What ho chaps
Just to let you know my Lajabless will hit the water at Bournville’s lake in Birmingham on the 22nd. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Bill
The 22nd is also when my maiden voyage is. COOL:)
We can compare notes on the Who’s-got-a-laja-thread.
About 9 min 20 sec in a 1 knot breeze at sea view marina.
a few poorly judged laylines caused a few extra tacks.
This boat is clearly capable of fast times,I hope!!!
Akela launch date is slightly delayed due to various reasons; my poor health and the build of a ( slightly modified ) Kittiwake kit with my son - so that he can play at Llandudno - being only two…
As a result of making those, I will not now be able to complete my own Footy ( Footprint ) in time to also take that… :rolleyes:
Keven. 
Just finishing my 3rd boat for Sunday. A modified Razor with a larger rudder and standard rig. Was going to try a 30inch rig but 2 other boats in our fleet tried and even after cutting sail down 3 times it still was over powered. We get high winds in Spring and Fall so dont want to take the chance. My other 2 boats–Pip Squeak and my own hard chine performed well last weekend and weighed in at 522gr and 566gr . Temperature is supposed to be in 60s on Sun so hopfully turnout will be good. Dont how I will beat 9min20sec but we will have fun and thats what it is all about. Let a 5 year old spectator try my boat on Sun and he loved it–caught on real quick–maybe a future sailor? Best of luck to everyone. Cheers Bill.
Good news for New England skippers!
In spite of the horrible weather we’ve had over the last couple weeks, the ice is gone on Lily Pond and the forecast is good for this weekend!!!
On Sunday, we should have fair skies and high temp close to 60 degrees!!!
Quite a welcome change, and just in time, too.
Razor V4 (new foils) and Cutlass (giving her to a friend) and American Footy are ready to go. Slingblade needs a “Dunedin” rig, and Excaliber is waiting to be decked. Hopefully, they’ll be ready by Sunday. I don’t think the Halfpint rebuild is going to make it, though.
See you at the pond.
Bill H
News from Colwyn Bay.
Some people have dropped out - faithless creatures - and some more have joined in, sharing boats.
Building programmes are so tight that there will be a scene on Saturday/Sunday unknown since Charles Martel, King of Frrance had an army of moslem captives baptised by driving them through a river previosly blessed by no less than 10 bishops.
All ferrets are ferreting away. Bridal flowers are being presented in newspaper throughout North Wales as pressure on precious stocks of floral wrap rises. If the sky does not fall on our head, we will have 3 Kittiwakes and 1 Akela. Luck and driving pressure (who said this was fun?) from the Oberflottenleiter (me) may result in a Foot Print, two more Kittiwakes (one with a McCormack rig) and an emergency, instant BUG 3 (also with a McCormack rig).
The forecast is for 12 knots from the SW. This should give smooth or slighly choppy water - depending on where we can pursude the swans to go - amd slso explains the lack of floral wrap as B rigs become closr to reality. Basicaly, if boats are not over-canvassed, they should give of their best. Worst problem is that hardly anyone has sailed an RC boat before!
Remember that the same boat can be used by multiple skippers…so drag your mates in for a go around the track.
Scalesailing has offered a “Kittiwake” kit as a prize to go along with several other spot prizes with an Americas cup flavour(Thanks again Ian).
So get to it this weekend guys.I expect my Inbox to be full of race results.
Good luck and good sailing.
After building the marks and putting together the course for sundays heat in Daytona I then built the measurement box. Good thing I did, my high buoyancy rudder was about .5mm too wide. Could have been embarrasing, organize the event then get disqualified… The boat is fixed…we all need a box.
What Ho Chaps!
Just thought I’d let you all know. We tried to run the “Internet Classic” today at Bournville in the UK but the wind was not on our side. 0-3 mph from anywhere and everywhere. So a none starter I’m afriad. I’ll try again next weekend. Some would say a typical Bournville wind but some of us know differently. My Labjabless hit the water today and I was very pleaseantly suprised by its performance in very difficult conditions. I’m quite glad really because it allows me to do some further work on it to straigten out one or two minor problems. I need PTFE bearings for the swing rig and I need sails with a bit fuller cut to improve the drive.Both will be dealt with in the week. I have attached some photo’s. I also had RA with me and its interesting to note that the Footy weighs less than the rig of the “A”.
