Sailing Experience

I felt mine was also a cautionary tale, following up on previous posts. Then again re-iteration is appropriate.

Charmc, do you mean literally that "...there are large ships moving about with no one awake on the bridge...." occurs? I am shocked. tut, tut, tut. - - - heh heh heh

Has anyone tales of close encounters with containers or other flotsam?

 

So if as artemis say there are water trafic lanes that is the answer then. If you anchor ie off shore where other boats are unlikely to travel at night it would add to the safety risk.

If you have a gps that could warn when your position changes could be another factor - in SA they'd steal your anchor right off the end of your rope to sell for scrap metal.

A wind speed monitor could also indicate changing conditions, although I've been on water where the wind was attacking from still to furious in less than a second - the storm approaching like a big blanket.

The other would be to have weather updates. I was wondering if there are storm broadcasts for seas, I saw a marine radio with such an alarm feature on it. If you rely on the .za news cast it depends what the guy in the radio and Tv transmission centre building in Jo'burg can see out his window.

 

LOL, that's not very nice of them!

I guess one could install american barbed wire (essentially razor blades) on the last couple of metres. Then when they feel their way down it, they will get severely cut.

You could install it with snap-schackles, so it'd be easy to remove without cutting yourself.

Nah, I'm not serious, but it's still less extreme than the anti-carjack installations I've heard of from down there (flames shooting out from under the car, 50.000 volts in the door handles and so forth).

 

What do you mean not nice of them !! We have areas where there are no street names beacause they steal that too. They even steal the pot hole covers in the streets. If you leave your car somewhere they will break the window to take the small change if they can see it. The only thing they don't steal enough are the bloody speed camera's that sits everywhere.

All those anti hijack goody goody's and mac gafters the guys build are desperate measures since our police are uncapable of taking up unimportant and minor things like car jacks, house breaks and so on. However if you defend yourself against a so called burglar and he happens to be the right color half the police force arives in less than three minutes in defence of the poor burglar that gets harassed by the radical white racist. You guys have no idea. Man, even the white police guy attempting to arrest someone, who dares to defend himself gets throwed in jail. Don't believe me ? Visit SA !!

The difference between a tourist and a racist here is about 3 days to a week

 

I believe you Fanie - there again we got heaps of young white South Africans in London just looking for a crust (anything is better than back home - even our shitty weather!)

When I first visited South Africa back in the 60's it was a beautiful country! Last time I was there on the late 80's it had really gone down the pan! You'd stopped 'seperate developement' and the monkees thought they were human! Sad, like this country your not allowed to call a spade a spade anymore! ain't as bad as Rhodesian yet tho! Sorry zimbabawewe!

they go on about the missing link between human and ape - God knows why we see 'em every day!!

[No I ain't racist, I'll punch anybody who deserves it!]

 

I'm not a racist either, I like white people

Did you hear there was a bank robbery in Zim.. they made off with a million zim $. Police are still trying to find a motive for the robbery...

Anyway, there's a slim chance I may be working on the small tri this weekend. Typical, almost Christmas, and everybody wants everything like in yesterday, while at the same time suppliers call off any new orders

I need a holiday. At this rate there's not even light at the far end of the tunnel

 

I'm trying to find someone with a cat that would take me sailing, right, since I've never been on one of them, have no idea what they feel like on the water. So as per previous suggestion I started looking up the clubs...

On the Hartebeespoort dam there are 3 sailing cats. I tried to find who they belongs to by phoning the Transvaal yacht club. Everything went well untill I finally got to the owners. One owner is gone, probably lives elsewhere, the one I spoke to doesn't 'take people out on pleasure drives' and the third guy turns out you have to get 6 guys min together and pay like R 250 each for a 3 hour 'pleasure' trip.

Now I begin to understand why so few people are interested in SAILING ! Seems these guys who think they have something are just running around thinking they can screw everybody else over. One thing's for sure, if the Hartebeespoort dam is the only puddle of water left on earth I'll be the last to join their club !

I'm going to contact the Vall dam crowd as well, see if they have the same shitty attitude.

 

Probably Fanie, probably! I got me a boat and your not having a go is a fairly well know phenomina - normally means I got this expensive boat but I haven't got a clue how to use it so the best way not to make a prat of myself is to make sure that nobody else gets a go, or make them pay a lot of money and then they won't admit they are as stupid as I am!

The answer of course is to sneak away somewhere learn how to use one and come back with your own which is of course bigger, better and faster and run rings round the ******** - the good thing is of course that as tehy don't know what they are doing in the first place it's not to hard to do!

 

Just to let you know I'm going about a different approach wrt building the little tri. If it works out and after the jig's been done it may be possible to produce the three hulls in a day, and another to assemble, probable another day to finish er off a bit.. If it works out and if you're interested I could show you what I did. The little tri is going to be 5m500 long. Still some small issues I have to work out but it'll come to me. May have to do an experiment or two still.

Safewalrus, it is exactly what I'm going to do... I'll learn myself the ropes. I've e-mailed 5 people that says they give sailing lessons, none responded.

 

Im interested to hear more about the tri. Will you be testing some of the concepts you will use on boxy fisher? Why not build something similar, a kind of scale model.

Will your boat be built quick and cheap or will you try and recover your money and sell it?

You might try and track down another beach cat so that you can reuse the mast and sails, rudders, daggerboards, will save lots of time and money. Some heavy tornadoes were built by collins fiberglass that would probably work. I recall a guy a few years ago that bought one on a trailer for 5 grand. I was really jealous.

 

Go for it Fanie! Take yer time mate and don't do anything rash and you'll be OK! It's easier than you think! (some idjit will have a go about that but think about it guys, as long as your careful and take your time........

 

Hi Tuks, the tri is for ME so I can get some sailing experience and get my hours up. I'm not going to make this one very fancy, but the next ones will be much better when my laser cutter is up and running (month or so I hope). I have a couple of experiments to play on it as well.

I haven't started anything on the boxy yet - there's a LOT of things I have to figure out still and a LOT of drawings and calculations etc etc... Collecting things for it in the mean time...

Don't worry Safewalrus, this sailing thing is going to be a wee-wee

I'm now trying to figure out a way to make a telescopic mast... one of my friends friends have put an 8m mast and sail on this windrider (so he can beat us). I was thinking the telescopic if short would give the competition a lot of confidence... one he's somewhere else you pull the rope and flush him out

My friend and this guy sailed the Vaal dam... my friend took his GPS so he could monitor for max speed but the friend sailed 'blind' so my friend won by half an hour or something... guy was really PO hence the new 8m sail

 

Sounds like fun. Post some pics when you do it.

 

The materials arive tomorrow...

 

Good on you Fanie, Your limited presence on this forum will be understood and accepted so long as Tuks and us all gets to see progress pics?

Have fun.