Trinity House, the official General Lighthouse Authority for England, Wales and other British territorial waters - with the exception of Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland -, is not only responsible for the navigational aids and the official Deep Sea Pilotage Authority providing expert navigators.
Under the Master of the Corporation - an honorary title, held today by Hrh the Duke of Edinburgh -, Trinity House is ruled by a court of thirty-one Elder Brethren, presided over by the Master, and appointed from 300 Younger Brethren, themselves selected among laymen with maritime experience, mainly naval officers and ships’ masters but also harbour masters, pilots, and yachtsmen.
One of the many odd and sensible, rarities in Admiralty Law, itself eminently grounded on results and facts, is that the Admiralty Court - since 1981, one of the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court - is that its nautical assessors are selected among the Elder Brethren of Trinity House, who express their opinion in nautical matters, assisting the judge in technical cases. The expert evidence of the Elder Brethren is admissible in all courts on all issues of fact about seamanship.
A nautical assessor is not however, to be confused with the expert witness, as he is not subjected to cross-examination.

Misha Hoichman has made available exceptional photos shot in the expedition undertaken along 600 kilometres of the Fiordland coast, in the south-western corner of the South Island of New Zealand.
From the elevation of the Southern Alps, the coast is steep and and crenellated, with fiords - locally named as sounds - running from the valleys of the southern ranges. The Browne and Sutherland Falls rank among the tallest waterfalls in the world are found between deep fjords and steep western valleys.
The prevailing westerly winds thrust large swells generated in Antarctica, blowing moist air from the Tasman Sea onto the mountains. As it rises, the air cools creating mist and rainfall that support lush temperate rain forests of surreal beauty
Just watch.

Inspired by a gambolling Mike Devlin, I have asked Brooks Paddle Gear for a neoprene avataq. If taken seriously, this hunting float would allow for a easy retrieval of harpooned anglers from the surface. Seen under an all different light, the avataq might suggest to many an Oedipean, a ponderous black pacifier through whose tip milk is duct to discharge. Probably a totally personal first impression. However, wary of sexual harassment I found it wise not to disclose my first impressions to the Brooks people, merely hinting that an avataq might be instrumental to learning the avataq roll.
According to an old article published in Sea Kayaker Magazine in June 1997 and written by John Heath, to roll up on the right side, one end of the float must be held in the left hand beside the right knee. The other end of the float is to be hold in the right hand beside the right hip, keeping some tension between the hands as if expanding a voluptuous accordion - not my analogy -. To initiate recovery, pull down toward the face sharply with the left hand, leaning aft as the float clears the front of your torso, then lean forward as you become upright. A successful finish would be marked by the left hand beside the left hip, and the right hand by the left knee, in a mirror image of the starting position.
Heath noted that the hips and trailing knee should rotate the kayak as you roll, and that the torso action should be coordinated, avoiding to lean forward too quickly. The float may be extended outward if more lift is needed for the recovery.

The local kayak club has decided on the first weekend of next June for its annual meeting. A night paddle and two kayak trips for paddlers of every ability, are scheduled around splendidly irrigated lunches and dinners.
On the last day, a raffle will decide the lucky recipient of a sea kayak donated by a national manufacturer.
Once, I remember, the prize went to the Yacht Club manager who rapidly donated to the kayak club which is happy to lend it to people new to the sport.
Aside of that happy day, the kayak raffle invariably fails to fall upon a club mate. There is always some applauding, happy, stranger who drives away merrily with the boat over his car rack, rubbing our injury.

It runs strong in North Wales. In perfectly foul weather, last weekend young Tozer excelled in his Bcu Level 5 sea assessment. After his rigorous training, the A5 assessors sensing a great disturbance in The Force, agreed to bestow on him the well deserved powers to train 5 star adherents to the cause.
I hear the humming of light sabers, and all defies the imagination.
The very best to him.

