T'was a Dark and Stormy Night...

...and the following morning I ventured out with the camera to take photos of the aftermath. This was early February 1983 and Blackpool had been treated to a combination of high winds and a high tide. Whilst lots of people think this is fun to walk up to the railings to see if they can dodge the waves, these photos show what power there really is in the sea...

The old Open Air Baths were still down at South Shore Promenade where the Sandcastle is now. The car park below Promenade level had filled with seawater overnight.

To give this some meaning, here's another view looking back to where I was standing to take the first shot. The entrance to the Baths was reached from a footbridge over the car park. There was 15 feet of clearance beneath the bridge...

A little further north, the ice cream, fancy hat and rock stalls that flanked the South Pier had not fared all that well. One lies on its front to the left of the photo and another has been knocked over by a combination of wind and sea and left stranded on the tram tracks.

Just next to where it used to be the sea has torn huge chunks out of the sea wall and Promenade and collapsed the iron railings.

Closer to the Central Pier and there is more damage. The cast iron bench has been tossed about from its place at the side of the Promenade shelter as though by a giant, the cast iron legs and feet in broken pieces over the pavement. For company the sea has left it a cast iron manhole cover, lifted from its place and swept here by the weight of water swirling about on the Promenade. The shelter's own seating and internal structure has been broken and swept into the sea.

Respect the sea. When it is rough and backed by high tides and wind the sea has no respect for you. At all...

Large versions of the photos: baths landscape, baths portrait, broken stalls, promenade damage, shelters

Sand Yacht Racing at St Annes

I've got up to September 1982 in my scanning of my old black and white negatives.

This week I came across a number of photos that I took for an article for Lancashire Magazine in 1982 of the sand yachts on the beach at St Annes on Sea.

This is a huge expanse of sand, open to the Irish Sea although the tide here never comes close to the edge of the beach.

As such this is a very windy place! There are huge sand hills here, dunes that are held back by star grass - at one time there was a local law that families had to plant so much star grass every year to keep the sand from swamping the villages along the coast. Even now you regularly find huge piles of sand as far back from the "front" as the main road from Lytham towards Blackpool and Starr Gate.

This wind is what makes the sport of sand yachting possible.

In the September of 1982, there was a brand spanking new Coastguard Station on the front at St Annes and it's from around here that the sand yachts congregated and went off on their zig-zag courses out on the flat sands.

The Fylde International Sand Yacht Club was formed in 1951 and hosted several large national and international competitions at St Annes.

In 1953 Richard Denning and a number of friends broke the British and World speed records here on the beach in their yacht Coronation Mk II. Unconfirmed speeds of over 70mph had been achieved - and here I'm looking back at my notes of 1982.

However thare has been no sand yachting at St Annes since a blanket ban in 2002 after a racing yacht struck a member of the public, killing her as she walked with her two sons in 1982. The pilot of the sand yacht was cleared of manslaughter but the ban has been in place ever since.

Currently a three month trial of sand yachting is coming to a close with close scrutiny on public safety and the effects on local and visiting wild life, particularly the various bird populations.

Large verions of the photos: racing yachts, coastguard station, lone yacht, stationary yachts