Bream.org has existed in various incarnations, with different software, for around 20 years. Before the domain name existed, the very first site was hosted by Pipex on my member account. Inevitably, the ubiquitous Wayback Machine has a copy from mid-2001.
The domain name was registered in November 2002 and the first version was published on 9th December. This can also be found in the archive. The image seen above was the homepage of this first “proper” site.
From the earliest versions I’ve tried to tell the story of Bream, and of the other Fish Class boats, as well as some of my own interests.
I’ve been asked many times whether I have a blog or vlog and other than this site the answer has always been no. However this month (December 2022) the old girl turns 90 and it feels like it might be a good time to say a bit more about the boat, about my life afloat over the past 23 years, and assorted other related issues.
It’s also my first time using WordPress on a site of my own, which may or may not be a good thing, only time will tell. I’m a big fan of Drupal, but it really is not in the same league as a blogging tool, and for once this site is about the content not the process of building it. Expect off-the-shelf visuals and no fancy plugins!
That said, I do hope you enjoy it. I’m going to see how long I can leave comments active for, without the site being spammed to oblivion…
Postscript...
October 2025, Wordpress is very convenient but it is terribly inefficient in the way it stores and uses images and this site along with my Travels pages had grown to a ridiculous size. Eventually I decided to migrate all the content again, this time to Backdrop CMS, which I've used successfully on a number of other projects in the past couple of years. I've kept all posts as close to the original versions as I can. Some comments on the old site may be lost, so apologies for that but thanks for your feedback if you did leave one. I read them all!
I've also merged the Bream and Iris sites into one. It hasn't really worked for me having multiple sites and I didn't post enough to justify keeping them apart, so bringing it all back into an environment I'm happier with might make me a bit more active!
Thanks to everyone who has shared photos and information with me, particularly of Iris, who was a much more photographed boat than Bream.
If any copyrighted images need to be credited or removed, please do let me know. Inevitably a lot of images make their ways through several hands these days and it is difficult to know exactly where they came from.
My particular thanks to Rebekah and Matt, who have shared lots of information acquired during their time on the boat, which will eventually end up on these pages. Here is one of Rebekah's many fabulous aerial shots.
