A Room With A View.

Saturday, 20th April 2013.
Holiday Inn, Southampton.

We're in Southampton this weekend as I'm attending two training courses at Stormforce Coaching for the sailing trips which I will be on this summer.

 

We were shown how to use different distress flares without setting fire to each other or singeing our eyebrows.

Early this morning whilst it was still very dark I heard a tannoy system outside the hotel but didn't bother looking what it was, when we got up and drew the curtains back we were confronted with a huge floating hotel in the form of "Independence of the Seas".

I wish I'd took the trouble to see what the noise was as the outside wall of our room is all glass and we would have had an excellent view of it coming in.

Amazing to think this huge ship came into the dock and tied up with virtually no noise (apart from the loud speakers), we've had more disturbance from people mooring a narrow boat close to us when were out on the cut.

While I've been in the classroom Jayne's been doing the rounds in the West Quay shopping centre and will probably be back there tomorrow.

It's Now or Never !

Wednesday, 17th  April  2013
Kings Bromley Marina.

I've always fancied being on a large powerful sailing yacht in a good blow, well heeled over with plenty of spray.

I sailed Boards for eight years both long and short, I've been out in a friends dinghy a couple of times and had been contemplating booking a round the island day (Isle of Wight) on an Open 60 racing yacht until my dinghy friend gave me his Royal Yachting Association (RYA) magazine to read, amongst the ads in the back was the answer, crewing on the Fastnet Race aboard a 72 foot ocean going yacht run by the Tall Ships Charity, so after a phone call to Richard at Tall Ships to check if I was eligible I signed up and paid up.
 

The Fastnet Race is a serious business and the organisers have rules to ensure the safety of crews, so later this month I'm off down to Southampton for RYA Sea Survival training and an International Sailing Federation (ISFA) safety course.

The following weekend its Portsmouth for 3 days training on the boat out in the channel.

During the following three months the yacht, skipper and crew have to compete in three qualifying races covering a minimum of 300 nautical miles (nm) before being allowed to start the Fastnet on August 11th.

Jayne takes the opposite view about sailing and certainly won't be joining me, preferring to catch up on visiting relatives instead.

Fortunately these events won't interfere to much with the cruising we had planned for this summer, apart from an trip along the Macclesfield and Peak Forest Canals in April/May which will have to wait. 

Today our Page Views Trebled !!

Wednesday, 10th April 2013.
Kings Bromley Marina.

As we haven't blogged for ten days our page view graph was fairly flat but tonight the hits have trebled and its still going up, why today, why have people been clicking on today, or is it another strange glitch, it's happened before about three months ago, weird.

Anyway back to the real world and tomorrow I am going to use my bus pass for the first time, but not on a bus, as I'm registered in the West Midlands I get free train travel in the Centro area so I'm off into Birmingham on the train, the service is run by London Midland who have been criticised for the poor service they've been providing, hope it,s ok tomorrow.

Cotswold Outdoor and Evans Cycles are on my list, I tell you what goodies I buy next blog.

No pictures this time, I did take a couple of a lorry fire which closed one carriageway of the A5 at Shrewsbury yesterday as we travelled back from visiting my Mother but as I took them on my phone in a hurry they didn't come out to well.