The SPECTRE of a blog anniversary

"Ah" says JP, stroking his white cat, "Jolly bloggers, I've been expecting you".

For another year has flown by and it time for yet another blog anniversary, with a whole decade of posting that have come and gone since the first went live.

But rather than sailing I've been to the movies and you can guess what I saw. Good fun it was too, and I  discovered that a race up the Thames is even better at night than daytime - golly the old smoke was looking good.

And you can get your hands on a bit of genuine Bond sailing legend, as the Spirit 54 Soufrière that stared in Casino Royal (above) is for sale!

Alas with the offers asked to be "excess of £600,000" that's a bit out of my price range.

But who knows? 10 years ago I had no idea one day I'd sail double handed to the Arctic Circle or race in the 100th anniversary of the Square Metre Rule.

So here's hoping to "Sail Another Day"...

Picture Puzzle

How does this photo connect the last two blog posts and in particular what you'd find inside?

Three planets and the Cosmonauts

This morning I got up at 05:30 to do a spot of astronomy. It wasn't as bad as it sounds thanks to the hour change, so in BST it would be the more reasonable 06:30.

The light was rather beautiful and I had just a handful of early rising birds for company.

The reason for heading out into the cold was the conjunction in the morning eastern sky of Venus, Jupiter and Mars, making a clear and bright triangle:

There's a nice little gif identifying each and describing their motion to be found here.

There's more space in London at the moment with a superb exhibition of early Soviet / Russian space technology in "Cosmonauts" at the Science Museum:

It was all rather brilliant, with lots of fantastic real engineering, such as Valentina Tereshkova's Vostok 6 capsule. The only downside was KGB levels of scrutiny to ensure that no photos were taken - apparently there were items on display that had to be specially declassified.

Well worth looking up in the night's sky if you have a cloud-free morning or visiting the Cosmonauts if you're in London.

JP's trip to Greenwich - in video!!

Recently JP returned to Greenwich, taking his camera with him, and you can see (above and below) two of the photos taken.

But what about videos, you might (possibly) be asking? When are we going to see S/V Delos style YouTube clips? And why not start by recording this, the historic maritime heart of London?

Fortunately there is already a video that captures JP's visit if you are prepared to make a few, very minor, mental editorials as you watch it, starting with the gender and age of those involved plus the additional points listed below.



Note that:

• There was no skipping, dancing, prancing, posing, jumping or spinning around
• There was a lot less hair, which was not curly but had the odd touch of grey
• There were no sun glasses or bikes
• There were no ice cream vans
• There were no friends present
• There was definitely no singing
• There was no jewellery, bracelets, crop tops [Ed: is that right???], skirts, floral outfits, painted nails etc. etc.
• There was a lot less leg on display (none actually)
• There was no retro cine camera or hoops
• There was no "alternative" approaches to purchasing flowers
• There were no flowers given away as there were no flowers
• There were no fans, selfies, laughing or waving
• There were no lottery tickets or money taped to parking meters
• There were no records, hats, balloons, rescue shelter visits, kittens or cat food
• There were no dogs 
• There were no piggy-backs what-so-ever
• There were no free high-fives or cute post-it notes
• There was no ice cream
• There was no chocolate sauce or signs
• There was absolutely no hand stands
• There were no cycle rickshaws
• The sun wasn't actually setting

Hmmm.... maybe this approach to videos isn't such a good idea after all.

Keeping plastics out of the Thames

Boo to plastics!! Polluting our rivers and seas!!! Bad plastics!!

But what to do?

The Port of London Authority (PLA) and Thames 21 (as in the Beverley Brook gun incident) have been working together to remove the rubbish from the river for years, but it still keeps on coming.

So they put together this video presented by explorer Paul Rose as part of their "Do the right thing" Cleaner Thames campaign.

Coincidently I was actually in Greenwich while this video was being shot and saw Paul out on the PLA boat. So I kept looking for myself in the background walking along the Thames path, but with no success.

Which Greenwich trip, you might be asking? Was any other video taken?

Good questions....

Gloriana and other classic boats

Yesterday's post of a fancy painted rudder was, as Tillerman correctly identified, that of the royal barge, Gloriana.

There were many other fancy and classic boats on display at St. Katharine Dock back in September as part of Totally Thames.

Tugs, yachts, barges and lots and lots of bunting.

I also had a good catch up with Alasdair of the Sumara of Weymouth blog with a stand for Arthur Beale, central London's specialist ship's chandler.

Rudder Picture Puzzle

This is the rudder of a boat that is often seen on the Thames which frequent readers will know.

Any guesses as to which it is?

