remmie's sailing blog

Weekend race, started fairly solidly, bit of confusion with the start; downwind?!?  Got away decently, 3rd around the first mark to our main competitor in a Farr92 and a Beneslow 38-42ish.  Pulled back 3BL and got an overlap on the 2nd mark.  He broke right, we went a bit more left where we felt there was better air and we put ourselves in a solid 2nd place (he kept going right for the rest of the day and kept getting served for it, bit of slow learning).  Got round the top mark and unleashed the kite, Beneslow was very slow hoisting and didn’t have the DW speed we do in that sort of wind (10k).

Beneslow fought kind of pointlessly; significantly bigger boat we weren’t going to cause him a lot of pain, we were clearly faster with a comparitively bigger kite capable of going a lot shy’er and he was trying to luff us into the break water (i.e. we were going to get obstruction rights).  Didn’t really hurt us that much, we drove over the top of him, he tried to follow, wrapped his kite up and got fed to the pack; lost 3 positions (plus an extra couple divi 1 boats in front of him) trying to win an impossible arguement.

Big run back offshore, fresh breeze came in, the guys behind caught it first but it just had a bit more ompf off the beach a couple mile; normal rich get richer thing.  Had a naviguessing error on the final mark, wasn’t the naviguesser’s fault (i.e. me), the skipper just forgot the heading coming around the mark so decided to “head a bit higher to be safe” until I had time to check the heading again.  Apparently 60 degrees above is “safe”.

Ended up with a 12 minute lead for a 2 hour race, first and fastest; happy lil vegimites.  Bit stressed now though, we’ve got something to live up to now and we’re gonna end up with mud on our faces when we go tits up.

Turfed one of the crew; kept panicking and stuffing up on the first inshore (tried to turf me overboard by releasing the topping lift halfway through a gybe), first offshore he was a bit better but on the weekend he was just a complete no show.  Been a bit flakey overall, didn’t put any time into boat preparation with the rest of the regular crew, etc; so he’s out.  Need a replacement now, anyone in Perth want a ride?

Oh, and after the committee antics from the first inshore (over time, DSQs, etc; see below) they decided to scrap the entire race; looked like someone protested, letter from the chairman basically saying it was non-negotiable and no futher protests can be entered.  Not sure how that’s going to affect us for the inshore series over all but we shall see.

Found out the camera is going to cost $100-150 to fix *cringe*.  Try and get it sorted this week and hopefully have it back up and running for next weekend.  Although there are some pics up from last weeks offshore race at http://www.sailinganarchy.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=36786; sorry OG, I know devil’s spawn website

Rgds,

remmie

PS Worked out what I’m going to use this for now as well, personal sailing diary so if you don’t like it, www.google.com (suggest searching for “meatspin”)

Bit behind the times but update on the weekend…

First of the offshore winter series and we served it.  Started with a light easterly, eventually got beaten down by the incoming seabreeze.  We managed to sail in front of the 3 mile transition hole and pick the seabreeze coming back off the coast, pretty much avoided the transition which was great, sailed around everyone parked in the hole skimming the edge of it by a boat length.  Had a great battle with another boat running into the beach mark; one light planing hull, one heavy displacement hull made for fun and games in light puffy stuff.  Eventually got the overlap on the mark, hauled up beside them cause they blinked on the kite drop first, slammed it round and shut the door on the inside shot much to their distress considering they were already sticking it in there.  From there is was a bit of soldier’s course (easterly course on a SW breeze) and we had the displacement boy between us and the competition with a divi 1 boat storming down on them.  Got 3rd over the line beaten by a 42′ and a 36′ in a 30′, 4th on handicap only beaten by the displacement and LWL boys;  so happy little vegimites.

Was really grouse, had a thrown together crew and we just stuck it, grabbed the sailing master from my baby and it was awesome.  We’re used to working together but him having to direct people to do what I needed; having him work directly with me was pure porn; it’s amazing the change in dynamic one person can cause.  Scared our skipper a few times, he was of the opionion that we should be dropping the kite 2BL before the mark, not having the pole still up as the bow went past the mark.  We had float hoists, float drops, and peels happening; this was the boat that I introduced to float drops last week so an interesting learning curve.

All in all very good weekend, smiles all round.  Decided that we should probably lighten the boat and take things seriously now!

 

Rgds,

remmie

 

Hrmpf, why’d my theme just reset itself?

