Getting Chilly

Had a couple of really good sails at the weekend. Managed to get out for a little bit on Saturday for a light wind sail and then again on Sunday for some two boat tuning with Doug in his Ninja.

The temperatures are starting to drop at the moment in the UK, which definitely didnt help with ventilation. I didnt seem to have it as bad as Doug downwind, although upwind was a different story. On starboard tack upwind I would regularly spin out either resulting in a big loss of height or coming off the foils. I tried loosening the wand elastic and not riding so high which seemed to help a bit although it never completely went away. I ditched my paddle a while ago as the ride height seemed pretty good without it, although I'm wandering whether its worth reinstalling it now.....something to try for the Bloody Mary maybe.

Still, managed to finally get some decent headcam footage of some of the runs which was good.



James

Blowing Wings off Seaguls

Thanks to Mike Cooke’s badgering at this weekend’s training event I said I’d post an update of the goings on at Queen Mary at the moment.

On Saturday Windy Weymouth struck again and so a group of 7 or so of us descended on Axbridge for an impromptu training session. Unfortunately however the 15 knot forecast failed to materialise and so after drifting and occasionally foiling for about an hour we all came in for tea, mince pies and geek talk regarding foil lengths. Although to be honest my contribution mainly consisted of commenting on how nice I thought Alex’s spreaders looked – white carbon – just like Toblerone.

Sunday was a different story altogether at Queen Mary with Torbay style ‘Champagne Sailing’ conditions – i.e. pleasant sunshine but gusts that could rip the wings off seagulls – literally. I arrived at the club just in time to grab a coffee and watch Chris slowly drift in sideways having done a Jiff and leapt through his mainsail (the life ring in the photo was purely coincidental Chris, honest). Mike similarly went out for a ‘play’ and hurt the feelings of his main foil so much that it broke off and tried to actually kill him by flying up through the tramp – scary.

Typically at the moment for me I suffered from gear failure again after launching into a slightly more sensible 18 knots or so. Its always the way isn’t it that the most shoddy, cowboy repairs seem to last longer than the diligent repairs that you do. The musto sail bag that I cut up in order to repair my tramps worked an absolute treat, despite looking like it had been sewn by an eight year old yet the time consuming repair I did on my spreaders didn’t – although I don’t think it was actually my fault this time. Apart from the failures I’m really happy with the boat at the moment though, its riding consistently high and doesn’t seem to be ventilating as much as some of the other Bladeriders given the water temperatures.

In terms of Queen Mary in general the fleet is looking pretty good at the moment. Sam has ordered some Aardvark foils for his mistress – which if Alex’s sailing at the weekend is anything to go by should get him back up to speed. Ben is also getting to grips very quickly with Martin Fear’s old Axiom and should be some good competition soon enough. In the Bladerider camp we seem to keep missing each other like ships in the night despite there being a lot of talk about benchmarking…..something for the New Year I think.

Anyone that fancies coming down to QM for a play, let us know…..might be a good opportunity to get some sneaky practice in before the Bloody Mary on 9th January!

James