I am a big fan of people who make long trips in small boats. I am also a big fan of classic working watercraft. I stumbled across this series of videos by Englishman Dylan Winter the other night and will share them over the next weeks.
In this series Dylan takes his 19 foot sailboat on a circumnavigation of his home island and along the way he encounters and films a wide variety of sailing vessels. In this first video there are some great shots of the Thames sailing barges.
These boats of the 19th century were used in the Thames Estuary. They were in the 80′ to 90′ range with a beam of around 20′, flat bottomed with a shallow draft of about 3′ and sported huge sprit sails on two masts. They normally were worked with only a two-man crew. They were fitted with lee board to work in the shallow waters. There are some excellent views of these barges in Dillon’s first video.
One More Good Adventure 