The Bluebird Project

On the venue front, what about Holme Pierrepont in Nottingham ?

2 miles of shallow man made venue ? Used to race hydroplanes there I believe ?

Loads of infrastructure for crowds

The regatta lake is only two (2) kilometres end to end. If there had been two miles I would have been to see them before Bute, because it is so close and I could have slept in every day!.

The powerboat racing did take place there, but not so much during the last decade. Jim Noone showed of Miss Windermere Vi to the racing audience at one event.

umm, i raced there a few times and although i like the venue a lot and you could get het up an trottin’ there would be no way you could get her round at eaither end short of shutting her down and being repositioned then run back the other way. no room for wiggling your way out eaither

‘Twas just a thought Gruber.

Just thought a quick update may be in order.

As we stand, we were told by the Coniston Hoopla Committee that the bureaucracy was over and we could crack on. They gave some dates that worked on paper but then the LDNPA confirmed that the bureaucracy was more of a miasma than ever before with things like.

"I would suggest at this stage you need to think about noise emissions (in decibels Db) from Bluebird, the size of any wash and the distance it maintains its integrity over flat water (this is relevant to lakeshore impact)"

No thought on distances or wind direction or any other variable when it comes to decibels and a failure to see that all our boats combined wouldn't produce the same wash as a single breezy afternoon but it's more work for someone - not us, thankfully! The bureaucrats also say the very soonest they could sign off on a deal would be March. Really? All the paperwork they want should have been completed years ago and popped in a desk drawer to be dusted off when needed so does Coniston have a load of resources and people commit to an event in July that they can't say will ever happen until the committees have stopped buggering about in March? That is way too late.
But the worst of it is that those concerned just will not sit down and talk about how the boat will be displayed and run into the future - three times we've asked. I think it's fair to say that virtually no one wants to see her locked up for the rest of time so we need to agree how future running will be organised so the boat can be displayed in the meantime. Folk say they want the boat in the museum and we have said from day one, and it has always been understood, that all our hard work comes with strings attached so it's not like anything has changed, but we can't seem to kick start the relevant dialogue so we can't progress much until that is sorted out. Why does this have to be so difficult to organise? Good news is that if nothing is sorted for Coniston 2019 there's plenty of other places we can run so you can all come for a look.

As a BSAC advanced open water diver, I was organising a World Record years ago for the club. The local council had a very large park that we wanted to use and we had council officials and the mayor at the club for a free drink and all seemed quite well. We still had to go through the same 4 months to just get signatures on paper but when nothing happened for about a month, I phoned and was told that we would have to reapply as one of the signatories had left the employment. I said "can't the new chap just add his signature witnessed by all and BINGO!". Ohh no, the whole application was incinerated and we had to start again! Oh Bliss! We would not have enough time to reapply and that was that. Then a local celebrity heard what had happened, made one phone call, we got the permission within 8 days! Huh ! So, invite the Prince and his new wife to crack some champers over Bluebirds bow (I am sure you can pull up a couple of dates for the official invitation letter - a couple of dates will ensure a greater degree of acceptance) . Get luvly shots of him in the cockpit, the world press will go nuts again, and over some salmon and cucumber sandwiches you can whisper how his influence may help. Only an idea guys as the next big event? I am sure your PR team can organise all this, if not I volunteer, but need more information naturally. I also have several dry suits hanging in my garage and would be honoured to assist next time she backs into the water. I want to book the old Black Bull in Coniston for a week when she does her long awaited return to the lake. But with no date I can't book so, "The Bluebird Prince" is waiting......

Renegadenemo wrote: ↑Sat Nov 03, 2018 10:32 pm "I would suggest at this stage you need to think about noise emissions (in decibels Db) from Bluebird, the size of any wash and the distance it maintains its integrity over flat water (this is relevant to lakeshore impact

Ye Gods! Leaving aside the fact that all this could have been done and dusted years ago, perhaps the considered response to that one would be:

"We would like to invite you to attend Coniston Records Week, during which you will observe a large number of craft being operated at speeds similar to those that it is envisaged will be attained by Bluebird during the proving trials. This event takes place every year and, as such, all of this activity is presumably acceptable to the authority.
We would appreciate an explanation as to why you are concerned that a single craft, operating at similar speed, might adversely impact upon the environment to an unacceptable extent".

Or, to put it bluntly: LDNPA, GET YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR @RSES! Have you had them up there for so long that you think that this is some kind of step into the unknown? It has all been done before, all you have to do is look at the evidence and draw from the wealth of previous experience......

(Calms down, takes deep breath, counts to ten and.....relax)

Hi Bill aka The Bluebird Ring Master!!

Thanks for the update, what I don’t understand is that from records week there’s going to be a significant amount of noise, wash, impact on wildlife, so why do they turn a blind eye to that yet make you guys jump through ever increasing hoops! It literally must be like trying to organise a circus. It does seem like the ldnpa etc have only half arsed commited to bluebird running as a pr exercise in the hope that if they drag their heels enough and put up enough barriers you’ll tell them to shove it and they can then say we gave you the opportunity...

what I don’t understand is that from records week there’s going to be a significant amount of noise, wash, impact on wildlife, so why do they turn a blind eye to that yet make you guys jump through ever increasing hoops! It literally must be like trying to organise a circus. It does seem like the ldnpa etc have only half arsed commited to bluebird running as a pr exercise in the hope that if they drag their heels enough and put up enough barriers you’ll tell them to shove it and they can then say we gave you the opportunity...

