All the seasons in a day

The Solent threw everything at the sailors on Thursday of the Royal Thames 250th Regatta...

Amazing what you find if you look closely enough around yacht clubs. I was in the Arundel Room of the Royal London Yacht Club, now newly partnered with the Royal Thames YC in all but a merger, and the smallest, tiniest lithograph, literally no more than 20cm by 20cm caught my eye. The inscription below it read: “The Royal Medina Hotel and the Royal Thames Yacht Club.”

You wouldn’t think anything of it, but the Royal Medina Hotel was ‘the’ place to be in the mid 19th Century. Set in East Cowes down the hill from the Royal residence of Osborne House, this is where Prince Albert came ashore to be taken by horse and cart up to the palace to his beloved wife, Queen Victoria. This is where ‘The Royal Yacht Club’ (now the Royal Yacht Squadron) held its initial meetings outside of London. This is the place where, in effect, it all began and we wouldn’t be sailing foiling monohulls at 56 knots without it. And all the time it was a Royal Thames establishment. Amazing how history gets distorted to suit a narrative, in all the annals I researched for my book, I never once found a mention of the Thames being there. Funny that.