• Start the entry with ‘FOR SALE’
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• an honest description of the condition
• the asking price
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If you are looking for a particular item, leave the following details

• Start the entry with ‘WANTED’
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Note: In order to reduce the amount of ’spam’ we have temporarily suspend the use of this service.

Look for crew for your boat? Or looking to build up your sea miles by crewing on someone elses boat? Then please just enter your details here by clicking on ‘Leave a Comment’ or ‘Comment(s)’ (whichever is showing)

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If you want crew, please leave:

• Head it “CREW WANTED”
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• Head it “CREW OFFERED”
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If you are at the marina, please also see the new Crewing Lists displayed on the CMBHA notice board on the ground floor of the marina. 

Please note that CMBHA takes no responsibility whatsoever for Nemo’s – or anyone else’s – comments.

IT’S NOT EASY BEING GREEN!

In the immortal words of Kermit the frog, “It’s not easy being green.”! Yes, we all probably pride ourselves on having at least some ‘green’ credentials, not necessarily of the tree hugging, Swampy variety, but perhaps just that hint of a warm glow when we produce our recycled bags at the Sainsbury checkout, or plant a few brassicas in the herbaceous border.

As boaters we blithely sign up to the RYA ‘Green Blue’ programme and use only the most eco-friendly anti fouling paint. We meticulously bag up all of our sailing gash and frown with righteous indignation at those less fastidious, whose antisocial jettisoning of last night’s carry out packaging we see floating past us with tedious regularity. However, this all pales into insignificance when compared to the macro desecration of our seascapes and waterways by what is, for me, the most insidious and pervasive form of environmental pollution so far invented by man – the relentless march of the increasingly ubiquitous wind farms!

Now I’m a simple soul. I like my valleys green and my oceans blue, just the way nature intended them. When I reach the brow of a Lakeland hill I like to see nothing more intrusive than a host of golden daffodils. Similarly, when I round the headland in my favourite cruising grounds, I want to see puffins, dolphins, yachts, perhaps the occasional light house, but nothing more. What I really don’t want to see is a scene like something from Wars of the Worlds with armies of hideous wind turbines bearing down on me!

This isn’t the place to rehearse arguments about their utter folly and futility in terms of energy production; the fact that the carbon footprint of their construction and erection far exceeds the energy that they will produce, their cost, their inefficiency or their long term unsustainability. No, my loathing of them is based primarily upon their aesthetic impact on the environment, together with their huge potential as hazards to navigation if their incessant propagation is allowed to go unchecked.

The new Marine Management Organisation, tasked with overseeing the development of Marine Conservation Zones is, paradoxically, the body responsible for granting licenses for mineral extraction and ‘Renewable Energy Installations’. This would possibly give us some comfort, were the energy czars not so anal about the dubious merits of wind farms, perhaps because they currently seem to be the only show in town, and weren’t in such total denial about the devastating environmental impact they bring with them.

There’s really a wicked irony in it all – let’s save the planet from global warming by making it an ugly and despoiled place in which we no longer enjoy living! If you’re not convinced, next time you sail up the Menai Straits look to the north east from about buoy B6 at the once magnificent vista between Puffin Island and The Great Orme and see for yourself; the beautiful seascape now completely destroyed by the invasion of a veritable army of trundling grumbling whirligigs.

So what to do? Well, the Marine Management Organisation claims in their literature to be committed to stakeholder engagement. The RYA for one have certainly made representations about accessibility and navigation in wind farm designated areas, and proposed sites are all subject to planning consultation. However, short of donning our suits of armour, mounting our trusty steed Rocinante and tilting at these wretched windmills in true Don Quixote style, Nemo’s advice on this one is; keep an eye on Notices to Mariners to make sure wind farms are plotted on your charts, keep a good lookout, especially in poor visibility and, most importantly, give them a wide berth and don’t drive into them!

There are, mercifully, still vast areas of sea to explore that are as yet safe from the incursion of wind power – enjoy them while they last!

Nemo