4 categories

Fun team session at "The Hook, Fangy's" with the man himself, Wazzcomelately, (some excuse about being found another job just as he was leaving), The edible Fin, Bugs, 'ken and Elmo

Looked great when I pulled up, so texted everybody the 17kts average I was reading, then spent some time deciding on launch spot with Fangy, after we decided on "The Hook" the wind had dropped to 12kts average. Being pessimistic we rigged big stuff, I went with the 6.6 koncept on the 65cm board with 31cm 35d weedy. Of course the wind then picked up again and for the first 1/4 hour I was over powered, so pulled on more downhaul and outhaul, which resulted in my best speed on the 2nd run afterwards, from there on it just slowly died.

Enjoyed having a few drags with Bugs, but we couldn't figure out why he was faster on starboard and I was faster on port. The wind died before we got around to swapping gear, to see if it was an equipment or sailor issue.

    Peel, Coodanp.WA 

Was good to get out on the watter again, with some sun and a bit of wind,.... had some amusement & merriment as Fangy managed to

sail by while I was just ploding along watching the scenery drift by,...  he did have almost twice as much sail up as me, thats my excuse,

.. so he had fun????

   I had the old slalom52, the ka kon5.8,.. ( I fibbed, not 5.0 Ross )  and Elmoweed 20cm/60.  

 Yeah, not bad for a winters day.  

Harding Rd, Albany, WA, AU

Tabou 3s 96l, Loftsails Switchblade 6.8m, Maui Ultra Weed 28cm & Starboard Sonic 85, Leading Edge 26ishcm weed fin

A bit of a chilly sail with Shane down at Harding Rd. A lot of South in it so the flat water only lasted until the weed bank & the wind was very much up & down. Had one wicked rain shower come through that I hid under the sail for.

Started on the Tabou but decided to take the new board for a run, when I say new it's an 2006 (I think) Staboard Sonic 85l 56w. For a 1st sail was really impressed with the Sonic, felt a lot more comfortable being more outboard & the rig felt better balanced for some reason.  Tracked through the water nicely & with a bit more practice think it should be quite a nice gybing board, just got to get used to narrower board. Think I may have finally got a 3 at the start of the numbers instead of a bloody 2!

Roll on the Easterlies I say!

Cheers

Morts

4 categories

Fangy’s with a mob of Mobbers. There is so much material from such a short session, where do I start? I suppose I need to get the obvious offender out of the way to start with - Elmo. Now if any of you are still in denial about the effect that Elmo has on Huey, stop now. I am pretty sure we all can pinpoint where we were on the estuary when Elmo got the trailer open. And just to be sure that the session did not survive on life support, Elmo proceeded to bolt in a surplus Cessna tail fin. Of course, it’s now considerably shorter having ploughed substantial furrows across the shallows.

  Bugs peaked with the knowledge that he shares second names with Hugh Grant. He also has the foppish good looks in common with Hugh said no one ever. Still, you couldn't wipe the smile from his face as he recently mastered fire and was keen to move onto electronics.And there endeth the mastery. To confound the problem he asked Wazzausesanabacus for advice…

 Moving on, ‘Keninsensitive decided to pay homage to his hero Fairybob, by ignoring reality (14 degrees plus freezing water) and substituting his own. Resplendent in a few pieces of tired neoprene that served no discernible purpose, he as per usual showed us all that pink sails should not be considered an impediment to great sailing.

WazzaonGMT arrived late, having spent the good part of the morning trying to ensure he got his wettie on the right way around. 

Fin had a bad session. Only because he was the victim of my triumph. Not once, but twice did I manage to sail on the plane, past a grovelling Fin. This is an almost unbelievable turn of events, as Fin is renown for not actually requiring the wind to be planning.

 That left the Cap’n, who unusually rigged right, remembered all his stuff and remained relatively blameless the whole session.

 I chucked in the Party Barge with KaRace 9.4 and Delta 22. This was working surprisingly well but in the gusts, there wasn’t enough fin in the water.  I slopped my biggest weedy in the slot, and then proceeded to Elmo it down a cm or two. A rather extended lunch followed while we waited for Elmo to pack up and hope for Huey to reappear. Even though it didn’t eventuate it was still a Top Ten Fangy Day. 

Coodanup, WA, AU F2 Vento, Challenger 7.8m ( then Ezzy 6,5 lion) and 32 Weedy

The Capt'n and Fangy were both rigged and ready and frothing at the mouth when I arrived as the car park quickly filled with Fin, 'ken, Elmo and Bugs. Fangy had rigged some serious canvas, possibly part of the Big Top from Cirque du Soleil, so i followed suit and rigged my biggest sail, a Challenger 7.8m, El Musculare. A few minutes later as the wind picked I saw that Fangy had returned, dragging his knuckles on the sand courtesy his recently lengthened arms and while he inserted a larger fin  I down-sized to a 6.5m. Big mistake on my part....they say that there's no substitute for horsepower....whilst Fangy was running a Clydesdale I seemed to be attached to a miniature Shetland pony. What a fizzer. I had one run upwind and one feeble one back again....the breeze was terminal even at that stage so I crawled home while Ii could. I should've known better.

