"WallToAll" ... is by no means the only website under my control. In the earlier years of this century, I was eavily involved with boats and sailing and the sea, passing on sea-lore and marine methodology to a younger generation.
The long gone www.pentargon.webs.com
was an early experiment in website design which detailed my escapades on the inland waterways of middle England during the second decade of C21, as I meandered along the Lea and Stort Valley, the Grand Union Canal, Braunston, the Oxford Canal, the Thames tidal and non-tidal, The Wey, Basingstoke Canal and a little bit of the Kennet by Reading where I experienced and braved the [in]famous Brewery Gut.
Included back then were the Lower Thames Estuary, where Pentargon re-opened the Darent to recreational navigation in 2015 and was chronicled in Canal Boat magazine in March2020 for so doing.
I spent two idyllic two Summers in Dartford in 2015 & 2016, making tide tables for it, identifying flora et fauna, reading biology and also re-learning embedded skills in hydrology and hygrology at Dartford Library. During the intervening winter I took a trip around England during what transpired to be some of the wettest stormiest winter ever recorded in England.
Actually I was on the water for the infamous Hurricane Xaver on 6th December 2013.
Refer also to the 2015 and 2016 trio: Abigail, Barney and Clodagh
For 2017, plans were hatched to sail from Dartford to Liverpool, skirting Greater Birmingham and to joining The Severn. The "Ring" would take Pentargon to the Bristol Channel at Sharpness, to make a solo passage to Bristol and join the Avon and Kennet navigations to Reading and London. The ship's log for 19thMay 2017 shows Pentargon on the Staffordshire & Worcester canal near Wolverhampton and on 13th August 2017, Pentargon entered Bristol Floating Harbour having navigated the Bristol Channel from Sharpness the previous day. Solo! We rode anchor overnight in Portishead Hole which Hilary Kington has so beautifully illustrated. The tide outside lifted forty feet but Pentargon only used about twenty five feet of it.
A race against time, which is against all that is sacrosanct to canal life, sped Pentargon and skipper right through from Bristol to Reading in three sailing days and that in itself may be a record. The climb at Devizes is chronicled elsewhere ...[HL]
AFFAIRS WITH TIDAL WATERS
Kenya Jacaranda dot webs was my proudest bit of web-work in the voluntary sector. As PRO of the now-defunct Mayflower Sail Training Society one of my briefs was to produce a monthly news bulletin for a scattered diverse membership of 150.
On my watch, it took to the web as well as being delivered by mail to 200 addresses.
The site's 'raison d'etre' died with the charity. The website, still broadcasting April 2023,
became a repository for an early draft of MUDDY BROWN WATER
http://www.freewebs.com/kjoperations/
(This link is no longer operational ...)
The Mayflower Sail Training Society never had an operations manual. The site was developed as a repository for sailing lore, methodology and operations centred on the SV Kenya Jacaranda . When that house of cards tipped over due to mind-boggling management stupidity and appalling seamanship, another site became available for 'storage'.
http://www.kjtraining.webs.com/ was conceived when it was realised a means of training existing members and new intake in doing things in a uniform way.
http://www.greenwichpeninsulahistoricshipsharbour.webs.com/
was to have been the biggest, most exciting maritime project I was ever involved in but it 'Went Down The Swanee' through appalling mis-management, corporate greed and a singular lack of vision. The website remained mine being used to store diverse verbal garbage. http://www.freewebs.com/thamesmaritimeheritage/ was another river-based concept which failed to get off the ground due to the breathtaking ineptitude of the principals. I had been retained as PRO and initiated a website but never got a key to the gate. The site lived on as an indictment of the concept that while less than 1% of people Make Things Happen more than 9% Watch Things Happen. The problem is the remaining 99% who Wonder What The Bang Was and from whose ranks 99% of the membership of all UK voluntary organizations and all political parties come. The 1% come from the 1% above who Make Things Happen but are at the devils end of that category and are committee men ... A camel is a horse designed by a committee
Mid-decade, found me with the London Unit of the Maritime Volunteer Service based by Tower Bridge from where I was undertaking PRO and training roles along with active service on a number of powered boats on The River. http://www.mvslondon.webs.com/ was a work in progress when the whole organization began to unravel before disintegrating into total civil war.
I learned much about the Thames from very skilled river men and marine specialists during my time there and on baling out brought with me my virtual bookcase and whatever was in it.
