Messages

Entry, fuel, crossing, camping and food may require a budget of @ £700 - and that's excluding cost of bier pour apres voile.
Hey Angus, thanks for the steer!
Annandale, Crammond & Castle Semple are in striking distance. and while Solway clashes with Pevensey the big guns may be doing battle on the south coast.
Could I sail to my usual standards (badly) yet maybe retrun a half-decent result for the series. .... Hmmmm. 
When is Loch doodah?

Entry is Eu 200, there's plenty of camping, roughly what is cost of ferry crossing with Mondeo & trailer?

Blimey!
A scan of the fixtures list had us thinking about a return to the fold and Pevensey in August ... not a big step I know, but a big one for us since Thorpe Bay 2009 was our last event!
And now anticipation has got the better of us we see Carnac, the entry list, and recall all the fun we've been missing.
It's too soon for us to commit to Carnac but were certainly interested. Bens college work is the main consideration. As yet he doesn't know if the bulk of his coursework assemments will have been completed by then. Just about the same time last year he had a very heavy workload. 
 
Chris and Ben. 'Why Can't You?'

Alas Chadders fit-out not yet complete, but full fees for home club paid for 2012, There must have been some optimism when I wrote the cheque !!  .. .. .. And if it wasn't so perishin' cold at 2am I'd bike the 12 miles to work to get fit !! !!

[because]

I was about your weight three and halve years ago when I purchased my Crusader, David and I regret I still am. I could afford to shed at least four stone and be better for it. Back then my boy was quite light and the plan was to lose weight faster than Ben would gain it. Erm, that is not quite what has happened. I've remined pretty constant but Ben has shot up, and while lean, he has gained weight in the passing from age eleven to fifteen.
12s are brilliant fun, thoough I say that as someone who has turned out (at all) since the Nationals at Thorpe Bay in 2008. (!!!!) Despite my lack of progress our twelve remians one of my best incentives to lose weight. One of the reasons that I haven't sailed, besides working queer hours, is that I have become very interested in the long term dietary trends of our species and it turns out to be quite interesting. I am also interested in the rlationship between modern ill health and the modern diet, and add to that a particular interest in cholesterol. I devote a lot of time to reading and research.

Really, we've never eaten less in the way of fat and more in the way of carbohydrate than the peoples of developed nations (like us) do now. Plus, despite them advising us to the contrary for nigh on five decacdes neither saturated fat and cholesterol are actually bad for us. It beggers belief in the face of all the marketing and guidance, I know, but saturated fat anbd cholesterol are actually good for us.
It easy to think that we gain weight, or resist weight loss, from simply being weak-willed, greedy, or otherwise eating too much. However weight gain is mediated by levels of the hormone insulin, and weight loss can be impeded if insulin levels are chronically high. The body secretes insulin as it digest carbohydtates. Insulin causes our levels of blood sugar to 'yoyo' and that can be a stimulus for feeling hungry and the compulsion to eat.
Another way of thinking about matters might be the idea that people gain weight from a decline in the ability to self-regulate the appetite, and something that might contribute to that is a trend towards low-fat foods and a low fat - high carbohydrate paradigm. Barry Groves is an author who has committed to print the opinion that social trends regarding obesity and diabetes arise, not so much in spite of all this healthy eating advice but, because of it. After a lot of reading I wouldn't disagree.
Dr John Briffa is a qualified and experience GP, now working in a private setting, who is a knowledgeable cholesterol sceptic and who subscribes to this outline of thinking. Weight management and weight loss can be acheived by being careful about the quantity, and quality, of the carbohydrate sources we select. With no reason to be fat phobic good fats can be used to help satiate appetite and stabilise blood sugar. Contrary to the popular (and commercially lucrative) paradigm polyunsaturated fats are not really 'good' fats if consumed to excess. Despite some polyunsaturates are 'essential', excess is a quantity not far removed from very little.
John Briffa has a book out, new this month, 'Escape The Diet Trap', in which I think he covers some of these bases and many more. I haven't read this volume yet, but I am aware of the other works of Dr Briffa and consider he sets a good standard. He maintains a well esteemed blog and in this link to his blog he sets out the synopsis for Escape The Diet Trap.
http://www.drbriffa.com/2011/12/23/my-new-book-escape-the-diet-trap-will-be-published-on-5th-january/

Flaps that leak while you have business at the blunt end - like hanging a rudder - are irksome. The old ones on 3244 did cos they may have warped with age and/or storage.

I used polycarboate sheeting (plastic glass) from B&Q to fashion replacements for 3244. They turned out good and stiff and make a good seal. I cut them to shape using a powered jigsaw -  BUT (!!) I do recall the exercise of cutting was not plain sailing; the material itself is not easy to work with a jigsaw. It could be better to work with if sandwiched between some scraps of ply.
My cut edges were a bit crude but I had a course file that tidied them up and then finished them off by offering up to a belt sander. Hinges were sinply reclaimed from the old flaps. They're simply a flat hinge (plastic with stainless pin) with a shim fixed to one half and the flap fixed to the other. Work well.

