Lymington to Plymouth via the Wolf - Mini 650 update

 After all the mini yachts made it safely round the Isle of Wight overnight they headed for Swanage Bay and hugged the shore in the early hours of Monday morning......

 a coupe of hours later and the tightly bunched fleet, apart from Mad Dog who seems to be taking some very creative tacks at times, have left Portland Bill way behind......

by 10pm on Sunday evening the wind, gusting up to 35 knots has spread the fleet, and the unfortunate Mad Dog has been forced in to Plymouth with repairs big enough to put her out of contention - Jake will be gutted as he was up near the front before running into problems.......

coincidentally, a bigger fleet of similar yachts were racing from the French port of La Trnité to Plymouth, chances are that with the visibility being poor none of the boats sighted one another despite their paths crossing!

Dolly update......

The headstone erected to commemorate Dolly Pentreath, last known speaker  of Cornish, lived and died in Mousehole.

This is an extract from my book A History of Cornwall (p. 76)

"The final demise of Cornish in the 18th century was rapid. By 1735 two local scholars, Gwavas and Tonkin, could find only a few speakers in the small fishing villages and coved between Penzance and Land's End, and it was in one of these,Mousehole,lived Dolly Pentreathy.......she died in 177 but nine years before her death she was visited by the antiquary Daines Barrington who noticed that there were still other folk in the village who understood her,but could not speak the language readily. Dolly's place in the history book was confirmed in 1860 when a bilingual tombstone in Paul churchyard was erected to her memory by Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, a descendant of Napoleon and a keen antiquary.

A year before Dolly's death a  sixty'five year old Mousehole fisherman called William Bodener wrote to Daines Barrington saying "there is not more than four or five in our town can talk Cornish now old people four-score years old . Cornish is all forgot with young people".

Information courtesy of Ian Soulsby

Lowena Mor

PZ 47

Classe Mini 6.50 race from Lymington to Plymouth today - Mad Dogs and other Englishmen......

The aerial view of Lymington where competitors for the Lymington to Plymouth via the Wolf Rock Lighthouse race are assembled - courtesy of YellowBrick who have an app for your phone that will provide livetracking of the event!

The boats make their way to the start line at 1512.

Local Sailmaker Andrew Wood (who provides one of the Through the Gaps web cams) - himself also Minitransat competitor - is a co-sponsor of the event with Geoff Duniam carrying a Solo Sail aboard his boat Mad Spaniel - the second of two Mad Dog competitors!


Follow on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23solent650

Check out the Lymington Yacht Club web cam for local weather conditions here:

A pleasant day for a stroll.

 If you've lost a buff........

 blue is the colour......

 one well-worn slip......

 and a great source of nitrates for the garden waiting to be collected.........

though that bank of clouds looks ominous

 but where are we?..........

for a change, the beachgoers are dressed for the occasion..............

 the old ship's daughter passes a famous rock that doesn't.......

 the boulders run way down to the back garden of this house.......

 not partisan then.......

 memorial to the first skateboarder in Cornwall.......

 Cap'n Nudd is on his way in,,,,,,,

 what's in a name.......

just wondering who she used to speak to and why she was pals with little Louis?

S.O.S. - Men from Mousehole man Penlee Lifeboat - a film from the 1930s

Original Description:


The Work of the Lifeboats 'Britain's lifeboatmen must be ready at all times to put to sea to help sailors in distress. At a lifeboat station in Cornwall fishermen are ready to man the lifeboat and go to the aid of any ship in distress however rough the sea. From time to time an inspector from the headquarters of Britain's voluntary lifeboat organization , the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, carries out a rigid inspection and test of the boat. A fault in the propellor is remedied in time for the men to put out to sea in response to an SOS from a ship in difficulties.' (Films of Britain - British Council Film Department Catalogue - 1941) 


Trivia: This film is set in Mousehole in Cornwall. 

View Larger Map
If you intend to visit the old Penlee Lifeboat house it is easy to drive past, as it is set below the road level.

The ships in the harbour at Mousehole all carry the registration mark ‘PZ’, for nearby Penzance. The main character in this film, Bill Blewitt, was a genuine Cornish fisherman and postman. After a chance encounter with director Harry Watt, he starred in GPO documentary The Saving of Bill Blewitt (1937), and would go on to have roles in a handful of feature films such as Nine Men (1943). He also appears in the British Council Film Trinity House.


Fil archive courtesy of the British Council Fil Archive.

New hake recipe from Russell Brown, Dorchester.

With the Ajax and other boats in the Cornish fleet of hake boats having just lkanded their catch, why not visit your local fishmonger, extend your culinary skills and enjoy a few fillets of the finest Cornish hake with this new crab and chilli twist recipe from Russell Brown. Chef Russell Brown runs the Sienna Restaurant in Dorchester, the county's only Michelin starred restaurant. 


If you plan to be in the area you can find out more here www.ChefRussellBrown.co.uk

"Discarding unwanted fish is widely acknowledged as an issue affecting almost all fisheries"

A new video released by Seafish, the authority on seafood, has revealed that the ongoing debate over discards has sparked an increase in take-up of gear technology. For more than 15 years, Seafish has been leading the development of this technology, designed to help reduce discard rates. In the video, filmed at Newhaven harbour in Scotland, Seafish's chief executive, Paul Williams, explains recent industry response to the long-established research programmes which exist to address the issue of discards. The industry authority also runs the Discard Action Group (DAG) - a forum established in 2008 which brings experts together to discuss how the problem can be addressed to reduce discard levels.

 

Watch Paul Williams' discards video

 Paul Williams, chief executive, Seafish, said: "Discarding unwanted fish is widely acknowledged as an issue affecting almost all fisheries and fishing methods and, although significant progress has already been made towards reducing the levels of discards, the rate of change needs to be stepped up. "With the increasing importance of social, economic and political factors in fisheries management, Seafish gear trial work over the last 15 years has helped develop new selective technologies and net-based fishing activities to reduce discards. This technology is now being rolled out in commercial fisheries. "Seafish is managing a new project to trial four different highly selective TR2 gears operating on Irish Sea Nephrops grounds and running flume tank and sea trials on a new grid design aimed at reducing the numbers of discards in the Scottish trawl fishery for Nephrops. "The importance of this gear technology work is evident in the popularity of the courses Seafish runs at the Flume Tank at the North Sea Centre in Hirtshals, Denmark, operated by SINTEF. Seafish has been using the facility since 2007 for practical trawl gear technology training and an essential part of all courses is to familiarise fishermen with a wide range of methods of improving selectivity of their trawls and reducing discards. In the last four years, more than 200 fishermen have benefited from the training courses."