One lump or two?

by John Curnow on 22 Jun 2016 There I was having an early afternoon cup of tea and contemplating the subject for this very newsletter. Thoughts went to my late Grandmother and how hers really was the last generation to have a proper silver service. I have kept her set, and for over a decade it has sat in a box somewhere in storage. Thankfully I did get rid of the sugar cubes from the bowl before it was all wrapped up and consigned to eternal darkness.

Now I would probably get shot for making said cup of tea from a bag, not in a pot, but the image of that bowl virtually overflowing with those centimetre cubed lumps, and its quaint tongs, is still very much in my mind 40 years on. I can still remember on special occasions how the cubes would be miraculously replaced with multi-coloured ones. I have not seen them in the shops for ages, but then again, I am not looking. However, it would seem that with the resurgence of high teas, everything old is new again.

At any rate, I never used the sugar, for I did not like tea or coffee at that point. Not that I did not have a sweet tooth, it is just that there were always great lollies, like mint leaves, in Miss Piggy, which was the jar you gravitated to when you walked in to her house.

So as I sat there with all those thoughts running through my mind, a link built between the old saying, ‘One lump or two?’ and the meetings I had been having with various charter yacht companies. Not all that long ago they were running, almost exclusively mind you, monohulls with say three cabins. Today, their fleets are virtually entirely comprised of cats.

Around the same time, I joyfully read Glen and Marilyn Middleton’s brilliant ‘Farewell Tin Soldier, hello Avanga’ piece. It elucidates clearly all the many and varied nuances associated with one lump or two. Now today the cubes are no longer uniform, and yes, the pun is fully intended after the soldier line. You can have long, short, tall, small, skinny, wide and so forth.

Anyway, just as in days of yore, one lump or two depends on your taste and certainly in the nautical sense, exactly what you are intending to do. Now with such great variety available in either one lump or two, one gets to see that overflowing bowl of multi-coloured sugar cubes every time you go to a marina. How special is that?

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Moving on, and elsewhere in the universe, I got mesmerised by ‘Sailing the squalls with Crystal Blues’. Perhaps it was the way the difference between storms in various regions around the globe was detailed, or that I had just seen a somewhat unseasonable downpour of literally cats and dogs belt tropical Queensland? No matter, thanks for the time at sea and the vivid memories your piece brought forward from the archives.

Ian and Annike Thomson moved their Plastic in the Pacific Crusade off to Fiji, there are also great tales from Portugal, and New Caledonia, along with lots of news from Rio. If the Med is the go for you, then please avail yourself of the material on the new Greek Cruising Tax (duty). Not sure if that is enough to solve the Eurozone issues, but a 1500 Euro fine for not being compliant is enough to get your attention. Given that most cruisers are over 12m LOA, the 10 Euro per metre, per month tax will get many waxing on lyrically, for sure!

Finally then, a 115-foot Viking ship may not be everyone’s idea of fun, and spending time on it way up in the latitudes would be enough to deter many an ardent sailor. Not so for James Howard, whose report on the Quebec City to Chicago voyage should be kind of cool, based on his preamble. So no matter what you like to read, there is plenty on offer in this newsletter.

Are you out there plying the seas and got something to say? We’d love to hear from you via editor@sail-world.com – In the meantime, do you love being on the ocean? Well remember to love them back too. They need our help. Now more than ever! Until next time…