I remember the floods of 2007 when the stream topped its bank and ran into the lake at the entrance to the club and at two points towards the far end of the lake.  The worst of the flooding was on the 22^nd of July when Barry and Pauline went Buzzing around the lake.

By 29^th July the waters had receded somewhat, but the septic tank required the attention of Tony and Ian.  This was also the last time that Mike was seen sailing a real boat.  Can you believe that it was six and a half years ago?  As I recall, racing was cancelled.

What intrigued me was that having received an e-mail from Laura announcing that racing had been cancelled on 12^th January, I thought that the picture of the jetty looked familiar.  Clearly, the picture accompanying Laura's mail had been taken in the winter as the trees are bare, but the planks which are wet and those which are dry are surprisingly similar to those in the 2007 pictures.  What do you think?

       Floods 2014                           Floods 2007

The galleries for 2014 are here

Racing was cancelled on 12^th January for the very good reason that the "facilities" were not working.  I don't wnat to be too graphic about this, but if you understand that WOSC uses a septic tank and the Gents shower was about 4" (10cm for you juniors) deep in water, then you can probably understand the problem and the decision.

The floods were very like the floods of 2007 with one exception.  The weather.  In July 2007 it was somewhat warmer than it was on 12^th January! In 2007 the floods arrived in the middle of Summer, during a relatively dry period.  The flooding was dramatic, but it subsided relatively quickly.  In contrast the 2014 floods occurred after a protracted period of wet weather.  The level of ground water had been high for weeks and the additional rain led to flooding and the inevitable consequences to the WOSC "facilities".

Les and Graham took the opportunity of the empty lake to practice spinnaker drill.  Les arrived late and gave Graham a taste of his own medicine.  Graham now knows how Les feels every week.  Having been successful in hoisting the spinnaker, Graham forgot to release the leeward twinning line and Les was very leisurely at the retrieve.  Maddy would not have been impressed.

Julie turned up to make sure that the intrepid duo were safe and well.  She confessed that she would have no idea what to do had they had a mishap.  Whichever of the emergency services that she called out would have to conduct a risk assessment, by which time the dynamic duo would almost certainly have scrambled ahsore or perished in the attempt.