Friday, August 29, 2008

Moving on to LA

I arrived in LA and was picked up by an old school mate of mine Ethan. We caught up over a quisedila in a little Mexican restaurant then headed for the Long beach yacht club. We had a training session planned with Scott Dickson.

Ethan was going to come out on the water and be our 6Th man and also take some footage of us sailing the boats. (credit goes to him for the images below.) We had a great session and were out on the water until the sun left us behind.

Ethan and i helped pack up then headed for the club house to meet Barbara and Jack (some family friends dinner. I Barb and Jack 2 years ago when i did the congressional cup and they have kindly offered to host me again during the regatta. And if you look at the image below have kindly lent me their mini which just happens to be my dream car, colour and all.

This is a pick of my wheels in LA kindly donated by Barb and Jack. (Thanks a million guys)
Practice day panama jack racing team chucks in a couple of tacks. the blond boy is our All American ring in Max Mooseman (great American name)
Great shot of the spinnaker up and set. Note how we matched our uniforms with the sails for this regatta (every little detail helps to win a race.)
Dave utilises his guns (aka muscles) to keep the big kite set "sheet on the womper!!")




Here is a good little video of a top mark rounding.

The regatta (the Ficker cup starts on Friday and finishes Sunday don't let the time difference let you miss the results.)
http://www.lbyc.org/html/content.cfm?CID=15004

Sunday, August 24, 2008

match racing in New York
















I have been sailing with the panama jack racing team at the Knickerbocker cup.
check out the blog panamajackracing.blogspot.com
We have had a frustrating day, sailing well but not converting it into points. We made a few aggressive moves in high risk areas, this sets you up for a risky umpire call and they were not going in our favour.
After day 2 we had 3 wins 2 losses, today we added 1 win and 5 losses.
Not quite enough to make the top eight. So we will walk away from this one with lots of lesions learned.
Its a humbling experience and we are positive about the lesions, I think it will make us much stronger for the regatta in LA next week.
I also managed to waterlog my waterproof camera (not sure how that works) So i have a serious lack of footage and pix from this event.

Monday, August 4, 2008

Robbs in Brisbane




Hey team I have landed in Brisbane getting the yacht "Belle" ready for Hamilton island race week.




We will be leaving here and delivering her to Hamo on Wednesday.




The wind is looking good 15 knots from the south west. 3 passengers on board, should be a bit of fun

Saturday, August 2, 2008

phuket raceweek day 4


Last day of racing the weather is settling down 10 to 15 knots and we have 2 new victims, will the succumb to the chunder from down under??


We had a great little course for the mornings race sailing between the islands we rounded channel markers off the Evason resort and further down the bay conditions were a little shifty but the breeze held its strength at 12 knots most of the day. We had a good first race which saw some technical manoeuvres by our team a good first set had us charging down the first run and caught up 2 places with an early gybe into the mark taking a nice wind shift and setting up nicely for a kiwi drop round the mark. again we headed upwind. At the final upwind mark the wind was in the right so we decided to do a gybe set with no spinnaker pole at the top. it all went smoothly the kite set we all looked up to see the logo on its side. the kite was hoisted on the clew not the head. the camera boat was snapping away and we all turned to our bowman. "Your shout tonight."


We quickly dropped it in the deck and switched the head for the clew and re hoisted the kite. second time lucky. it didn't cost us too much and we carried on to the finish with our tails between our legs but knowing we had sailed well apart from the one mistake.


In the afternoons race we had another windward leeward. the breeze was dropping a little 8- 10 knots. with our number 1 jib we were charging to the first mark in touch with the big boats. we felt sure that this was going to be our race. we sailed well changed gears when the wind was light and had great crew work. on the final run to the finish we had a dieing breeze below 5 knots and the clock was ticking against us. We had sailed so well and stayed so close to the bigger yachts in our division but it proved not good enough as we placed 4th in the final race.


