HPO NEWS - UPDATE

I have arrived back home after 5 weeks sailing up the East Coast of the UK and have met up with three HPOs and on returning to Scotland I shall try to meet two more on the West Coast towards August before laying the boat up for the winter in Kip Marina.

CHANGES TO HPOs:

Yvonne Phillips,           HPO Mallorca (South) has returned to the UK and has resigned as HPO.

Dr Meinhard Kohfahl, HPO Cuxhaven, having reached the age of 85 and 17 years as HPO, has stepped down but his son Dr Jens Kohfahf has agreed to continue as our HPO for Cuxhaven.

NEWS UPDATE:

The Storm Petrel Circumnavigation Leg 6

Rattray Head as you will rarely see it

Peterhead is a welcome shelter on the exposed coast of north east Scotland and lurking around the corner is a legendry danger spot – Rattray Head. It can be a devil with strong wind against tide, or even just with the tide we are told. So having settled nicely in to a very quiet Peterhead Marina with its modern facilities and helpful staff we wondered if we might spend some time there soaking up the local ambience.

At the back of the marina is a rather large and imposing building which one ventured to think might be a museum or some such place of interest but upon enquiry it transpired that this is no place for holiday visitors, rather more for prison visitors. ‘I wouldn’t go too near there, confided our friend in the marina, some pretty hard cases up there’.

The Storm Petrel Circumnavigation Leg 5

A formal lunch on passage to Peterhead

Chris Nicholson is known to his friends as a man with an excellent eye for detail and planning. True to that reputation the phone rang whilst we were at tea at a Berwick hostelry, it was Chris with the offer of a lift back to the boat with yet another harvest of shopping (this time at the Coop – that is just for the record). Our crew have been such a pleasure along the way and so far the planning has been impeccably realised. Now its time for the next leg of our adventure having shown Chris the nightlife of Eyemouth. That took about ten minutes but we did enjoy an excellent seafood supper.

The weather forecast is showing signs of a real improvement with XC Weather, Windguru and even the Met Office showing predictions of some warmth and light winds. Still the winds will be from the north of course but now bearable, one hopes.

Meeting another HPO in Scotland

With Cairns in Arbroath

Sailing up the east coast of the UK seems to be bleak involving long journeys before finding a marina to break the journey, but all Tim’s planning has now fallen into place and we have stayed in some fascinating docks, marinas and fishing ports.

Since my last blog we have practically motored right up the east coast and the next HPO was on the east coast of Scotland and we spent 1½ days in Arbroath, a very pretty dock marina surrounded by the typical grey stone houses, fishing sheds and being a Sunday, people strolling around, some sitting down eating huge ice creams and others attempting to eat fish and chips with flocks of seagulls waiting expectantly for the chance to grab a chip and the pungent smoke from the Arbroath Smokies drifting across the marina all day.

The Storm Petrel Circumnavigation Leg 4

Approaching Lindisfarne

With Geoff Quentin still on board we had to cover quite a few miles before he would be dropped off to continue his lawn mowing, garden digging and preparations for the Lot Cruise. It was disappointing to be missing a motor up the Tyne to see the city and its famous bridges but good sense dictated that we should turn left out of Royal Quays Marina and make for the river entrance and farewell to the Tyne.

We have so enjoyed the changes in local accents as we have headed north. First the Essex, then the Norfolk and Suffolk, on to Humberside with a hint of Midlands, then Yorkshire, then Geordie and Northumberland. My family have always enjoyed speaking in local tongues (quite badly) and we have had lots of fun confusing ourselves and forgetting where we are. Wait till we get to Scotland!

The 86th Calais Rally

The 86th Calais Rally pontoon party

When I heard that the Little Ship Club Temperance League, of which I am a committed member, was going to foreign parts to engage in missionary work I, of course, jumped at the chance to lend a hand.

So it was that I motored away from Burnham on Crouch in Silver Pearl on a clear Thursday evening together with crew Mark “H2O” Hynds and Hugh “more water” Daley in calm, windless conditions despite the forecast of gales that was given 48 hours previously. Calais was the destination (this being the 86th Calais rally) where our teetotal ministrations were so sorely needed and as we crossed the Thames estuary with nary a problem, my reflections on the good work that we were going to perform kept me warm long into the cold night.

Higley Halliday R.N.V.R.

Club members may be interested in the short biography of Higley Halliday and his involvement with the Little Ship Club on Seran’s website: http://www.seran1926.com/higley-halliday-mina.html

Halliday was one of the founder members of the L.S.C. and was actively involved in providing shore based training in the late 1920’s and 1930’s and to members of the Royal Naval Volunteer Supplementary Reserve during The Second World War. In 1950 he was appointed Honorary Life Vice President of the club, a position created especially for him.

It would be interesting to hear any recollections of him.

 

The Storm Petrel Circumnavigation Leg 3

At the Whitby Yacht Club

Our departure from Grimsby and the River Humber was another with doubt about the weather, this time warm moist air rolling in from the south west which could only mean the threat of fog. The forecast was one of calm winds with the chance of fog patches and a more sinister warning of fog banks. Clearly in addition to the horrors inflicted upon us by our nation’s banks they were now ready to release fog upon us, perhaps with virtual fog bank cash machines lurking out there somewhere. Is your correspondent starting to hallucinate? Yes that was actually a pot buoy over there.

The Storm Petrel Circumnavigation Leg 2

With Ipswich behind us and another stop overnight at Suffolk Yacht Harbour to pick up Mike’s camera left behind in the Lightship, we headed off down the Orwell clad in our best all weather gear to make passage to Lowestoft.

The weather being churlish as it is, and it being the 11th May, we reached the Stour entrance only to hear a gale warning specially prepared for us by the Coastguard. Oh what a good thing we had the radio on, one was tempted to think.

So in to Shotley for the night by which time Mike has had enough of estuary cruising and leaves by train from Harwich (with his camera) to be home in time for his birthday celebrations on the following day.

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