The Merlin Rocket

A sudden damascene conversion??? Any photographs of this miraculous event?

The next thing we'll hear is that he has sailed down the road to Whitstable to join in the Nationals.

Well after all those years of piss taking, I finally got a go in one today and I absolutely hate to admit it but I thoroughly enjoyed it, luckily the wind turned down a bit from what it had been earlier or I'm sure, in fact almost certain I'd have fallen out of it. It's not the most comfortable thing I've ever ridden, but there's so much to do in it, you have no chance of getting bored. I've never sailed anything with a symmetric kite, if I ever got one that would have to go, we were doing really well until the second time round and I said chuck up the kite, he went no! I said er why not? He said the burgee is not abeam of the forecastle or some such sailing narrative that even though I've repeated it several times in humour today i still cant exactly remember what he said, but anyway because it wasn't he said it would be a waste of time putting it up so the RS400 and the L4K we were racing both got past us on the reach, we'd get them back upwind and we'd get them back down the run, but eventually the race finished at the bottom of a reach so they got us over the water in the end.
I did a bit of a wind up video of our preparation which I'll try and stitch together, but right now I'm quite proud I managed to just get in it and finish 4th over the water and damn nearly came 2nd, if the burgee hadn't been abeam of the wotsit...
Not a boat for beginners, In fact even though i was wiggling the stick pretty adeptly even if i do say so myself, there was a whole load of other competent crew stuff going on, he did everything, i didn't pull a single rope other than the main, my kind of boat, don't anyone tell you the helm is the most important part of Merlin sailing, no wonder they can get p1ssed out of their minds every night during Salcombe week.

Edited by iGRF - 23 Aug 15 at 9:25pm