Blog review of 2011

It wasn't an easy year, what with a death in the family and the riots in London. There was also not just one but two periods where work loads were excessive for weeks and weeks in a row.

But there were good moments too. Despite the riots London proved it was great with a wide range of culture from Gauguin to the Book of the Dead to Steve Reich's Drumming to Miro to theremin SF to Iain M. Banks to string quartet plus didgeridoo to Barber's Knoxville to the Proms to John Martin's Apocalypse (and sewage system) to Film to Wild Beasts to Swallows and Amazons.

Just check out what was packed into one day off in London.

There was of course one rather well publicised wedding.

Hmmm...... looks like there was more culture than boating. But I did get paddling on the river, go ice skating and race in the Fowey Classics (allegedly). We were "not bad" three times in a row - yeh!

This year is already promising much, with both the London 2012 Olympics and the Queens Diamond Jubilee, and I've been plotting options for sailing routes and destinations.

Above is the classic yacht Mikado which we beat at the Fowey Classics - one definitely good memory to take from last year.

Of course Buff's year was even better.......

JP slacker shock

G'day all! Buff Staysail here! Buff by name and Buff by nature!

Well I've always said that JP was a bit of slacker and now I've got the evidence to prove it. This photo was found on the interweb thing and it clearly shows Aeolus, the boat that JP claimed to be crewing as foredecker.

But what is this we see? Two boots, clearly raised and at rest, the owner lying back relaxing - in a race!!!

If I'm shaking my head it is more in sorrow than disbelief.

This is Buff Staysail, disappointed but not surprised, signing off.

Picturesque Fowey

Fowey is a lovely place - maybe my favourite place in Cornwall - as can hopefully be seen in these photos.

Night Spirit at Fowey

.... or maybe not. Someone thought this was a Spirit Yacht, but another wasn't sure and I have no idea.

Anyhow its very prettily lit up here - we just had flags etc. Indeed some used words like fancy or flash, but for me it looked fab and was a good subject for a photo.

Fowey Classics 2011: Mikado sailing

Happy thoughts, JP, happy thoughts!!

Bit grim here at the moment, London's burning, London's burning as they say. Its totally crazy - have a listen to this. I want to be back out there sailing rather than watching videos of burning buildings and locked down shopping centres.

Oh well, above's a nice pic of Mikado sailing. Did I mention that we on Aeolus beat her?


Updated: Have removed the other photo and text as might have been taken in by caption on the Panerai Classics web site as don't think that picture was Mikado after all. See for yourself here.

Fowey Classics 2011 - racing towards the mark

"Not bad" sailing at the Fowey Regatta

You are a bit constrained in the language you use to describe race positions in an English Classics Regatta.

It's quite all right to say something like "made a total mess of that one" or "had time enough to make and drink a cup of tea". If you come a bit further up the fleet then phrases like "could have done that a bit better" come in handy. Bragging is an absolute no-no: none of that American talk of ass-kicking here if you don't mind.

So I'm a bit stuck, and will simply say we were not bad three times in a row and go make myself a nice cuppa and possibly down on a Pimms or two later on.

Fowey classics pics day 3

Bit of swell from SW made life up front a bit damper but don't mind that. Overall didn't feel it was our best effort, but will have to see what corrected times are. Our rivals on Mikado, a lovely Clyde Linear 30 from 1904, sailed a little ahead of us all the way round which was a bit annoying but then again we were faster on Tuesday. Another lap and we'd have got them, honest!

Updated: Well that was a bit of a result. On corrected time we were 30 seconds ahead of Mikado, and they're quite good as can be seen by their results in the recent Classics Week in Cowes here.

Managed to get a few shots of the gaff riggers start before camera was stowed below as we were in our 5 minutes.

Tall ships in Charlestown

Today there was no racing in the Fowey Classics Regatta 2011 - well of yachts that is. There was apparently plastic duck races and I had only the slightest curiosity as to what that might be.

Instead I headed over to nearby Charlestown to see the three tall ships and unspoilt village, much used in historic movies. Btw unlike colonial namesakes there is no royal connection, as it was local businessman Charles Rashleigh who built the port to support the clay mining industry.

Very pretty it was too, and had an excellent crab sandwich and visit to the shipwreck museum before heading back to Fowey.

I'm still not that happy with the photo import and blogger interface on the iPad so might have to tweak these when back with laptop.



Ok, this isn't a tall ship. I think it was the Argo in recent film of Jason and the Argonauts.

The main ship, the SV Kaskelot, has starred in a long list of tv and film productions from Hornblower to Dr Who.

Fowey classics pics day 1

These are a selection from some pics pre the start as took no pics after 10 minute gun.

Not a bad race though not really enough wind for us

Return to Fowey Classics

So again I'm enjoying sailing as part of the Fowey Classics, and we've rafted up amongst a mini flotilla of wooden boats. Yup, no plastic here thank you very much (note this pic is from last year but not much has changed).

