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it was not my kind of weekend: very very light winds and my own favourite crew decided that partying with some (other) teenagers would be more fun than ripping around on the fabulous fredrick henry bay … the betrayal. i was lucky and rohan, who usually helms another c2 just like ours, was kind enough…

stuff breaks. high loads, massive kinetic shocks, uv light and salt water will, given time, destroy nearly everything. and sometimes there is a know-on effect, so when one thing breaks it then transfers too much load onto other parts, which then fail as well. the spinaker pole appears to be a case in point: when…

nat and i need every opportunity to improve, not only individually but also as a team and also handling the boat. the wind forecast for the two days was not necessarily great and we were a bit apprehensive; as a result we set the rig for strong winds, which particularly on the second day would…

when we acquired nopantsdance it came with a trailer. i really liked that fact: normally the boat stays on land but every now and then we may need to move it and this is pretty much impossible without a trailer that is tailor-made for the boat. one thing is that the boat is pretty long,…

i did mention that we had a few issues with the self-tacking jib not tacking by itself, which was a bit frustrating and really slowing us down. the issue was not difficult to diagnose: the traveler car that is supposed to run along its aluminium channel was a bit hesitant. maybe a bit of a…

when you work hard to acquire new skills sometimes things go (a little bit) wrong. we were lucky and managed to catch those but it could easily have gone the other way. i also think this looks funny. anyway, enjoy!

nat was away with friends for the weekend but the training must continue and luckily rob was again available to help me improve my helming. and i agree it needs improving: my tacks in particular were really bad today, but my steering keeps improving. i also didn’t mind overtaking the two a class upwind –…

that little action cam we use to film our f18 sailing actually has an in-built gps unit. obviously the data that captures can be used to calculate all sorts of interesting metrics: course, distance, heading and of course also speed. given the formula 18 catamarans are anything but slow that is definitely interesting. sadly the…

nat and i had a few tries to get out on nopantsdance together, but somehow it never worked out well. last week the wind was a bit too strong and the waves too high for people still very much on their ‘L’ plates, which is why i sailed with rob. yesterday, however, the weather forecast…

the weather forecast was for a fair bit of sea breeze swinging in in the afternoon just in time for racing, after a light morning northerly. based on that information and because nat had an exam she wanted to study for, we decided i would sail with rob. the breeze was very light to begin…