scott.projectsomewhere

This weekend saw the beginning of what is to be a long sailing
season in Sydney.

Saturday was an early start to resurrect a training 49er from the
warehouse and put it all back together… the delay didn’t hurt,
with the seabreeze taking a while to swing from SE around to the
NE. Euan and I did a few laps up and down the harbour to get
familiar with the boat and sailing together. Nice and relaxing
cruising around in the spring sun.

Sunday however, was something else. The forecast 25-33 knot NW came
through at about 10AM and we didn’t look like getting on the water
after that. Emmett and Darren started getting their sport-rigs on
to do a few speed-record attempts… but hadn’t been brave/stupid
enough to rig by the time I left.

So the first two days weren’t particularly taxing… we’ll see what
the next 6 months has in store…

The quarter-life crisis starts today… time to re-evaluate the
state of the nation and make some irrational and drastic
changes.

But then I’m feeling relaxed and comfortable… what to do?

The 18 Footers season starts up in only a few weeks. Most of the
fleet will be pulling their boats out of the shed for the first
time since last season… some of the boats will be testing out new
teams for the first time (like ours)… and then some others will
be launching new boats after putting in plenty of
preparation.

Seve, Rob and Sam seem to fall into the last category. Their
program was officially announced only
today, but the guys have been putting in plenty of time on the
water on the old Panasonic over the last few months. It’ll be great
to see how they go…

They’ve definitely got a few things going for them, with Andrew Palfrey kitting out the
boat and coaching them and Iain Murray lining up the sponsor (not
that they really need it, with combined parental support which is
pretty extreme… even relative to the rest of the fleet… that’s
saying something).

It’d be great to see another boat break last season’s top 4…
these guys look like they might just do it.

Another new hotshot team is the Pure Blonde (formerly Casio) effort
of 12 footer sailors Nick, Will and Brad. They’ve got a good
pedigree and a great boat, but they’re pretty green in terms of 18s
experience.

…

I think we might need to pull the Club Marine out of the shed
before the season starts just to make sure we can keep it
upright.

If it wasn’t enough that I dump all my sailing photos on
Flickr, now I’ve added geotagging info to them.

So anyone can browse a map of the World, then zoom in to each
location where the photos have been taken… pretty nifty
technology… if you’ve got the time to waste…

Here’s the link…

Not much happening lately, well not much compared to the
International jaunts of June and July.

The month or so of little sailing will probably come as a welcome
relief when things really heat up. Spring is here, 49er sailing
starts again in a fortnight or so and the 18s start at the
beginning of October…

Then it’s going to be all on til April… I can’t wait.

The Swiss have added Fastacraft foils to their 18… and
have managed to foil it as the photos on their web site show.

And they’ve got video
of it too

It will be a cold day in hell before we see a foiling 18 race here
in Sydney, but you never know.

As someone would
say… the revolution continues…