Lot of truth there... The big difference with records week is that no one goes there but let the media stir up a furore about Bluebird 'going home' and everyone would go.

By the way - a quick question. If Titanic were raised, would her 'spiritual home' be a Lat and Lon in the north Atlantic? or would it be Southampton, or Belfast, perhaps? Just wondering. One or two have questioned my opinions on this but they haven't lived with the thing for a quarter of their life. I got a rescue dog once and its home became here with the kids and family, not with the RSPCA. K7 is like a living thing to us and her workshop with all her tools, spares, support equipment and her loving team has become her true home. No problem displaying her in the museum when she's not doing other things, which will be most of the time, but pack your kid off to boarding school and you expect them to come home in the holidays. Anyway, enough explaining.

The LDNPA appears to be terrified of the whole thing, nor do they like the fact that a group of determined volunteers from the other side of the country has forced their hand. Well they should have had the common sense to see this coming and positioned themselves to be the heroes of the hour. Not our fault they sat there fat, dumb and happy collecting their wages for back-stopping anything remotely controversial for so long and therefore had nothing in place to deal with a fast ball coming their way.
Trouble is, the world is full of whiners. Take that astronaut chappie who quoted Winston Churchill. Got shot down by a load of do-gooders calling Churchil a racist. So, the man in the moon apologised and promised to educate himself on Churchill's racism whereupon the Churchill supporters waded in to tell Mr. Astronaut not to judge Churchill by today' standards. FFS! The guy was only being an astronaut. Then today there's a fat lass who's made a film and flew the flag for fat lasses everywhere only to get grief from others citing that other fat lasses had made films and they were black into the bargain. For goodness sakes, I'm a fat lad - just fly the flag, will you!

I digress again...
As I touched on before, one major thing that just isn't going in either is that under no circumstances will we put the boat in the museum without an agreement stretching into the future to get her back out again. Heard lots of silliness on this one. Everything from us trying to steal the boat, that we make money out of this somehow, etc, etc. It's a standing joke in the workshop that we just can't seem to find all this money and all the brown envelopes remain obstinately empty. It's utter bollocks - this costs us money in the same way as our hobbies and holidays cost us but there's an ever present group of snide, jealous individuals out there who just can't or won't get their heads around this. They've always been there going right back to the recovery when they thought the BBC handed out the buckets and granted us access to their money lake so they get a good case of being rightly ignored.

The truth of the situation is this. Back in late 2000 I stood in the doorway of the Bluebird Cafe listening to a dad telling his lad about Campbell's boat. The lad was first super excited then equally crushed when he found he couldn't go see the thing as it was sunk. I had been sat astride the engine cover less than an hour earlier. In that moment I decided that if there was any way on earth we could get that thing out of there and mend it then that had to be the plan. Never thought we'd find a way but Gina surprised us all by taking it over and asking for just that.
So, having spent 18 years without ever letting up for a single day getting almost to the point where young and old alike can be inspired for years to come by this stunning machine, can you imagine the horror at the thought of it being locked away never to run again, as some would prefer to do?
Yes, there will still be the Type II and Type IIIs who will say, nah, they're trying to steal it to make money, blah-de-blah, but they're morons and time, as ever, will be our witness. What will happen, however, is that we will play every card to the death to make sure that machine is as accessible to as many people in as many places as possible going forward and anyone who wants to lock her away to gather dust will have the fight of their lives on their hands!
Will Coniston be ready to host an event in 2019? Who knows, it's in the balance, but if they can't do it properly the best thing they can do is be honest with everyone and re position for 2020 and we'll put on another show in 2019 while they sort the finer points.

Well done Bill, we now can read diary entries on the Bluebird Forum!

What would be the situation if I had not told Bill that you can't just rock up and run a boat on Coniston Water? What if he had not challenged me to come up with a solution - which was a Bye Law specific to the Proving Trial. Would the Parish Council and villagers have come up with that solution? Who knows, but they did support and go along with the BBP plan and its execution.

Where I may have gone wrong was to agree to avoid the single option of a Proving Trial and running once a year as the only option. The top LDNPA officer suggested that was not the way to get any member agreement in 2010. So we have the 'one off' Proving Trial, now with added hurdles, nine years later and that event is a one off feature.

The Proving Trial is fully defined in the Bye Laws and I would not expect anyone to call the activity at Loch Fad by that name, but they do.

If there were no Proving Trial, the homecoming of Bluebird K7 could be on the back of a lorry and the offload of cradle and boat into the designated museum wing. That process would not inspire anyone, let alone the young people who have heard about the man Donald Campbell and a jet hydroplane Bluebird K7 from their elders, but have never experienced the sounds and sight of such a speed vehicle.

Methinks this coming week could be the make or break time for 'home truths', and I may deliver them, as it was my plan to get the best for the village and the National Park from 2005/6. Watch this space .