Sorry!!

Shitty interweb connection in Singapore... actually it was a good connection, just a bad price!!

you can check the news at http://www.extremesailingseriesasia.com/ and here are a couple of pics to check out whilst I get to doing a full wrap on the Singapore event.

Now in Amsterdam and freezing cold, Snow all around and tomorrow I drive to Austria and then Italy or some real snow time!!

Tough way to finish

Hans Peter caught a bug after the round the island race, so the next day we had a replacement crew for the 2nd last day.
The teamwork is hard enough at the best of times, but its super hard to get a new guy on the go in very short notice.
We survived but then we had a small but unfixable issue with the hydraulics and that was the end of racing for us...

Now I am in Phuket getting a few days of "relaxation.." before Kings Cup starts. I am sailing with Evolution Racing, A modified TP52 so hoping for big wind so we can send the bus!!

Round HK Island race

Frustrating.... best way to put it for today.

Not a great start and we were on the back foot from the get go, but after being miles behind at one stage. We managed to get back in the game when the fleet parked up on the back side of the island. So we went from last to first!! and then back again! It was very tricky to work around the headlands and bays, not much logic to a lot of it which left us scratching our heads most of the time!

The final run in super light breeze was terrible, I got really greedy on one side of the harbour and we worked our way down the windward shore in a great puff which gave us a shot at the lead with only half a mile to go, but we managed to park it in a bay while the rest of the guys wafted through on the lee shore.. Even the Oman blue boat almost caught us and they were so far back at one stage we forgot they were even out there!

So, put that one up to experience... Now its time for a bit of dinner and an early night, up to 8 races planed for tomorrow and my shoulder is a bit sore so maybe its worth trying to find a physio..

Day 2

Much better day for us, 4 races in the morning in light and very shifty conditions.

Startline was right outside the RHKYC and the course ws set over the shipping lane... made for a few interesting moments as you try to work out here the Chinese ferry driver was going to go as you approach in a gusty 4-14kt breeze!

Anyhow, our starts were really muc better then they were on the first day (except for being OCS and having to return in one race..) butt we scored a 3,2,6,2 with the 6 being the race we were over early.

Crew work was much better today and for the teams 3rd day sailing the boat we are really happy with the progress, considering we are still working through a pile of jobs and calibration work to get the boat sorted.

Tomorrow morning is the round Hong Kong Island race, its the biggest event of the yachting year for the region and they expect more than 200 boats to be racing with the start at 9.40 we hope to be back in time for lunch!

Keep checking the website for pics and info!!

Day 1 Racing

Quick update this time, woke up a bit late and we start racing at 10am today.

Yesterday was the first time ROman and Hansi have ever raced an X40 so it was a sttep learning curve! But we managed to round the top mark in the firt race in 2nd place which was awesome, but then we slipped back to finish 5th in that one, just detail things that caught us out at the marks etc.

Second race was interesting... We were fighting with Oman Blue for a good port start position and just as we crossed the line we had them to leeward and had Shirley approaching on starboard, so we tacked and Oman Blue tried to duck her..... not quite, actually not even close! They nailed her really hard... So Shirleys team got an early shower and we had a short wait while Oman sorted their issues.

In the Restart we had a perfect launch off the line and lead all the way round to win, Very happy boys!!

There were 4 more races and we finished 4th in most I think, again the little detail things kept coming up and in the debrief we worked our way through them so we can tackle today with a bit of direction.

keep cheking the website for pics and updates: http://www.extremesailingseriesasia.com/

Practice day

Tough, long day...

Early start with the worlds greatest breakfast, I love the Omlete stations in Asian hotels...

Then we started on the boat jobs, a pretty long list is normal for an X40 but we were in good shape until we tried to fit the dagger boards in! I had packed the board cases with teflon strips when I was in Holland but that was in 7 deg temps and now its mid 20's and the black boards had swollen just a little bit, so they were impossible to fit in the case! so we had the crane driver lift the boat so we could sort it, quite a sight to have a couple of guys working away under a 40ft cat suspended over a dock!!

