Bit on at this time of year.

November 12, 2012 Leave a comment

At this time of year there’s always a bit on. Saturday before last was round two of the State Kiteboarding championships that I’ve been running, this coming Saturday will see round three at Botany Bay. As of last week ISAF have decided against an earlier decision to instate the Kites for Rio 2016 instead of Sailboards. They have now reversed this decision and the Kites are out. It will be interesting to see how many continue racing in the long term.

The next day saw a little trip up to the Central Coast for the BIA Try Sailing day. I visited Gosford Sailing Club, Budgewoi Sailing Club, South Lake Macquarie Sailing club at Sunshine and Mannering Park Sailing Club. It was good to see the volunteers helping out and assisting those who would like to take up the sport of Sailing – well done. At Sunshine they had over 60 turn up, only a couple had pre registered so well done to all there. The photo shows an 11m One design taking those out at Gosford.

Thursday was another one of my little drives down to the South Coast of NSW. I stopped and saw customers at Lake Illawarra, Nowra, Wollamia, Ulladulla and Batemans Bay. A long day on the road and 625 kms driven.

The photo shows an IOR Robber 1/4 tonner at Wollamia. This yard is full of owner builder/repairers, where they can pull their boats and take their time updating.

Back in the 70s, my late father had the plans to build one and engaged Ken Beashel to price it up. Unfortunately it never went ahead. They were a quick boat in their day in Europe, although none of the Australian built boats had any success that I know of.

Saturday saw me back at MHYC for the first time in several weeks running the club races. With 20knots at the start there was plenty of action on the water.

Yesterday was a rare day away from the water. We have several friends who are due to have babies in the coming weeks, so there was a bit of a get together and a catchup. Very enjoyable day cathing up with old friends.

Next Saturday sees me back at Botany Bay for round three of the Kiteboards and Sunday a trip up to the lake for the first day of racing in the Australian Multihull Championships. This is a look/see, as I’m not involved in the race management.

The following weekend is the MHYC Short Ocean Racing Championships, Saturday is a race up to Lion Island at Broken Bay. Sunday sees two short races offshore. Depending on the forecast, I’ll either send them North to the Manly Circle or south to Bondi.

Following that, I’m off to Melbourne where I’ll be involved in running Sail Melbourne. This is the first time I’ll be involved in Sail Melbourne, but an interesting look at how others run their events none the less. With the amount of yacht race management I do, it’ll be interesting doing dinghies.

Suddenly Christmas is upon us and it’s time for the Rolex Sydney Hobart start, where I’m the RO for the Southern line. This will be the sixth year and it never gets any easier. Each time I go to anchor in the designated spot there’s a hole making holding fast difficult, some how we do it. Last year we had a couple of OCS starters which meant no going out to watch them turn south. Hopefully this year they’ll all behave.
Thats’ the weekends booked till the New Year, like I said a bit on. January?  Off to Tasmania with the DeckHardware van on the ferry. Mels going down with it for a couple of weeks, I’ll bring it back.

Yep, bit on.

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Kites are on again

October 30, 2012 Leave a comment

This coming weekend sees me down at Botany Bay for Round 2 of the Kite Boarding racing on Saturday. Given the conditions will be similar to a couple of weeks back, I now know what to expect. Hopefully there’ll be more coming to race now that the word is out.

Sunday is the NSW Boating Industry’s Try Sailing Day. Normally I go down to MHYC, however this time I’m going to do the rounds of the Central Coast clubs. Hopefully I’ll get around to Gosford Sailing Club, Budgewoi Sailing Club, Mannering Park and South Lake Macquarie clubs up on Lake Macquarie, only one I’ve sailed from before.

Should be an interesting weekend.

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Kite Boarding

October 21, 2012 Leave a comment

So some time back those at the International SailingFederation [ISAF] decided that the sport of Windsurfing.sailboarding would be dropped from the Olympic games for RIO 2016. In it’s place would be Kiteboarding.

 

Whilst I know a few who Kiteboard, I’ve had little experience with it. As a teenager, I dropped out of sailing for a while and bought a couple of Windsurfers and competed in a few regattas, went wave jumping on Sydneys Northern beaches and even ventured up to the Central Coast on occasion. There are those who are yet to come to grips with either as a sport relating to Sailing, but as they are all powered by wind, I won’t get in to an arguement on the minor technicalities.

 

So the other day I was looking at http://www.seabreeze.com.au an excellent Australian weather website and noticed that there was a Kite event on at Botany Bay being organised by one of DeckHardware’s  customers, Kite Power. I had a look at the link and realised that whilst they are a new group to racing, what better way as a Yachting Australia Race Official than to get involved, especially with RIO 2016 in mind.
I got in touch with Steve McCormack and offered my services and arranged a meeting. Steve eagerly accepted my offer as an RO, so there I was on Saturday at my first event.

