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Fangys with Captain Calm, Fin, Wazza,JJ and Windxstasy, on a SE/ SSE that in the early stages was awfully religious.

A funny sort of day for me. I could not take a trick with my rigging and board combinations. Of course this is made complicated by Captain Calm and Wazza each providing conflicting wind influences. The Capn doing his usual thing and leaving me in holes but then Wazzza went home to get a bigger sail which made it blow again. Unfortunately in the meantime I had got grumpy with the holes and had gone in to change up to a bigger sail. Now Wazza was back I was way over done, but managed a couple of fun times on the F2waterlog, before sinking into the holes again.

I was left in a bit of a Goldilocks situation,the F2 was too small and the QE11 too big, neither just right. But when I get my restored Loreena back from Adam I reckon its going to plug that hole nicely..I cant wait! 

In the end I just could not get my mojo sorted today and so was always uncomfortable and fighting the rig. When I was not doing that I was sitting in my own little puddle of calm. The end result was I got tired way too soon and had to chuck it in early.
In the meantime Cap'n and Fin just kept rolling out the miles - I reckon they are going to have a massive distance post when they finally come in!!.

Wazza has just turned up and shown me his Delta. It looks like a jaw of a crocodile down the leading edge. Low water levels and maybe some sand in the weed being the suspects.

As far as the Mobbers are concerned I reckon its going to be a Top Ten Fangy Day.

Coodanup, WA, AU

Forecast was for S-SSE around 16-20 knots all day. Oh yes! . A scan of the horizon showed whitecaps all around. A chance to use the North Sails 5.5 Idol? Quite possibly.

Fed up with always being at the bottom of the leaderboard, I contrived to think of options to increase my hull speed that would obviate the need for either increased sailing ability or increased effort on my part. Over several cups of double-shot expresso followed, furtively, by a couple of those tablets that Warnie liked, I  hatched a cunning plan. Wind resistance?  Retiring briefly to my boudoir,  I rummaged around in the wife’s drawers and found the necessary implements with which to  sculpt and gel my leg hairs and eyebrows  into perfect aerofoils. My calculations clearly showed that nose and earhole hair were minor players and , in any event, I figured that the recent caffeine hit would make trimming them a potentially dangerous proposition. Hull and fin resistance?  A can of Mr. Sheen made the underside of the F2 positively gleam in the sunshine with the unexpected and not unpleasant bonus of smelling of summer berries. As an afterthought I emptied the rest of the can into my wetsuit. Certainly the F2  was now more slippery than a politician’s handshake. Now for the fin. Taking to the Delta’s leading edge, which hitherto had borne a striking resemblance, both in profile and in thickness, to that of Bill Lawry’s nose, with assorted wet and dry papers and with a great deal of care I rapidly reduced it to something more akin to one of Michael Jackson’s later efforts. Horrified by this dermabrasive disaster, I hurriedly adding some more epoxy  to the ruined proboscis , added a modicum of concentration and  the Delta slowly morphed into a high tech, frictionless, underwater, uber-guidance thingy...the Namibian Needle.

After a  nutritious “ The Original Lance Armstrong Breakfast”  there was a brief delay while I tried to locate some Band Aids and a used needle disposal container. In desperation I tried the public toilet block over the road  in the park but found myself attracting unwelcome and persistent  attention from several middle aged men who had, apparently, been conducting some sort of meeting in the block. Probably the legs and eyebrows I thought so I turned around and, being careful not to mince in the process, returned to the car and headed off to John Street to locate the gathering wolf pack.

At John St. proceedings were well under way as was the tide …. most of the way out to Madagascar. What the….? . Fangy, Fin and the Capt’n were already out and about and WindXstacy was rigging up. Fangy came in for a sail/board change. The wind seemed to be dropping so I dashed home to collect the Challenger 7.8. On my return JJ had arrived and the wind was picking up. I settled on NP Excess 6.4, F2 Vento and the Namibian Needle Delta 22, slid, noiselessly, into my aromatic wetsuit and had lovely runs across and outside the weedbank, up to the island…fantastic. But the tide was dropping all the time and the weedy stuff was thick on the surface and constantly grabbing at the fin. I had some great broad reach runs into the weed and was in mortal fear for my well-being but I had no stacks and only partial groundings. It felt as though I had broken the all-comers speed record and I was, accordingly, very pleased with my efforts. I was not pleased, however, to find that I had only achieved 26 knots! It wasn’t possible, surely, for me to be only going 26 knots…everyone else was in hyperdrive...all of them. Fin, Fangy,the Capt’n, WindX and especially JJ seemed to be flying along. I had thought I had been too.  Surely it’s no possible for me to beso scared at that speed..no way.  After a damn good talking to myself  and a somewhat optimistic  thump to the GT31, which failed to make it register 53 knots, I returned to base before I had a serious misadventure. My cunning plan had failed miserably but I had had a great sail and a fun day.

When I derigged the Namibian Needle looked as though it had been used primarily, and apparently very successfully, as a nulla nulla. The leading edge had been battered and worn away all along it’s length and especially  right up near the fin box, presumably by the weed sitting horizontally on the surface due to the depth, or lack of depth, of water . My eyebrows were frazzled and  the wetsuit had neutralised my leg hair. The hair thing was a mistake, I realised, as I watched the Capt’n flying along in all directions, in perfect control of his bodily functions. He has almost certainly never been offered any sponsorship from Schick and seems to be coping with life just fine.  I fear that it might have been a disappointing  day for me, results- wise. My only conclusion is that I need to be more courageous downwind..in a nutshell, I need to grow a pair. Probably to replace the ones almost certainly shrivelled by the Lance Armstrong breakfast.

POSTSCRIPT : the thump I gave the GT31 has made it see the error of it’s ways….after downloading it now concedes me 28.46 knots. Not a bad day after all. Bring on those breakfasts!

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       Peel Inlet, Coodanup, WA, AU.

What a day, wind a bit up and down, had Windextasy & JJ join us, and the other usual suspects that turne up at fangys.

After a full day of sailing, am totaly spent. the old custom slalom52, 6m lightning, 50/55 supaweedy witch is about 17cm, after

all that weed scrapeing.

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Distance and hour attempt today, but wind was far from steady frequently changing direction and strength.

Tide was also very low, making the inside banks a tad "iffy" and the surface weed more draggy.

Started off with the 65cm board, (to get through the lulls) with the 23 x 29 super weedy and the 5.8 koncept to handle the gusts.

As Ross has said, it was very hard to get a comfortable compromise, after a few hours the gusts got stronger and the big board and bagged out sail was too hard to handle in the gusts. So after lunch I changed to the 53cm board and Keefs 17cm 40deg,.and tightened the sail up. Started off great, thought I'd get an hr in, but half way through another big lull. Didn't get an hr's worth of wind until the last hour when I was buggered, so I didn't make the most of it.

Felt more powered up today in the gusts than I did yesterday, but the bigger board and more draggy weed didn't translate into better speeds

tracks coming up

Apparently not, not sure if it's because of the big file but gpsvisulizer is not cooperating. So here's the plain ordinary mono colour google earth view

looks like I judged the shallow spots around boundary Island quite well, although I did ground my gybes a couple of times.