Monday, February 11, 2013

Header Photo: British Moth at Chippenham SC



I have posted before about sailing on small water, for example, Cooper River just outside Philadelphia Pennsylvania. But in all my searching on the Internet, I have yet to find another sailing club that sails on anything smaller than Chippenham Sailing Club in England, a club that makes do with racing small dinghies on the upper reaches of the Avon River where the average width is between 17 and 20 meters (at least according to Google Maps measuring tool). So where the winding river would offer up a beat, the British Moth pictured here in a beautiful roll tack, would have approximately 4 boat lengths to go before preparing to tack again. I've never even sailed, much less raced on such a tiny body of water. In such close quarters. it must be a hoot!

Here are the Google coordinates for Chippenham SC.

A comment pulled into the main post from Die Hard Dinghy Sailor:

"British Moths still sail on the upper Thames above Oxford, at Medley S.C. ( I used to sail there), but that was postively huge compared to the narrow reach just a couple of miles upstream, above the famous 'Trout' inn (as featured in 'Inspector Morse' on occasions) and the site of our school sailing club. We sailed Fireflies, and they were pretty poorly maintained, so what with the narrow river, frequent tacking, gusty winds...we got pretty good at handling tricky situations! But I never liked Fireflies after that."

7 comments:

my2fish said...

wow, that is tiny! I often use Google Maps to try to guess if a nearby lake I'm not familiar with will be large enough to make it worth sailing.

hey stop by my blog - I posted a sweet video today about an Australian Wooden Boat Festival.

Romain BERARD said...

I sail on the Seine River and I feel it's too narrow to be really good, even though I have 110-120m width to play with.

I would rather kayak than sail on the river you show on the header (or maybe kayak sailing)

bonnie said...

Wow. And we at Sebago thought our bridge was a challenge. When I started sailing at Sebago, the challenge was to try to sail under the Belt Parkway bridge, but if you were having a bad time you could sail to shore and walk your boat through. Then construction started on a new bridge and walking was no longer an option. I got better at tacking pretty fast. Here's a post with a couple of pictures of the bridge. Third picture from the end shows the relationship between the size of the channel and the size of a Sunfish really, really well!

bonnie said...

hm, that link doesn't seem to be working. Here's where it is -

http://frogma.blogspot.com/2011/11/race-6-sebago-fall-race-series.htm

Tweezerman said...

Bonnie,

Went over to your blog and looked at the bridge. Hard to tell but looks like there is an array of steel pilings that one must stay in between. At several regatta venues I have had to negotiate very narrow cuts to get out and back from the race course. Under those pressure conditions, short tacking skills do get honed (and usually you are sharing the cut with other boats). Still nothing like Chippenham SC.

I must stop by Sebago Canoe Club one of these days. In my days in the International Canoe, I heard many stories on the rich history of the club.

Dieharddinghysailor said...

British Moths still sail on the upper Thames above Oxford, at Medley S.C. ( I used to sail there), but that was postively huge compared to the narrow reach just a couple of miles upstream, above the famous 'Trout' inn (as featured in 'Inspector Morse' on occasions) and the site of our school sailing club. WE sailed Fireflies, and they were pretty poorly maintained, so what with the narrow river, frequent tacking, gusty winds...we got pretty good at handling tricky situations! But I never liked Fireflies after that.

Rupert said...

I've raced several times at Chippenham, in British Moths, Firefly and Mirror. It is about 40 feet wide, and so shallow that you can't put the centreboard down fully at any point. Some boats use extra short rudders and boards.

It is somewhere I've enjoyed visiting for the variety, but I'd hate to sail there every week.