I regret to report that, in the face of NIL wind and a Spring Flood Tide starting to run strongly, the assembled band of hopeful sailors (Jane – already rigged!; Ben, optimistically kitted out in buoyancy aid; Chris, looking sceptical; and James, discerning the frustration implicit in the remote possibility of trying to work around even a very short A course) eventually accepted that there would be no sailing today. (As Tim Young, presciently, had done some 5 hours earlier after his Oliver’s Island Ferry business had gone into liquidation after some customers had made the startling discovery that the river bank was muddy and declined to embark.)
The safety boat crew (Andy &, I suspect, Dave) gratefully stood down from the inevitability of Kew Bridge recovery duty.
However, we have some very smartly repainted Club gates, so the day was not entirely lost.
Next week is the annual Sunday 12-hour closure of the Thames Barrier, so there will be not tide – just the flow of the river. We put a B-course in the Calendar before the closure was confirmed since a low-water B-course is what we usually do on a Barrier day, but an interesting possibility is a race from Strand to Isleworth and back. This will depend on there being enough wind to overcome the mighty Thames, so we’ll make a final decision on the day.
Tim Wellburn, OOD-in-waiting