The brainchild of James Ramsden the first mayor (1867) of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England who had visited Venice and seen large gondola-like passenger barges called Burchiello, the opulent steam yacht Gondolais a rebuilt eighty-six passenger Victorian era steam powered vessel. She operates on Coniston Water in the English Lake District. Built in Liverpool and launched in 1859, her lines clearly influenced by those of Venice’s Burchielli, she was built for the steamer service carrying passengers from both the Furness Railway and the Coniston Railway. She was in service until 1936 when she was retired, being converted to a houseboat in 1946. In 1979, by then derelict, she was…

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Learning to row boats with sliding seat mechanisms, specifically single sculls, had long been on my list of water sports to try when I discovered one early spring some time ago, that the opportunity existed with a club based at the Jericho Sailing Centre on Vancouver’s English Bay. I signed up and was soon in a single scull, under instruction and trying to stay upright and dry! Experienced with river and sea kayaks as well as sailboats, sailing dinghies and keel sailboats, along with non-sliding seat engineless boats of various genres, I nonetheless found single sculls quite challenging due to…

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Rarely have I been terrified to the point of immobility or had concerns for my incipient demise. Getting stuck unprotected by climbing gear on a close to vertical mountain side and afraid to move as a twelve year old is one incident that comes to mind. Worse was crashing a motorcycle at 50 mph in my mid-teens. Certainly in that single vehicle accident a lack of mobility was hardly the issue as, clinging to the bike, I watched the rapidly unfolding event seemingly in slow motion. (a common experience during perceived threats). To this day however the incident which scared…

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Downhill skiing/boarding resorts under the closely controlled operation of a myriad of trained workers from lift maintenance to pyrotechnic avalanche control, grooming, ski patrol medical staff and a host of other activities, in general have good safety records. However, the liability waiver printed on the back of each and every ticket is there for good reason. There are many factors in the skiing/boarding environment that are simply uncontrollable and that skiers and boarders accept as an inevitable part of the sport. The fact was brought home to me a few years ago when I and four others experienced it the…

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Customer places phone call Customer:  Is that Rent an anything? RAA: Yes. We rent anything and everything. C: Good I want to rent a dog for the afternoon RAA: Great! Do you have a part number? C: a part number? For a dog! RAA: all our products have to have part numbers. Company policy C: a dog isn’t a product RAA: must be if we carry it C: do you in fact carry afternoon rentals of dogs? RAA: don’t know. I need a part number to find out C: Let’s start again. Do you rent animals? RAA: I’ll type it…

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As a kid growing up in post ww11 working (best case) class northern England, I developed a fascination with bobsleighs and in particular the four man event.  The closest bobsleigh track to our modest perch quite likely would have been Switzerland’s Cresta run seen periodically on our (black and white 12 inch screen ‘telly’). Quite often the latest horrendously life threatening crash would be shown as yet another sleigh exited the track en-route to the nearest tree which typically and, oddly even for those less than safety conscious times, was usually very near indeed.  Frequently British bobsleigh athletes in those…

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In 1967 about two months prior to emigrating from Britain as immigrants to Canada we ordered a new car. An Austin 1100 hatchback. Think Fawlty Towers and the ’Gourmet Night’ episode. The car was a small hesitant step up from the original Austin Mini but without the pizzazz. The plan was to ship the Canadian specified left hand drive vehicle aboard the ship that would carry us from London’s Tilbury docks on the river Thames to Montreal, a nine day voyage the last two of which needed to transit the St Lawrence river upstream to Montreal. She was the Russian…

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For reasons which must have held a compelling attraction for me at the time, most likely because it largely avoided my getting cold and wet, I used to view the underwater world on occasion by submerging only my face-mask and snorkel equipped head from the bow of a very small inflatable dinghy. The dinghy’s buoyancy tubes being of particularly small diameter enabling this procedure. (Said dinghy was, let’s say, inexpensive.) For the rest of my anatomy the dinghy provided a mostly dry, comfortable cushion on which to lounge prone. Hence the need to expend much effort as in swim was…

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Booked to sing the national anthem at a Vancouver 86ers game, the precursor organization to the current Whitecaps, while waiting to perform I noticed a poster for a Canada v.s. Guatemala FIFA World Cup qualifier upcoming at the same stadium a couple of weeks out. I asked my 86ers contact if they had anybody lined up to sing the Guatemalan national anthem. They did not and were wondering where they might find someone. “I’ll do it” I said. “You know it?” he asked clearly surprised. “No I said but I have a Guatemalan friend who will teach it to me.…

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Lazing in the summer sun warmed cockpit aboard our 30 foot sailboat Exodus, we were moored for the afternoon in the Union Steamship marina on Bowen Island in Howe Sound BC, Canada when the cockpit VHF radio repeater sprang to life on channel 16, the distress and calling frequency. Loud and clear came the call: “Port of Vancouver, Japanese warship”, “Port of Vancouver, Japanese warship”. We looked at the radio in some disbelief. It seemed and in an odd way felt like a sort of Mary Celeste, over the eternal ether sort of moment, not that the famed merchant brigantine would have had radio…

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