While his colleagues blogged, tweeted and filed stories with their smartphones and tablets from a media boat on Weymouth Bay during the London Olympics regatta, veteran British sailing scribe Bob Fisher regaled them with a yarn about how the games were covered 40 years ago.

Fisher recalled being on a media boat on the opening day of sailing at the Munich Olympics — the sailing venue was in Kiel — when a photographer from an evening newspaper in Copenhagen, Denmark, boarded with a wicker hamper.

"In it wasn't his lunch," Fisher said.

Turns out the hamper contained a carrier pigeon. Fisher said that after taking a picture of Denmark's Paul Elvstrom at the start of the Soling race, the photographer put his camera in a changing bag, snipped off a negative, rolled it up tight and put it into a screw-top aluminum can. He strapped the canister to one leg of the carrier pigeon and released it.

"That picture appeared on the front page of the Copenhagen paper that evening," Fisher said. "Here's a guy who thought on his feet. Obviously he'd done it before, or had practiced it."

Fisher has written 35 books and is working on three more books about the America's Cup, including one titled "The Poisoned Chalice."

— Bernie Wilson — Twitter http://twitter.com/berniewilson

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EDITOR'S NOTE — "Eyes on London" shows you the Olympics through the eyes of Associated Press journalists across the 2012 Olympic city and around the world. Follow them on Twitter where available with the handles listed after each item.