I like it! I love how's theres more "traffic" around

Ashar wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2007 at 5:41pm:


Both boats in the picture are moored and stationary. The tried and tested system is to moor your main boat in a sheltered inlet, and have a smaller boat (generally known as 'the skiff' or 'the soap-dish' owing to their flat undersides) which you use to get out to your larger boat. You then moor your 'skiff' at the mooring your larger boat was on, and you're away!

The moorings are basically a buoy with an absolutely massive and very very heavy (believe me, I've had to lug it up and down beaches) chain hanging underneath. This chain alone is enough to keep the mooring in place in the summer, when the weather's not so bad. Both the mooring and the boat have to come onto land during the winter.

The previous picture showed The 'White Heather' (as she's named) at her mooring, that we put her on when we're not out in her. This picture was during a trip (which is why she has her rudder on this time and she didn't last time) to a small bay nestled into one of the many small voes (open-ended valleys full of seawater, basically) that populate the bit of shetland we always go to. During said trip I managed to slip over (on a slipway, oh the irony) and got a rather nasty series of mangled-up cuts on my left hand.

On the same trip, when we were heading back, it got a bit choppy and by the time we got back we were all soaked from sea spray, and I didn't care. She really is so stable in waves like those (and much worse) that you just trust her to get you home safely, and she always will.

As you can probably tell, I'm very attached to her. And one day, if all goes well, I'll part-own her.

Clipper wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2007 at 6:00pm:


The reason my previous sig was moody and sultry was because the weather was rubbish when I took it!

By contrast, the weather was beautiful here. Unusually.