The highest Spring tide for 4 months made the timing a little tricky and it wasn’t helped by early morning fog that barely revealed the Isle of Wight from Calshot.

But the Skipper and crew of Camena had been up before the chilly dawn to travel down, some on motorbike, from London. Nothing would stand between them and their goal.

On arrival at Cowes Camena joined Wild Spirit that had sailed up from Lymington the day before. After the traditional mulled wine and mince pies it was already time to go to beat the tide.

Both boats headed off to their own berths. Channukah Sail 2008 – Mission accomplished!

(Thanks to Stephen Stern for the photos)

The AGM and Laying Up dinner this year crept up on us silently and suddenly I realised that it has been two years since my appointment as your commodore. I also reflected that much has changed since I joined the club, not only in my life but also for many members and for many reasons.

During the AGM that always precedes the Laying Up diner, tribute was paid to Michael Doctors, founder member and former commodore who passed away at the beginning of the year. Read the rest…

Crewman Of The Year
Nigel Reese

Crewwoman Of The Year
Diana Abramova

Yachtsperson Of The Year
Gill Woodbridge

Round The Island Cup
Philip Sugarmanand Nanae Gendre

Skipper Of The Year
Adair Butchins

Cruising Cup
Bryan Sheinman

Commodore’s Trophy
Maureen Gorb

Most Promising Newcomer
Martin Sargeant

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. 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!

Read the rest…

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…

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.

Read the rest…