A visit to Appledore

3 – Bideford Bar

I have never crossed Bideford Bar but it seems that I have known it all my life. I thought I would check it out. Who knows? I may yet get the chance.

Many sailors have crossed this Bar, and many still do. To them I say, please bear with me. I am doing what I should do – looking at the water, reading the entries in the pilot book, looking at the chart. Also, I am looking at it from two different viewpoints – what it’s like now and what it might have been like in the nineteenth century. I have always had  problems envisaging what it would have been like to live in a castle that now stands in ruins, but envisaging being at sea in a wooden sailing ship is different altogether – the sea is the same sea, the wind the same wind.

That there was a gale blowing and rain was in the air last week just made it more interesting. The outside bar was hidden in the murk . . .

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A day-sail – 6 hours

I foolishly left the camera my smaller Lumix camera in Farnham at the weekend, so yesterday I took the heavier Nikon 3200 SLR instead. The problem is where to put it down in a hurry when I need to attend to the boat. It sits in one of the canvas line bags at a stretch otherwise in a bag hung just inside the companionway.

There were a number of people enjoying the water. It was one of those days when the wind was steady (F3), the sun shone, the sailing, as they say, was easy. I left the mooring about 1100 and was back at 1700. No pressure.

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