The background:   (From the Telegraph..)

LIFEBOAT crews fear being scuppered by crippling new charges for using their radios from Ofcom, the communications regulator. The RNLI could see the price of using its VHF emergency frequencies rise to £250,000 under plans to charge the full commercial rate.

The charity, which saves hundreds of lives every year currently pays an annual £48,000 at a discounted rate of 50 per cent. It relies on donations and fears the move will have a disastrous impact on fundraising. Peter Bradley, RNLI operations staff officer, said: ‘It’s a lot of money when you think in terms of lifeboat days and little old ladies collecting pound coins.’

‘We could buy several inshore lifeboats for the same amount.’

‘The Government rely on us to provide this search-and-rescue service, at a cost of £124 million a year, but they want to charge us for doing it!’
Read the rest…

In summary, a great cruise of about 100 miles total starting in Falmouth in Cornwall, stopping off at Helford River, Fowey, and Mevagissey, in glorious suntan lotion weather throughout – we did not hit anything, nothing hit us, we did not murder each other on the boat, and many thanks to Victor for organising and skippering.

This was the delayed departure of the Easter cruise, the sort of thing you read about on the train destination boards when the time now is quite clearly different from what the destination board shows.  At least we had an explanation – Force 8 at Easter is not conducive to good sailing, manic yes, good no.  So this was the Easter cruise.  What sort of sailing did we have?  Manic at times, and that was just the crew!

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Don’t miss the HSSC 2008 AGM and Laying Up Dinner to take place 16th November 2008. Click here for more details or contact the Commodore now!!

Click here to view the AGM papers

Don’t delay… reply today!

Sandy

Fishy Business!
From a very early age my dad quite regularly used to take me out on fishing trips off the South Coast.  I can vividly remember my excitement heightened by the earthy pungent aroma of the clinker built fishing boats; they smelt like a sort of farmyard of the sea, a heady odour from decades of catches in contact with the tar and linseed oil ingrained timbers of the old boats with a background tang of rusty corroded diesels and bilges awash with old black engine oil and sea water.  I never remember coming back from one of those trips without a sack full of fish and a beaming face.  It’s probably those fond memories of times with my Dad that sometimes encourages me to pull out a line when I am sailing.  So, having heard of a few disparaging rumours going around the club about my purported lack of success in fishing attempts, I wanted to set the record straight.  Here, therefore, are three accounts of fishing ‘successes’ while sailing with HSSC friends. Read the rest…

It looked as if the July 2008 event would be no less damp and slightly inclement than the 2007 version of the same name, however, surprisingly to some, if not to the forecasters, the afternoon turned bright and intermittently sunny.

  Read the rest…

Log Cabin,
Trencrom,
Hayle,
Cornwall,
TR27 6NP
19th August 2008
Rosail41@msn.com

Dear All,

Determination comes in a lot of different forms, every individual reacts to both strain and pressure in different ways. Going into Europe this year I knew that I had not qualified for the 2008 Olympic Games, also knowing that I was far from my physical peak. These were things I could not change, I had to accept my disadvantage against my team mates and competitors who had been training for years without setbacks. My goal was to work on my mental game and accept my physical disadvantage. Read the rest…

It has to be said, that the HSSC has had little recent luck in matching clement beautiful and sunny sailing weather with the dates of our proposed club sails. Moreover we have had to cancel, curtail, or severely alter passage plans of every event from last December onwards. Finally however, despite desperate attempts by the weather-men, frontal systems and tidal windows to foil our maritime endeavors, we finally made it! Read the rest…

The Canal du Midi runs for 240km from the River Garonne at Toulouse via Carcassonne to the Mediterranean at Agde. It was the brainchild of Pierre-Paul Riquet, a minor noble and tax collector, who succeeded in convincing Louis XIV (and more importantly, his first minister, Colbert) of the merits of linking the Atlantic and the Mediterranean via the Garonne.

The work, begun in 1667, took fourteen years to complete, using tens of thousands of workers. The crux of the problem from the engineering point of view was how to feed the canal with water, when its high point at Naurouze, west of Carcassonne, was 190m above sea level and 58m above the Garonne at Toulouse. Riquet responded by building a system of reservoirs in the Montage Noire, channelling run-off from the heights down to Naurouze. He spent the whole of his fortune on the canal and, sadly, died just six months before its inauguration in 1681. Read the rest…

Following a conversation in the Hendon Hall Hotel one evening, Graham Colover offered his boat, a 34 ft Jeanneau named Chai of Burnham, for a sailing trip over the second bank holiday in May.

Graham lent Robert full size charts to plan the route for this intended trip which was to Oostende.

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Greetings from Victoria, Vancouver Island.

I’ve been asked to explain what sailing I’ve been doing since moving to this Canadian Pacific Island. Well, I’m the in the ideal location. I have a Waterfront apartment so I can see the weather when I wake up. I’m near two marinas so I can be on a boat in10 minutes as opposed to the 2 to 3 hours drive from London to the South Coast.

Read the rest…