Ken keeps cool head to cheat death

KEN Davies, the arthritic 77-year-old Falmouth sailor who was winched from the sea last Friday, has been reunited with his walking stick.

The Falmouth Lifeboat crew pulled it out of the water from the flotsam of his sunken 50ft converted fishing boat Iasgair, and handed it back to him.

Commodore of Falmouth Town Sailing Club, Ken disappeared beneath the waves for 20 seconds as the Culdrose rescue helicopter arrived at 3.15pm.

He was over three miles off St Anthony Head and says the sea was “a bit lumpy”. He was standing with his stick on the deck. “When you are under the water, you don’t realise the amount of time – all you are worried about is getting out,” he told the Packet.

140 years old tomorrow!

THE Falmouth Packet celebrates its 140th birthday tomorrow.

The newspaper was launched on July 14, 1855, and has been a prominent feature of town life ever since.

When the Packet celebrated its 50th birthday in 1905, the then editor wrote: “We regard it as a special privilege to be in the position to announce, with pardonable pride, that the Falmouth Packet will attain its jubilee in the coming week, the paper having been published continuously since the 14th of July, 1855.”

Ninety years on, the Packet is happy to report that it is as strong as ever, leading the field in Falmouth and Penryn.

Editor John Marquis said: “We are proud to record this latest milestone in the long, successful history of a great little newspaper.”

ASDA store is now a certainty

PENRYN will have an ASDA supermarket within 18 months regardless of the outcome of the current planning enquiry.

The company confirmed this week it would go ahead with the 50,000 square feet store if it loses in its bid to get the floor area upped to 78,000 square feet.

The planning inquiry into applications for supermarkets at Ponsharden and Kernick is currently being heard in Truro by an inspector appointed by the Secretary of State for the Environment.

Huge signs went up adjacent to the Kernick roundabout in Penryn on Sunday informing motorists a new ASDA store will be built on the site.

Mr Nigel Godfrey, development director, said: “We will await the deliberations of the inspector and then we will develop what we are permitted to develop.”