The crew has come so far in the week. In the beginning they were asking questions about all manoeuvres and wanting to be told what to do all the time. by the final day they were making their own decisions jumping to attention to help out when others needed a hand and really using initiative to make the boat go fast. It was great to be apart of a crew that wanted to have fun and work hard to achieve a good result.


cheers endeavour of Whitby see you at the next regatta.
PS check out the jetty we had to contend with every day it caused some pretty funny situations as you could imagine!


phuket race week day 3







My Internet went down at the hotel i was staying at in Thailand so I missed sending out news of the last few days of racing.






Day 3 was a beauty 20 - 25 knots and a decent swell started to cause havoc with the fleets. We began the day with a long race around the outer islands. We had a brilliant start but there were a couple of green looking team members right from the start. (didn't help that they had only had 2 hours sleep and were already looking green before hoping onboard.)






we worked the left side of the beat and managed to hook into some nice left hand breeze we tacked over to lay the first island on Starboard tack. At this stage one of the boys began to feel really sick he was on the windward rail and began to spew son the side of the boat. The big problem here was that the wind was at 18 knots and as the spew left his mouth the wind would pick it up and send it all over the crew. everyone left the rail in search of cover. We had 4 of us cowering on the floor of the cockpit in fits of laughter trying not to get covered in more stomach liner.






We slipped around the tip of the island and bore away to hoist our nice big A symmetrical Gennaker. We got it to the top of the mast and heated on, it cracked into life and the speedo roared up from 6 knots to 8 knots (wow you got to love keel boat racing for an adrenalin rush.)






the difference for an extra two knots being the boat is now leaning right over the loads double and we push twice as much water. So we had a lesson on heavy weather tight reaching. We worked on de powering the boat easing the main then the Vang and trying to send the bow down to decrease the angle of heel. hard work in a keel boat when the rudder looses grip with not too much warning. by the end of the leg we had really good communication and the boat beautifully balanced and under control.






we bore away to a down wind course downed the Gennaker and hardened up to round the marker and head off for the next island. it was a long port tack to the next island and we worked hard on boat speed to keep one of our rivals off our hip. We sailed well up past the island and hooked our Gennaker up one last time for a short blast to the finish. (it was one of those situations where the wind angle tempts you to put a kite up but its a boarder line call its tight your on a lee shore and the wind is gusty.) we decided to play it safe and take a little height first to give ourselves some sea room. after 2 mins we hoisted and had a shocker the kite didn't make it to the top, the jammer didn't stop the halyard and the jib came down all at once and we were heading for the beach. luckily the boys scrambled well and we got the jib back up spinnaker back down and we 2 sailed back into the finish. in hind sight it would have been good to stick with the jib. some times less is more especially in a short leg.






In the afternoon we had a short windward leeward race. It was a slightly skewed course pin end favoured long port tack beat, and a bear away set at the top mark. most boring course you can even imagine. But due to the simplicity we got the start we wanted and stormed away to a credible 3rd place. So it was another successful day with a 4th in the first race.






We headed back to the beer tent for some refreshments, a swim in the infinity pool, a cheeky chocolate thick shake. We couldn't hang around long cos none could wear their shirts due to the chunder marks down our backs so we took off back to our hotel to get changed.






Our team got a mention on the www.sail-world.com/asia website






'Angry Rob' Heilkema on Endeavour of Whitby said, 'it was the same course as yesterday, so we just made sure that we didn’t fall into same soft patches (but we still scored 5th both times). And it was really lumpy out there – there was a major ‘chunder from Down Under’ - and we had some pretty serious knitting problems. The afternoon race was a good deal easier, a windward-leeward with a pin favoured start and almost a fetch to the top.' Williamson’s office-wallahs scored 4th in race 6 to allow them to hold on to 4th overall, just one point in front of Toshio Furuta’s Mumm 36 Emma on 25 points (after a drop)."


A quote from the day before


"Right behind them was Stuart Williamson’s Endeavour of Whitby. 'We are very happy with our performance so far,' said Williamson. 'For a collection of office-wallahs with rather less experience than the division leaders I think were are making a pretty good showing!'"