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apparently they have made it to Norfolk - a couple of days early though!

 
Thats great fun.  What sort of camera are you using. How much, where can i get one?
Meds

Angus
I can help i think.
Meds

Shame we missed it.  Who won? 

Hi Tom
I will be there on friday.  Please bring your old mast.  2 reasons, it should be a useful reference tool, and if i fail the new one you have something else to use!
I am practising Friday afternoon.  We can look at Friday evening or first thing Saturday morning.
John

unless it is very choppy, the perceived norm is to sheet the jib hard, use a lot of kicker so that the leech of the main is very tight and hike hard.  Tom Stewart and Jon Ibbotson in particular almost sail head to wind.  They sail very upright, Tom tends to heel to windward.

Whilst we all dream of London 2012 this weekend I am pleased to let you know that we will all be able to enjoy London Pride in the bar at WPNSA.  The NTOA Burton Week funds will receive £££ from every pint sold.  There are limited stocks available, so dont be late for the social activities!
Thanks to Fuller's for supporting Burton Week.

Whilst a good result, and great PR, arguably this also needs a little bit of perspective.
The race is not run under the PY system exactly.  HISC do their own local PYs.  See here
http://www.hisc.co.uk/handicapPY.pdf 
What this suggests to me is that the N12 handicap given was a little favourable on the day.  We sailed there last year, as did Jo Richards and Sophie Mackley and did ok, but not as well as Jonno and Char.  I dont think the result of one race at Hayling will change our PY, but Simon, if you keep beating everyone at URYC it just might!

This is John Hugo rescuing his boat from the Annandale SC dinghy park when the floods hit Scotland / Lak District last December.  Captions please.

Hi
I have got some more info which I wont post here, but send me an email and I will let you have it.
john at 2baileyclose.net

At this rate we may even get 65 entries by the 1st of May...........

We will be there.

These are from back in the day.
[face=Calibri]3 well know National 12 sailors are pictured.  Who are they? and which one features twice?[/face]

 
This isn't so. It is the distance from the anchor point in the boat (mast foot) to the deck that is the key driver. Adding purchase above the deck reduces the amount the shrouds can be let off. Once the blocks in the boat stop moving, the bits above the deck do too and if there are three parts rather than two, they move only two thirds the distance. Work it out on a piece of graph paper if you don't believe me.
 
Kevin

At the risk of letting this get a trifle pedantic, I agree with you that it is not the 3:1 above the deck that gives the throw itself but rather the ability to rig the relevant blocks between the base of the mast and the deck to give sufficient throw in that part of the system whilst at the same time being able to (a) give sufficient purchase to be able to move the shrouds when it is required and (b) to use an economic amount of rope.  You dont want to be pulling rope for too long when you go round corners, and you then only get it wrapped around your feet or pull the tails into the jib ratchet blocks!  I simplified to 3:1 above deck - this is clearly not all the story!  I believe that I have 5:1 below deck giving 15:1 in total compared to the 16:1 achieved with the 2:1 above deck.
Ian - I would disagree that the marginal increases in performance does not warrant the additional choice.  It is like marmite as originally said.  Sometimes you want it and sometimes you dont.  You dont have to be consistent.  That is why it is fun!

I had shroud tracks on 3473 but have not had them since.
In the end it was cost benefit decision.  It was an expensive way of getting a little bit more mast security (allegedly) when it was windy and being able to sail with the boom square in such conditions.
One other interesting benefit was in very light stuff to be able to change the shroud base and add rig tension so as to induce more mast bend and therefore flatten off the full mainsail that we were using.  We would also pull the mast forward at deck level to help.  Not much of an issue if you are a tiddler with flat sails anyway, but clearly of interest to the gentleman with a fuller figure.  Not sure if it worked but I felt better.
Without the tracks now we still seek to pull the mast forward at deck level when the wind goes. 
The other interesting thing was that pre shroud tracks most people had a 2:1 above deck purchase on their shrouds and frequently did not have enough throw in the system to square the boom.  Shroud tracks enabled a lot of throw and Tom Stewart responded by rigging a 3:1 above deck purchase which had more throw and solved the problem at a substantially reduced cost.  Many recent boats now do the same.