1800hrs 13 Jun 2005 UTC London
I went to London today to collect the paperwork for Fastnet entry from the RORC (which has one of the best positioned clubhouses right in the centre of London, just around the corner from St James’ Palace). I’m going back tomorrow and may need to get into deep and serious discussions – it seems we don’t comply in at least two rather critical areas and perhaps more. There is a formula for maximum cockpit volume that we may exceed (but that is fixable by including polystyrene or an empty fuel tank) and a requirement for a crash bulkhead forward that we certainly don’t have, plus two watertight bulkheads in the hull, also somewhat lacking in Berri. I’ve only seen one other boat with these – a single handed round the world boat – and I may have misread the requirement. There are several other requirements that differ from the S2H list but not showstoppers. And I have not yet seen a copy of the special appendix covering two handed entries.
Could be an interesting day.
For the romantics (and the classicists, I think) I also went to visit Harrison‘s clocks at the Royal Observatory in Greenwick. H4 was there – one of the 2 or 3 most important technological inventions of the last 500 years for the British because it gave them the capacity to find their way around the oceans. Cook had an exact copy on his second voyage. K2 was there too – it went with Bligh in the Bounty and then to Pitcairn with the mutineers and then to Japan with a Nantucket whaler. Just being close to them is goosepimpling.
And Nelson’s Trafalgar uniform, complete with musket ball hole and bloody socks – though not Nelson’s but his secretary’s blood.