With the boards sorted, we had lunch and Red Bull.. And went for a spin, of course we sailed straight into the restricted area and got in trouble within 2 mins of leaving the dock!

Then we joined some practice races and worked out who does what on the boat (Harry the boat captian was filling in for big Gerd who arrived after sailing) we got around the course without too much drama and generally were pretty happy with the package for a first days sailing.

Today is the start of racing, and we have a good list of things to get done before we start, just little changes and tweaks but they all take time on a boat this size so its another full on day. Racing starts at 2pm and 8 races are scheduled!!

no pics today, but for sure some tomorrow..

Later!!

in Hong Kong

Yesterday Hugh Styles and I jumped on a Qantas flight to HK, I scammed a Premium Economy seat which is basically a mid way point between cattle class and Business, nice mix really.

Anyhow, after a bit of a mission to get to the Hotel (a wheel fell of my bag... not happy!) and a shitty bus tour on in peak hour we arrived.

I met the Red Bull guys, Roman, Hansi and Harry and we went straight to dinner. We found a nice Japanese Sushi house and enjoyed a fantastic dinner and a couple of beers..

Then it was off to bed to prep for a big day of setup and training, the boys took 2 days to build the boat which is a little longer than normal! but they had some stickers to put on so I gave them the benefit of my doubt! boat looks good though.

Now I'm off to breakfast, news and pics to follow!

http://www.extremesailingseriesasia.com/

NSW F18 State champs

Great weekend sailing at Kurnell again! When I arrived at 9am, Grantly had the boat pretty much rigged. I reckon he wet the bed... Anyhow, we finished rigging and went to the briefing: I hate briefings!! They are such a waste of time unless they are about the after race party or other non racing related issues. People forget that nothing said at the briefing can overturn a direction in the Sailing Instructions... I resisted the temptation to ask if the course diagram was to scale and it was over soon enough.
The good news was the classic NE seabreeze conditions, we started in about 10kts and it built to a nice 15 or so as the afternoon went on.
Our first day was tough... we were not quick compared to the guys we neeed to beat so it was a battle the whole time just to stay with them but we sailed pretty well except for the race when we had the head cam on... (more of that when James sends me the footage) and we ended the day with a 2,4,2,3 which meant we had our work cut out for Sunday..
On the drive down to the club on Sunday I was thinking about why we had such a speed issue and figured it would be a good idea to check the rig setup, The boat had a new mast since I used it last and Grantly and Katie are lighter in weight so maybe they had moved away from the settings I had left the boat with.
We checked the spreader rake and mast rake, both were too far back so be gave it a tweak and hit the water.
Instantly we were fast again! We led at every mark of every race that day to finish with a perfect score for the day 1,1,1 and we won the event too!
So, the lesson is: Check your rig setup!!!! even small changes make a big difference.
The Encouragement award has to go to the youngsters, Billy Nissen and Yianni Coats. These guys were fast and getting faster all the time, more practice and bigger fleet racing and the boys will be a force to reckon with. Keep it up!!

Video to come in the next day or so.

F18 NSW state titles this weekend.

November 7th and 8th sees the 2009 NSW F18 States take place at Kurnell cat club, I wasn't planning on doing the regatta but after a chat with Grantly I thought what the hell! it should be fun and I haven't sailed with Grantly since we did a little race in Sweden a couple of years ago...

Here are some pics from that event, 600 miles on an F18.... crazy hey! So a couple of days with short courses will be easy for us!

Updates on how we go after the weekend.

It worked!

Sunday was not ideal for testing new rigging, we arrived at Kurnell Cat club http://www.kcc.asn.au/ around 10am and it was already blowing 15kts from the NE and on a sunny day in Sydney it always builds from the NE. We kept rigging and discussing the options if it built too much for testing.

By the time we had it all sorted and ready to go it was a solid 25kts and gusting to 28! Then we thought about it for ten seconds and decided to go out and see how it held up. The reasoning being: If we are going to use it at all then it has to be able to handle this much wind...

So off we went, cautious at first but then after it held through a couple of really strong gusts we started to get into it more and very quickly we were giving it the full message.

