Welcome to the Batchelor family website

This is the online home of Kirsty, Amelia, William, and Peter Batchelor!

Here you will find out about some of our interests and hobbies. If you have been given a login you will be able to access our collections of photos and other material as well.

 


William, Kirsty, Peter, and Amelia Batchelor

 

Something missing? We've moved the information about web hosting and our old technical articles to www.i-t-services.net.



Alan Chinn Award 2023

The Wooden Boat Association confers the Alan Chinn Award every two years, for excellence in boatbuilding. It was established in 2018 in honour of founding member, long term committee member and highly skilled boatbuilder, Alan Chinn. The aim of the award is to promote the skills of boat building and restoration and to recognize the work of WBA members in their boat building activities.  This year, I was nominated for the award, and fortunate enough to win, for the build of Pitthirrit, our Lapwing 16. Having had a long association with Alan, I am honoured to be this year's recipient.

Alan Chinn Award 2023

Wooden Boat Association boats at Werribee South. Sunday 26 March 2023

Not lots of wind, but a good number of WBA boats on the water. Some of us sailed out of the mouth of the river and cruised along the coast, while others headed upriver as far as they could go. It was great to get our boat, Pitthirrit, back on the water!

 

 

Ricketts Point. 22 January 2023

Kirsty and I saw even more Snapper on this dive than when we were here in 14 January! In some places they seemed to be circling around one particular fish that was lying on the sandy bottom. Perhaps this was a female who was getting ready to release eggs?

There were quite a few Moonlighters, Zebrafish, and Yellow-striped Leatherjackets, along with a pair of Yellow-finned Leatherjackets where the male was being particularly protective of the female.

We found one Port Jackson Shark on this dive, under an overhanging gutter, but couldn't find any more. There were a few Stingarees around as well. The beginning and end of this dive saw us swimming through schools of Garfish.

 

Ricketts Point. 14 January 2023

Our first dive at Ricketts for the year certainly did not disappoint! There were lots of Snapper and Zebrafish, Scalyfins and Sweep, along with some Old Wives, Fiddler Rays, Spotted Stingarees, and an enormous school of East Australian Salmon that circled us for at least five minutes. They seemed quite interested in checking us out, as long as we didn't get too close! Visibility varied from reasonable to excellent on this dive. Every time we come here we have a great time, and wonder why we bother diving anywhere else. If we had brought more tanks with us we would have been straight back in...

 

Rye Pier. 12 January 2023

I spotted a small nudibranch on this dive, possibly one of the Tambja species, but I didn't get a good photo of it. Perhaps I rushed it, but the camera just didn't focus on it. I saw what I think was a colony of Grape Ascidian in the weed near Eivion. The highlight of the dive would have to have been the time we spent watching a Blue-Ringed Octopus moving between pylons under the pier. There were lots of juvenile Leatherjackets around, and a school of Herring was also found, out towards the end of the pier.