Sailing, I am Sailing

At the DCA/HBBR Cobnor week recently, I sailed Wayne Oliver's schooner Ever Hopeful. Liz Baker, organiser of the week, got this picture from her boat as she passed just off Pilsea Island. It came out very well considering she gybed three times while taking it.
Poor old Wayne is hidden behind the foremast, however.
You can see why Ever Hopeful gets compliments wherever she goes, with the varnish, the traditional rope rigging including wooden deadeyes, that spread of sail and flags everywhere.

PS Last night BBC4 showed a selection of clips from a series called Look at Life, shot in the 1960s by the Rank Organisation but never broadcast. The first episode is called Messing about in Boats. It is a lost world, with London dockers unloading sacks and boxes of stuff by hand, fishermen casting their nets off Iceland in the cod wars, the rise of leisure sailing, the first solo circumnavigations and rowing regattas where the commentator thought it necessary to explain that the rules on amateur status had been relaxed so 'artisans and workmen' really could compete against their social superiors. Well worth catching on iPlayer if you can.