Well is is a grey and overcast Bank Holiday Monday here. However I got a couple of interesting pictures.

First, the wading birds in the estuary at low tide.



Now not being a bird watcher I am not sure, but I think the red one in the centre is either a bar tailed godwit or a black tailed godwit.

Not sure about the others possibly sandpipers.

Walking along the pier I saw there was a naval vessel of some sort heading my way.



It was the HNLMS Van Speijk.

Which has a bit of Dutch history in the name.

She is the seventh ship in the Royal Netherlands Navy to be named after Jan van Speijk, who, during the Belgian Revolution, blew up his ship rather than let it fall into Belgian hands. To honor him the Dutch king decided the Royal Netherlands Navy will always have a ship named after him.

Not something you often see in Croydon!!

The orange bill suggests godwits.
My first thought was curlew, but that has a dark bill, with a very distinctive upwards curve.
The trouble with all the waders is they are more or less the same size and colours.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Now tomorrow in Yarmouth is one of the important events in the holiday season.

It is the Yarmouth Old Gaffers Festival

Now if that conjures up and image of pipe smoking grey haired old sea-dogs sitting drinking ale, you would wrong.

As I am sure you know the term "gaff" refers to a gaff-rigged sail as of coursed opposed to the Bermuda Rig

(No I didn't actually know the difference until I looked it up.)

So the "old gaffer racing" now make more sense as they will be gaff rigged sailboats not grey haired old sea-dogs out of breath running round the town square.

There will be lots going on and this morning large white things are appearing on Yarmouth green



High tech diversion signs for the ferry.



And the reason for the ferry diversion, well another large white thing is currently occupying half of he normal queuing lanes.



The fun kicks of tomorrow for three days and I expect the quiet little town I have come to know will be transformed.

I will attempt to get a few pics if I can.

A Dragonfly:)
Called Trollslända here.
Before Christianity came to Northern Europe, the dragonfly was associated with the goddess Freja who stood for fertility.
The Swedish name "trollsländor" probably comes from the fact that dragonfly is said to be the troll's spinning tool.

My first rose of the season.



By changing angle of camera and sun the rose explodes. Photoshop only to crop/resize for posting. That's how it came out of the camera. Sorry my macro is not that great.



These are 900 pixels. Is this too big?

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...

I did mention the "Old Gaffers Festival"

Unfortunately my dad has not been very happy so I have been a bit busy. I did however get to the festival and here are a few shots.

To best Illustrate the difference between a "gaff rig" and a "Bermuda rig" here is a picture.




The two yachts left and centre have the 4 sided mainsail, with the gaff pole at the top, the yacht to the right has the 3 sided Bermuda rig, the most common.

All the boats (gaffer or not ) had the bunting out.



There was also one of the Dunkirk "little ships




The Caronia, read it's full history HERE

Here is the short version.



The largest "gaffer" I saw was the training ship Vigilance which was just raising it;s sails on one of it's trips down the Solent.



In the town there were stalls everywhere selling all sorts of things, including this one selling fudge




Err lots of fudge :-)



However my favourite spot was the classic car display, it is many , many years since I have seen one of these;




A 1955 Humber Snipe, with an Island registration "DL"

And this gem that as a small boy I could always spot;



A Jowett Javelin, manufactured between 1947 and 1953, it was also a "fastback"



There was of course the brash and loud.



But by far the car I would have most liked to have driven, I had actually seen before and posted a picture here;



Quite unassuming Ford Crown Victoria, favoirite car of American police forces everywhere.

The owners handwritten note in the window shows why.



I could not stay for too long as I had my dad to consider, but I did enjoy the festival.

Very nice pics Bernie.
And the first pic very well illustrate the difference between a "Gaffed rig" and a "Bermuda rig"
The two closest are Gaffed rigged and the two behind are Bermuda rigged.
Is this from Isle of Wight by any chance?
A friend of mine has sailed there:)
Rather tricky with the tides.

Just talked to my sister living in Liverpool.
She thought is very windy today.
Gale she said.
That's not windy.
Strange because we both sailed with our father in a heavy storm when we where young:)

Quite unassuming Ford Crown Victoria, favoirite car of American police forces everywhere.

They are finally being slowly phased out but any Crown Vic in the rear view mirror creates bad vibes.

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Very nice pics Bernie.
And the first pic very well illustrate the difference between a "Gaffed rig" and a "Bermuda rig"
The two closest are Gaffed rigged and the two behind are Bermuda rigged.
Is this from Isle of Wight by any chance?
A friend of mine has sailed there:)
Rather tricky with the tides.