The Footy created quite a bit of interest in what is a racing based club. Most of the guys were jokingly dismissive of the Footy until they saw it sailing. Quite a few changed their tune, it will remain to be seen whether others appear.
Will be back in touch once I have posted a time.
Bill
Report from NC.
This one is in the books, whew. It was tough sailing for everyone
attending. Except Doug maybe. Winds were light and variable and died
just as you needed to round the marks. Everyone was amazed at how
tiring sailing was making us. These little boats require complete
concentration. There’s no coasting, ever.
Everyone seemed to enjoy the racing in spite of the challenges. The
winner was Doug Hale sailing his McCormack designed Pipsqeak, #75(I think it’s a Pipsqeak). Second place was Mike Roe borrowing Doug’s boat for his heats. We had a few break downs unfortunately and not all could finish their heats. I recorded a time of 33:20 when I snagged a floating stick and couldn’t get off it for a while It was my last heat and rather than start over I just completed the laps.
The skippers are willing to try this again sometime but want to pick a day with more wind. Fleet racing on a small course should be fun too.
I can’t wait to see how this all sorts out at Brett’s end.
Our Footy classic was a bust from top to bottom. Since the Toronto guys decided to go on their own, we only had two local guys enter, me and a guy with 4 boats.
The other guy’s boats wouldn’t fit the measuring box. I was ready to start when a gust of wind came up, blew my boat off the table, and busted the rudder.
Results: no official times were recorded.
Hope everyone else had better luck.
–Doug
The Toronto Footy Postal Classic started off with NO wind yet we were forcast 5-9mph. We launched in the morning to try to tune but with no wind this didnt work. We had 9 boats show up and all were teched in the box and all boats passed. Two boats had tall rigs, banking on light wind. It was decided to have lunch and racing was finally started after 1pm. The wind started to pick up but was flukey and some boats got tangled in the rope connecting the marks. As the day progressed the wind filled in and became gusty which caused some catastrophies. The early times were slow because of the wind but they got better. In the end the results were as follows: 1st–Bill Shorney–own hard chine–B rig–10min 3sec, 2nd–Charlie Mann–modified Shorney hard chine—big rig–11min 40sec, 3rd–Bill Shorney–Bretts Pip Squeak–17min 32sec. Pictures were taken of each boat in the box and these along with the results will be sent to Brett. A great time was had by all and much SHOP take and idea exchange took place throughout the day. We plan on having another meet with triangle match racing in the future. Cheers Bill.
Still time until the end of the racing period.
Get out there again guys and get some times in.
This event is wide open…anyone with a reliable boat has a better than even chance I would say.
This was the most enjoyable disaster I have ever been involved in. Defection, illness and incomplete boats brought a once-healthy entry list down to four boats (another 3 were very, very nearly made its, plus 4 more in different states of disorganisation) 3 Kittiwakes and Angus’s Akela. There ended up being 6 entrants including people who turned up to borrow boats.
Wind started off at about 14 knots SW (16 mph, 7 m/s) and most of the action took place during the passage of a cold front involving a shift to NW and in increase in wind speed to (probably) gusting 20 knots (22 mph. 10 m/s). The internet course functioned perfectly with the shifts. The only problem was that that the shift put the leeward mark down into an area of very short, steep seas reflected back off the end of the lake. Race Officers should bear this possibility in mind.
The most important thing to realise is that we have no depth of RC sailing experience in the club although quite a high proportion of members know a lot about big boats.
Every boat broke! Nothing catastrophic – incorrectly tied knots, poor waterproofing. However, the fact was that by the time that we were thinking of timed runs after a little practice, every boat except Akela had drowned electrics and Akela still did not have a bulb or radio! Hence no timed runs. Hopefully we’re coming back for more next weekend.
Akela was launched, made to sail and did a couple of untimed laps. We were just about to try a real go when she stopped responding to the helm. Rudder servo broken away. Jam it in place with some spare hunks of Depron. Off we go again. Screaming up the second beat, we loose control again. Radio flooded. The theory that surface tension will be enough to keep the mast bearings watertight doesn’t work! Damn.