Good news first

6 196 Mini-minx GOVONI-Raeffer THOMSON-Alex Arrivé

Noice, 6th Proto in for Mini Fastnet.  Kudos!!!

Found out my baby (Inglis 57) was doing winter series last night, already committed to another boat (it’s a good mate so all good) but I always cry when my lil lady is out and I’m not with her.  Someone else walking around my foredeck is like perving on a mate’s missus, it just feels dirty.

Shit wind today, I think light winds are a national epidemic; glass with random little fingers of breeze.  Some absolute moron (including us) finds himself on a finger and just ride up it for a mile lead.  Just stupid, no consistency, just too much luck invovled.  Other than that had fun, was good for teaching purposes… “Right, float mexican drop”, “Huh?”, “Follow my call”; crash course in mexican drops ensues, nice and easy in light winds.

No pictures, absolutely gutted, my 2 month old waterproof camera has a big ass crack through the LCD (no view finder). Cracked on the way down to the boat, narked big time, going to try and get it through as a warrantry job cause theres no marks on the case or screen, it was in it’s case, in my bag with my mobile phone (which is full size LCD screen and no where near as robust).

Then there was the commitee boat DSQ’ing boats who sailed through the finish line after they moved and hadn’t put an on station flag.  Then they screwed the finishing sheet, first boat in our divi was 6 minutes outside time limit and boat crew marked it as such.  Ther recorded the rest of us and presumed it was obvious, cause the first boat was over time, that the rest of us were.  When the comittee wrote up the results they marked us as fastest, then when they we corrected them (i.e. we were all over the time limit) they decreed that as they had announced and presented the flags the race would stand and the results be adjusted to account for the first boat.

Fun and games for the day but good for shits and giggles.

Mini Fastnet…. go the Minx!

277 Miles to go and has picked up 5 odd spots in the last two scheds, be awesome if Raeffer could pull it off.

http://www.winchesclub.com/fastnet650/….

Place No P/S Date/Heure TU Pos Dist Arrivée

1 424 P PCO Technologies-Set-EnvDiroEn-nLeAmMeOnTt TE-Tanguy DESHAYES-Ronan 07/06/06 05:50 51°11.124 N 009°27.450 W 273,808 M

2 196 P Mini-minx GOVONI-Raeffer THOMSON-Alex 07/06/06 05:50 51°13.932 N 009°30.864 W 277,289 M

3 265 P Vecteur-plus LE-VOURC’H-Didier LE-CLAQUIN-Aloys 07/06/06 05:50 51°14.610 N 009°30.690 W 277,666 M

4 291 P Déphémérides STEPHANT-Sébastien DUBOIS-Thierry 07/06/06 05:49 51°15.702 N 009°31.362 W 278,717 M

5 510 P Adria-mobil-too MIHELIN-Andraz SHARP-Philip 07/06/06 05:50 51°16.242 N 009°31.518 W 279,155 M

I love how much it says about Mini’s when someone like Alex Thomson (skipper of Hugo Boss) will go CREW on one.

Rgds,

remmie

Met Phillippe Peche on the weekend.  Start thinking,

and

Anyways, got him to come down a tune up the rig on the Farr 30 I’m doing winter series on.

Dead set legend; I learnt more off Phillippe in 2 hours of dicking around rig tuning than I have in two years of sailing with 2 ex-Whitbread guys.  Ability to explain subtle tuning adjustments in a straight forward way was just awesome; about the only bad thing I could say is he tends to over simplify.  If you want to go fast for the season and have a couple hundred to spend get him to come tool around for a day with you; worth every cent.  Have a look at the SailForce link.

Anyways that was my excitement for the weekend…

Rgds,

remmie

 

Mmmkay, kick this thing off.  Dunno what I’m going to use it for but we’ll see, probably just a collection of cool sailing stuff I find laying about the web.  Plus any pics and vid I take.

I race on Inglis 57, Farr92s, Farr30 depending on the day of week, etc.

I’m in love with Mini’s; for sale/exchange, one mother in exchange for a Mini.

Other than blah, you’ll work it out as I go along.

Rgds,

remmie

Welcome to Livesaildie.com, your new sailing blog hosted by Live Sail Die. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Stupid auto-message thing.

OK, curiosity killed the cat, information bought it back and all that.

Should really be working at the moment so I’ll come back to this later

 Rgds,

 

remmie