The photo above taken by Humber Keel and Sloop Preservation Society luminary Dave Everatt shows Humber sloop Spider T visiting Stockwith for the West Stockwith rally, which is jointly organised by the West Stockwith Yacht Club, the Canal River Trust and the Chesterfield Canal Trust.
After all the troubles the weather and flooding has brought along the banks of the Trent in North Lincolnshire, it’s good to hear that the Spider and her crew led by skipper Mal Nicholson have been able to get out and enjoy themselves – Mal, who makes his living refurbishing and maintaining classic cars is still working getting his workshops back in order following floods caused by the big East Coast storm surge of a few weeks ago.
So it must have been especially gratifying to sail to West Stockwith, where the Spider and received as many as 2000 visitors over the weekend.
I gather that a nice came when 82-year old Frank Major was steering the Spider along the river as a guest crew member. At the age of 10, Frank was mate to his barge skipper dad, and was later a skipper himself running barges around the estuary and all her tributaries.
Someone asked Frank if he was ok, to which he replied with a big grin: ‘Aye lad I’m ‘ome again.’