In the morning of March 18th, 1967, the “Torrey Canyon”, the first of the supertankers capable of carrying a cargo of 120,000 tons of crude oil, hit Pollard’s Rock in the Seven Stones reef, cruising at a speed of 17 knots, and ripping open 6 tanks.
Because of its length of 974.4 feet, the “Torrey Canyon” had not passed through the Suez Canal. Instead, the ship took a route from Mina al-Ahmadi, Kuwait, around Africa by way of the Cape of Good Hope. On March 14, as it passed between Tenerife and Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands, Captain Pastrengo Rugiati, was informed by the ship’s agent that it was imperative that he arrived at his destination in Milford Haven, Wales, by high tide at 2300 on March 18th, least a week pass by before the tide would be again high enough for the tanker to enter the harbour.
Captain Rugiati set in the autopilot a course from the Canaries that should have taken the “Torrey Canyon” five miles to the west of the Isles of Scilly. At noon on March 17th, he checked his position and found that he was on course. When he went to bed that night, he left instructions to wake him at 0600, expecting to have the Scillies on radar, somewhere off the starboard bow by that time.
Instead, the next morning the Scillies appeared off the port bow. During the night, strong currents had pushed the “Torrey Canyon” to the north and east, and while the captain slept, the chief officer had altered the course from 18° to 12°.
When he was awakened at 06300, Rugiati decided not to turn around the Isles of Scilly to avoid adding 40 miles to his journey time, and with only a small scale chart of the area, he chose to cross the 7 miles wide gap between the Scillies and the Seven Stones.
Rugiati ordered a return to his original course of 18°. By now, the course of the tanker had the reef of the Seven Stones in its path, and high tide would obscure the reef from sight. The captain was aware of the problem and planned to make adjustments to take the ship through the deep channel between the Scillies and the Seven Stones.
At the sight of fishing ships in the channel, the captain steered well clear of the nets, making two slight corrections of 3° and 2°, and setting a new course of 13°, that moved the ship starboard to the right of channel and closer to the reef, to avoid the nets.
At 0840, with the captain, a junior officer in his first trip, and the helmsman in the bridge, the plotting error is discovered. A position is re-plotted immediately, only to learn that the vessel is only 2.8 miles from the edge of the reef.
With the helmsman at the wheel, Rugiati plotted again a fix, switched off the autopilot and brought hurriedly the ship to 0°, turning the autopilot back on. By then, the officer on watch could clearly see that the “Torrey Canyon” was already among the slightly submerged rocks of Seven Stones. He noted that it was 0848. Informed of the problem, Rugiati, still dizzy from only three hours of sleep, ordered a hard swing to port changing the course to 340°. The tanker did not move.
Rugiati rushed into the chartroom at the back of the bridge to inspect the chart. The helmsman shouted that he could not hear the clicks with which the autopilot marks every degree turned, but his captain failed to hear him.
Then Rugiati himself realized that he did not hear the autopilot clicks. He decided that the fuses might have been blown as it had happened before, opening the fuse box and checking them to find them in working order. He deducted that the oil pumps that move the rudder must be at fault, and rang the engine room asking the chief engineer to check the pumps, dialling by mistake a number that go him to the galley where the cook informed him that his breakfast was ready.
Captain Rugiati glanced down at the wheel: The autopilot control lever had been inadvertently knocked down and rested at the mark of Disengage between the positions Manual and Autopilot. He moved the level to manual and changed course to avoid the disaster. The “Torrey Canyon” started turning only to hit Pollard’s Rock at full speed.
An order of full astern was obeyed but had no effect. The bottom was being torn out of the tanker.
After helicopters and lifeboats rescued the crew, Pastrengo Rugiati, and three men stayed on board. A distress call brought a Dutch tug, Utrecht, but rough seas made it impossible for the tug to pull alongside. Plans were made to pull the stranded tanker off at the next high tide. In preparation, the crew began pumping cargo overboard to lighten the ship. Very quickly, a six-mile-long slick of crude oil developed.
After nightfall there was an attempt to move the ship. It failed and, by dawn, the ship had a list of 8° to starboard. In rough seas with 20-foot swells, the crew began to abandon ship. Rugiati was the last to abandon the deck.
At the next high tide the following day, there was a second attempt to pull the tanker from the rocks. By this time, vapors were building up within the ship. At noon on March 19, there was a terrific explosion. Five men left onboard were injured and captain H.B. Stal, a salvage expert airlifted from Amsterdam, and a member of the crew of the tug “Praia da Adraga”, were blown to the sea.
Sailors F.M van Rixel and A.B. van Wijk, both of the tug “Titan”, jumped from their boat and dived into the oil-covered waters, rescuign Captain Hal, who died on board the “Titan” as she entered the harbour of Newlyn near Penzance.
Salvage companies still wanted to tow the listing ship away but were in a quandary about where to take it. Great Britain, fearful of widespread pollution, refused entry at any port, and decided to bombed the shipwreck.
The bombing raids began when eight Royal Naval Buccaneers that took off from Lossiemouth in Scotland.
In all, the Raf and the Royal Navy dropped 62,000lbs of bombs, 5,200 gallons of petrol, 11 rockets and large quantities of napalm onto the ship.
Despite direct hits, and the inferno of towering flames and smoke created as the oil began to burn, the tanker refused to sink.
The bombing mission was called off when particularly high spring tides put out the flames.
The efforts of the salvage ships could not move “Torrey Canyon” a bit. Pollard’s Rock had penetrated deep into the hull and a final attempt failed. Within a week of the accident, oil began coming ashore at Cornwall.
The disaster led to changes in shipping international regulations. The first Civil Liability Convention (Clc/69) and the International Convention Relating to Intervention on the High Seas in Cases of Oil Pollution Casualties (Intervention 1969), that for the first time since the Anti-Piracy Conventions affirmed the right of a coastal state to take measures on the high seas to prevent, mitigate or eliminate danger to its coastline from pollution by oil following upon a maritime casualty.

