Archive for the ‘Sailing’ Category

Since I have not posted for some time, I figured a bit of humour might not go amiss!! Here is a great insight into what it’s like when we get into some real manual work! In this case back in 2004 when we first renovated the boat! Click below to see it… or go to the media page to see this and more!
(more…)

This is one of my special books… it is a first edition and has been signed by the author, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston. It was given to me on my birthday this year by H’s parents and it now seems that I owe them 2 lots of thanks… first for giving me a special book and the second for giving me such an excellent book!

The story flows so easily that it is actually hard to put it down. As with other books of this type, it details all of the hard-times and the good-times but what really makes this story different is the context and the person. The constant worries about his boat, Suhaili, and RK-J’s amazing abilities to render temporarily permanent repairs really keep you turning the pages and would even impress Dave!

Bearing in mind that it was also a race, the story really comes to an end just a bit too soon. It has the most memorable end of any book I have read though… Falmouth!! If you take into consideration that the book takes only a few days to read, yet the voyage was nearly a year long, you get a deeper understanding of the true scale of, what most certainly is, one of the greatest sea adventures of all time.

For anyone that is interested, Gringod and I have finally uploaded the new Aquasail.net homepage. This will allow you to see each of the loactions that the yacht Spinalonga has been to and will link to the relevant article. Have a look and see what you think. The map system is also being heavily used in a project that I am working on at the moment to ducument location photography and travel articles.

Dave will very soon have a presence online as we are building him a photoblog. Links and details to follow over the next few days. If anyone has any ideas for sub-domain names for him… let me know! We hope this will make him use his camera little more and get used to posting online!

With my seemingly never-ending list of things I want to achieve with my time, somehow, posting to my website does not happen as often as I would like. Especially in these summer months, I barely have enough time to eat, let alone read, write and photograph. I have been very busy with Mystere over the last few weeks and have even spent some time away in France. You can read the full story of our experience in the Blenheim Triangle Race on The Sailing Bug. This coming week-end, most of us will be off to Jersey to compete in the annual Dresdner, Channel Island Yacht Race. Aidy will be absent as he will be on his way to an adventure in Norway. Last year we came 10th in this race from over 100 boats, this year we are not expecting such great things… though we will of course try as hard as we always do!! The weather report this year is not looking ideal for us but at least it will be sunny (fingers crossed)!! Dave, myself and Helen will be heading over a day earlier so that we can do some shopping and visit a couple of the local attractions. With any luck, Dave and I will have our cameras and so might have something to show for it aswell!! Leigh will be heading over Friday evening for the start on Saturday.

The Little Britain Spring Regatta was held here in Guernsey this year. With over 30 boats from the UK and Channel Islands there was quite a lot of action out on the water. A few of us headed out on the Sunseeker to watch. Some of the best photographs of the week-end can be found at Encaptured.com. If you were sailing in the Little Britain Regatta, you should check out the pictures as there are some great shots!!

Another evening spent at Jacksons but this time Dave and I were installing our new, in-boom outhaul system. The purpose of this was two-fold. The existing outhaul was not working correctly and got stuck everytime it was pulled on and the existing system looked messy with a 4:1 pulley system at the base of the mast.
By installing the outhaul and new Harken fiddle blocks into the boom, they will be protected and out of the way. The installation involved drilling a hole into the boom at the guestimated correct location… please take note that unless you are exceptionally skilled like Dave, you should probably look where you are drilling. Next challenge was to rig the blocks correctly and push a plated D-ring with a bolt into the boom using a long socket extention and attempt to get the bolt into the new hole. This actually only took a couple of minutes and meant the end of the hard work. This was bolted into position and sealed up with some heatshrink. Next we had to pull the new outhaul through the length of the boom using the old one which also went to plan without any problem at all. With everything going so well, I was starting to get a bit paranoid! We put the boom back together and gave it a proper test. Again… everything seemed fine.

Having cleared up and tied the boom onto the van we headed to the boat to put it back on for the race on the following day. 15 minutes later and the boom was back in place with only some rope to cut when we have the mainsail rigged up. With everything going so well up to now, I can only hope it doesnt fall to bits or something!

Over the weekend, H, Leigh and myself went to Jersey on Mystere to do some shopping, drink some Guiness and as it turns out nearly end up returning deaf!! This could have been appropriate as the actual travel elements included enough fog to realistically allow you to call yourself blind aswell. To read in detail about the problems we had with the boat and how we fixed them in our usual ‘At least it works’ kind of way, head over to the sailing bug! I would just like to reinforce a couple Leigh’s view aswell… the KFC was awful and Constantine was a very good film.

Aidy also went on a holiday over the weekend on his motor bike. He has made a few posts about his experience if you are interested.

