No, the headline is supposed to remind you, those of you who ever copped English history at school, or who enjoyed the unrestricted freedom of Cracker Night, that tomorrow is Thursday 05 November and that somewhere in the world it is still going to be Guy Fawkes Night and little kids will be having a fantastic but dangerous time putting penny bombs under tin cans or into letter boxes, frightening their mums with Chinese crackers and jumping jacks or aiming penny rockets at their mates out of empty Coke bottles, the rocket launcher of choice.

Guy Fawkes was a political dissident in England who thought the solution to the political situation of the time was to blow up the Parliament, in the so-called Gunpowder Plot. Unfortunately, his plot (and the gunpowder) was discovered in time and Guy had Cracker Night named after him as the only outcome he could take solace from. Now we don’t even have that.

Nevertheless, tomorrow is the 5th of November and, after sailing, we can all go home and dream about the bonfire we used to build, the trip to the shop to buy as many crackers as we could save up for, the long wait until it was dark enough and then the mayhem we caused around the bonfire on the vacant block down the street, and getting up early next morning to get back down there and find all the fizzoggs before the other kids did. I distinctly remember my mate Steve picking up a dud penny bomb at 7 in the morning and having it go off in his hand, 12 hours after it was first lit. Of course, he blamed me for his burnt hand, thinking I had just lit it and put it where he’d find it.

Par for the course some of you might be thinking, but I swear I didn’t. I’m not clever enough to think up such a good trick. He got over it after his mum rubbed butter on the burn and we are still best mates 60-something years later.

So many things in that story above are deemed to be wrong these days and have been banned or are frowned upon (including the butter) but I reckon we had the best time, way better than our kids and grandkids have these days in the land of the nanny state.

Not that I wish we were anywhere else in the world …

Thursday 05 November 2020: IOM and DF 95 Club Racing at Jackadder Lake, from 2.00 pm. Weather: Sunny, Max 30, Slight (20%) chance of a shower or thunderstorm about the far northern suburbs in the evening. Winds easterly 25 to 35 km/h becoming light in the middle of the day then becoming southeasterly 25 to 35 km/h in the late afternoon. Gusts to 60 km/h possible about the foothills in the morning.

Saturday 07 November 2020: IOM Shootout and Heat 6 of the Club Championship, at Maylands, from 1.30 pm. Weather: Sunny, Max 29, Winds easterly 15 to 25 km/h shifting south to southwesterly 15 to 20 km/h during the afternoon then becoming light during the evening.

Note that there will be no official sailing at Jackadder on Saturday, it will all be at Maylands with a single mixed fleet of PRSC and MYC IOM sailors and it will be sailed from the beach, not the jetty. So it will be wet launching but there will be plenty of room on the shore for all, including for those who need a chair occasionally. Team 1 will be in charge, in conjunction with the usual course setters from MYC. And note the earlier start time.

Team 1 is as follows: Bruce Robins (Captain), Rob Mews, Justin McAullay, John Smith, Allan Beer, Mike Appelbee, Vincent Shaw, Steve Hartley. And can I remind all members of all duty teams that being named in the month’s team doesn’t mean that you can’t sail in the listed events. And in case the double negative confuses you, I’ll say it another way – if you’re in the duty team, you can still sail. There’s no need to give up sailing for a month just because you’re in the duty team.

After fireworks got banned, and Guy Fawkes Night was no more, we used to make our own bombs just for the fun of it. Out of glass jars, with screw-top lids! Can you imagine little kids lighting the slow burn fuse, frantically screwing on the lid, then running like crazy to get away before the bang and the shards of glass whizzing by. None of us ever got hurt, seriously.

It was almost more fun than radio sailing.

Cheers
Bruce