Hi all,
We hope those who made the trip to Leigh & Lowton enjoyed the weekend but we gather it was cut short.
We made the drive out on Sunday hoping to see our chums but arrived around 1350 while the Guy Fawkes Pursuit was well underway. We thought our eyes were deciving us when we could scarcely pick out a '12' amongst the menagerie of craft gracing sun-blessed waters of the Flash. Some intense detective work resolved our cognitive dissonance.
Our 'informants' told us there had been a lack of wind early in the morning and therefore the two planned races for the '12' weekend had been abandonned. Postponement was not an option becuase of the scheduled Open Pursuit. A big dissappointment for all, we sure.
So we're sorry we missed many from the fraternity and we're sorry for those who made the trip that the event was cut short. It is more than thirty years since I last visited Pennington Flash. Although we missed members of the clan it ws great to trip to the club to get familiar again. We chatted with a Miracle owner from the club and a visitor with a keeled 'thing' from Fiddlers Ferry SC. We picked up local knowledge that 'weed' can be a problem. (I don't touch the stuff myself.:-/)
Ben thanks those behind his offers to sail. As it happens he has an exam coming up this week and a revision weekend was in order. Naturally he only 'remebered' about the exam last Thursday. (Grrr !!) Thanks for the early offer Angus, and thanks again David. Apologies Ben could not oblige.
The 12s that entered the Pursuit, how did they do? We did not identify the entrants save that I saw an entry form for Patrick of Burwain in 3502. By 1510 the breeze was falling. We left at 1515 and were not around when boats would have been coming in. Was it a good experience?

Chris, Linda, and Ben  

Duh, Somerset !!

Any idea of vendors location?

I cut my teeth with transom sheeting, first in a Grad and then in an Ent, often team racing. Centre sheeting has never come naturally to me despite having worked with it in several other classes. The thumb on the tiller hand has always served me well for momentarilly 'cleating' off the mainsheet feed from a transom block.

After being absent for more than two decades and entering the 12s with a transom sheeted arrangement my tacking was initially very clumsy. It was a while before I figured why. After being away from transon sheeting and then from being away form the sport entirely I had forgotten the merit in swapping hands before the tack, whereas in centre-sheeted craft like the laser I campaigned briefly I had adjusted to swapping hands after the tack. Even now I don't know what it was I was doing to make matters so clumsy but I suspect I was trying to swap hands mid tack which is pretty darned stupid really! Here's hoping if i get my basic tacking skills up to scratch some other of those three decade old proficiencies might also follow; but we're not holding our breath.

Let's hope we can resist temptation to amend the name to 'Why Can'ty We?'

Team 'Why Can't You ..?' can't make it to the event this season.
We're hoping to be a more familar part of the scene next year. If we succed in ambitions to trail to events in 2012 we'd like to lend our support to the Midland SC fixture.
Good luck come Saturday, and sorry we can't boost the numbers.

I can't make either Ripon or Yeadon I'm afraid. 3244 not fully refitted yet and I have to work Saturady into Sunday with only one rest day that w/e. Ben is still on for the event to partner Tim.
We'll be glad to get back on the scene.

Ditto thanks to Brian and Ros and thanks too to Chadders. Ben enjoyed his day thoroughly. But what did you do to him? He was cream-crackered! Could be something to do with a social event teh night before.

When we get back on the water chances are our crew weight will be pushing the envelope for a Crusader cos the crew is growing and while the helm remains a relative (and large) constant - so potential answers interest me.
Once airs range into moderate and above powering up ought not to be a problem, should it (?), and the sailmaker determines how much power is factored into the cut. Am I correct in thinking carbon rigs are better able to regulate power? Carbon set ups can de-power powerfully cut sails. Do carbon rigs aid crews of modest weight because power can be regulated to match crew weight, wind strength, and point of sailing that power is down-regulated (matched) to the ability to make use of it.
BW 2011 was blowy, my skills rusty from two decades away from sailing, and my experience in the short chop of the estuary was limited. We were there for no other reason to make up the numbers within the AC fleet. I did find myself struggling to make upwind progress. I should think we weighed in well above 21 stone. Without much experience of open water and being accustomed to close quarter competition on small waters and meres I think I reverted to type and was aiming too high. We' wern't making active use of shroud tension control to induce bend in Proctor C (ally) mast. I was included to feather the gusts in a way that one might in a laser. We were not powering through the chop.Momentum was not being carried forward.

Footage of brightlinsea has driven some sense in, has it? I spotted a lot of leach twist in many rigs.
Now I figure I ought to have used shroud tension (increased) to induce pre-bend to be controlled and limited with mast ram and eased kicker to permit some twist. Instead of feathering to windward in the gusts we could have laid off slightly, eased the sheets in the knowledge that pre-bend would flatten the sail to a more manageable and effective foil, keep the slot from stalling and induced twist would lower the centre of effort acting on the sail making thus resulting that more of our hiking effort would get converted into forward motion. Twist spills wind from the top and lowers the healing moment. Reduce power for blowy beats; restore some for off-wind.

Carbon, so far as I get it, permits the factoring in of more power in sail cut that can then be downgraded to match the point of sailing and limitations of crew weight. If I have it right, and I concede my technique was horribly lacking at Thorpe Bay, carbon rigs offer the greatest advantages to lighter crews. I hope to make the action of my tensioners a bit more user friendly so we make better use of them in race. If that don't do no good then that nut on the tiller has to go.
Hell, fun first, prizes second.

Burton Trophy Race footage on YouTube at http://bit.ly/pIhBli (part 1) and http://bit.ly/qlUJND (part 2)