scott.projectsomewhere

Andy Rice has a good interview with Silja on his SailJuiceBlog (in which I manage a mention). It’ll be interesting to see what decision is made on the Olympic events for 2012 tomorrow…

Waz ‘the prince of darkness’ Rooklyn was in form yesterday, taking out the Sydney38 twilight regatta on the harbour with some friendly finishing tactics.

I was on board for the last two days, filling in in the ad-hoc crew for some pro who couldn’t make it.

Anyway, we scored a 4,3 on Wednesday night in a shifty southerly, then came out swinging in the shiftier breeze yesterday to take a 2,1 and the regatta win.

But it wasn’t all easy. Going into the last race we were 1 point down with 2 drops. Unfortunately for us, we got called OCS in the last race (a 2-lap sprint) and our regatta was almost over… but after restarting we got into phase and good pressure, and chipped away at the fleet to pin the port tackers and take a good lead around the top mark. All the rockstars on board must be good for something.

Anyway, again unfortunately for us, the boat infront of us on points was coming 2nd. If we finished ahead, we’d still lose on countback. So Mothy brings out the scoresheet and we dump on #2 on the uphill to drag the rest of the fleet up. We still were well ahead on the downwind… so back steps Seve for some last minute match racing.

Up goes the jib, in goes the main. We slow down and wait for them about 50m from the line. The poor guys didn’t quite know what hit them as we stuffed the chute and pinned them out of the line in a couple of nasty luffs.

As the other boat fell apart with a flogging chute and a half-raised jib, everyone on board went ballistic with the yell “WHAT THE %$^@ ARE YOU DOING?”… as we peel away, set the chute and take the win, with another boat between us and the confused and well pissed victim.

Yay. There’s the regatta win. Winners are grinners.

But somehow I don’t think they’ll be forgetting that one in a hurry.

One of the little side-projects I’ve been working on has gone live… in an alpha-release sort of way.

What is it?

It’s the place to get a bunch of custom gear for high performance boats like 18 footers, 29ers, 49ers, Moths and the like. The list of products is small, but slowly expanding.

Why?

I’ve talked about it for a while, but a trip to the legendary BestWind on Lake Garda brought the message home. Sailing gear is expensive. Great gear is really expensive. Really great gear is almost impossible to get if the sailing world doesn’t revolve around you. So John, Alex and I started throwing around a few ideas, and out popped SailingBits. We’re pulling together the good ropes, gear and toys that we use and like, with the aim of getting it to anyone, anywhere as cheaply as possible.

Alpha?

The catalogue is a bit sparse on launch date, but you’ve got to say go at some point. We’ve done a little bit of testing, and I know there are a bunch of ‘look and feel’ glitches, but it works. If you want to test it out and give some feedback on how to improve it, go ahead. Next stage is the ubiquitous web 2.0 beta phase.

Ideas?

We’ve gone and included some left-of-centre products… like the super-grippy and super-cheap Atlas gloves for 29ers and 49ers - which I use all the time. We’ve also got some good-value nappy-style skiff trap harnesses from Ocean Gear. Then we’ve got all the Moth tricks that we put on our boats for the Worlds, like the vang-system with high-load thimbles which work infinitely better than the commercial high-load blocks. And then there’s almost every piece of string for your 18′ skiff… including new tacklines.

But there’s always room for more. If you know of some great gear, or have some gucci components that you’d like to sell, drop me an email and we’ll start selling them.

Not such a good day yesterday. Another nice 20+ breeze (albeit a westerly), and another breakage for the Rag.

Not such a big one this time, just blowing up a 5mm dynex tackline a couple of hundred metres down the first run. Another missed chance for a bunch of good downhill rides.

Anyway. No excuses for gear breakage.