A must for all sailors. Experienced yachtswoman, sailmaker and CA member Cindy will guide us through sail care and valeting and emergency get you home repairs.
This meeting is open to all and there is a fee of £3 per person for this talk and pre-registration is required, please click the link here to register
Our meetings are held at the Dog and Bear Hotel in Lenham, the talk starts at 20.00, if you wish to eat before please phone the Hotel on 01622 858219 to reserve a table and mention you are attending the Cruising Association meeting.
Thursday 26th January 2023: 7.30 for 8.00pm Strood Yacht Club, Knight Road, Strood. ME2 2AH Bowman Bradley, Chair of the Inland Waterway Association’s Sustainable Boating Group.
Bowman will talk about the work of the group, their vision of how inland waterways boating might be made sustainable in the future, how that vision has developed over the last two years and the intended work of the group going forward. Bowman will be interested in the views of members as to how they might contribute towards the vision and any suggestions they might have as to what the group might look at in the future.
Bowman is a retired mechanical engineer and a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He has been a ‘canaller’ since the mid 1970’s and a narrowboat owner since 2005. Other members of the Sustainable Boating Group own a variety of canal craft ranging from historic narrowboats through ‘conventional’ diesel powered leisure craft to a state-of-the-art electric narrowboat.
Entry is free with a raffle to cover costs. All IWAKES events are open to non-members and you are encouraged to bring friends. Similarly, if you know a local club or society that might be interested, please do tell them.
For the second in our new series of monthly winter talks, Adam Taylor will give a fascinating presentation on the Medway Islands. Well known to the MSBA, Adam is a keen canoeist with 15 years experience of paddling a fourteen foot, Canadian (open) canoe. He has canoed in many places including the back country of Ontario, the lakes of Finland and Sweden and beautiful places here in the UK, but it is the islands and marshes of the Medway estuary where his heart is.
Adam’s presentation draws on many sources: census records, photos, Victorian technical plans, personal experience and several trips to the National Archives – to illustrate who lived on these islands, how the twin forts of Hoo and Darnet were built, the story of the pub which stood on an island in the middle of the estuary, how a WW1 German submarine ended up were it is now and a bit more.
We will also take a close up look at some of the flora and fauna of this huge, beautiful wilderness that is Medway estuary.
Rochester Cruising Club will be hosting the event. The club is easy to find on the Esplanade at the foot of Rochester Castle, postcode ME1 1QN. There is ample parking at the club and on the road outside. The bar will be open and a professionally prepared meal will be available at 7pm if you pre-order.
We will be having an “MSBA Special” of ham, egg and chips or sausage, egg and chips,or curry for £6 on the night. Desserts will also be available and the bar will be open. Please email info@msba.org.uk to order your meal.
Adam’s talk will start at 8pm. Non-RCC members are asked to contribute £3 at the door and sign the visitors’ book.
The CA Kent Section’s next talk is on Thursday 12 January 2023 at The Dog and Bear Hotel, Lenham, commencing at 20.00 when CA member Roger Clark will be giving us a behind the scenes look at the Southampton Boat Show. Roger has exhibited his Westerly Fulmar Concerto at the Boat Show in 2021, hopefully the weather will have improved by then. To register for the talk (cost £3) click the link here: [BOOK VENUE]
If you have any difficulty with booking through Eventbrite please contact us and we will do our best to help. The hotel has requested that those wishing to eat before the meeting should telephone in advance and book a table. This meeting is open to members and non members.
The Cruising Association Kent Section Winter Warmers are held at 8pm on the 2nd Thursday of each month at The Dog & Bear Hotel, The Square, Lenham, ME17 2PG, which is 8 miles east of Maidstone, just off the A20 in the village square. All are welcome. There is a small charge of £3. Many eat beforehand and it helps speed up service if you telephone the pub on 01622 858219 and order your meal before 5pm.
