20 THIRTEEN

I said this on Thursday about Friday and Saturday this week:

"On Saturday, there is the Thames Ship Society Solent cruise. As the weather forecast continues to be excellent with plenty of sunshine these should be two great days of photo-taking!"

But circumstances have had other ideas. Firstly the appalling weather yesterday morning and secondly, and worse, my mum, who is in intensive care, has taken a turn for the worse and the outlook is poor with the doctors not expecting her to recover. Me and the rest of the family are travelling to and from the hospital and have been doing so from the early hours of the morning, so I cancelled my trip to Southampton today, phoned Blue Funnel and asked them to pass a message onto the TSS bod who is the trip organiser. I hope I can get on the August trip or get a refund, although that's the least of my concerns at the moment.

My mum likes a bit of ship-spotting, too, although she doesn't take photos. We aren't particularly close but she did accompany me on a couple of local ship-spotting trips years ago and has always liked ships.

2013 is living up to the 13 part, so far it's been a sod of a year with the deaths of one of our dogs and a family friend and now my mum's illness.

Odds and ends

A neighbour of a good friend of mine died recently and, as co-executor of his will, my friend, knowing of my interest in ships, asked me if I'd be interested in some books and other bits and pieces as the chap who passed away, John, had been hotel manager on the QE2 for a number of years (he also worked on many other Cunard ships, such as Franconia and Queen Mary) and had amassed a large collection of nautical books and ephemera.

Among the books were a number of copies of ones I had years ago and had sold over the years. As I regretted some of the departures I replaced those as well as found some that I had always wanted to read, but never got round to, such as the autobiographies of Captains Harry Grattidge (Captain of the Queens) and Geoffrey Marr (The Queens and I), as well as Captain Ron Warwick's book on QE2. Most of the books are Cunard-related but there were some others, covering ships such as the Norway and White Star's famous Olympic-class of 1911 (yes, including that unsinkable one that sank on her maiden voyage) plus John Maxtone-Graham's Crossing and Cruising and Liners to the Sun, which are in the same series as his classic The Only Way To Cross. I have The Only Way to Cross but have never read the other two, so that's something to look forward to.

Here are the other odds and ends:

A fridge magnet, destined to join the myriads of others covering the white goods in the kitchen. I don't think it's official Cunard tat, but it's nice all the same.

A badge, commemorating QE2's last voyage as a steam-driven ship

I don't wear ties, but these tie pins are nice

And a couple of bags. I can pretend I went on the 1993 world cruise...

...while the blue one opens out into a sizeable holdall.

I also ended up with copies of Ships Monthly and Sea Breezes from the 1980s, which took me right back. It was interesting going through those this morning and seeing how much things have changed, especially on the ferry and cruising front and not to mention how the size of ships has also grown, right across the board. Cruise ships, ferries and dry cargo ships have all grown much bigger over the past 30 years but tankers have actually grown a bit smaller, certainly in the Ultra-large class; you just don't see vast half-a-million DWT leviathans these days. Container ships have not only grown to huge proportions, they have also become ubiquitous as carriers of all sorts of dry cargo.

Famous names have since vanished, including the ferry operator Townsend Thoresen and the QE2 herself has also disappeared from our waters, although the latter still exists for now, languishing in Dubai. Unfortunately the magazines also brought back unwanted memories, as my teenage years were singularly unpleasant, thanks to a violent stepfather who made us kids' lives hell (he is, unfortunately, still alive while far better human beings have passed on at a younger age). Reading them took me right back to our home in Ryde which was not nice...I think I'll keep the interesting bits and photos of favourite ships (my beloved TT 'Spirits' feature quite a bit) and recycle the rest.

Hobbies keep people sane, I think and mine certainly did when I was a kid - that and rock music.

It's that time of year again

Cowes, September 28th 2010

I have a seasonal job delivering tourist booklets to various places around the island. This, of course, brings me to the beaches, so my camera comes along just in case I come across anything of interest, including ships, of course.
Today, I was in West Cowes so I parked in Queens Road and took my camera - and dog, who was with me - for a walk. There wasn't much about, whether ships or birds, just Red Osprey, the dredger City of Chichester, Hartland Point and Red Jet 3.

Red Osprey

City of Chichester

Hartland Point

Red Jet 3 passing Hartland Point

The weather was crap, very grey and murky so I didn't hang about and, after buying a far-too-milky cup of tea from the cafe I went back to the car. On the way back to the car I saw a notice, which was invisible when coming from the parking places, stating that dogs were banned from the beach between 1st April and 30th September. Oops. Although neither me or my dog actually set foot on the beach because it is all shingle and uncomfortable for both me and my dog to walk on, we did go the beach side of the cafe where there are seats, although we stayed on the paving. If I get a fixed £75 penalty through the post for (not) going on the beach, I'll be very pissed off, especially as the sign is stupidly positioned. It's a stupid by-law, especially in April and September when the weather is no good for sitting around on the beach. However, there was no dog warden around, so unless there was some curtain-twitching old busybody with nothing better to do than spy on people then I should be ok - especially as I didn't actually break the stupid by-law.

So what's this all about then?

Nothing much, just a few photos of ships, mostly in and around the Solent. I used to do a lot of ship 'spotting' and taking pics - I still do, although probably not as prolifically as in the past - the main reason for this was that I have always loved photography and living near ports meant that ships were an attractive subject so I was interested in ships as a result; I like ships in themselves as well as the fact they (mostly) make attractive subjects. I did, however, grow up fascinated by the great ocean liners, thanks to relatives who worked on the original Cunard Queens.
Wildlife has always been a big interest of mine, but before digital photography came along I didn't do wildlife photography because of the cost - and waste - of film and processing. Wildlife runs away and is shy. Ships don't run away when looked at and aren't particularly shy! So, living on the north coast of the Isle of Wight, I turned my attention to the ships that passed by instead. I guess that if I'd lived near a large airport I'd have taken pictures of planes which are also not shy, although they move a lot quicker than ships.

I try and make the effort to go to Southampton or Portsmouth when something interesting is happening, such as the first arrival of a new ship, the final departure of an old favourite or just for a change of scenery. I also go to the Continent as and when funds allow, my favourite ship-spotting places being Belgium and Holland.
I also have a website called Ship-Photo. This is where the better photos will end up eventually. I used to have a website called Ship Images but Lycos, who were the web-hosts, decided to no longer offer hosting and I couldn't be bothered to redo or re-upload the thing elsewhere.

What else? Oh yeah, just the usual rubbish - I'm in my 40's, live on the Isle of Wight, have a little dog and am also interested in astronomy (most clear nights I am outside peering into the deep sky, with a 18" reflecting telescope), wildlife, reading, football (Southampton F.C.) and surfing. So, there you go. That's me.
And, how exciting, the first post - with pictures - is coming right up.

Updated 15th December 2012