Perhaps one should not look back and ponder over all the uncertainties and omissions, but I would like to cover the ground once more, because after five years as editor I have inevitably acquired a little more knowledge than when I started!

No. 1, February 1995.
After my pilot project of the Christmas Magazine, Christian Gude and some student friends set the ball rolling and found the perfect name for our membership journal. An intriguing little notice appeared on the last page; a new book about Bjarne Aas, to be called "Making one’s living in the summer" was about to be published – as far as I know, the manuscript was finished in Norwegian, covering his life, career and boats at Isegran, Fredrikstad, but through lack of funds (?) this book has never been published. Worth following up?

No.2, June 1995.
I was the new editor and the idea was to collect a few articles whose common theme was sailing and the fate of boats under the occupation of Norway. The main item was the account of our Honorary Member Cecil Chr. Stephansen, now aged nearly 88, about his sailing experiences during the war. I tentatively approached the subject of Johan Anker’s last ditch effort to persuade the King and Crown-Prince not to go into exile in early June 1940, while Peter and I played detectives to discuss the possible origin of our 10 metre yacht GAVOTTE. I can now show the 1921 photo of the real GAVOTTE and compare it with a similar photo of our boat taken 70 years later – are the two boats identical? Finally Rolf Rathcke gave us a German perspective: the scuttling of JØRN ex FEO, a Charles Nicholson 8mR, by a war widow and her daughters to save the boat from bombing or destruction during the Russian onslaught on Berlin. Rolf has fairly recently bought this boat ; it is now in mint condition and he competes with his son Philip in the IEMA World Cup.

No. 3, October 1995.
We had three slender issues the first year! Gustav Dietrichson now delighted us with the first part of his ambitious series on the ROLLO boats. The 12 metre ROLLO was famed for her victories at Cowes in 1911. She survived until after WW II but the exact circumstances of her demise are a mystery in spite of great efforts on our part to solve the mystery. The other main article was an account of the sailing career of the Bergen surgeon, Johan Friele, who won many international regattas with his 10 metre, SKUM 2. Funnily enough, the measurements of this boat are the same as ours – the demise of SKUM 2 is also unknown. Peter and I came up with new information about the correct name of the Norwegian family who bought our boat as "enemy property" in 1945. When we rang them up nearly fifty years later they remembered a number of useful details. Our boat’s saloon furniture was made in Berlin in 1941 and Bjarne Aas had his name enscribed somewhere – was he the designer of our coach roof ?

No. 4, April 1996.
On the back cover page we extended an invitation to our sister clubs to meet at Johan Anker’s house at the end of August to found ECYU. I took the plunge with English summaries and started my article series on the metre boat Olympics (1908 – 1952). I now supply a photo of Johan Anker’s FRAM in the 8 metre class. Chr. Jensen’s status seems to have been that of "reserve crew" – I spotted this explanation in an old SEILAS recently. Similarly, the Duchess of Westminster
(Shelagh Cornwallis-West, whose brother married the widow Jennie Churchill, mother of Winston) probably sailed with the four-man amateur crew of her yacht SORAIS, which won the bronze medal – she evidently received a silver commemorative medal . At the first AGM of ECYU, in February 1997, we had the good fortune to meet Andrew McMeekin, whose great uncle, Thomas McMeekin, had won the gold medal on his 6 metre DORMY in the same Olympics at Cowes. In the 1924 Olympics at Le Havre, I told the story of EMILY but had no photo of her. Our Portuguese ECYU representative, David Vieira, has restored her, and I now show a good photo from her past. In my innocence, when writing about "La Belle Epoque", with a bit more background to the article on BRITANNIA, I presented a really lovely picture of Alice Keppel, the last mistress of King Edward VII. We now know that she was the grandmother of Prince Charles’ Camilla!

No. 5, October 1996.
Gustav had moved onto ROLLO 3 in this number. The incredible mystery of her disappearance down on the French Riviera a few years ago has not been solved. Her owner then bought EILEEN, Sonja Henie’s 12 metre which had a fling as a charter boat on the Oslofjord in the early 1990s. EILEEN may be for sale again, but we doubt whether she will ever return to Norway. In my second Olympic article, I raised an interesting point connected with the 1928 Olympics : Who was in Crown-Prince Olav’s crew for the selection races in the Oslofjord? His crew in Amsterdam had never raced together before (and Olav had requested Johan Anker to take over as helmsman). I spotted the probable answer, given by King Olav himself much later, in an interview with SEILAS on related topics. His faithful professional seaman Ole Andersen would have been allowed to act as crew (only amateurs for the actual Olympics still). I now supply a good photo of them together. In the QUINTA article, the "missing" years of ownership before the Hassel family from Bergen bought her in 1918, are now cleared up. See Letters to the Editor in this issue.

No. 6, April 1997.
To the excellent article celebrating the diamond jubilee of the IOD (International One Design) in 1996, I add a photo of Georg Unger Vetlesen on board the first IOD he ordered in USA from Bjarne Aas. My third Olympics article gave an account of the 1952 final race of the six metres in Helsinki, when Finn Ferner, helmsman on ELISABETH lost his chance of getting gold. This awakened old memories of what had happened, and occasioned correspondence in SEILAS. The double victor of 1948 and 1952, LLANORIA, is no more (destroyed under restoration?), but there has been a sign of life from PAN, the double victor in the Dragon class (see Letters to the Editor). Gustav moved onto the history of his own boat, MARIA-MARIA ex ROLLO 4, the largest 10 metre Anker ever constructed. It is a great relief that the future of this wonderful boat now seems assured, and that she will stay in the Oslofjord.

No. 7, November 1997.
NIRVANA article: the portrait of King Haakon in oils is shown under "club pages". In my long article on the career of Johan Anker, in English, I mistakenly gave the impression that the granite monument at Garnholmen, Hankø, was erected in his honour for the centenary of his birth (1971). Although there was a big gathering there to mark this centenary, it was in 1949 that Crown-Prince Olav, in the presence of King Haakon and other members of the Norwegian Royal Family, unveiled the monument. Erik Anker made a speech on both occasions and here is a photograph of him. The unveiling of 1949 is shown on Lars Bull’s film of Johan Anker’s life.

No. 8, May 1998.
As a supplement to the article on SIRA, here is a photo of her Swedish rival SVANEVIT. Are the other Swedish competitors in the Kattegat cup, such as YVONNE, ALBATROSS and ATAIR still in existence, but perhaps with other names? SILJA is still up in Finland and FRØYA in Scotland. News from Sweden about this would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise, as regards all 8 mR, the amazing register kept by John Lammerts van Bueren will hopefully track down all surviving boats.

No. 9, November 1998.
There was a line missing at the end of my article in Norwegian about the rivalry of the two clubs, NFL and KYK, the precursors of KNS. One was national without a clubhouse, the other was based in Kristiania on the Dronningen site. They finally amalgamated into KNS at the end of 1904. The missing line should read:
(Men den formalitet å oppløse) KYK var faktisk aldri foretatt. There is also an interesting point about the blue and white KNS pennant. This was taken over from KYK, and few KNS members today probably know about its origin, especially since the NFL pennant was red with the golden lion. In my article, I should have perhaps touched upon the story of the «rebellion» against the Union flag in the early 1890s. Gunnar Knudsen, the first Commodore of NFL, the national club, when it was founded in 1883, had to resign his membership ten years later because he sailed his TERJE VIKEN without the «Sildesalat», daring to use a purely Norwegian flag. The Norwegians finally won the right to display their own national flag exactly 100 years ago. The assent was passed by the Storting on a 3rd reading in spite of the Swedish King Oscar’s refusal the first two times.