With all this financial talk buzzing around of how poor we are as a result of the worldwide financial crisis and how tight money is, one has got to stop and think that people will be cutting back on non-essentials and luxuries. Which normally means no more eating out and if push comes to shove, sell the yacht and resign from the yacht club.

Wouldn't it be great if we at ABYC had a rare sailing related artifact lying around that we could sell for heaps of money and with the proceeds give every member a holiday on their membership fees?

The only item of indeterminate historical value left over at ABYC from the fire, that I know of, is a Blue Ensign that came off of Scott's Discovery II, that took him to the Antarctic in 1910.

The Blue Ensign was first presented to the Zwartkops Yacht Club on May 12, 1934 by Admiral E.R. Evans, Commander in Chief of the Royal Navy in Africa Station.

Browsing the net and looking for some indication off what value we could place on the Ensign I came across a listing for a set of wall maps by the greatest Italian ancient Cartographer, Giacomo Castaldi, being sold by a New York Gallery for $850 000.00 - that's R8 540 386.56 at today's exchange rate.

Methinks that 8 MILLION bucks would buy us free membership for at least 10 years.

Anyone got a spare set of Giacomo Gastaldi wall maps lying around?

Original Giacomo Gastaldi Wall Maps Post