My favourite Goon Show line is Major Dennis Bloodnok's remark "Curse this wind! No more curried eggs for me!" Well, there was quite a lot of wind over the weekend here on the south coast of England and everyone cursed it thoroughly. I was forced to row up the relatively sheltered channel to Dell Quay instead of heading towards the harbour entrance from Cobnor, where I was boating with the Dinghy Cruising Association and Home Built Boat Rally.
They obviously had a much bigger gale down West. The Eddystone Challenge, a race for pulling boats and sea kayaks from Plymouth to the famous lighthouse and back, had to be diverted up the River Tamar (again).
According to the Plymouth Herald, conditions were atrocious with winds gusting to force 8. Forty boats took part, and six competitors had to be taken off by safety boats. Some great pics on the site of windblown and very wet crews battling through the white horses.
First home was a double gig from Bradford on Avon in 2hr 13min, a tremendous show.
[Two members of] London Whalers were there in Henley Whalers' American whaleboat Molly, winning the whaler trophy. The fact that Molly was the only whaler in the race does not diminish my admiration for their achievement in rowing over twenty miles in punishing conditions. There's a report here.
2 comments:
Chris, thanks for the mention but Molly was there with Henley Whalers, there were just two of us London Whalers along to make up the numbers! - Dick
Sorry about that, Dick. Got confused by the report being on London Whalers site but not on Henley Whalers. But that's the wonder of the web - bloopers can be corrected instantly!
Chris
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