They had over 30 competitors in two divisions, race and off the beach. As a RO setting the course was easy, the hard thing was how do you identify them? Kite Power had arranged numbered T shirts so that was easy, but a little harder than I thought. I was helped out by Evelyn who knew most of the competitors, all I had to do was train her in the art of Race management and we were off. We got in two races in each division in around 18-20 knots of breeze, perfect conditions for the flyers. As we went in to sequence for race 3 in the racers, one competitor Jordan Girdis noted  that the breeze had increased some what. We hoisted the AP [Answering Pennant] and did a spot of checking with the local windstations and the use of my JDC Eole. Yes the breeze had got up somewhat and was more survival that good racing. After a 3/4hr postponement we agreed to pull the pin on the day.

The competitors were a mix of sailors including Jordan who had just competed in the recent Melges24 Worlds in San Francisco and Aiden Menzies a former crewmate of Nathan Outteridge. It was good to see them all mixing and talking about the different equipment. Certainly an eye opener for me with no previous experience with Kite Boarding. These guys were also acceptable to having a national race official coming in from the outside to make things run smoothly. The comradery was excellent with a BBQ running, Getto Blaster sounding out the tunes on the beach, it was all about atmosphere and it helped to set the scene.
I’d like to say thanks to Steve and Evelyn and the rest of the team who helped run the event, none of whom I’d met until that morning. I certainly look forward to the next event and helping out those who are looking to compete at Sail Melbourne later in the year where I have put up my hand to help as an RO. These guys certainly have the enthusiasm for their sport and made for a great day. Next time I hope ‘Hughie’ the wind god plays nice and we get a good NorEaster.

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2012 NSW Youth Championships

October 3, 2012 1 Comment

After many years of involvement in competing in and then running the Heaven can Wait 24 hour race around Lake Macquarie over the October long weekend it was time for a little change of scenery. To the other side!

I put my hand up several months ago to help run the NSW Youth Championships, not really knowing what I was in for. There were two courses, I was the Race Official on Bravo and Jeremy Atkinson from Woollahra was on Alpha. I had 29ers, 420s, Laser radials and 4.7s and the largest fleet in the Flying Elevens. Overall there were some 200 boats and 275 competitors.

I was fortunate to have my daughter Melissa once again backing me up on the start boat looking after the clock, she usually avoids most race management with me except for the Rolex Sydney Hobart race, preferring to do her own. Rhys Llewellen a DeckHardware Ambassador parent came from Narrabeen Lakes Sailing Club to do the flags. I was extremely fortunate to have another MHYC member in John Winchester offering his time to lay all the marks of my trapezoid course. Having these three with me made the three days and fifty starts [plus generals!] a lot easier. I didn’t have to worry about anything happening behind me, all went to plan. Rhys also took care each day in picking up the radios and trackers and returning them upon returning to the shore, John had to load and unload his boat daily with 5 marks. I think I had it easy worrying about the weather and the course to set.

Saturday dawned with a forecast of strong winds, we were not disappointed! The sailors came out and were greeted with gusts to 30 knots, a decision was made to send them ashore to wait it out. After several hours and the breeze reaching 35 knots on occasion it dropped down to a more manageable 18-20 and we were able to get in 2 races before sunset.

Sunday was a total change as Hughie definitely disappeared overnight. This time the land breeze took several hours to rotate around to a nice seabreeze of 10-12 knots, perfect. Even though most of the sailors were out there all day, we managed to get in 4 races. I’m sure that there were plenty of exhausted youth sailors that night, I know of a couple who were asleep early.

Monday was the same as the day before, except this time we kept them all ashore till the seabreeze arrived. We were fortunate to get in the required number of races after the gear breaking conditions of Saturday, there were several masts broken in the F11s and Lasers.

As for the results, I’ll leave that to the NSW Yachting website. What was notable was the number of ‘repeat offenders’ starting at our end of the line each time, the start team had a repour with some, “he’s back…”. There was one female Laser sailor who had the boys bluffed; she certainly nailed the start on more than one occasion. It was also nice seeing those who did timed runs in from the port end working out the line bias.

What disappointed me most was the total disregard by many parents and coaches in Sailing Instruction 25 requiring them to stay 50m away from the course area. This is one point that has been duly noted the next time I run a Youth Event. Jeremy said that he could almost have spent the night in the protest room blowing out his Alpha fleet, but decided against it too.

Next year? Maybe time to go sailing again in the HCW.

