Floaters

Eurgh! Reader Ben has sent me this photo he took today of our lovely Royal Harbour, and writes:

I couldn't help noticing that the Ramsgate inner harbour was filthy today. There was a large oily slick of floating rubbish - not far from the disused King George IV Maritime Heritage Pontoons. This is hardly a good advert for Ramsgate's tourist industry. TDC used to employ a chap who would row out and scoop it up, I guess this is no longer the case.

Indeed. And with a Eurofunded project under way to tart the harbour up, you'd think they'd be taking a bit more care of it! Oh, but then they'd probably want more Eurofunding to do that.

Speaking of poop decks, word has reached the old ECR shell-likes that our former dredger, fittingly enough called Ramsgate, has turned up in Norway after being flogged off by The Duffers for £65,000 a few years ago. That was apparently part of a plan by Cllr Latchford (Who he? - Ed.) to bring in new, super-duper dredging arrangements. Ramsgate has been refurbed and is still apparently doing sterling work for the Norgies, so it does make you wonder whether TDC could have done the same and saved a few bob on the hundreds of thousands they've subsequently spent on getting contractors to do the job.

Hang on a mo. I think I may have spotted some of my council tax floating in that slick pic!

Sold Down The River By Thanet Council

So, my Belgian spies tell me that defunct TransEuropa's tub Gardenia went for €750,000 at the auction in Oostende yesterday, although that price can still be outbid (by a minimum of 10% on top) until the end of the month.

And the amount Thanet Council, which is owed £3.4m of our lovely lolly by TransEuropa, will make from the sale? Nothing. Zero. Nix. Nada. Not a sausage. Because someone at the council (step forward Chief Executive and Chief Financial Officer Sue McGonigal, for it is you!) failed to secure any of the debt on the company's assets.

Would it be too much to ask Ms McG to pass 'Go' forthwith, without collecting her £200,000? Kuh!

Meanwhile, in what writers such as myself like to call a 'bizarre twist', it's emerged that as late as April this year TDC joined an EU-sponsored organisation called 'LO-PINOD', one of those Eurocratic acronyms which, in this case, apparently stands for 'Logistics Optimisation for Ports'.

LO-PINOD'S blurb states: 'Through improvements to shortsea routes, local ports and their hinterland connections, LO-PINOD encourages a wider use of water-borne transport across the North Sea Region. Greater use of local ports will re-balance Europe's transport network, reduce road congestion, aid regional development and deliver more freight by sustainable sea transport.'

It was on 17 April 2013 that LO-PINOD welcomed the Port of Ramsgate to its fold, just three days before yours truly broke the story that TransEuropa had sunk without trace, and the whole Ferrygate scandal began to unravel. Did the TDC bureaucrat who signed up for LO-PINOD not know that, within hours, there would be no more 'logistics operations' or 'freight' from the Port of Ramsgate? Or is this yet another case of our beloved council's arse not talking to its elbow? I think we should be told!

Click here to go to LO-PINOD website

Ferry For Sale - One Careless Owner

Ahoy fellow salty millionaires! I'm just back from my annual break in Cannes. What a lot of yachts they've got!

And talking of floaters, my Belgian spies have alerted me to the fact that one of the two old TransEuropa tubs that's rotting away in Ostend is being put up for auction this month.

Bidding on The Gardenia takes place at the Hotel/Restaurant Weinebrugge on Saturday 14th September at 2pm. So, er, do pop along if you fancy grabbing yourself a rusty bargain.

It's worth reading the small print, though, since there's a whole list of debtors attached to the sale, amounting to some 5m Eurowhatsits of prejudged charges on a ship that's probably not worth much more than a mill. Strange, though, that despite the Port of Ostend, a number of Belgian companies, and sailor types (who are presumably attempting to claim back unpaid wages) attached as having a charge over The Gardenia, there's not a single mention of Thanet Council or the Port of Ramsgate being owed a bob or two. So what's going on there, then?

The Ostenders reckon they're owed €2.5m by the defunct ferry line, which, they say, is about the same as us Fannit taxpayers are out of pocket. Although my calculator makes that about £2.1m, way short of the £3.4m that Thanet Duffer Central has fessed up to so far. And not even a chance to make some back on the auction. Kuh!

Meanwhile, I see from my copy of Krant Van West-Vlaanderen that Ostend Council are, not surprisingly, vexed about the €25,000 a month it's costing them to keep The Gardenia, and its sister rustbucket The Larkspur, moored up in their lovely port. Each ship apparently has to have a three man safety crew on board, and there are other costs such as popping the odd Euro in the lecky meter. All of which is coming out of the public purse. The Krant Van West-Vlaanderen also mentions there have been talks about restarting an Ostend-Ramsgate service. Apparently 'there may be Italians or Greeks interested'. Yep, I'll believe that one when I see it!

