Envy is a terrible thing but who can blame me when I find a scene like this ?
I took a trip to Gloucester yesterday and wandered around the historic dockyard. It’s a fantastic place with easily modelable warehouses and interesting features at every turn. OK, so things have changed a lot since the docks were a working port - all the grime has long been sanitised away, but you can still get a feel for the place as it was.
For the modeller, the city is well worth a visit. As I didn’t have time to “do” the museum I’ll certainly back again later in the year. A couple of excellent model shops and a superb second hand bookshop in town are just added attractions.
Anyway, while looking for some food I discovered the Gloucester Model boat club, or at least some of their members who were sailing. They must be the luckiest club in the country – sheltered flat water and lots of it.
These guys were sailing in an area off the main basin although at least one intrepid modeller sailed his boat onto the main expanse of water. It’s pretty quiet so it wasn’t at any risk. Even if it wasn’t I don’t thing he was likely to damage any other boat he’d hit out there. In a fight between a steel barge and a plastic model boat I know who my money is on !
With handy food and toilets the only downside to the “pond” is that most of the banks are ten feet tall and made of concrete. Recovering a dead boat would be a real challenge. Presumably you always sail in packs so you can shove each other’s boats back to the landing area.
You even get an audience of interested visitors. Mind you, sometimes you just want to sail in private when first launching that new model so perhaps it isn’t perfect after all.
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