finally some more work underway

oh yeah thats right i cracked the deck sitting on it the last time i sailed the boat better throw some glass and resin at that crack!! (the crack in the boat not.... never mind) go the heater!

better stack these away so Hana can get here car in the garage.

thanks for the plane dad. now lets get rid of some weight.

if only the PT was made of roto molded plastic!!

more scraping, more heat gun more sanding who put all this paint on?

where is that broom?

more of whiplash

the PT hangs out with my kayak one hull stripped

the side profile

the boat on its home made road trailer got that one for 80 bux...

fittings off

some work to do around the inspection hatches

the paper tiger!! Whiplash!!

sail numbers

the paper tiger logo

the whiplash logo

the whiplash mascott

Skudd class IFDS world Champs

Im coaching the skud 18 class again and we are at the wolrds in Holland.


Practice day today, a chance to test our boat after many hours spent in the boat park, getting the yacht out of its bubble wrap and into racing shape.

We got off to a slow start slightly late towards the boat end of the line. We played catch up and enjoyed some good upwind boat speed which kept us in the hunt. We rounded in 8th at the first mark but had 4 boats within 2 lengths of us. Across the reech we stayed in touch with them and sailed fast down the run to the gate. 3 boats fell to us on that run and we rounded the mark overlapped with GBR and SIN.

The last beat was a long port tack and we used our speed to sail clear of the other boats. We rounded the last top mark in 6th position.

Down the final run the boats ahead started to bow to the pressure of the age old superstition “don’t win the medal race if you want to win the regatta,” this handed us a 2nd place for the day and a few things to work on.

We would like to thank predict wind.com for choosing us as a winner for a free year’s subscription to their excellent forecasts, by the way, the forecast was spot on today!! Thanks also to Air NZ for giving us a large baggage allowance which got us and all our required equipment to Holland. Thanks to The Glenn Family Foundation for sponsoring us, without them we wouldn’t be in Holland competing in this prestigious event.

Thanks also to all our friends, family and supporters.
We will bring home the goods tomorrow in the first 2 races of the regatta!

skud 18 world champs medemblik holland

after somthing like 30 hours of travelling from auckland to LA

1 hour in business class lounge

more transfers back onto plane

sail melbourne coaching the skud 18

we had an incident with our new boat and bent the mast. it used to be an aussie boat and we put NZL on the sails i dont think it liked us. so the next day we put a green and yellow rope on the mainsheet to fool the boat into thinking it was still an aussie, the next day no dramas, I think we tricked the boat!

Tim and pauline sailing the new skud to the finish of race 4 no dramas and getting closer to the top boats.

tim and pauline with their 3rd place bibs (which we had to give away after placing 4th and 4th today.

I am coaching at sail melbourne this year. I have been coaching tim in the skud for nearly 2 years now and we as a team with pauline have sailed 10 times. we are really happy with how things are comming along, our boat handling is better than all the boats . we need to work on our down wind angles in the light but things are comming along nicely.

looking forward to some more wind tomora!!

kings cup

photo of us on tour on the layday

me giving a motivational speech at he crew dinner.

some serious sailing from burgo in the practice race.

my team and our new backpacker friends

Kings Cup 2009

we started this regatta in light winds muggy hot temperature ???

we kicked off the regatta in fine form taking the first race comfortably, we put this down to the practise we got during the Rajamuda regatta. It was good to come out firing and kick the regatta of in good fashion.

In the second race the breeze died down below 8 knots which is hard for us to preform with the heavy Benetau. We got really tangled up with phoenix an IRC'd quarter tonner, we avoided them shooting the top mark and protested, in the room they decided that they had not tacked within the zone so it was dropped.

Phoenix at the top mark have they tacked?

We then tangled with them again at the bottom mark as we came in on starboard and on the inside of them with room. We tangled up and flew the red flag again. We finished in 9^th for that race in the protest room we sent our female representative Gemma Farrell who put forward a brilliant case and took picking us up on results to 8^th.

In the third race we sailed better but still the light winds held us back we battled through and got a 4^th placing.

On day 2 we had a long race and headed around the bottom of Phuket island and up to the island called Koh Lon!! funny name.

We sailed a really tough beat as the tide started to push against us we had a big match race with madam butterfly again bouncing each other up the shoreline out of tide. We lost out with a tight lee bow and I decided to dip and take the right hand advantage, however the left was so favoured they crossed ahead of us bad call. From there It was follow the leader to the finish we took a little time out of them with two good shifts but then at the turning mark we picked up a fishing pot which stopped us dead in the water. We dropped sails, backed off the rope and carried on. Luckily it didn't cost us much as we came away with a second placing.

Race day 3 we had 2 windward leewards with 8-12 knots we liked the look of the forcast but the race committee wasn't happy with the 25 degree shifts rather than middle the 2wind directions they waited for it to drop and settle in direction. Much to my frustration the 8 knots again not really suiting us. Our game plan was to beat madam butterfly at all costs ignoring the other yachts in our division. The game plan worked out ok for us we beat madam butterfly on line but still behind on corrected time. In race 2 we sailed a perla and beat them. Placing 3^rd and 4^th

the party

we headed off to the bar bearing in mind that we had a lay day planned the next day we got stuck into the free food and drinks, a blues brothers band played and we danced until close then off to the fullmoon party at Karon beach.

We had a VIP area for the yachties with free refreshments and a massive dance party on the sand, kiwi vs aussie scrums which ended with 2 crook necks and a sore shoulder (2 injuries from the aussie side of the scrum and only 1 in the kiwi camp.

Myself Andrew Clouston and Kelvin Holdt making a pretty formidable front row.

I'm looking forward to heading out again tomorrow and taking this regatta out. We have a long race scheduled with 12-14 knots which will hopefully play into our hands.