Just a quick announcement! Cathy Chapman tells me that the 2013 Calendars are SELLING OUT FAST so you need to get your orders in a bit quick if you don’t want to miss out. Details are on the shop pages in the black bar at the top of this page.

Highly Commended certificate

2CV Pete’s Highly Commended certificate for the adult section of the National Historic Ships Volunteer Awards.

I have not mentioned this before now as we thought that maybe our entry had fallen through the cracks and been lost, but at the same time we entered the National Historic Ships Volunteer Awards on behalf of our heroic teenage volunteer girls, Hannah and Bethany Pihama, we also sneaked an entry into the ‘grown-ups’ category on behalf of 2CV Pete. Readers from back in the day of the painting project will recall that 2CV Pete was very much part of our regular crew, making the long run in from Ramsgate every weekend in his lovely old car, donning his overalls and getting down and dirty (and cold and wet) with the best of them, taking a lion’s share of the anti-foul painting down in the bowels of the lighter, helping and even leading on some of the more engineering style stuff (moving crab winches around etc) and always being a happy, chatty, bantering member of our little community.

When we heard about the awards competition organised by the Marsh Christian Trust (for National Historic Ships) we dug out some nice pics of Pete in action (some of which we have published on here) and wrote a glowing description of his heroics, and posted it the same day as the girls’ entry. Given how fast we heard back about the girls and knew that they’d been invited to attend the awards ceremony on HMS Belfast (although we didn’t know then whether they’d won anything), we were concerned when we got no word back about the Pete entry. Hence we decided not to publish that we’d applied and contacted the competition organisers to see what the score was.

Well, now it has all been sorted out and we have, for Pete, a beautiful “Highly Commended” certificate (see picture) and a very nice covering letter noting his “significant contribution to Maritime Heritage and to the vessel Cambria”. So, thank you for those, Marsh Christian Trust and the National Historic Ships Register. 2CV Pete will be delighted although I know he doesn’t “do the internet” and will not have any idea yet that we entered him and that this is on the way to him to stick up on his wall.

Thanks, Pete and look after yourself.