nourishing obscurity

This is a joint Wiggia and James post, with elements of haiku, Chuckles and Rossa thrown in.

Strange how things come together. Wiggia sent a whole lot of photos he took of the tall ships and added:

I know little about tall ships or any other, but here are some of the tall ships leaving the pool of London in 1989.  The weather was really dull and grey and not for good images.  I remember at the time being told this was the last time they would be able to get up to the Pool and I wanted to see a bit of history.

I was glad I went despite the weather they really are a magnificent sight and must be more so under sail, I remember that the Russian ships were going to man the yard arms going down the river but my timing was wrong and we missed that.

What I do remember was the British training ship was the scruffiest with odd and patched sails, not that it mattered, the picture of the ship leaving through the raised dock bridge was a great moment. A huge crowd gathered from nowhere as you could see the huge masts moving from miles away, it was a great day shame about the weather.

One thing’s for sure we won’t see it again , well in London.

Oh, I don’t know, Wiggia, as haiku came up with a nice idea and that was – why they don’t have tall ships at the Olympics? Perhaps we could get up a campaign to promote this. As Wiggia asks:

They have a tall ships race don’t they ?

Well, not many but if we write to the IOC and put the idea, maybe even get a whole lot of signatures going, it might be included – it would certainly be spectacular. Rossa was concerned how the spectators would see it if the boats can’t come in close to the shore.

Well, they’re much bigger and so can afford to be a bit off the shore and still highly visible. So what do you think – get a campaign going?

The reason I think it might have a better chance for the America’s Cup is that the AM was sailed for well over a century in yachts.   It’s only been in recent years that these monster multihulls have been used and though I’m a multihull man – not for the AM thank you very much.

If there was some sort of groundswell movement to get it back to these elegant craft, methinks people would like it that much more.

Haiku rushes another set of criteria to us: “Remember racers are to carry a load of opium … should we make avoiding customs part of the test, sort of like eventing in the equestrian sports ?”

A few more shots:

Very interesting battened mizzen sail on this one:

It says Mir [world or peace], Leningrad in Russian [so pre-1991]:

There were tall ships in there but many were schooners.  Beautiful or what?

Filed under: Chuckles, haiku, Leisure, travel & sport, Rossa, Wiggia