I'm yet again in what feels like the rather implausible position of foredecker on this sleek beauty. And no, we don't have anything as modern as wire safety lines.

I say implausible as it's not a place I'd previously spent much time and there is a certain expectation of performance after last years good result - but as we all know that means nothing. So I better not let that spinnaker wrap, twist, tear, go fishing or any of the many other things that can go wrong.

And alas a whole year has passed since was afloat so more than a little rusty. Fingers etc crossed and will be muttering the sailors prayer. What's more the forecast is for light winds and we want a bit of a blow - gloom :(

Now must head out to Fowey for drinks and dinner, but more later.

Cornish Flag

Massively busy at the moment so just a quick post to fly the flag for the Cornish, as can be seen from this pic from last month's Fowey Classics.

The Rope Coil Aesthetic

Inspired by some other's rope coiling I turned my hand to it at Fowey..... and it did indeed look rather nice against the wood deck.

Updated: thanks to a bit of O' Docker magic the shadow line has vanished!

Photographing the Sailing Experience

Once when sailing someone mentioned how most photos are taken under circumstances that don't reflect the true nature of life out at sea. All too often they are in sunny weather with light winds, when hands search for something to do. There are, we agreed, not enough pictures of the many times when the winds blow and seas and skies are grey

So we snapped some pictures of each other as we raced for home in rather rough weather, all enclosed in full wet weather gear complete with safety harness.

But since then I've looked for pics to take that bring back memories of life on-board, such as the one above. It's the bowman's workplace on Aeolus, little spinnaker packed (rather roughly) and wired up ready for the hoist, with the larger one in the background, ready to be swapped in if called for. There is not much room, just crawling space, and packing during tacks is an interesting exercise.

Another key pic for memories is of the sails themselves. Think of all the time you spend staring upwards, looking at its shape and the tell-tales, eyes continuing up to check the windex at the top

And if you're lucky you'll have a memory a bit like this, looking back at the fleet....

Foggy Friday in Fowey

That's not this Friday, rather the one 2 weeks ago, on the last day of the Fowey Classics when the rain set in for the day and the committee scheduled a picnic ashore. It was a good decision.

In the afternoon there was a break in the weather so we went for a walk around the harbour, and very picturesque it was too:

Fowey's Troy Class

I had already been alerted by a post over at the Bursledon Blog to look out for the Troy class, and was pleased to see a whole shoal of them out racing.

I'm told there were a couple in the Fowey Classics but they found the weather on the first race day a bit bracing and were seen being towed back in to calmer waters.

Anyhow, jolly nice, so here are some more pics:

Fowey

I was very impressed with Fowey as a place to visit. A lovely little town of stone houses painted white beside a perfect natural harbour. The narrow streets are almost too narrow for cars which presumably saves it from the worst of the tourists hordes.

The harbour is deep enough for some very large vessels to come up. Mostly these are coming for the fine China clay, but apparently the cruise ship MS The World was able to make it up the windy channel. The local taxi drivers are still talking about the tips they received!

Must admit one of those China clay vessels gave us a bit of a fright as we crossed the harbour at night in our inflatable. I doubt it saw our dim white light, so was rather glad when we made it safely out of the main channel.

It has a long and interesting history, including (allegedly) a visit by the young Jesus, piracy, smuggling, privateering, attacks by the French and Dutch, battles in the civil war and becoming a rotten borough. Famous residents including writers Daphne du Maurier and Kenneth Grahame and a host of day time TV presenters.

A few other pics of Fowey below:

Fowey Classics 2010 Race 2 Photos

It appears that the Fowey Classics web site is back on line, but it hasn't been updated with news from the regatta.

Anyhow, here are some photos from the parade of sail (for which there wasn't much wind so rather a lot of the parading was done under power) and preparation for the second race.

Fowey Classics 2010 Race 1 Results

The official Fowey Classics 2010 web site still seems to be down so there might be some who are interested in the results, starting with the Triangulation Race.

The course, you won't be surprised to learn, was a triangle. What was surprising was that we didn't race in classes but groups, which were basically the list of boats split into four roughly equal sized collections.

So you raced against boats completely different to you. Just to make things more complex the different classes had different courses though all within the same group started at the same time.

I think this was something to do with the "ethos" of the event, though we couldn't understand how sailing Aeolus against dinghies having to go a fraction of the distance plus adjusting the time would give comparable numbers.

Anyhow here are the other scorecards (mostly tweaked iThing pics apart from the last where the output was blurred so used the proper camera which blasted a bit with its flash):

Fowey Classics 2010 Race 1 Photos

During each race there was a short period during the pre-start when could poke my head out of the hatch (keeping it low to avoid the boom of course) and take a few photos of some of the other classic yachts.

As you can see it was a bit of a wet and wild day. We were told F5 gusting F6 but it was more like F6 with the odd lull of F5 - a lot of fun!