Who was out this weekend?.....

Nice looking boat. Not sure he'll stay dry sitting there though, you might want to strap him in too!

Looking forward to the on the water pics!

Went 29ering in a gorgeous F5 tonight, best capsize yet! Missed the toestraps after a tack and snapped my carbon tiller extension in the process! I know only have ont tiller extensin long enough for twin tillers cos I chopped the end off the other one!

this weekend i broke 2 boats in 2 days, first on saturday i took the 14 out with a mate who can't trapeze without looking like a muppet, feet at least 3 feet apart and holding onto the wire instead of pulliing the jib sheet in. but he had fun so i geuss it was good... right up to the point where the rudder pulled off the back on a reach. the rudder wasn't even loaded up, the bottom pintells just pulled out the hull  ive got some serious boat maintenance to do methinks.

then on sunday it was the laser open and i spent all morning running around delivering kit for my sister. i went to the club and back on my bike twice with a lot of kit on the luggage rack each time and its 5 miles each way. then i was wandering round the doinghy park and managed to scrounge a hull and my sisters radial rig (she was going to go 4.7 but neshed out). i had a great time. lasers are a lot of fun in a blow, apart from the upwind bit. in the race i beat my old rival from my laser sailing days even though i havent sailed a laser in about 9 months. then i was reaching around waiting for a next race but they abandonned the open cos it was getting silly. so me and a mate went upwind for a while then went on some insane blasting reaches, gybing down the faces of the waves. all going well to my mast went pop. i looked up and the rig was still upright but it looked bizzare. i couldnt work out what was wrong. my mate said later the top of my mast was infront of the bow. i tacked round and headed for the harbout but on the way in the mast fell down at deck level. i was the second person to snap a bottom section that day, we also had 4 snapped top sections.

had HYDRS (squad) training today, raced in a 200 snapped my main halyard, came in bodged it, went and raced (and swam  )
part of the afternoon involved the entire squad sailing oppies...(pics to come)
then jumped back into the 200 and had a blast and half, then snapped the spinni halyard but luckily the bobble that was in half stopped the line going into the mast, fixed that on the water and carried on.
and turned the 200 into a submarine

Twas a beautiful wipe out, mind. Just peeved off my camera was out of battery.

Boat was then sailed in with the jib unfurled and a rather heavyweight crew from the rescue boat* hiking- still shifted a bit!

Probably a good day to be on rescue; I reckon if I hadn't we'd have been daft enough to go out and would have broken the boat/ourselves.

Wouldn't really call your crew earlier a "novice"- yes, a novice at trapeze crewing, but he's not a bad helm in his Cadet, and he managed to keep the Pico upright with full rag out.


*at this point, the 3k was the only boat on the water, bar the windsurfers.