The Ancient Mariners Sailing Podcast

Joining Brad and Andrew this week is Dave Owens, part of the team at Flushing Sailing Club working hard to provide an all tides pontoon for water users from the Flushing Quay. Dave is Chair of the Falmouth Harbour Users Group charity, a flood planning consultant by trade. He was Commodore of Queen Mary Sailing Club among many other notable achievements and has been a life long sailor.

For the first time Brad and Andrew took the show on the road to record in front of an audience at St Mawes Sailing Club. The evening was organised by Social Secretary John Howard and featured special guests, Simon Rowell, who is a meteorologist for the current Olympic team. Our second guest was John Andrew, the president of St Mawes SC and well know face on the Working Boat scene in Falmouth.

This week Brad and Andrew are joined by Paul Miller, Chief Sailing Instructor at the veterans' sailing charity, Turn to Starboard. Paul is getting ready to set out on a circumnavigation of the UK aboard the classic Pilot Cutter, Spirit of Falmouth this summer, with veterans and other small ships in convoy, to take the charity's story to ports and people along the coasts of the four nations.

This week Brad and Andrew talk to the CEO of Falmouth Harbour, Miles Carden. Topical topics covered include the recent devastating fire of a classic boat in the harbour and dealing with storm Goretti. Miles gives an insight into the commercial operations of the harbour and shares his own sailing journey as the owner of a classice St Mawes One Design which he bought when he was just 16 years old. Plus the pleaure of his own son's success in the RS Aero class.

Cornish Shrimpers owner and racer Steve Przybylski, talks about the local and wider Shrimper fleet, yacht racing at Mylor and the excitement and dramas of delivering an unreliable motor boat to Cornwall from the Mediterranean.

This week it's just Brad with special guest Deborah Maw joining him by phone. Deborah leads a bohemian life, living on the road in her campervan. An activist, mystic, explorer, environmentalist and traveller, her sailing life started early. In 2017 Deborah joined the crew of a vessel which sailed round the British Isles sampling seawater for plastics and other contamination. Sailing from Plymouth, they visited Cardiff, Belfast, Edinburgh, London as well as the Isle of Arran in the Clyde. The project was led by Professor of Marine Biology at Plymouth University, Richard Thompson and aimed to gather data, and draw attention to man made marine pollution.

This week Brad and Andrew speak to Lydia Paleschi about her Allantic crossings, her trip through the Panama Canal and the ups and downs of boat ownership. Lydia is a travel writer, the author of a book about wild swimming and a YouTuber whose content has been viewed more than 20 million times. She shares stories about bad weather, dodgy skippers and how she finds peace on a long voyage.

This week Brad and Andrew interview the chair of the Cornwall Offshore Group Series Tim Rowley. A technical problem means we lost part 1 of the interview, but luckily we had a second session with Tim and here is that interview, where we talk about changes to COGS racing for 2026, and the impact of Storm Goretti which had just passed over Cornwall as we went on air. So with apologies to Tim for the lost audio, I hope you enjoy this slighly shorter pod this week. We will have Tim back another time to try again!

We interrupt normal programming this week with a live interview with the team stationed on one of the UK's most western lighthouses, off the coast of Lands End in Cornwall. Tom Sewell is part of a maintenance team on the lighhouse for the next week. And during the peak of Storm Goretti, Tom shared the experience of what it is like to be 35m up a tower, surrounded by crashing waves and 100mph winds!