SB Cygnet at Standard Quay

The  lovely 130 year old minature Thames Barge SB Cygnet visited Standard Quay at the end of last week and, much too everyone’s delight, set off down the Creek under sail alone. We went with her a little way on Mac’s ‘Markie’ to take a few pictures. She is I think, the last barge with a tiller (our own Lady of the Lea briefly returned to her tiller sailing days when she starred in Leon Garfield’s ‘December Rose’, a BBC Children’s drama series filmed in the 1980s). There is a useful potted history of the Thames Barge with an honorary mention of Cygnet here: http://phillipsdesignpublishing.com/section439711_154492.html . She did sail from Standard Quay, but my camera decided it would only work from the Iron Wharf on so I don’t have the shot I took of her sailing past the massive SB Lady Daphne looming over her from her perch in the Standard Quay dry dock. If anyone has any shots of the Cygnet on the Quay we’d love to have them on the site.

As we were going past Iron Wharf I took a quick snap of work in progress on SB Cambria – she won’t be stumpy rigged for long. We are looking forward to the day in a couple of weeks when she returns to the Quay in all her newly rigged glory.

The next big date in the Save Standard Quay diary is this Wednesday, 6th April, when I, as the E Petition organiser, am to meet up with our landlord Mr White at the Borough Council offices at Swale House in Sittingbourne. We are taking up the offer of Swale’s Director of Regeneration, Pete Raine, to mediate between us. This came offer was made at the LEF meeting of 15th March. It should be interesting. A newsletter will follow.

Talking of newsletters, we have made an Archive page where past issues of the newsletter can be found (including the two issues numbered Issue 3 (sorry, we lost count for a minute there). We are also working on a way of making the petition on this site accessible (together with the petition as it was at Swale when it closed), to everyone who has signed it and will let you know when we have figured that one out.