Now the more interesting bits. It’s astonishing how well the Kittiwakes sail in a lot of wind, even under an A rig. They are rather twitchy when over-pressed but that is hardly surprising. Nobody had any significant difficulty tacking despite the big seas, their inexperience and the rumours on the subject. There were a number of instances of submarining but they were brief and controllable. Overall the boats are even more impressive than I had thought.
Everyone had a whale of a time. Nobody blamed the failures on Footys – simply on their own incompetence. Everyone wants to have another go – whether we will manage next weekend is another matter. I think that, despite this wobbly start, our new club is probably up and running.
Angus, excellent review. In S.Daytona we had decent conditions, 8-10 kts with gusts to 14. The internet course stayed perfectly aligned and we only suffered a 20deg wind shift. The coffee and donuts were excellent. Of 7 boats, Kittiwakes ruled, all the big rig boats including mine bombed (tanked for our UK readers). My ‘big boat’ submarined downwind, at times buried to aft of the mast, though extraordinarily, never lost control until it flooded it’s servo’s and then petulantly sailed off to the far corner of the pond. We had one excellent sub 8 minute heat by a very well prepared Kittiwake, I agree, impressive little boats. Nice job Graham. I for one will fit a new keel, modify the rig and try again next weekend. Paul
Our New England meet was plagued by variable wind and first-day-on-the-water problems as well. Forecast was for 6-9 mph, but we only saw that briefly. The rest of the day was pretty light. The course worked fine, though, as demonstrated by it’s ability to handle a 360 degree shift of the wind over the day. That’s right, the wind came from ALL compass points. Some shifts abrupt, some gradual, most preceeded by dead calm conditions.
Many failures occured as the regatta served as the shakedown cruise for boats built over the winter. Boats built last year fared better.
My friend Harry Welch, sailing my Cutlass had a good run going for three laps, then the wind completely died leaving him with a 9:40 time.
Scott Spacie hit the right combination at the right time for the only good run of the day…a very nice 6:45 with his American Footy and a low-aspect rig. Scott’s boats and rigs were very well prepared and sailed nicely, including a scaled-down version of Pitou.
I had high hopes for my new Excaliber. Initial sailing showed promise, but the test was not definitive in such fickle wind. I’m probably the only guy with bad enough luck to buy vinyl tape to seal a hatch that doesn’t stick to fiberglass! I saw the hatch lift from the deck, lost rudder control, jumped in the dingy to chase it just in time to see it sink beneath the waves! I was devastated seeing all that work…not to mention my new mini servos, receiver, and new carbon fin and rudder sink like a stone. And since those things are all interchangeable on my boats (which I thought was smart) I now have 3 boats out of commission. It’s only about 6 feet deep, but very murky water so you can’t see more than 3 feet. Attempts to snag it werre unsuccessful. Hopefully some snorkel gear when the water warms up a bit will allow me to find and salvage the boat later this season.
Out of 7 skippers attending, we only got the two recorded times, and my friend Ned (who sailed his J boat the day before) decided these little boats just aren’t for him. Despite what sounds like a dissapointing day, though, the other six of us had fun comparing boats, talking Footys, and sailing together. I guess that’s a pretty good day.
Bill H
Bill,
I am so sorry to hear that your boat sank, I am certainly one to know that feeling. I hope you can retrieve it when the water gets warmer. I hope you had the receiver in a balloon.
Bob
Down at the bottom of the earth today we had a small event with 2 skippers.
I managed to collect 4 times and my 12 year old son managed 2 timed heats.
We will try again tomorrow,but may be pushed for time due to big boat commitments.
conditions where a little varible…but managed one heat in a good steady breeze and may have the fastest time ever at 5.56…I also managed some a little closer to 10min than I would like.
7 minutes seems to be about the standard “good time”.
1.05 was my best lap so it is still possible to get better.
my times for the series are from 5.56 to 9.29
My son managed 8.35 and 10.23 so far sailing Dads modified “Pipsqueak” aptly named “Paint it Black”
The racing period has ended!!
I will be tallying up the results this evening.
The entry in the end has been a little disapointing,many who I thought would enter have not.