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\u201cA Rival is she?\u201d The harbourmaster stood and looked as Samsara<\/em>, dried out against the scrubbing posts at Felixstowe Ferry and proudly showing off a clean bottom.<\/p>\n (If you have been following this blog, you may have seen the picture of \u201cThe Infestation\u201d of goose barnacles which appeared out of nowhere).<\/p>\n I had just scraped off the last one and was going round the topsides with a rag and a bottle of hull cleaner, so I was feeling a certain pride of ownership already \u2013 but there\u2019s nothing like a compliment from a harbourmaster to put things in perspective. Harbourmasters have seen it all and you could tell that this one had seen it all and shaken his head over most of it.<\/p>\n I had waved to him on the river as he chugged past in his ancient workboat with \u201cHarbour Master\u201d flying from the ensign staff. This was the vessel, I learned later from the sign on his ancient office, that was available for sightseeing trips – and ash scattering by arrangement.<\/p>\n \u201cGood boats, Rivals\u201d he continued. \u201cNice wide side decks for getting around \u2013 and look at that keel\u2026 good skeg too – strong.\u201d<\/p>\n Then he added: \u201cAs my old Dad used to say \u201cThey go a long way and they take a long time to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n Well, yes, I suppose so. Nobody has ever claimed the Rival is a fast boat and \u2013 it may be a product of my return to the design in retirement, but I don\u2019t mind that any more. Thirty years ago, when I took Largo across the Atlantic in the OSTAR, I had ironic T-shirts printed with the legend: \u201cLargo: Broad and Slow\u201d (I looked up the musical term in a dictionary).<\/p>\n Now I realise that if you have a fast boat, all you want is a faster boat. You\u2019re constantly up-grading the gear \u2013 not because there\u2019s anything wrong with it, but because the man on the stand at the Boat Show says it\u2019ll give you an extra half a knot.<\/p>\n So, I have been able to forget the harbourmaster\u2019s father\u2019s views and concentrate on Samsara\u2019s <\/em>other virtues \u2013 of which, we agreed, there are many.<\/p>\n \u2026not forgetting, the extra half a knot that comers from not towing a bottomful of barnacles.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cA Rival is she?\u201d The harbourmaster stood and looked as Samsara, dried out against the scrubbing posts at Felixstowe Ferry and proudly showing off a clean bottom. (If you have been following this blog, you may have seen the picture of \u201cThe Infestation\u201d of goose barnacles which appeared out of nowhere). I had just … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":574,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570\/revisions\/574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}