I have never seen any evidence that DC stated that boat and Donald say together. If that was the case, why did the RN spend 2 weeks with the full backing of both the Campbell Family and Leo Villa attempting to recover his body after the tragedy. It makes no sense. This is an anecdote that I believe gained currency long after the crash. LV in his book The Record Breakers speaks of these efforts and evidence of the time, and correspondence between Futcher and LV records how disappointed all were that recovery of DC's body had not been possible. Both Gina and Tony James outright refuted the suggestion that DC remain on the lake bed if recovery was possible. The decision not to recover K7 was taken at the time because the team felt they knew what had gone wrong. I don't doubt for one second Leo's sincerity, or the care for his best friend, but I do doubt that this was DC's expressed wish, and the way is now been used as a fact to justify their position re the future of K7. The fact that DC wanted the team to carry on his work with K7, if possible, should anything happen to him personally adds futher evidence against the viewpoint.
So there you have it from the man himself. I for one would not question Neil's authority when it comes to DMC's history so thanks for that' Neil.
On another matter, following much tooing and froing these past few weeks we were seriously running out of time because the army has one again kindly offered to help but has a deadline to get what's needed together to install our slipway. Remember that we were supposed to be running on Coniston so we got a fair way down the road of recruiting, organising, taking holidays, etc. before the gig was pulled so the plan was just to take the vacated dates and run elsewhere. Anyway - having finally reached the point where we believe we have a workable understanding with our museum partner there's simply no more time to play with so the army has been asked to go ahead and we're prepping to go back to Bute this summer at the end of July. After that we'll do a the requisite strip-inspection then settle into finally getting all the restoration work finished and the paperwork done.
We'll issue a full statement in the next 24 hours
I'm only a plumber from Cannock...
"As to reward, my profession is its own reward;" Sherlock Holmes.
'It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to.' W.C. Fields.