Blue Moon's trip around the UK

I adore Falmouth, and I have had some amazing times here with good friends: pretty much every class of boat I have sailed has had its national championships here (some several times) and I have loved them all, even the one we lost at the very end defying mathematical near-certainty that we were going to win.

But because I know it so well it’s not the best place to be stuck for two days. I adventurously got the folding boat bike out and cycled to Penryn to buy some pipe to stop the leaking sink, stripped the winches and other little jobs, and then I ran out of ideas.

A moment of inspiration: I was moored next to the National Maritime Musem and I have never been in. So I went.

What a disappointment. A lovely building with a few small boats in it and not much else. They have Ben Ainslie’s Finn which is, well, a Finn. And Rodney Pattisson’s Flying Dutchman which is, well, a Flying Dutchman. And Uffa Fox’s International 14 which is, well, an old dinghy hung up in the air so you can’t see it. And really not much else.

The lady on the desk enthused about how lucky I was to be one of the first people to see their new exhibition on pirates. I wasn’t. By far the best exhibit was a video by the daughter of the creator of Captain Pugwash.

She even had clips of him working the carboard cut-outs with levers and paper clips, just as we had always suspected.

Unfortunately they had decided to enhance the ’70s feel but putting it in a ’50s TV with a sort of grainy filter which makes the picture look odd. Or perhaps that was to deter photo piracy.