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.
That's Yacht Racing
Things had been going reasonably well. Sure it was a dead beat from Lowestoft to North Foreland but there was always enough wind to make progress and, when the tide was against us, we tried to position ourselves either on or behind sand banks in order to minimise its adverse effect.
Early in the day, when we'd been sailing within AIS range of Resolute, we'd been sailing a few degrees lower but about half a knot faster, giving us a better VMG, and we slowly pulled away. Trying to put ourselves is the optimal position for the change to negative tide, we tacked off to the west and were rewarded with a 20 degree shift to the left, which meant that, when we tacked back, Resolute crossed 1.7 miles ahead of us. Later we sailed SSW along the length of one of the main sand bars, putting us in less tide than both Resolute and Summer Bird and we pulled some 4 miles ahead and maintained this with a fair tide. Then we got to North Foreland, the tide turned against us and the both caught us up again. That's yacht racing.
The tide turns back in our favour at about 0800; the wind is all over the shot and around 9kts but mainly south or SW, so we should be on our away around then,
