Round-the-Island - Calypso gets there first!

I should make clear this is not first to the finish but first to enter the 80th Round-the-Island Race - an epic yacht race of 1700 boats who make the annual dash, 60 miles around the Isle of Wight.
I've never taken part in the RTI race but other members of the Rogers family have won the most coveted RTI trophy, The Gold Roman Bowl, three times in the old family boat, Rosina, so the pressure is on! People assume that because your surname is Rogers that you are genetically modified for sailing. Of course, I'm not a real Rogers, I was born on a farm in a land locked part of the country and had no idea about boats until my late teens. It's true that since then I have got quite a few miles under my belt, but somehow, I still feel like a bit of a fraud.
Anyway, it should be an exciting day and hopefully if we do really badly it will be put down to the weight of the hybrid engine, or the extra batteries, and not the dilution of Rogers genes on board!

Eternal sunshine in a muddy creek

There's been a variation on the "would you rather" game in our house (eg. would you rather eat a spider or have one of your legs chopped off - or some such gruesome thing). The new one is "what's your worst day ever"? Worryingly, Rex never misses a heartbeat in his answer - it's "The day we went on Calypso" - We thought it was time to instill some happy Calypso memories to try to dislodge the traumatic one and fortunately managed to pull off a near perfect winter weekend trip to Newtown Creek on the Isle-of-Wight. It was one of those fairly non-descript winter weekends when the forecast wasn't great and the sceptre of trying to persuade the kids that they'd love to join in the rugby/hockey/sailing class was looming. So we packed everyone up and did the nuclear family thing, just us in our floating home. The great thing about Newtown in the winter is that there is no problem getting a mooring - there's no one there other than the occasional sail training boat and thousands of birds. We took the dinghy ashore and walked the children the long way to the pub at the top of the river - enjoyed a delicious lunch and walked back just as the light was fading. Fading light and falling tide saw a family of six (plus mildly neurotic collie) enjoying the spectacle of huge flocks of birds swooping close overhead. No one except the birds were there to watch the spectacle of the same family being dragged rather desperately by a grunting father, up to his thighs in mud as the tide finally left the little creek we'd decided to navigate in. The children loved it, laughing at Kit as he became more and more covered in mud. The grunting and muscle power paid off and we made it back to Calypso for pasta and a film for supper. Next morning we managed to fit in a full morning of fossil hunting on the beach before setting off with the wind and tide behind us for a beautiful sail home. Maybe I should suggest a game called "what's your best day ever"? Sadly the answer would probably be something like "going to Paulton's Park". Perhaps I won't ask!