Tuesday 15 April 2008

Awesome sail on Sunday.

I took a break from the build race and I had one of the best sails of my life on Sunday. I borrowed an old Laser and went out in a very light northerly wind that was shifting 90 degrees before it shut off completely and then blew very lightly from the south. It was day 2 of Pirate School for number one son Max.

I have been reading Swallows and Amazons to him for a while and employing various other brain washing techniques to make him think sailing is cool. Maybe it is a sign of the times that the DVD from the Moths Worlds 2004 is way cooler than Swallows and Amazons. However I read the book more for me more than him of course. It is a book that is better to read to kids than have read to you as a kid.

Day one was theory and quiz games and day two was the real deal. A Laser is not really an Optimist but at the end of the day he could steer it and had a feel for what was going on. He still can not remember the magic "There is Red Port Left in the bottle." sentence but again I will brain wash him.

So all you hi-performance Moth sailors out there when you get board of sailing it can be really fun to rediscover it again through you kids, however I suspect the success of our high seas adventure could be about to get expensive.

Now it is back on with the build race. I plan to get the boat to the sail-makers for some tramps in a week and I still have a few jobs to get done before then. Niki and I plan to do some sailing this weekend which will probably mean the last sail of my old boat for a while. I will then rob her of her bit to rig up the new one. So Flashheart will be launched in a couple of weeks I hope. This is too late to win the build race. but it turned out to have been a very close finish. I think both Felix and Martin have flown their boats but neither have posted a picture to claim the prize.

1 comment:

Simon Payne said...

Hi Doug!
The boat flies! See on Simon's blog. Ciao Martin!