Agree, it probably is. Sails molded round an ostrich egg when wet – nothing worse than a flat sail or flag!

Bob

I do have six eggs that I got in Cape Town many years ago for about £1. Got them for decoration really, and they are all in a wicker basket. Eventually, I began to use them for making sails, but they are all of similar size, but with a blunt end and a more pointed end, there are a selection of curves to choose from. They are very strong, and I have never broken any of them.

Bob

This model was damaged beyond repair in transit from here to Belgium – received the news today.

Bob

It was insured, but they are already laying the foundations of wriggling out of it.

Bob

Thanks for comments. I still have a large number of photographs of it, so the memory will live on for me, but the buyer will be very disappointed, as he already has a number of my models. They are asking me to prove it was as valuable as I claim, which is practically impossible, although I have found a similar one in the online archives of Charles Miller Ltd Maritime Auctions Ltd London (Norman Court – See below) with a sale price of £600 (hammer) plus £90 buyers premium, making a total cost to the buyer of £690, on top of which they would have to pay delivery, and that was a smaller model at 32 feet to 1 inch. Whatever happens, it has made me reluctant to send anything ever again, leaving it to "collection only." This will, of course vastly curtail my activities, as not many will want to collect personally, and storage space is always a problem. We will have to see what happens, and I will keep you informed as safe transport for models is not something confined to myself. Unfurtunalely, EEC law insists that the seller is fully responsible to make good loss or damage, but at the same time, they do not enforce any law on couriers to be fully responsible for items in their care! A bit of a "flexirule," that does not apply to large delivery firms. I will be refunding in full today – "hard come, easy go!" Oh well – that's life!

Bob

Edited By Bob Wilson on 28/06/2018 08:15:47

It is now on its way back, but travelling a lot slower than when it went. It arrived at Tamworth (Near Birmingham) at 0134 bst this morning, so I suppose the earliest I can expect it will be Monday, more likely Tuesday. Absolute silence on the insurance claim!

Bob

Bob,

That same thought did occur to me. At one stage in her career, the Gulf Stream was partially dismasted. A damaged ship running for port under a jury rig of reduced spars and sails. I will decide after I see it. If I do decide to restore it completely, it would mean a new set of masts and rigging. The masting and rigging of it took 39 hours, as I have all the work recorded in my build log. The total building hours actually came to 90.1, a bit more than my original calculation, because in the computer log, I had put a / instead of a dot in one of the earliest timings, so it had only added the column up after the mistake. But whatever happens, I will not offer it for sale again, and as I liked it so much, I was a bit reluctant to sell it in the first place!

Incidentally, when she was dismasted, one of the seamen was working aloft at a height of about 150 feet from the deck. As the mast broke beneath him, the sail folded over, and engulfed him completely as the who lot went crashing to the deck. As they were clearing the tangled wreckage, they found him inside the folds of the sail, bruised and shaken, but otherwise unharmed. Such tales I find far more intersting than the never-ending and ever- popular Napolenoic sea battles!

Bob