Retirement!

June 13th, 2011 by JCB
Posted in Coastlines | No Comments »

Retired Fowey pilot, Sam Guy, sent me this delightful photo of his dog “Chinks” (named after the rocks off the Scillies) keeping a sharp lookout whilst at anchor during “beer o’clock”! However, Sam still continues to keep his hand in professionally  and sent the following report:

Since ‘retiring’ from pilotage I have done the odd relief job on the local ferry and also on a small dredger belonging to Padstow harbour in North Cornwall. We have had a few interesting jobs with the dredger one of which was recovering broken containers from the seabed at the grounding sight of the Napoli in Lyme Bay. Although at present we are doing what a dredger is supposed to do ie. dredge, we had an interesting little job removing a derelict dredger from the upper reaches of the Taw estuary near Barnstable, in Devon late last year.  We had to get it off a bank and tow it 3 miles down river to be beached  and cut up. It was not the easiest of jobs especially as we had very little water, no bowthruster and single screw.