| Safety on an event
of this scale is of great importance.The fleet will be accompanied
by support vessels to increase the safety standards,as well as enabling
television/photographic footage to be relayed back to overseas countries. Sir Chay Blyth added"The ocean rowing Challenge will be a supreme mental and physical challenge.Teams will need to adapt to testing conditions that will push the human spirit to it's limit. The event present record is 40 days. This target are team hopes to beat. |
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Two power boats racing in Plymouth Sound a recent event
orgainised by the well known local property developer Chris Parsonage. Chris always makes sure that everyone who has helped to put this great show on the water,gets a very big 'Thankyou' |
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| THE ROOKIE SAILOR PREFACE Robby Fleming was a lively and often mischievous child, he lived for adventure and was seemingly born to be wild. He began his time on earth in the east of London in the late 40's, and was soon giving his parents palpitations with his death defying, and often foolhardy, antics. He began "flying lessons" at the tender age of just eighteen months when he managed to fall from the first floor of his grandparent's fire escape. Despite landing on concrete, the supple bones of a baby proved to be his saviour and no real damage was done. By the age of four he was often slipping out of the back door of the family’s council house and spending his time fishing from the banks of some local ponds. In those early days, not having access to any money, he improvised with the use of an old bamboo stick, a cotton reel, a length of twine and a bent safety pin. He would scratch around in the grass searching for worms which he used for bait and he soon became skilled in the art of catching small perch and roach. Disaster struck when he managed to fall into one of those ponds, the wayward little lad was extremely fortunate that a passer-by had noticed his plight and had dragged him from those murky waters. The events of that almost fatal day remain etched in his memory, the sensation of being under water, the quietness, the green brown water, the bubbles, the aquatic plants and the strange feeling of disorientation. He also recalls riding home perched on the handlebars of his rescuer's bicycle, and the look on his mother's face when she learned of the day's events. His animal instincts again got the better of him when he was around five years old. He lost his grip while mimicking a monkey, or was it Tarzan. Swinging through the branches of a tree in a local park he fell heavily, head first onto the stone path below, sustaining a fractured skull. He can still recall being loaded into the family's coach built pram, and then being rushed to hospital by his panic stricken mother. He cheated both death and blindness on that occasion. Although that escapade was enough to deter most kids from taking too many further risks, he managed to break his arm when falling from a swing in the children's park near his home as a mere seven year old. He recalls the family holidays to Coverack, a quaint fishing village near the Lizard, in Cornwall. He would rise at 5.0 am. and taking a hand line baited by his father the previous evening with a limpet, sampled his first taste of sea fishing from the old stone pier. On each of the first two mornings, he had managed to catch a quite sizable wrasse, and had then disturbed his parent's holiday slumber by rushing back in excitement at around 6.0 am. to show his father the fish. He also remembers leaving the holiday cottage at 4.30 am. on the third day, not noticing until he’d reached his favoured fishing spot that his father, desperate for a restful morning in bed, had purposely not baited his hook!!! At eight years old his family exchanged council houses and moved to the naval port of Plymouth. He endured four years on a notorious council estate where he was subjected to some pretty harsh moments. He was educated at a school on the estate and learned to overcome the attentions of the estate's bullies. His experiences of his early days, both the east of London and in Plymouth were, to some extent, an influence on his quest for adventure later in life. He often sought solace by catching a bus into the city and pursuing his addiction for fishing from the many vantage points nearby. He moved from the estate at twelve years old and spent a year at a secondary school before attending a small private school where he was subjected to regular confrontations with the headmaster. Hardly a week passed without six of the best administered with a cane by the school's principal. -to be continued... |
