Olympics Commentary

A friend of mine sent me this link.

Hope you enjoy it, its hilarious

http://www.blameitonthevoices.com/2012/08/irish-commentary-of-olympic-boat-race.html

Not offence intended to the Irish by the way, just a bit of fun.

AmyJo grows 2 feet but will never walk.

Hi all,
We started the year with a drought and now Noah would feel perfectly at home because it absolutely threw it down with rain this afternoon.  To give you some idea how much rain we have had here we installed a new weather station at the sailing club at the beginning of June and it has a rain bucket to measure rainfall.  Here are the readings since it was installed

300mm of rain in since the beginning of June and 70mm this month alone.  

Some good news today we received the initial draft plans from Fernwoods for AmyJo.  The layout is basically the same as I posted previously but Julia was not happy with the space left in the saloon when the system set the measurements.  After a brief chat it was decided AmyJo should be stretched 2 feet to 67feet to make the saloon a better size.  I must admit I was worried about space there and by my calculations it would be tight.

I don't want to reveal the final layout just now as the plans are only in the initial phase.  Once they are finalised and we approve them we'll be in a better position to confirm the layout.

TTFN

You can please some of the people all the time.

 I have been using Tony Blews UK Ranking web site on here for a while now.   Not to see how we are competing against other bloggers, but just to get a feel for how many people are reading our mumblings.   I like the fact his site only records 1 hit per IP address and not every visit as does Google.  To me that gives a truer picture of the number of visitors we get.  I also like the fact I can tell how popular my posts are by the way we move up and down the rankings.  We're never going to be in the top ten and frankly, we don't care.

I guess I'm going to tread dangerously as I don't normally air such views on here but it pains me to read on Sue and Vic's blog (No Problem), that Tony is receiving complaints about the way he runs the ranking on his website and seems to be (quite rightly) very upset even planning to stop work on it.  Come on folks are we really that worried if we're not No. 1, no I doubt it.  If you are then perhaps its time to get a life.

Lets face it Tony has put a hell of a lot of effort into the site, and, lets not forget he is not running it as a business but in his spare time. The site does have other benefits though, like being a great catalogue of other blogs, all collated in one place.  Even if you exclude the ranking side of it, it is still a jolly useful way to find narrow boat blogs, especially new ones.  

  

 So why, oh why then do some people have to see fit to put his work down.  Its not as if he is charging anyone for the service, its free and always has been.  My guess is he is actually incurring hefty costs to keep the site running, all for our benefit. Those who think he should hand it over if he cannot devote full time to it should realise the site belongs to Tony and he can do as much, or as little as HE chooses, not us, but him, and no one else should be telling him otherwise surely?  At the end of the day we use his site because he lets us, not because we demand it.  In other words if your not happy with the way Tony runs the site, then please just leave it so the rest of us can enjoy it.

Tony is running a survey (Click here to put your answer) and like Sue I do hope you offer your support for Tony to keep it running.  He got my vote in favour.

To Tony if you ever read this.  I've posted to you before about not letting people get to you.  Keep up the good work mate.  As that famous saying goes: -

You can please some of the people all the time

and you can please all the people some of the time

but you can never please all the people all the time.

Please, I'm really not in for an argument on this, I'm just not happy about people putting other people down for no good reason.  

Rant over and out.

TTFN

Thunder, Lightening, lashings of rain but.... no wind

Hi all
Last weekend Chris and I attended the Island of Anglesey Offshore Race.  This race is for all classes of dinghy either mono hull or multi hull and runs from Beaumaris on the Menai straits through Penman point and then on to Traeth Bychan some 15 miles away.  It is an area of stunning beauty and is a fantastic place to sail.

We both love this race and make a full weekend of it camping at Traeth Bychan in a lovely little camp site and a whole group of the Sailing club members join us.  A good time is had by all

Team Chester enjoy a few drinks and a social chat the night before the race

I usually sail the race as crew for one of our members but this year the plan was for me to helm and Chris be my crew.  This would be the first time Chris has sailed the race and we would sail in the club's latest addition the RS Vision

RS Vision nearly ready to launch

The Vision is a great boat to sail and we were really looking forward to it.  Unfortunately  over the preceding week my right shoulder has developed Tendinitis that is really painful so I had to step down and Chris sailed with Andy, one of our other instructors instead.

Our friends Mike and Kathy launch their RS 400 in the storm

 Whilst launching the boats the sky went black, gave forth thunder and lighting and then the heavens opened up.  It rained so hard it began to fill the boats with water.  Luckily dinghy's are used to having water come into them and so have bailers in them to extract the water whilst under way.  We were really lucky the lightening did not come any where near them.  During all this the wind dropped away to nothing and so the race started with a drifting fleet.

The really light winds make  for slow progress.
 Andy and Chris (on right of photo) work hard to keep the boat moving

Rounding the buoy at Pennam Point

The island in the photo above is Puffin island, home to a large colony of Puffins.  It is a bird sanctuary now and you can only see the birds by boat.  There are regular boat trips from Beaumaris to see the Puffins and you can probably make out some in the photo if you look close enough.

 Eventually the rain stopped, the sun peeked through the clouds  and the fleet started to pick up some wind all be it a zephyr of a breeze.  After 4 hours of sailing Chris eventually made it to Traeth Bychan and enjoyed a good meal and drink.  Whilst they won no prises they did enjoy the sailing.

Coming ashore at the end of the race

 Once back at camp the team enjoyed some group socialising

Steve decides its Sausage time, this is a rare sight indeed

Nothing like a Full English to quell the hunger

Now I DO LOVE CUSTARD says Lorraine and gets stuck in

Its hard graft all the sailing mlarky - Our Amy restoring energy reserves

Its morning and yours truly is helped out of his sleeping pit by Lorraine

We all had a great weekend despite the weather and are exhausted. We had 8 boats enter the race and all came home safe and sound.

Quick update on AmyJo.  Spoke with Jim at Alexander boats and he is finishing off a hull over the couple of weeks.  AmyJo will be next and he will let me know when the base plate will be laid so we can be present.  So hopefully we should have something tangible to show you of the build soon.

Well thats all for now, hope you are all enjoying what little summer we seem to be having.  Hopefully the weather forecasters are right and the promised warm weather turns up at the end of the week. 

TTFN...