In the merchant navy, Captain is still the traditional title given to the ship’s Master. A term that derives from the title Master Mariner in use in England at least since the 13th century, which reflected that in guild terms, such a person was a master craftsman in this specific profession.
While an unrestricted Master’s licence is the highest level of professional qualification amongst mariners, enabling to command ships without any restriction of size, power or geographic locale on the license, and the use of the post-nominal Mm; among professional mariners, the title Captain is reserved for someone who has served in command of a merchant vessel. Once the master had been appointed to a command position, he would retain the title of Captain even when working ashore.
The origin of this nautical title comes from the stubborn adherence to tradition in the Navy. In the early days of the Royal Navy, warships were often merchants vessels with crews requisitioned by the King and a company of soldiers embarked aboard from which the ship’s company evolved later to name crews. Even as the ship was under the command of a captain with a commission from the sovereign, he was very unlikely to have any nautical experience, so the navigation, sailing and steering functions failed under the next officer, the master of the merchant ship who performed his duties as a warrant officer, the Sailing Master, while the captain filled ceremonial and legal roles.
Eventually, the Crown formalized the Navy as a service, the crew officially became “the King’s Men”, the ships “Her Majesty’s Ship” (Hms), and the service merged the positions of Captain and Master into one commissioned office.
The title of Master and the rank of Commander was thus, the full title of the rank held by Commanders when they were first introduced into the Royal Navy, then equivalent to a major in the British Army.

The Royal research ship James Cook in an Atlantic storm during a cruise in the vicinity of Hatton Bank, in the west coast of Ireland.
The RRS James Cook is a British Royal Research Ship operated by the Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc), that replaces the now retired Rss Charles Darwin. She was built by Flekkefjord Slipp & Maskinbabrikk AS, Norway, who commissioned the  hull with a displacement of 5800 tonnes, a length of 89,50 metres, a beam of 18.60 metres, and a draught of 5.50–5.70 metres to the shipyards of Gdansk, Poland.
Laid down on January 2005, she was christened on February 2007 by Hrh Princess Royal.
With a nominal crew of 9 Officers, 13 shipmates and technicians, and 32 scientists, on March 5th, 2007, she set off to her maiden voyage for a scientific study of a hole in the Earth’s crust that was expected to reveal the mantle below.
On February 2008, the crew used the Isis Remotely Operated Vehicle developed by the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, to place a Welsh flag tied to a small commemorative weigth at the bottom of the Hess Deep rift in the equatorial Pacific. The flag was carefully unfurled by the arms of the robot, lying now spread in the dark abyssal depths at 3,500 metres in the seabed of the Pacific Ocean.