A short message for FirieBob who is doubtless GreyNomading somewhere warm.....we have a new Thermal Lunatic here in Coodanup Firie and here's the photo to prove it. The photo is deliberately on it's side despite hours of trying to rotate it. Clearly this is the way it was meant to be.

Or perhaps not?

There's an unwriten law here about posting sideways images of team captains, it's somehow demeaning.

Tabou Rocket wide 128L, NP RSR E6 7.8, JP Weed 36cm.

If your day was bad it can't be that bad.

Got woke up this morning by my mate who took up residence Wednesday and has been getting more boisterous so a couple of Nuerofin at 5am is a nice way to start.

Finally got my crap together and left at 11 only to get down to Falcon and have my phone go of for work  making me turn around and go back home just over an hour later I finsih of the work and hit the road again.

Get down to Frangaland to see whitecaps to the shore and a nice high tide with Oaf belting around trying to keep warm.

Went to get the gear out of the trailer and felt the rapid arrival of another Collingwood supporter, so waddled of to the toilet block only to find the the bog blocked with a whole family of supporters, so went to the disabled toilet figuring I could quite easily pass scrutiny, the door wouldn't close properly so being the hyperinteligent character I am I gave the door a good slam which promptly closed it.

It was around this time the thought occured to me why the door wouldn't close was because the lacth wouldn't go back in, so I thought I'd better check the door would actually open, well you could imagine my surprise...... no not from having 2 thoughts in five weeks but to much utter amazement the door handle went down to the feel of striped gears and didn't reopen the door.

Oh shit, this could be a problem..

Tried using my key to slip the latch, no joy, thought about phoning Mike but he was out sailing, desperate times is these, perhaps it's a conspiracy cunningly set up by Franga to keep me away from the water??

In a moment of desperate rational thought (woo hoo a hatrick) I lifted the door handle lever upwards low and behold I could escape whew thank goodness for that... and now to the unfinsihed busness at hand.

Feeling a great weight of my mind I toddled back to the trailer watching the boys zip back and forth Oaf seriously was working hard to keep warm and the white caps were still coming into the shore so I thought 7m and 100L supersport.

No sooner did that board touch the ground and I kid you not the wind dropped around 4 knots and the whitecaps receded about 50m, I put the fin in and mast base and took the board for a walk, got the 7m out and put the apple core on it and the wind faded a bit more, so I thought the 7.0 needed to go back in the trailer a Oaf for the first time gybed and stalled (Sorry dude) got the 7.8m out and decided to change the board as well.

Franga came back to shore and said he knew exactly when I opened the trailer as his 9.5 suddenly became managable.

Yet still I persevered, Got the wetty on, by this time pretty much all the sails were upright, couple more Nuerofin down the gullet for lunch and headed out.

In the distance I could see Decrep and Bug's still planing, unfortunately I'm such a fat bastard at the moment as soon as I stepped on the board it managed to squeze at least 6" of water depth out of the estuary susequently I was draging my poor fin through what felt like porly laid blue metal road surface.

The session wasn't a total waste as I managed to get planing for at least 250m enough to suck me in for another futile attempt which resulted in another slog and a missed photographic oportunity for Franga (an Elmo walk of shame).

Back at shore my poor fin had lost +20mm of the front and tip, the session would have been a perfect test for my abrasion resistant coatings I'm playing with If only I can get of my fat arse and actually make up a test fin.

The highlight of the day was getting home to inhale the lovely aroma of a slow cooked curry. It tasted wonderfull.

Oh well

Albany, WA, AU harding rd . jp 101 , isonic 76 , np evo5 6.4 , jp 31 weedie ,leading edge 28 . Very cool day in albany but it has been a while since i have had a sail so i was pretty keen to get back on the water . morts already there i was running late which was okay as i only had 400 mtrs to travel to harding rd . little bit rusty glad i left the new board in the shed . only one casualty for the day, broken harness line

Coodanup, WA, AU

Fun day with a whole lot of the team out enjoying the breeze. It was great to get some sunshine and enough wind to get going. Mostly smiles and good times at Fangys but the breeze dropped out on me ten minutes before I'd completed a whole hour. Still glad to get a sail in. Good chats before and after too.

Forgot the GPS at home today so was using the backup one so first post with Canmore numbers.

Manta 100 7.3 HSM GPS