Whaler on the Thames

I'm a bit behind in blogging having been off sick for a few weeks. A lot of that time was spent staring out of the window watching the boats go by.

One of the more interesting ones was this whaler - the Henley Whaler's Molly, as can be read about here.

As can be seen, it's double ended and has a small mast, useful to handle the range of conditions that whale hunting would require.

Now of course the Thames is usually whale free (though there have been the occasional visit as far as Battersea) but Molly participates in events such as the Great River Race as well as special occasions such as the Royal Jubilee and Olympic Touch processions.

Great River Race 2015: Two Special Boats

Two boats in the 2015 Great River Race caught my eye in particular.

One was Jubilent (above), a replica of the Naval Victualling Commissioners’ Barge in the shape of a Royal Shallop. It's part of the waterman tradition along with the Doggett’s Coat and Badge race, as described here.

Going further back in history, really much, much further, was the half sized reproduction of the Dover Bronze Age boat:

It felt rather appropriate to see it on the Thames, given that many bronze age artefacts have been found along the banks of the river, as I posted about last year.

Great River Race 2015: Buff's Boat

G'day all! Buff Staysail here! Buff by name and Buff by nature!

I told JP I'd write something on the GRR but you know how it is - couple of late nights, head a bit delicate in the morning and the post somehow gets "eaten by the hair of the dog" if you know what I mean!

But I had to comment on the legends on Hammer of the Gods who clearly had their priorities right, fortified as they were by a bottle of something suitable strong, complementing their no-nonsense look.

Buff would have been right at home here with their "no worries" rowing style:

Good sports one and all!

This is Buff Staysail, over and out!

Great River Race 2015: Sassi says its "oarsome!!!" (geddit!?)

Hi Guys,

OMG, you GRR guys ROCK! I mean - those outfits, they were totally awesome - or should that be oarsome - GEDDIT!!!

Take the Ooo....PS above: abs. fab. guys!!! Way to like totally commit!!!

And ladies of Cam - I love, love, love the look! Feathers and masks!!! Count Sassi in!!

Just what you need for a Venice Ball - am I right?????

More great hat action here:

Alas not everyone was pulling their weight, as can be seen by this photo:

Now Pigs going to ham was TOTALLY in the spirit of things but St Quentin, would an Edwardian jacket and boater be too much to ask?? Hmm?

Of course its not all about hats - there's also SELFIES!!!

Main thing to remember is that everyone who finished is a winner!!!

(but some are more stylish than others!! - and as for JP, just DON'T ASK. Fashion d.i.s.a.s.t.e.r.)

Luv yah!!

Sassi xxx

Great River Race 2015: Go Gladys!!

Hurrah for Chris (of Rowing for Pleasure) and co (aka the "Whiskered Terns") on Gladys!

Here they are pulling well during today's Great River Race trying to repeat their previous victories.

And they were seen over-hauling a couple of boats as they headed up the Thames....

But was it enough....?

Crossness: The Cathedral of Sewage Works

Two hundred years ago London was a mess with raw sewage flowing into the Thames and thousands dying of cholera. In 1858 the "Great Stink" from the river got so bad that Parliament had to close and it was therefore generally agreed that something had to be done.

Enter the engineer Joseph Bazelgette who supervised the building of the great Victorian sewage network for London: 100 miles of intercept sewers, 450 miles of main sewers and 13,000 miles of local sewers. It was future-proofed by being built with double the necessary capacity and is still being used today.

All that waste was sent down the estuary to two pumping stations, one on each of the river banks, which discharged it into the out-flowing Thames.

The pumping station on the south side was built at Crossness and opened on the 4th April 1865, by a lot of big-wigs including the Prince of Wales, Prince Alfred, the Duke of Cambridge, Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York and the Lord Mayor of London.

It could have been one of those hidden away, not to be talked about, bits of ugly but necessary machinery. But for some reason the Victorians built the pumping station as a cathedral of industrialisation, ornate cast iron decorations around a central Octagon.

The building contains some of the largest steam engines in the world: their scale can be judged in this picture of two of the beams:

It has a wonderful Gothic feel to it, and you won't be surprised to hear its been the set of many films, TV programmes and pop videos:

It was last used to pump after the great floods of 1953 and then abandoned. It might have been sold for scrap but fortunately the works were so heavy it would not have been cost effective, and was therefore left to rot.

So it was saved by default for the nation, and is now a Grade 1 listed sewage works. It's not open that often as the restoration program still has many years to go, but one such opportunity arose last weekend as part of the Totally Thames festival.

I passed it when walking from Erith to Greenwich and wanted to go in but it was closed, so I kept an eye open for an opportunity - and was glad I did!