Click here to read the notice of the Gardenia auction in Ostend.
Click here to read the TransEuropa article in Krant Van West-Vlaanderen

Any Portland In A Storm?

Word on the nautical grapevine (or scuttlebutt as it's known in maritime circles) is that a well known fast ferry company that can't be named for legal reasons (and can't provide a service from Ramsgate either, despite many promises), is sniffing around Portland Harbour near Weymouth.

Portland describes itself as 'the UK's newest commercial port', boasting the second largest man made harbour in the world, and a quick whizz around its website shows that a huge amount of investment has been made recently. Certainly there don't appear to be any holes that a boat hoist could fall down!

My guess is that it would be in the right place for services to the Channel Islands and St Malo. If they can find a boat this time, that is!

Quay Hole Surgery

Holy harbours! The salty seamen down in our lovely naval basin tell me that this hole, which has hastily been covered up with a metal Band-Aid, was caused by the boat hoist going through the tarmac! Here's the boat hoist:

The idea is it picks your floating gin palace up out of the water, and then drives it to the quay on the right where you can scrub the barnacles off your poop deck at your leisure.

Apparently it went in right up to its, er, ankles. But fortunately it wasn't carrying my £250K Sunseeker, or anybody else's, at the time.

It just goes to show what a parlous state the Cecil Square Duffers have allowed Ramsgate's Royal Harbour to get into. No wonder the marina lost one of its coveted Golden Anchors earlier this year.

Our beloved council have now fessed up, and the island's hacks were apparently invited down there to gawp today. According to my matelot mates, as part of the council's proposed groovy new staff structure at Maritime Services, there won't even be a full time engineer down there in future. I presume that's something the local scribblers weren't told!

All At Sea

Following my recent item about the RNLI, reader Michael writes:

Interesting bit of film you posted about the rough seas and the old cruise ship. Seeing as you are in nautical frame of mind here is a still photo from January 26th this year of Fred Olsen's Balmoral (ex Norwegian Crown) which sails from Dover and Southampton pitching alarmingly in the Bay of Biscay rather perilously close to land. This was just one incident out of many in a few hours of rough weather and possibly poor seamanship.

Yes it did come up again but cut short the cruise and returned to Dover with a few injured passengers and some damage.

I don't know if I am your furthest away regular reader but it's great to be able to keep in touch with all the wonderful things happening on the Plannit Fannit while I suffer here in Florida in sunny 75 degree temperatures and limited to two pina coladas per hour by a cruel mistress.

Hmm. I wonder if Michael is indeed my furthest flung follower? No, probably not. Stephen Broadhurst, the Blue Rinse councillor for Dane Valley, lives in Panama and phones his votes in, I seem to recall. He's bound to be an avid reader!

Click here to read about 'nightmare' cruise on BBC News website

Ferry Sad News

I'm not normally one to plaster death notices all over my blog willy-nilly, but now that it's been officially confirmed you might care to know that Mr Denzil Dias, the founder and owner of TransEuropa Ferries, has, er, rolled on to meet his maker, having rolled off this mortal coil earlier in the month.

Ownership of the line has passed to his two sons, who were thought not to have any interest in things nautical, although I see they're now saying it will be 'business as usual'. Let's hope they don't change their minds again, and that Port Ramsgate's only customer stays afloat!

Click here to read TransEuropa story in Ferry News

Spammer In The Works

One of the drawbacks of being a well known celebrity with a widely publicised email address is the amount of junk that finds its way into my inbox. I mean, I've lost count of the number of times I've been invited to increase my girth. My policy with those is to reply politely in the negative to the effect that, at 36 inches, I'm already stretching it in my opinion.

Recently I've been bombarded with messages from a 'Mark Sure'. Mr 'Sure' has apparently collared the market in 'Silica Oil Regen Lubricant' and rather charitably wants to cut me in on the deal. He helpfully explains that his product is 'an industrial lubricant used for lubrication purposes in the brain box of a ship'. A quick straw poll among the matelots down at our Royal Harbour elicited not much more than a few strange looks!

Only One Port In A Storm

According to our port's latest publicity bumf, Oostende is apparently the only continental destination available from Ramsgate. Well, call me old-fashioned, but I thought if you were in a boat you could pretty much go wherever you like, so it seems rather limiting to advertise the port's services in favour of its one and only customer - TransEuropa Ferries. And if we're only going to advertise their route, why aren't they paying for this sort of marketing mullarkey rather than the beleaguered council taxpayers?