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Power point

September 18, 2012 Leave a comment

Yesterday morning I recieved a phone call from the Cruising Division at Middle Harbour Yacht Club, their guest speaker for last nights meeting had dropped out. Could I fill in and do a talk?

Sure.

Melissa spent most of the morning putting together a modified version of the Power Point presentation that she and Ben did for the Sydney International Boat show a couple of weeks ago [well it seems like that].

The cruising division at the club is quite active and they usually have around 40 members turn up, cook a BBQ and then have their meeting followed by a guest, in this case me. As the clubs principal race officer, I know a few of them , but it was great to meet up with some of the rest of the division. They even have one fellow who keeps up to track with any new developments in the news, magazines or on the net. In this case he mentioned the rash of European built boats coming in with sub standard skin fittings. well, did I come on a good night!

The presentation started on Liros ropes, the care, upkeep, choices and a host of other issues when owning a yacht. I had a few rope whip samples which were passed around. Some of those there still had wire halyards! I then opened up the bin I had of Forespar including a few of the Marelon skin fittings. This raised an eye with many there as it was surprising how many didn’t look after or regularly maintain their seacocks and valves, I think a few may when they next go aboard.

I spoke for over 1/2hr and then with questions and there were plenty, I was talking for over an hour, followed by those who came up afterwards. I think I managed to open a few eyes with the DeckHardware product range, many had picked up one of our discs at the show but were still to have a look. After last night a few will.

Come this Saturday at the club, I’m sure there will be a few asking some more questions. Hopefully I can help them out.

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First race season 2012/13 at MHYC

September 10, 2012 Leave a comment

Last Saturday was the first pointscore race of the season, with a good rollup in all divisions including the new #4 Division of fortnightly competitors. The breeze was out of the South West, however given the shifty nature of the breeze, a Westerly course was set. This gave the competitors a chance to do triangles as well as windward returns with a bit of Middle Head mystique thrown in.

 

With only one OCS on the day, all fleets were surprisingly well behaved on the startline. There was one incident however, Ken Krone aboard Kestral had a MOB in the last boatlength prior to his start. I was looking down the line and missed it, all I saw was his mainsheet being eased to slow the boat down. Once notified by the start team, I radioed Tender3 on the pin for them to come and assist. Ken arrived shortly after and picked him up and then retiring from the race. I look forward to seeing his report on the incident.

The start team then moved to watch the bottom mark for a few laps then moved on to be in position at Balmoral for the finish, this also gave Melissa the opportunity to take photos from a different direction.

The final issue on the day for the start team was the rescue of a distressed sailboarder. We had picked up all of the marks and were returning to MHYC when we saw a hand waving at us. The sailboarder had come out of Balmoral and was over come by exhaustion and the cold. We brought him onboard Hugh S George and took him in to the inner line of moorings at Balmoral for a short paddle ashore.

 

Photos taken by Melissa can be seen on both the DeckHardware and MHYC Facebook pages.

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Time for another trip report and an update

September 6, 2012 Leave a comment

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I haven’t written an update for some time, although I did try whilst away on this trip, however internet connections didn’t help.

 

Prior to this trip we had the Sydney International Boatshow at Darling Harbour in early August. DeckHardware again had a large presence including a new Heron dinghy showing the latest Allen fittings and Liros ropes. We had a great help from our regulars including Ben, who flew in from Tasmania, Goughy and Shane our sailmakers and Georgia our number one seller at the show. We had plenty of visitors and the show was one of the best we have had in quite some time, hopefuly the economy is on the improve.

Following the show, I drove up to Far North Queensland for my annual sales trip in that area. I ring up the customers in the area and let them know I’m coming, some take the advantage and order, others buy from the van. The photo above shows where I stay halfway between Port Douglas and Cairns, not a bad view to wake up to. I saw some 77 customers both old and new over a 10 day period. Some I was in and out of, others I was there for several hours. I drive up through the ‘guts’ of Australia, literally a straight line from Sydney going north, then work my way back south. The last stop was Bundaberg where I have to make the short stop to a certain Rum distillery, unfortunately they didn’t have any high ball glasses in stock.

 

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One of the great things about this trip, is finding all those boats from long ago that have semingly disappeared. The photo above is of Warri, possibly the first of Bob Millers [Ben Lexcen] One Tonners in Bowen. Also in Bowen was Deception a Peterson 37 that I sailed against in the early 80s when she was known as Simon Greens Thirlemere.