As to that artist mentioned in the previous post? Well of course it was John Martin who came up with the idea 25 years before Bazalgette implemented it.

I've posted about him before, as his life seems amazingly rich, including art and engineering, writers and royals, from racing on steam engines with Brunel to giving a home to the author of "The Mummy".

And Crossness seems to be the embodiment of that mixture of the two cultures, where form and function both show the ideals of the Victorian era.

What did sailors use before toilet paper was invented?

So now you know.

You might be wondering what JP was doing in a museum with these sorts of exhibits?

Well it was grade 1 listed awesome and meant I could babble about one of my favourite artists - can anyone guess who that is and hence where I was?

JP's foil-up sailing project!

In my last post I asked whether you could add foils to everything, and there could only be one response to that question and add foils to JP's own boat.

It's a classic Hobie cat (or at least a scale version) and clearly new-tech foiling required an expert, so we asked Hannah White of project Speedbird. Alas she was unavailable but mini-fig Hannah (above) was only too happy to join Team JP's foiling project!!

The first question was to the material to use for the foil, and we plumpt for Grape-Nuts cereal packet. This was found to be stronger than the Kellogg's Crunchy-nut equivalent (plus lower sugar - hurrah!):

Team JP engineers used high-tech design technology (Microsoft Visio) to define the foil size and shape, to optimise the aerodynamic effect. Naturally the coating was foil (for strength, water resistance and that shiny, laser bright look) and mini-fig Hannah was delighted by the result:

Of course the critical stage was the testing and we had to wait for optimum conditions in terms of water depth, temperature and number of bubbles.

Finally, we were able to launch the JP-foiling boat, and mini-fig Hannah had to hold on tight!! Yes, it was literally flying in the air!!

After a couple of successful runs it was back to land for a debrief:

Mini-fig Hannah's verdict: "Big thumbs up!" (or at least, the mini-fig equivalent).

So a success and proof that the JP foil-up project works!!!

It was, if I say so myself, a total foil-up!

Holy foiling cows

Can you - should you - add foils to everything?

Also, where are the laser canons? Surely it has laser canons, somewhere in the bow...

Zap, zap, zap!

Thames picture puzzle

Yesterday was a busy day on the Thames foreshore for men and women with hi-vis gear: but what were they doing, where, why and for how long?

The Last Tall Ship

Over the last few years, as part of the Thames Festival, tall ships have been coming to Greenwich for the last weekend of August, a three day long bank holiday.

On Monday there was a parade of sail followed by fireworks!!

There was also rain, lots of rain.

Now rain is typically incredibly rare in London - in fact, several hours can go by without it raining at all! Some people even call it the "Sunny City"!

[Ed: Who? Unable to fact check this!!]

Yesterday this unusual meteorological condition, combined with having a recurring bug, meant I felt more like making crab with linguine, watching Parks and Recreation, then having an early night.

Today I went exploring down river to see what could be seen of these majestic vessels. But alas, they had headed out to sea, leaving just this one remaining:

This is the Dar Mlodziezy, a Polish ship built in the Gdansk shipyards of Poland in 1981.

However I overheard one women say she had told her husband it was the Cutty Sark.

Just for comparison, this is the latter, land-locked in its glass sea:

And notice how it is not raining in any of these pictures! The Sunny City indeed!

Tempted to go for a swim?

The water is not as inviting as it looks at first:

The changing Thames - from above

I was recently researching a picture my dad gave me, trying to work out where and when it was painted. It was of an urban scene, in London, probably from Cheyne Walk where so many artists visited and lived.

The history of the area proved easier to track down than the artist, with resources like the Britain from Above, which revealed the photo above of Battersea Reach in 1928.

I was staggered by how much London's river bank has changed, and recently too, for these factories were mostly there 50 years ago. Now that area is part of the expanding developments of river view apartments, with another 100,000 planned between now and 2020.

Before the transformation there were factories making candles and soap, mills for flour and sugar, distilleries, malt-houses and much much more.

This site allows you to compare modern satellite photos side-by-side with old OS maps from a hundred years ago. And for this stretch of the river in the 1888 - 1913 maps there were engineering works, saccharum works and a starch manufactory (yes, that's what they called it).

After looking through these photos and maps I biked along the oh-so-smart Thames path for this stretch of river. My eyes could see the concrete and glass but in my head I saw chimneys and brick. On the river weren't tourist boats but dozens of lighters taking goods down to the docks.

London is ever changing, but this was more than that, a transformation, the end of the industrial Thames.

The rivers and air is the better for it, but it is worth remembering this smoking, dirty but hard working part of the city's history, which helped build modern London.