Tuesday, January 07, 2014

London Boat Show 2014: the people

The London Boat Show continues to shrink, with ever fewer stands. But still I go as I keep finding reasons to be there.

First up there were the people met, such as Tom Cunliffe (above) giving a talk at the World Cruising Club stand on how you can sail away for less than you might think. We had a very brief chat about Greenland which we both had recently sailed to.

Immediately after him was Will Stirling (below) talking about the expedition to row to the magnetic north pole (among other things). At a previous boat show I met the expedition leader Jock Wishart. Will is currently aiming to sail around the offshore lighthouses of Britain in a dinghy.
Then there was Sam Llewellyn, writer of many a good sailing novel and editor of the Marine Quarterly, a subscription to which I received at Christmas.

And finally there was the chance to catch up with Stokey Woodall who I met last year and who gave a talk on celestial navigation including the star clock. I told him I'd worked out why the answer was 41.5 and promised to email him its derivation (which I did).

Those four chats were an excellent start - but what about the boats....?

6 comments:

Tillerman said...

And why is it 41.5? We discussed this question on your original star clock post but I don't think we got any sensible answers then. Some of my readers seemed to be obsessed with the number 43 for some reason.

Tillerman said...

Oh sorry. I see you did write a post about it. I missed that.

Tillerman said...

And now I see that I even commented on your derivation post. I must be losing my memory.

Brilliant piece of work. Would make a good Cambridge Scholarship Exam question! If there still is such a thing.

JP said...

You must have been hit on the head by a .... what's the thing called?.... begins with a "B", swings across, hard, you know.

Happens to all of us.

Chris Partridge said...

Not to rowers it doesn't. One of the big pluses of oar power.

JP said...

But, Chris, there must be the equivalent downside to rowing? Subject for a blog post?