 

One of the sorriest sights was that of The Card. A former Whitbread Round the World racer, she came to a sorry end in a Cyclone. Washed ashore and ground against the rocks, nearly half the hull has disappeared. Amazingly she wasn’t stripped. She’s left in this state at Shute Harbour, near Airlie Beach.Image

For the first time, I suffered a flat tyre, luckily whilst in Townsville CBD. I also got a stone chip, right in the bottom right corner of the windscreen. Yep, P plate driver overtaking in a 80k roadworks zone just north of Bowen. All the traffic was doing 80, I can asure you he was doing over the ton!

Having seen nearly 80 businesses, chandleries, boat builder, riggers and 6461kms later, home.

 

THEN, it’s straight back in to the summer season at Middle Harbour Yacht Club and another season as Principal Race Officer. This season is looking forward to being another busy one with 200 odd competitors at the NSW Youth Titles at Belmont 16s in October. Then there will be the the Rolex Sydney Hobart race on Boxing Day and the Adams10m titles at MHYC in January. The last major event will be the Sydney Harbour Regatta in March. Knowing life, it’ll come around pretty quick!

 

 

 

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It’s been a full on month or so

August 17, 2012 Leave a comment

It’s been a full on month or so for Robyn, Melissa, me and all the helpers at Deckhardware. First up we had the farewell at Wangi Wangi for the Australian champion 49er team of Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen and their coach Emmett Lazich prior to London 2012. It was so rewarding as friends and sponsors of these guys that they came home with the Gold medal, knowing the work that has been put in to their effort, it was great to see the smiles on the dias.

We look forward to catching up with the guys later in the year.

The following weekend was the Sydney International Boatshow, with a great team again including Goughy, Georgia, Brad and making his first appearance for us in Sydney, Ben. Several others made the show easier, in setups, during and the breakdown. They included Nicole, Shane and Michael along with Greg and Emma Harris. It was a huge show for DeckHardware and we couldn’t do it without the support of these guys. Thanks.

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Another interstate trip

July 9, 2012 Leave a comment

Last week I made a late trip down to Melbourne, I had hoped to spend the week seeing a majority of customers that I don’t see on my regular trips. Unfortunately due to the ill health of Robyn I could only get away for a couple of days. So instead of driving down Sunday, I left late thursday afternoon and could only spend Friday seeing a few people.

 

Saturday was spent attending a Yachting Australia Racing Rules and race officers meeting at Royal Brighton Yacht Club, before the return 10 hour drive home on Sunday. Why drive? Too often I’m asked do you have this to show me, I haven’t seen that before. having a van full of products enables me to show a range of the nearly 10,000 items in our price list.

 

 

I had the chance to visit the Melbourne Wooden Boat Centre at Docklands. This is a Co-operative of owner builders building a nd repairing a quite differing range of craft. Luke Evans is one of those building his first little sailing dinghy, a 16’er as seen in the front right of the photo. Luke is after a classic style in his finish and Liros do a range of ropes that will hopefully fit his final look. I was able to show him a variety of the DeckHardware range, including the Allen fittings and PROtect Tape. Some of the other boats ranged from a Minnow up to a Dragon class yacht, there were rowing sculls and Dragon paddling canoes, quite a range.

 

Saturday at Brighton was a first also. As my clubs Principal race officer, I try to keep up to date on what’s going on, especially with the new ISAF rules coming in to effect in January. Each state had a nominated person to vote but there were several of us sitting in and able to to comment where neccessary. It will be interesting to see the new rules of Sailing come in to effect as I had not been involved before.

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Saturday on Sydney Harbour

June 12, 2012 Leave a comment

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This weekend was a long weekend in Sydney so there was no racing at Middle Harbour. After an early start at Woollahra Sailing Club where the East Coast Championships were being held for the 420s and Optimists, it was back to MHYC.

At Woollahra, I was able to have a good look at some of the 420s and catch up with some of the coaches and parents.

Later Steve Tucker, my assistant RO at MHYC, Phil Clinton, Vice Commodore and the chair of the sailing committee and I went out for a run around the harbour. The object was to GPS mark all the NSW Yachting Association marks as well as some of the other common marks such as the Shark, Clarke Islands and Fort Denison we use. Steve was going to update all the course lengths as they haven’t been done for some time, it’ll also give us an accurate database for any other courses we may set around the fixed marks.

Some of those we pinged were the posts at the islands, the one shown is on the Southeast corner of Clarke Island. Steve said that last season he’d run aground on the rock to which to post is fitted in a 30’er. Being in the MHYC startboat Hugh George [36′ and twin turbo diesel] and giving Phil Clinton driving lessons, we were able to come right alongside and have a good look down…mmmnn that one? The three of us were all able to have a good look for future races! Whether or not that’s inside knowledge or not…put it down to research.

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