With the race about to start we lined up and warned James not to start to leeward of us just in case it all came crashing down!

We sailed the boat as normal for the race and then came in to check everything was sitting right on the thimbles and not rubbing on something it shouldn't. All looked good and the only issue was that the forestay had elongated a lot more than the adjustment range available, so now I will have to shorten the forestay and we are good to go.

There was a fair bit of elongation in both sidestays and forestay but that has stopped now so I think that was just the fibres and splices settling in. The sidestays really shrunk in diameter, down from 3mm to just over 2mm!! but they look really well bedded in now. The Forestay is quite different in terms of finishing as it has a coating on it and I think that explains why it elongated so much, the coating is quite thick and its not until there is a lot of load on it that the rope can really compress and therefore elongate to its natural length. It seems to be settled now and after another sail we will know for sure.

If you have a boat that doesn't restrict you to wires in the class rules then I reckon DSK78 is a viable option and for sure all A class cats should run this stuff! We saved 1.8kg from the rigging!!

What does your Rigging weigh?

Today Greg and I spent the day giving our much neglected Super Taipan some love.

Some of you will have seen the boat before and a lot of people around the world know of it, but for those that don't: We took a set of Taipan 5.7 hulls and mutated them into a 10ft wide carbon masted weapon.

We have some really trick parts on the such as Marstrom M20 rudders and carbon rudder gudgeons that Greg made one winter...

Aside from the usual jobs like replacing ropes and blocks, we went a little radical.... I hate wires so we replaced the sidestays and forestay with rope! There have been some big developments in rope technology over the past couple of years and now its feasible to use rope in the same diameter in place of wire.

DSK78 is same for same with wire in terms of strength and creep so we made up a set as you can see in the pics above. We weighed the original rigging and it came in at dead on 2kg, the new stuff??? well as you can see in the photo its just over 200grams and thats complete with lashing for the bottom and all fittings! So a 10:1 ratio for weight saving is a big deal particularly when you consider it's up the rig too.

We test it on Sunday so maybe I have an funny story to tell come Monday...

Corporate days...

Usually the mention of a corporate day is enough to send most of us competitive sailors to sleep, But what if it was on an X40?

For the past 2 years we have done a lot of corporate sailing for Volvo Trucks Benelux, They supply a truck for the Tornado Sport team, currently carrying around Holmatro and Ecover teams in an enclosed F1 style truck (more on this later)

This year we ran two boats and even threw in some match racing, getting the guests involved in the crew work was a blast! Big trucking type dudes hoisting the kite while we yell at them to go faster...

Unique to the X40 is the ability to get everyone driving the boat, its really rewarding to see the reaction on each face as they discover the skills to keep the boat at the right angle, I even had to learn a little dutch to make it easier to communicate with the guests. I keep it simple Push and Pull (Duwen and Trekken) and they work it out really fast!

The margin for error is a lot less on the downwinds so I usually steer then but the rst of the time we let the guests drive upwind and they all love it. I have never seen another corporate experience that gets such a positive reaction.

Maybe there is a business case here??

Hey all!

Ok, so after too many requests and too much time passing.... I have started this little blog.

I am pretty slack at keeping up with family and friends as well as the general sailing scene so this is my attempt to stay in touch.

I will be posting stories and pics when I can from the various travels and regattas I go to, i'm not a natural photo taker but will try to change that to some degree and will always try to get hold of the real pics fom the pro's at events.

My schedule over the next few months is pretty full on:

November 19-25, Red Bull X40 in Hong Kong

November 28-Dec 5, Evolution Racing (TP52) Kings Cup, Phuket

December 8-14 Red Bull X40, Singapore

December 17- Jan 5, Xmas in the cold.... Italy and Amsterdam

January 8-15 Langkawi race week,(TP52) Malaysia

January 25-31 Singapore straits, (TP52)Batam

February 1-7 ?? X40, Oman

So... not much free time there apart from the snowy Xmas which I am really looking forward to as my first one in the northern half of the world.

Hey all!