Anyhoo, I thought I'd bone up on Oostende (Ostend in old money) and managed to get hold of their impressive tourist magazine, which is described in the intro as 'bursting with sensuousness'. 50 glossy pages chock full of photos, maps and places to see and stay, it does indeed make the place look like a veritable tourism paradise. And most of their marvellous monuments appear to have been restored or kept in spic and span nick! Oh to be Belgian!

Click here to visit Oostende tourism website
Click here to visit Thanet tourism website

More Muck Dredged Up On TDC's Watch

My fiancée, the lovely Mrs Ceaucescu (no relation), and her husband, Mr Ceaucescu (no relation (other than to the lovely Mrs Ceaucescu (no relation))), seem to think it would be a good idea for me to invest in one of those floating gin palaces you see down at the marina here in the Cannes of Kent. Something about it being handy for regular trips to the in-laws in Belgium.

So this morning I pottered down the street and picked up the latest edition of Motor Boats Monthly. Imagine my surprise when, riffling through the ads for Sunseekers and Fairlines, I came across a prominent news story featuring our Royal Harbour! Headlined 'Ramsgate Boaters In Row Over Dredging', it outlines the sorry saga of the new blue flag beach bang in the harbour entrance, and the highly expensive grounding of one of those swanky cruisers back in January. MBM says:

Boaters in Ramsgate are growing increasingly despondent over the local council's inability to deal with a sandbank at the harbour entrance... Relations between local boaters and the council have deteriorated over the last few months, not helped by the council's decision in late 2007 to sell its one and only dredger, which had earned the nickname HMS Teaspoon due to its failure to resolve the sandbank problem.

The mag quotes TDC's Harbour Master, oops, sorry, 'Head of Maritime Services' Dominic Evans as saying there are no plans to buy a new dredger and that the work will be contracted out in future, although one unnamed boater comments this would be like 'cutting Wembley's grass with a pair of scissors'.

Well, the council can't be pleased about that sort of publicity, can they? Only the other week they were described as 'supine' in Private Eye, now this! Still, we have seen something nibbling at the Harbour Beach recently, and I gather from Salty Dave down at the docks that a new hooverdredgeriser is expected to visit shortly. And I for one am certainly putting absolutely no store in the vicious rumour that they've applied for an €84,000 EU grant for, er, improvements to dredging last year!

Click on picture to read

Davy Jones' Locker

In Memoriam
Captain Birdseye
Popular Nautical Character

So, Farewell
Then Captain Birdseye.

'Only the best
For the Captain's table',
That was
Your catchphrase.
You seemed
To know lots
Of kids who liked
Fishfingers.

I once ate
27 fishfingers
In a single
Sitting.

After the 19th they all tasted like cardboard.

E.C. Richard (29)

Rock Bottom

As you can probably tell from my previous post, this stock market palaver is giving me a right kick in my rather over exposed assets. So much so that, faced with the prospect of being reduced to buying Shampagne, Boxo Cubes and Ranston Pickle from our local Aldi, I came to the conclusion earlier today that I really ought to close this blog to save money on electricity.

But they say one man's misfortune is another man's gain, and as I was meandering along the cliff top this morning, half contemplating a swan dive onto the Pleasurama eyesore as a final gesture, something caught my eye that cheered me up no end. One of those swanky yachts from the marina appeared to be stuck in our silted up Royal Harbour, and was being dragged off by the Ramsgate Lifeboat!

Of course, the council will blame poor seamanship, the tide, the wrong colour socks, anything in fact other than admitting the fact that they have allowed our harbour to become little more than a sand pit through lack of dredging. But hey-ho, I've suddenly regained the will to live! Pass the Don Perrynon!

Ramsgate In Shock Move To Essex

The old cellar's running a bit dry here at the cliff top mansion, so I thought I'd pop over to Belgium and pick up some bargain booze. Looking at the latest guide from ferrysavers.com, however, it seems I would face quite a drive to get the ferry from Ramsgate to Ostend, as our port now appears to have been relocated to somewhere between Southend and Harwich:

On the other hand, the good news is that the brand new, super-duper Eurostar station at Ebbsfleet has now opened in Ramsgate, so maybe I'll go shopping in France instead:

Port Whine

Ramsgate's Royal Harbour and Port are, of course, the jewel in the Ile de Thanet's, if not the entire country's, crown. So naturally I ramped my Oticon Delta up to 11 when I overheard a couple of matelots discussing the future of these fine facilities on my morning saunter along the harbour wall, dressed inconspicuously in my customary attire of captain's cap and brass-buttoned navy blue blazer. Here's how it went:

Matelot A: So the council want to hive off the port eh?
Matelot B: Yeah, they need to raise £10m for this new quay the wind farm people want.
Matelot A: But wouldn't that mean there'd be no room for another ro-ro operator?
Matelot B: Yeah but the rumour is TransEuropa are up for sale anyway, so who knows how much longer they'll be here? And Sheerness have made a play for the wind farm people, who are pissed off about the state of the dredging, so what would that leave us with?
Matelot A: Fancy nipping into the pub for a drink?
Matelot B: No thanks, I'm driving.

