Kipper Sailing
| Vessel Name: | Kipper of London |
18 November 2010
White Boats
Sailing schools are commercial enterprises and margins are extremely tight, so they typically buy training boats that provide sufficient accommodation for the maximum of 5 students and one instructor at the lowest possible price. These are usually European (as opposed to British) built and on large production [...]
18 November 2010
Jet Skis
I positively hate jet skis, the people who use them and everything to do with them. As far as I'm concerned they're ridden by men with small willies and without the balls to ride a motorbike. And I mean MEN. When did you ever hear of a woman stupid enough to buy a jet ski? Am I being unfair. No. Do I have an issue with other powered recreational vessels (motor-yachts, ribs, ski boats)? No. The problem with jet-skis is that the idiots who ride them will ride round and round and round what, should have been, a quiet anchorage. This is akin to somebody riding a noisy motorbike round and round a park where everybody else is trying to enjoy a quiet, whatever you do in a park (I wouldn't know). If I could legally buy a bazooka, I'd buy one and blast all the jet skiers to kingdom come.
18 November 2010
Big Boats , Small Boats
Once upon a time, maybe 25+ years ago, a typical first boat was a Mirror Dinghy, then a Wayfarer, then a small Westerly, then a Contessa 32, then a 40 footer. All this over a lifetime of sailing. Experience was gained slowly. Nowadays too many people go out and buy (yes you've guessed it) a shiny new [...]
18 July 2010 | Lymington
Back to Work
Back to the day (and sometimes night) job after the (excitement) of the 2-handed RB&I race. And guess what? I'm enjoying myself more working than I was, supposedly, taking some R&R. It's one Hell of a lot more varied and stimulating.
06 July 2010 | On our way bsck to Lymington
Final thoughts on the race
Now it's all over, I've had time to reflect on the experience and to report on what worked and what didn't.
Spilt Milk
It looks like Resolute, Knight's Challenge and Summer Bird are having a worse time of it than we are. We're been consistently making SOG >5 and in more or less the right direction. It's a long way to Lerwick though and, actually, we'd quite like them to arrive not too long after us so's we've got someone to socialise with. Most of the other boats will be long-gone by the time we get there, hopefully sometime on Monday.
We are getting slightly concerned about our chances of finishing by the 4th. If we finish this leg on Monday, that leaves us about 8 days sailing time and 4 days in port. The Lerwick to Lowestoft leg is 475M and another 320 to Plymouth, which means that we'll have to average 4.14 over the ground. So far we've averaged about 4.0. I planned on 4.2.
Bit of a disaster earlier this morning. Whist preparing porridge, I managed to drop an open, almost full 2L bottle of milk. About half of it spread itself around the galley and chart table. I cleaned it up as best I could but it has made its way under the floor boards etc. and will add as certain something to the general miasma of the cabin over the next few days. We'll have to take the floor boards up in Lerwick.
We've passed close by a couple of fishing vessels and a tanker, apparently bound for somewhere called Sunudalosa overtook us down out starboard side about a mile off, heading to pass just south of The Shetlands.
It's been bloomin cold. I've got my full 3-layer system on plus an extra fleece and that's only just enough. Hopefully the temperature will rise slightly as the wind backs.