The long gone www.pentargon.webs.com
was an early experiment in website design which detailed my escapades on the inland waterways of middle England during the second decade of C21, as I meandered along the Lea and Stort Valley, the Grand Union Canal, Braunston, the Oxford Canal, the Thames tidal and non-tidal, The Wey, Basingstoke Canal and a little bit of the Kennet by Reading where I experienced and braved the [in]famous Brewery Gut.
Included back then were the Lower Thames Estuary, where Pentargon re-opened the Darent to recreational navigation in 2015 and was chronicled in Canal Boat magazine in March2020 for so doing.
I spent two idyllic two Summers in Dartford in 2015 & 2016, making tide tables for it, identifying flora et fauna, reading biology and also re-learning embedded skills in hydrology and hygrology at Dartford Library. During the intervening winter I took a trip around England during what transpired to be some of the wettest stormiest winter ever recorded in England.
Actually I was on the water for the infamous Hurricane Xaver on 6th December 2013.
Refer also to the 2015 and 2016 trio: Abigail, Barney and Clodagh
For 2017, plans were hatched to sail from Dartford to Liverpool, skirting Greater Birmingham and to joining The Severn. The "Ring" would take Pentargon to the Bristol Channel at Sharpness, to make a solo passage to Bristol and join the Avon and Kennet navigations to Reading and London. The ship's log for 19thMay 2017 shows Pentargon on the Staffordshire & Worcester canal near Wolverhampton and on 13th August 2017, Pentargon entered Bristol Floating Harbour having navigated the Bristol Channel from Sharpness the previous day. Solo! We rode anchor overnight in Portishead Hole which Hilary Kington has so beautifully illustrated. The tide outside lifted forty feet but Pentargon only used about twenty five feet of it.
A race against time, which is against all that is sacrosanct to canal life, sped Pentargon and skipper right through from Bristol to Reading in three sailing days and that in itself may be a record. The climb at Devizes is chronicled elsewhere ...[HL]
AFFAIRS WITH TIDAL WATERS
Kenya Jacaranda dot webs was my proudest bit of web-work in the voluntary sector. As PRO of the now-defunct Mayflower Sail Training Society one of my briefs was to produce a monthly news bulletin for a scattered diverse membership of 150.
On my watch, it took to the web as well as being delivered by mail to 200 addresses.
The site's 'raison d'etre' died with the charity. The website, still broadcasting April 2023,
became a repository for an early draft of MUDDY BROWN WATER
http://www.freewebs.com/kjoperations/
(This link is no longer operational ...)
The Mayflower Sail Training Society never had an operations manual. The site was developed as a repository for sailing lore, methodology and operations centred on the SV Kenya Jacaranda . When that house of cards tipped over due to mind-boggling management stupidity and appalling seamanship, another site became available for 'storage'.
http://www.kjtraining.webs.com/ was conceived when it was realised a means of training existing members and new intake in doing things in a uniform way.
http://www.greenwichpeninsulahistoricshipsharbour.webs.com/
was to have been the biggest, most exciting maritime project I was ever involved in but it 'Went Down The Swanee' through appalling mis-management, corporate greed and a singular lack of vision. The website remained mine being used to store diverse verbal garbage. http://www.freewebs.com/thamesmaritimeheritage/ was another river-based concept which failed to get off the ground due to the breathtaking ineptitude of the principals. I had been retained as PRO and initiated a website but never got a key to the gate. The site lived on as an indictment of the concept that while less than 1% of people Make Things Happen more than 9% Watch Things Happen. The problem is the remaining 99% who Wonder What The Bang Was and from whose ranks 99% of the membership of all UK voluntary organizations and all political parties come. The 1% come from the 1% above who Make Things Happen but are at the devils end of that category and are committee men ... A camel is a horse designed by a committee
Mid-decade, found me with the London Unit of the Maritime Volunteer Service based by Tower Bridge from where I was undertaking PRO and training roles along with active service on a number of powered boats on The River. http://www.mvslondon.webs.com/ was a work in progress when the whole organization began to unravel before disintegrating into total civil war.
I learned much about the Thames from very skilled river men and marine specialists during my time there and on baling out brought with me my virtual bookcase and whatever was in it.
© MMXXiv
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e-mail the author
[email protected]
@poguemuhone.bsky.social
Publish at All Costs
Or at No Cost At All