Thursday 8th December 2022 at 20.00 – Engaging with the wild world of the tidal Medway – the work of the Living River Foundation by Tanya Ferry
The foundation is working to reconnect communities with estuaries. The estuaries are improving despite their characteristic brown colour in the South East of England, but the colour makes it difficult to perceive the important animals that live in it. The foundation runs programmes to allow people to explore different aspects of the estuary, tackling litter, eliminating single use items, sampling microplastics, and giving talks.
Venue: The Dog and Bear Hotel Lenham ME17 2PG
To book and pay the £3.00 per person fee please click on the link here: [BOOK VENUE]
For the first in our new series of monthly winter talks, Paul Smith of PSI will give us an update on marine electronics and electrical systems for our boats. Paul is well known locally for his knowledgeable, personal service to boaters and you may well have met him at national boat shows.
Rochester Cruising Club will be hosting the event. The club is easy to find on the Esplanade at the foot of Rochester Castle, postcode ME1 1QN. There is ample parking at the club and on the road outside. The bar will be open and a professionally prepared meal will be available at 7pm if you pre-order.
We will be having an “MSBA Special” of ham, egg and chips or sausage, egg and chips for £6 on the night. Desserts will also be available and the bar will be open. Please email info@msba.org.uk to order your meal.
Paul’s talk will start at 8pm and he will bring some of the latest kit to demonstrate and answer your questions.
Non-RCC members are asked to contribute £3 at the door and sign the visitors’ book.
The Cruising Association Kent Section hosts a popular series of monthly talks each winter. The meetings are currently held on Zoom. Non-members are welcome to attend. On Thursday 10 March at 19.00 Nick Ball from Chatham Historic Dockyard will give a talk on Navy Board Ship Models.
Nick is the recently appointed Collections, Galleries and Interpretations Manager at the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust. He had previously been a curator at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Together with Simon Stephens, he co-authored the book ‘Navy Board Ship Models,’ published by Seaforth Publishing in 2018. Nick will give a talk outlining his research into the construction and function of the models together with the identities of those who built and owned many of the finest ship models ever made. From about the middle of the seventeenth century exquisitely crafted ship models with distinctive unplanked lower hulls began to be made. Regarded as the pinnacle of the ship modeller’s art, they are valued both as art objects and as potential historical evidence on matters of ship design.
This Cruising Association Winter Warmer talk has been rescheduled Thursday for 31 March at 19.00, with Kent Section member Des Crampton to talk about the history of HMS Bellerophon.
Model of HMS Bellerophon made by Martin Male of Upnor Sailing Club
HMS Bellerophon, nicknamed ‘Billy Ruffian’ by her crew, was a 74-gun ship of the line launched at Frindsbury on the River Medway in October 1786, just three years before the start of the French revolution. She fought in all the major naval battles of the Napoleonic wars and crowned her well-deserved reputation when she prevented Napoleon’s escape to the United States after the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon was detained on board for twenty-four days until his transfer in Torbay to HMS Northumberland for the voyage to St Helena.
The talk will review Bellerophon’s construction, long naval service, and eventual retirement to become a prison hulk in Plymouth. Her hull design and sea-keeping characteristics will be briefly analysed using the original 1:48 scale drawing of her lines. There will be a review of her armaments followed by descriptions of her participation in the battles of the Nile and Trafalgar. The talk will conclude with some detail of Napoleon’s surrender to Bellerophon’s Captain Maitland at Ile-d’Aix off Rochefort.
The Cruising Association hosted a Brexit Webinar for members on 22 January 2022, which is now published for public viewing by the wider cruising community. The CA’s Regulations and Technical Services group (RATS) continues to be at the forefront of lobbying on behalf of the cruising community to mitigate the impact of the UK leaving the EU, and there have been some significant changes in the past year which are presented in the webinar.
The webinar covers in detail the latest updates on:
People issues – including Schengen immigration and the 90/180 day visa rules
VAT issues – the latest on EU and UK VAT and the changes to Returned Goods Relief
Recreational Craft Directive/Recreational Craft Rules – compliance and how it will affect you
