Sea Change - a Festival by the Sea

ONE of the Rosneath Peninsula's longest established summer events is taking on a new life next weekend.

Sea Change, a Festival by the Sea, will be offering a chance for the whole community, sailors or non-sailors, young and old, to get in on the Cove Sailing Club Regatta and celebrate their life beside the sea.

The three day event, which has been timed to coincide with the regatta, has been organised by the Arts Sub-group of the Rosneath Peninsula West Community Development Trust, under the leadership of journalist and broadcaster Ruth Wishart who is a member of the board of Creative Scotland.

The Festival begins on Friday evening, June 8, with a reception at Cove Park when Jo Royle, internationally recognised as one of Europe’s leading female ocean yacht skippers will be talking about her experiences building and sailing Plastiki, a vessel made from 12,000 plastic bottles which she skippered across the Pacific.

Places for this event, which begins at 7pm, are restricted to 60 and anyone interested in attending is asked to call 01436 850123 to check availability.

The underlying themes of the weekend will be recycling and, of course, water and professional artist Alison Bell has been working with the children at the local primary schools to build boats from recycled materials.

These boats will all be on display at the Burgh Hall in Cove on Saturday. June 9 between noon and 3pm and Jo will be there to judge the creations which Ruth said were often "a triumph of imagination over practicality" and award prizes.

While the boats are on display "Mermaid Teas and Tucker" will be served in the hall and all the goodies on offer will have a seaside theme.

However, before that the Peninsula youngsters are invited to dress up with a seaside theme, be it pirates, mermaids, sailors or anything else nautical, and parade from Kilcreggan Pier to Cove Sailing Club. The parade will start at 10.15am and at the end the costumes will be judged. The judges will be especially looking for costumes made with recycled materials.

After the boat judging and Mermaid Teas there will be a special free film show in the Burgh with "Floodtide" on offer along with some archive footage from around the area. The free film show will begin at 3pm.

Sunday's events begin with "Float Your Boat" when the youngsters will be invited gather at the Burgh Hall at 10.30am to float their model boats from the previous day's exhibition off the beach.

A Royal Navy rib crew will be off shore to make sure that none of the recycled boats sails off to become a new pollutant and the young people were asked not to paint their boats so that the paint can't pollute either.

Afterwards, at 11.15 there will be another free movie in the Burgh Hall, this time for the kids with a special screening of the favourite "The Water Horse - Legend of the Deep".

The weekend's entertainment will conclude in Kilcreggan with a performance of "Sea Shanties on the Shore" performed by the Peninsula Choir and "Poetry by the Pier" read by local writers.

The Terrace Cafe will be serving fishy treats all day on Sunday and other entertainment will be available at the sailing club on Saturday evening as part of the regatta proper.

Ruth said: "We are really keen that as many people as possible get involved. This is very much a community event and we want it to be enjoyed by as broad a section of the community as possible."