Falmouth Oyster Festival gets the Spirit

This year's Falmouth Oyster Festival is well underway with much to see and do - a chance to participate in celebrating traditional values that have stood the test of time - natural food taken by men using natural resources - none of your huge cages of fish being fed tons of anti-biotics or huge suction dredgers hoovering the beds here!
Currently providing much interest at the show is Pete Goss and the boys aboard the Spirit of Mystery who are spending their last few days in contact with people before they head off to Oz. They are due to leave Falmouth on Sunday and slip round the Lizard bound for Newlyn, the start point of their epic adventure. Once in Newlyn, they will head out though the gaps as soon as the wind is in the North and head South for the land down under. Navigating by the sun and stars with charts and a sextant, every effort will be made to emulate the original voyage.

In several continents around the world at the time gold fever had struck and the word spread. On November the 18th 1885, a handful of intrepid Newlyn Buccas talked themselves into seeking their share of the fortune to be had in Australia over a few beers in the Star Inn, in Newlyn - one of the more notable events after such discussions! Once underway, it will be possible to track the progress of the adventurers on their website and, unlike the Pete and his crew, know exactly where the boat is! Around Cornwall, dozens of kids involved in Pete Goss' Playing for Success project will no doubt be watching the progress of the boat as the trip unfolds.

The voyage has received much attention from the press, some of the better stories are from those who have at first hand tasted salt water on their lips in sharing the trying conditions of those that make their living by the sea. As Plato once said, "there are three sorts of men, the living, the dead, and those who go down to the sea".