Wow, every day is a school day !
Thank you for that information, I hate the dark nights and always looked forward to the 22nd December when I thought the nights started to draw out, however now i see that the sunset starts to get later from the 17th !
This thread has just brought me 5 extra day of happiness, in a thoroughly miserable year…
The sinusoidal curve is similar to that for tidal flow.
The extremes of the curve, ie high and low tide are relatively flat, so change happens slowly, giving a tidal ‘stand’ and at mid curve or mid tide, the curve is steep, so flow is rapid.
Talking of tidal flows you should see the tidal flow here In sunny 'sarfend, I once got caught against the submarine boom at Shoebury on my windsurfer on an outgoing tide and had to be rescued by onshore lifeboat, I’m convinced if I had gone in or the board had turned and gone through the pillars the vortex would have taken me down and it would have been Vienna for me.
Did you feel a bit of…a tube? 
I think I’m being a bit thick (or innocent) but I don’t follow ?
Is that another name for a “pipeline” ('60’s surfer term for a nose down wipeout).
Submarine > Torpedo tube…> 
> As you were!
I guess I felt a bit of a tube once I was safely back on terra Firma, it mad a paragraph in the local rag but fortunately no personal details so my blushes spared, what I did feel for some time was all the cuts and scrapes all over me from the barnacles on the framework combined with a 3ft swell it is truly frightening, the power of the outgoing tide, could not even push the board away from the girders !
The closest I came to being rescued was in Mounts Bay when I took my little 260 sinker wave-board out in an offshore wind with too big a sail and just could not get back upwind.
One of the other guys, Mark, was clever enough to spot my predicament and sail out to me with a board with a smaller sail and swap boards.
Mark had more height and weight than me and we were both able to make it safely back to shore, despite the fact I was knackered by then and his (250) board was smaller than I had ever sailed before
He really saved my bacon that day…
I can imagine how you felt it’s a horrible feeling out at sea unable to control what’s happening, always good to have a budy around, makes me think of the poor fella lost off of Norfolk recently, very sad.
It didn’t get to the stage of panicking or even being particularly scared.
I had a board and a good warm wetsuit, so I was never going to die
If the worst had come to the worst, I could have ditched the rig and lain on the board to paddle in to shore.
Luckily it didn’t come to that, as I’d already lost one rig that year when my mast broke in the surf at the same beach.
Well thank you Mrbarry. You learn something every day! I knew joining this forum would be useful.
The days feel longer already!
We had some sunshine today after the deluge of last night, a beautiful clear day, and not much traffic over or in London so the seeing from sixteen miles away was rather good.
Here is the view from the public footpath crossing Uxbridge Golf Course (shut for golf right now), walking shoes essential. This is at the limit of an old phone camera.
The Wembley arch can be seen on the left, Canary Wharf etc in the middle and the Shard a bit towards the right.
Be patient.
Won’t be long now.
“I’m just nipping put for milk”
“Yes dear…”
Top down?
But of course young fellow.
Tsk tsk…
I live in Somerset. Very easy to forget just how much colder it is when you go North. Flashback almost 50 years to 1973/74, I drove buses in Glasgow for 18 months. Getting up hours before dawn to walk to the bus garage. -18 degrees overnight. Arriving at the yard, the air a fog of fumes from the buses left running to stop the diesel from waxing in the fuel lines. Lived in a cra**y bedsit, with a single bar fire. Never so thankful for the heavy driver’s uniform coat to pile on top of my bed.
Great sentiment and great song but a bit spooky (nowadays) to see how close everybody was to one another.