Just talked to my sister living in Liverpool.
She thought is very windy today.
Gale she said.
That's not windy.
Strange because we both sailed with our father in a heavy storm when we where young:)

Did you ever do anything like this

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Very nice pics Bernie.
And the first pic very well illustrate the difference between a "Gaffed rig" and a "Bermuda rig"
The two closest are Gaffed rigged and the two behind are Bermuda rigged.
Is this from Isle of Wight by any chance?
A friend of mine has sailed there:)
Rather tricky with the tides.

Just talked to my sister living in Liverpool.
She thought is very windy today.
Gale she said.
That's not windy.
Strange because we both sailed with our father in a heavy storm when we where young:)

Did you ever do anything like this

Oh dear. Not yet:)

Very nice Gnu.
Sitting next to a bonfire or a chimenea is really special.
You can sit there for hours just looking at it.
And playing the guitar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XCbfAzOq9c

With things as they are here currently I take quite a few pictures on my daily walk but often when I get home I get sidetracked and totally forget what I took.

So it was a nice surprise to remember I saw a quite unusual ship in the harbour on Friday



ML 1387 or Medusa a Harbour Defence Motor Launch or HDML .

They were designed in 1939 to protect ports and harbours from attack specifically from submarines.

Medusa is one of only 3 known survivors out of a total of 484 built worldwide.

Medusa is maintained by the Medusa Trust. Who's motto is "Preserving Medusa for Future Generations"

Preserving something from the past as it was is always a positive thing in my opinion.

The 2017 Rolex Fastnet Race will start on 06 August 2017.

The race starts off Cowes 50°45′34″N 1°18′1″W on the Isle of Wight on the south coast of England at the Royal Yacht Squadron. Leaving The Solent through The Needles Channel, the race follows the southern coastline of England westward down the English Channel, before rounding Land's End. After crossing the Celtic Sea, the race rounds the Fastnet Rock 51°23′22″N 9°36′08″W off the southwest coast of Ireland. Returning on a largely reciprocal course, the race rounds the Isles of Scilly before finishing at Plymouth 50°22′17″N 4°8′33″W.

I hope you will take some nice pics from that race Bernie:)

With the problems with my dad I have been forgetting the pictures I have taken.

I had forgotten that as I didn't visit dad on Sunday evening, I had decided to take a few pictures of the sunset from Fort Victoria.

There were quite a few boats about



The this was a bit later as the sun was just starting to go down



I also had completely forgotten about the swan and seven cygnets in the harbour.



I call this one "Pheasant and Sundial" .




I have noticed the male pheasant often suns himself at the end of the garden

(Using a mod perk I have edited this links now hosted on imgur, but you have to resize them, better than nothing I suppose.)

So nice Bernie.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

Thought I'd try and take a couple of shots of my Claude Butler touring cycle....makes a change from all the nature shots...

Looks like cat fur in your sprocket.

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Beautiful pix, Gnu. Thanks for posting. Your pix brighten up my day.

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~Sue~

Mr Gnu, can you please stop giving away photographers secrets!!

You should have said, "I waited for ages for the bee and butterfly to be on the same flower together, hoping the light would be just right. Finally all the waiting paid off"

But no, you said "I didn't know I'd photographed the bee next to the butterfly until I looked at the photos on my tablet...." :-)

Nice pics by the way!!

So today with things a little quieter with my dad I went for my walk and this was moored just outside Yarmouth Harbour.



A reminder of how the "other half" live. The MY Amaryllis (MY used to be motor yacht in this case means Mega Yacht)



To get an idea of the size, the white blob on the far righ is a person bending over the stern, also here the Wight Link ferry is passing astern



The info states, it has 6 staterooms for up to 12 people, just 12!! and a crew of 22.

If you really want to know what it looks like to be one of those 12 have a look here

Charter yacht Amaryllis

This is a definite case of "if you have to ask how much you can't afford it"

For reasons that are unlikely to be made public, I have been going out to the rubbish bin (trash can) around 10pm each night and have noticed the moon has been very bright.

I do like skies but find night skies are obviously more challenging to photograph with my trusty Ixus. However here are a few shots.



It sort of looks like below they are shadowy figures reaching up.




The moon is in just the right part of the sky to be framed by the trees.

However the one I like the most is this, I braced myself on my car and zoomed right in. (just needed a little twiddle in Photofiltre)



Now for a £100 pocket camera that is quite good.

Very nice photo's, I wasn't so lucky in Colorado the last 3 weeks. We had clouds every night.