Crikey! Now of course this may have all been briny tittle-tattle, but you have to admit that our beloved council's track record of running its assets into the ground speaks for itself. So borrowing ten million sovs to build an asset that might never be used in the first place seems to be bordering on the reckless.

Still, if the silt isn't dredged out of the harbour soon, the last thing they'll be accused of is being wreckless!

Ramsgate For Sale, One Careful Owner

Chatting to some of the local millionaires over a glass of bubbly down on the Croisette last night, I learnt that the Royal Harbour's ancient dredger, Ramsgate, is up for sale. Apparently it's all part of Councillor Latchford's plan to bring in new, super-duper dredging arrangements and get rid of the sandy beach that appears in our harbour entrance every low tide.

I've dredged up this photo (geddit??!!!) of the old tub in happier times. So, now you can buy the whole of Ramsgate for £65,000! A snip, I'd say!

Ferry-Go-Round

I spotted one of our luxury Transeuropa ferries languishing out at sea yesterday afternoon. Normally the sharp bit at the front of this vessel would be pointing either 90 degrees to starboard (that's right to us landlubbers) from its current position, if it was heading for Belgium, or 90 degrees to port if it was heading into Port Ramsgate.

It seemed as if the captain had decided to take his passengers on a diversionary cruise to Boredstares. Why? Only he can answer that question. Meanwhile if any of you nautical types out there have an explanation, do leave a comment.

Sandy Beach Sandy Beach Destined For Sandy Beach?

The Sandy Beach sandy beach which currently graces our harbour entrance could be destined to top up our, er, sandy beach. Reader Jane writes:

I've heard that Councillor Latchford and co, who are putting the new dredging contract for the harbour out to tender, are investigating the possibility of using a JCB with an extended arm based on the East Pier itself to dredge the harbour, following the trial of the barge-based JCB recently. The idea would be to hoik the sand over the other side of the harbour arm onto the beach and allow wind and tide to distribute it.

That's not something I've heard myself, Jane, but I suppose it would be a, er, cost effective solution. Although I'm not sure that huge mounds of rotting harbour silt would be my idea of how to regain Blue Flag status for Ramsgate Main Sands!

Dredgeful State

There's a mutiny among our local matelots! According to this week's Gazunder, fisher folk have been holding parties on the new beach that used to be the entrance to our Royal Harbour to protest the fact that, although they're charged for deep water berthing, they're unable to get in and out unless it's virtually a spring tide.

The blue tub in the photo is Ramsgate's The Ramsgate, and it's supposed to dredge the harbour and channels, keeping them free of all that estuary silt that builds up. But the cap's retired, and the boat itself should have been sent to the knacker's yard years ago judging by the state of it.

And who's responsible for this 'sandy' state of affairs, eh? Well the clue's in the question. Yes, you guessed it, none other than our wonderful Thanet District Council (Leader: Sandy Beach), who run the harbour. So what more appropriate epithet for the new facility they've created in the harbour entrance than... [drum roll] The Sandy Beach Sandy Beach!

Pesky Jetski

Staying with matters nautical, relaxing on the verandah of my cliff top mansion sipping the afternoon G&T just now, I heard a series of frantic toots coming from one of those TransEuropa tubs. He really was giving the thing some welly, and on closer inspection with the old 20x100BMs, it appeared that one of those jetski wallahs was impeding his progress into port.

Now I'm not the type to complain about rich-and-famous style activities such as charging around the ocean on your own personal aquabike, but really. If it came to the crunch between a 4000 ton ferry and a waterborne hairdryer, my money's on the ferry!

Local Customs

All the nice girls love a sailor. Or in this case an HM Customs and Revenue officer, but that's a bit prosaic. This is HMCC Valiant, and we'll be getting used to the cut of her jib here in the Millionaires' Playground, as she seems to now have a permanent berth in the Royal Harbour. Here's what they say about her on one of those websites for nautical anoraks:

Special care has been taken to provide a high standard of living accommodation for the crew during operations. Low noise levels and a relaxation area for those off-watch reduces crew fatigue. The large, well-equipped galley is designed to enable the crew to prepare meals and drinks in all sea conditions.

Cruisey! Assuming she can actually get out of the harbour at low tide, that is, seeing as half the entrance now appears to have sprouted a new beach.

As I rather nosily peeked through the windows, I caught one of those bell-bottomed types peering back at me through an enormous pair of binocs. Maybe I should speak to my accountant about getting those tax returns up to date!