My Dad

This web of masts, yards and rigging belongs to Stavros S Niarchos, the Brig belonging to the Tall Ships Youth Trust (formerly the Sail Training Association). She was launched in 2000, to replace the aging Sir Winston Churchill and Sir Malcolm Miller. Stavros was at Liverpool today, being part of the Spring on the Waterfront event. If you want to see more images from the event, Bald Eagle will surely have a link to some on his photoblog.

My dad, God rest his soul, was a keen supporter of the STA, and for several years, including his last, he spent a week of his holidays as a member of the volunteer crew on one of the two old ships, acting as Purser. He absolutely loved it. The experience fulfilled at least two of his natural instincts - helping young people discover themselves (he ran the church youth club when I was a child and worked for the Duke of Edinburgh's Award when he retired from the police force) and all things to do with water (we made and sailed our own Mirror Dinghy in the seventies; he was one of the first police frogmen etc etc). Not bad for a man who lived all his life in the inland town of Northampton!

He would have loved seeing all that was at Liverpool with us today.