two projects that include works to improve fish passage past weirs, one of them has a high expectation of returning salmon to an excellent stretch for breeding, the other is part of a longer-term restoration but it will improve the connections between currently isolated fish populations.

Neil: I am sure all anglers, as well as nature lovers in general, will wish you success. Unfortunately it's only part of the battle, one other factor being the partial destruction of the food chain by foreign commercial fishing interests. Changing the subject, when I was talking about how the amount of rubbish generated by commercial fishing interests finishes up on Moray Firth beaches, I mentioned seal pups being drowned after getting entangled in bits of net. I've now uploaded a picture on my album. Not my photo - it was taken by a friend in the village.

The picture of me was at the union chain bridge. If you look at the fisherman's hut & walk away from the bridge about 70 yards down river & go into the scrub just up the bank a bit you will find a hidden door. This is the entrance to the fish store they used to keep the salmon in when caught until the van collected them each day.

The bank at that part is a terrible mess. it is now badly overgrown & not the lovely shingle bank that they used to cast the nets from.

If one were to walk up the river to the first bend the coarse fishers used to catch roach there. The salmon fishers hated them as they saw them as competition for food so they used to gather great shoals of grayling ( which they disliked as well) & roach in the nets & drag them onto the banks & let them die.

Many years ago the angling times published an article about the bloke who made the Intrepid reels, K P Morritt, fishing in by the island above the wier at Kelso for roach. they caught lbs of them.

Last time I was there I could not see a single one. I used to catch a few roach (to my grandfather's disgust) at Horncliff on the bend where the stream comes in down the hill but 15 years ago I tried it & could not even get a trout.

3 Years ago for the first time in 64 years I saw 2 seals surface at the Chain bridge so that suggests that there were salmon about. How they got above the rapids just below I am not sure but the river was in spate.. My grandfather never once mentioned that so I assume it was a first. The fishermen often shot them when they caught them in their nets off the pier by the Shad

If you are involved in conservation of the Tweed you will , I am sure know about those places

Edited By Sam Longley 1 on 09/04/2018 10:50:35

Sam: The maker of Intrepid reels was Ken Morritt (spelling?) I worked for Angling Times for many years in the 1960s and 1970s, and we did any number of feature articles on roach fishing in Scotland. I took some really big catches on the Tay just below Perth, the Erne, the Forth & Clyde canal, and the Forth at Stirling. You have stirred up some really happy memories.

I was once a sea angler, my one brother was and is a hugely keen and successful one who's taken records and put record fish back.

My uncle took me and my brother roach/rudd fishing once, we caught dozens of tiny things and it didn't seem fair

Neil

Actually I may have just beaten you to it. I just could not remember as I typed it - the database is full now according to my son & daughter- & stuff drops out the bottom- as they love to remind me. You will see that i have edited it to KP Moritt. ( like you - spelling!!) it is one of those useless thing that stick in ones mind. As soon as i went back to visit my grandad I wanted to try it & he absolutely refused to take me. We had to go fly fishing for "proper" fish instead

I still have my Intrepid reel & there is really nothing wrong with it, considering its age (unlike me!!)

Sam, I used to get the same treatment when I visited my uncle in Perthshire. In the era, angling clubs used to net grayling and coarse fish, and bury thousands of them on the banks. I used to catch a lot on the Isla and, unbeknown to my uncle, I used to put them back. Talking of Intrepid reels, a friend of my wife's gave me an Intrepid fly reel a couple of years ago after she had cleared the house of a deceased relative. Included in quite a collection I acquired was a "proper" Mitchell fixed-spool from the days when they were made in France, and a built cane spinning rod from the same period.

I went sea fishing once off the East Anglian coast, near "The Wash", with the lines with all the hooks and weights attached to them, all I got was one measly mackerel and a lot of nausea. T'was a pretty fish though. 

Edited By Michael-w on 09/04/2018 13:21:24