Sailing races at Portobello

Portobello Sailing and Kayaking Club and guests took to the water yesterday, for the start of the racing season here at Portobello beach. Everything with a sail that could be sailed was unearthed from winter hibernation and dragged to the shore for an afternoon's good, laid-back racing.

I counted about ten sails on the water before their movement made accurate counting impossible, and it was indeed a grand sight to see so many sails on the water, ranging from the most high-tech new craft to the old traditional forms. Experienced sailors and first time racers all competed together, so don't be worried about not having raced before if you'd like to join in.

The water looked quite calm, with only an uncharacteristically fierce surf wave to get through/ over/ under in order to get out to the course, marked by huge yellow bouys offshore. It turned out to be harder than it looked to get past that first small but relentless obstacle of waves determined to keep the boats on the shore, as many competitors discovered.

The weather was wonderful, with a suitably huge Portobello sky: sunny bright blue with dramatic black clouds, low grey sky with hot sunshine, a morning monsoon then an equally brief and warm evening one, with a rainbow.

These races are open to members of PS&KC, and to anyone who would like temporary membership in order to race or to just try some sailing. Sailing dinghies can be borrowed from the club, including Toppers and an Enterprise. As well as the usual sail Sundays, here will be fifteen Sunday race days, culminating with the grand finale in mid-October.

http://www.sailporty.org.uk/

Guardian Edinburgh

from my posterous blog last week

http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/insideguardian/2011/apr/27/guardian-local-update

I read the announcement in the online local news feed of the superb Guardian Edinburgh, that The Guardian intends to wind down the local sites for Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh over the next month or so, then stop them.

I was, and still am, horrified. I'm also baffled. There's a distinct feeling of betrayal in there too, not just to the communities who've benefitted from being freed from London's centrifugal force, but to the journalists who have worked so hard on this project.

I can testify that Guardian Edinburgh has transformed the way l fit into this city. I hear about events, organisations and people I'd otherwise have missed and I've met all kinds of people both online and in person. Writers' Bloc is part of their 'literary blogosphere', there have been links to my own blog when I've mentioned certain issues, and I've even had the opportunity to guest blog on several occasions, with both Tom Allan and Michael MacLeod. All this let me share some Portobello events with the rest of Edinburgh, but also gave me valuable career experience.

If this really was an experiment, then the results are conclusive: the Guardian Locals are an overwhelming and irreplaceable success. There will be a way to continue them, and, if The Guardian won't do it then we'll have to find it ourselves.

and continued here after a week's unhappy pondering about the 'experiment'...

Before Guardian Edinburgh, my news and event knowledge was gleaned from a range of good local sources: The Evening News, who sometimes covered events the day after they'd happened, with no link for the organiser; The Scotsman, who mainly covered large mainstream events and in more depth; The Guardian, who mainly covered Edinburgh in August; The Skinny, which is much less mainstream but not daily or weekly; The List, which is more mainstream but again, not daily or weekly; newsletters by being on the mailing lists of places and events of interest; plus links to local blogs where events that each blogger was following in or participating in would be mentioned.

That last method meant that to hear of twenty upcoming events or issues, I might have to read through twenty blogs. And I'd have to know of these writers or village sites in order to follow them, which meant that my feed was accidentally but heavily biased towards the activities of the literary, art, museum, uni and Portobello beach worlds of Edinburgh - or what I could find of them.

Admittedly my position as an inhabitant of Edinburgh is drastically skewed due to being stuck indoors ill for 70% of my time. It's 100% on very bad days/ weeks/ months, so I could be on the moon for all I'm actually part of the city at those times. This means I don't often get local information from posters, overheard conversations, serendipitous sightings, flyers and free magazines.

My access to - and opportunity to contribute to - local information is almost entirely via the internet, despite my being something verging on a luddite. I may not be representative of the population, but I'm a useful indication of how successfully and widely something is advertised or easy to access online. For example, thanks to their coverage of Row Porty a few weeks ago, I now know about STV local, a newly launched news site for each region of Edinburgh. http://local.stv.tv/edinburgh/. Meanwhile, through The Bike Station's online work, I'm now part of the Innertube Map project, where I'll be blogging for my local area as the Orange Line ambassador http://www.thebikestation.org.uk/innertube-map/

Unlike any other newspaper, online or otherwise, if I or anyone else feel that Guardian Edinburgh is missing some angles or topics or areas or demographics, we can change that immediately by contributing to it. Our articles or links aren't rejected as 'not newsworthy', 'not mainstream', 'not of interest to the majority', 'too local' or 'not written by a proper journalist'. You don't even have to be the person to write about it; you can just send a link to the Guardian Edinburgh journalist. I strongly suspect that this experience has liberated a lot of writers, bloggers and innovative media organisers.

Guardian Edinburgh covers what is going on in Edinburgh. I hope The Guardian can find a way to fund this valuable resource.

Innertube Map

The next stage of The Bike Station's Innertube Map Project is almost upon us.

The first part of our training is over (I think!) so that when the map site goes live, we will be able to keep it up to date with the latest news happening along each line. I'm on the orange line: Portobello to Leith. I can even see some of it from my bed.