Many a happy memory of working in the engine bay of the Sunseeker was brought to light when Dave and I arrived at 8AM to go out and get the GPS positions of the race marks in the channel. The adventure started when one of the batteries was too flat to get the V8 going and Dave, being determined to use a powerboat instead of the yacht, dived in and started moving them around. We eventually left at 9AM to get some fuel and then head off on our mission. My job in the scheme was to take photos and get waypoints for each mark on my Garmin. An hour later and we had finished with all the information and photos that we needed, not too bad considering how cold it was when you got up to 40 knots… strangely only on top of your head though! On the whole, it was quite a pleasant morning. This adventure was followed by an hour and a half of trying to figure out how you convert GPS files between different formats then a nice lunch at the yacht club.

To see the fruits of our labour, have a look at this map of local race marks I have put together.

Had a yacht race yesterday and did very poorly… so poorly that we did not even finish the race!! I guess that when even at the start you are heading the wrong way, you know you should probably give it a miss!! It was very cold and a couple of us got very wet legs… I guess changing our positions wasn’t the best idea if we were looking for consistency… oh well… another season to learn!! ‘H’s Dad took some photos at the start and in fact you can clearly see us heading along the start line instead of across it. Have a look at the gallery to see the set. There are some really great pics! This is my favourite, looks like we are going quickly with the bow buried in the sea!!

I have written a small article about NMEA and our plans for installing a Multiplexer on Mystere. If you are interested in these… head over to thesailingbug.com and have a look. This is a subject which I am learning about and so I put this together to try and clarify a few things to myself. If anyone else finds it interesting or useful then great!!

Finally got around to enrolling on the Yachtmaster course I have been wanting to do for some time now. I have decided to do it via correspondence with the NMCS. Apparently it is possible to complete in 4 weeks but I am looking at more like 6 months as I plan to spread it out a bit. Leigh is doing a Coastal Cruising course that includes Day Skipper, Yachtmaster and some other interesting modules. We are currently planning to get together for a study session each week! Leigh’s blog is more likely to detail our progression as ‘Study Buddies’ Here’s to education! My course consists of 18 modules and his is 31 which gives some indication of how much more he will have the opportunity to learn. The only reason I didn’t sign up aswell for that course, is that I already have the Day Skipper certificate and did not want to repeat too much!

At some stage in the future, it is my aim to take some time from the hustle and bustle of modern living, and venture out onto the ocean so that I can spend some time visiting the far off shores of tropical islands and experiencing a life of freedom in more pleasing climates than I am currently situated. The emporer stated that ‘The lure of adventure and exploration is strong in this one’ and I would have to agree. This impulse is now higher in my priorities, especially as I nearly got electrocuted through a dodgy socket near my foot and I am forced to realise that my time may end at any time!

My friend Leigh has started a website to document the preperation and plans for this trip starting from our current position… i.e Square one! If you are interested in what is going on… visit thesailingbug.com and keep up with where we are in our plans and how we go about preparing for the real ‘trip of a lifetime’!!!

The morning of Thursday 8th April brings with it uncertainty.  The trip to Beaulieu and the Scilly Isles, (which was going to be the proper maiden voyage for Mystere, her new co-owners and crew) had to be abandoned, as the re-fit was unable to be completed in time.  To say Guernsey is supposed to be a “tropical island” (so long as you look in the right holiday brochures that is, live here and the residents will tell you that it’s not all palm trees, white sands, relaxation and cocktail drinking- my view of tropical!) the recent cold weather meant the exterior work on the boats hull was nigh on impossible due to the temperature.  The minimum of 5 degrees was far off for several important months on the run up to the boat going back in the water, and when it was above 5 degrees it was pouring down with rain and blowing a gale at the same time, making any sort of outdoor activity more than a challenge!

(more…)

As I am planning to do some travelling at some point in the future, I was considering how to record the journey for people to read about and allow them to communicate back. The obvious way to do this is via a blog like this one. The next feature I felt that would be great, is if people could see my location on a map. Stories about particular areas could be marked on the map and all could be linked together in a harmony of hyperlinks. As this part is the most challenging to build, I have started to plan out how the location could be stored, how it could be displayed and how it could be updated. All manner of ideas are crossing my mind from using emails, text messages, radio broadcasts and even old fashioned phone calls! The next challenge will be to find a way of displaying these on a map. I have a lot of ideas about this aswell but some good ‘old fashioned’ googling will be needed to look at options. I think this could be an interesting winter project for a couple of years. If you have any ideas for this (Or if it has been done before!) let me know!

Here is the crew of Mystere after Dave and I collected the ‘William Shearwater Cup’ from Lady Carey.

Left to right: Aidy, Me, Helen, Dave and Leigh