Weekend photos

Great day had by all, there was a professional gillie with ten rods at the ready for the afternoon and everybody caught a fish.... The perch and roach were in abundance in lough key yesterday afternoon , good to see you and the family again Fergal.

fergal.b wrote: »

Last photo of Sean-Nós as she has now been sold to the owners of Wineport:):(

Straight swap for a time share...

The Ice House in Ballina???

ETA - having reviewed my own photos from The Ice House, I've changed my mind:D Somewhere a bit downstream from the Ice House maybe? I still think it's the Moy in Ballina.....

fergal.b wrote: »

Where was I

neris wrote: »

Not a photo from the weekend but possibly one of the greatest sailing photos ever

http://matth.du.free.fr/bato/Silk2.gif

Any background?

Simona1986 wrote: »

Any background?

Was cowes week in 1996 that was taken. Boat had their forehatch open and water got into the boat buried the bow and went ar5e up. Was meant to be blowing about 40knots of breeze that day. Boat was a BH41 being skippered by gordon maguire.

HeidiHeidi wrote: »

From last Sunday's DL racing.... it was like the Med!

(Credit for the pic to one of our crew, who manages to take great shots every week without fail!)

Thats alot of kites we only had 4 spinnakers in howth on sunday. White sails has become to big and a cop out

On the pitchpole youtube "figaro pitchpole" its a great video taken in the last year or two. (Found it). Theres also a great shot of a mumm with half the boat buried in a wave and the stern lifting out of the water will try find a link

neris wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWNpdQ37BBA

God almighty, the suspense watching that, just waiting for it to happen :eek:

How in God's name did the two boys stay on board!!!

HeidiHeidi wrote: »

Gwan gwan gwan, you know you want to, you can do it

Nothing more dispiriting that seeing boats flying kites disappearing into the distance - which is why I would never race white sails! (as much as the spinny strikes fear into me a lot of the time )

The first Sunday this Turkey Shoot was an exception in my experience - my memory of winter sailing in Dublin Bay is of calm, settled conditions - far more so than during the summer!

Excited and nervous, decision made so its happening, just need to get the sails out if the attic, and not break the boat and we will be out there on Sunday.

The choice of white sails was down to the fact that half the crew were non sailors, it was a gentle introduction to both sailing and racing.

Good to know the first Sunday was not typical, at least the wind was dropping over the course of the race.

Really looking forward to next week, although its too early to call, looks like we will be glad of the spinnaker winds looking light again.

And also, as was pointed out to me by a pro we were doing training with. .... the faster you go on arun, the lower your apparent wind, the safer and more in control you are. I'm sure he was right, but hard to persuade yourself of that when careering along at about 15kts :eek:

HeidiHeidi wrote: »

And also, as was pointed out to me by a pro we were doing training with. .... the faster you go on arun, the lower your apparent wind, the safer and more in control you are. I'm sure he was right, but hard to persuade yourself of that when careering along at about 15kts :eek:

The sailing at 15 knots and been in control is fine its the gybing or taking down part where it gets really exciting. Did a chinese gybe at 17 knots on a 38footer, all i,ll say is thank god it had a sturdy mast head rig and no runners involved and strong stanchions to hang onto while looking down at the new leward side

Should have posted these last year. Unfortunatly I didnt get a load of pics along the way as I drove most of the way down and after the alps it was boring. Might not be a boat in a few of the actual pics but I can assure there was a boat attached to the car.

I bought a smallish sail boat down in Italy near the end of 2012 and kept it there till last June. For the trip back we took the ferry on the Monday down to cherbourg and took a pitstop along the way to pick up a trailer in France on Wednesday morning. The boat didnt come with a road trailer so I had to order one and ended up using a company in France (was 1/2 the price of an Italian company, was near Grenoble and south of Lyon) so we picked that up about on wednesday about 11am 600km away from where the boat was moored and drove over the alps into Italy. We stayed with the guy I bought the boat off.

The boat was moored in a place called Lerici about 70km north of pisa. We had to get the boat from there to boat yard a few miles away which was a trip on the med and then up a river to the yard (a fast flowing riveR aswell). At this stage we had the dodgiest most unreliable outboard going and no wind. Engine to full throttle and she didnt conk out till we were 20 meters away from the boat yard dock thankfully.

After a few hours of pulling the rig apart etc on the dock we were told we werent getting lifted that night and would be next morning so we headed off to the local mcdonalds drive thru only to get a call on the way out to tell us to get back to the boat yard we were getting lifted in 20 minutes. This was about 830 at night. By 1030 that night the rig was out and the boat was on the trailer. One more problem though. The support arms on the trailer had been lowered so much that they were in the ground and we couldnt move the trailer. The hack saw came out only to break after 2 strokes. There had been a guy hanging around the yard we thought was a bit of an odd ball but turned out to be the owner of another boat in the yard who gave us his angle grinder. Few minutes later and a few centimetres less of galvanised steel we were able to eat a cold mcdonalds and head back to bed.

The next day (friday) was just a matter of tidying up the boat, getting it ready for the road , adding the odd bottle of wine or 10. By early evening we were able to get the boat out of the yard and back to the house of the previous owner. After a nice dinner with him and been given a bottle of olive oil from his own olives we hit the sack for a 7am departure to catch the ferry from France on Monday.

The drive out of Italy was uneventful until we hit the Mont Blanc tunnel. I had been expecting it to cost somewhere in the region of €200 however as the height of the boat was over 3 meters we ended up in the tunnel down €350. (this wasnt the kind of place where you could negotiate or back up and take an easy alternative route).

We had an uneventful rest of saturday in France and got checked in to a motorway Ibis for a few beers and a nice sleep. We headed back out Sunday up through some lovely country side(think chateau's and grapes) but by sunday after noon we,d hit the Paris outskirts and having two sat navs on the go is not recommended. We may have the accolade of being the 1st Irish yacht through Versailles. We hit a hotel outside Cherbourg that night and then Monday was just a matter of adding more wine before the ferry back to Rosslare. Back in Dublin on Tuesday afternoon and after a bit of elbow grease were on the start line for a race on Saturday afternoon.


The trailer among the olives after its drive down from France


Friday morning after being lifted the night before. Yes they are jumper struts at the top. Some of us still like old Dinosaurs. The water behind is the Magra River. I bought the boat on the other side of the river in miserable weather 8 months before


Approaching Mt Blanc from the Italian side and at the time 350 quid richer


The French side after Mt Blanc. (I dont think this is the Mont Blanc glacier on the french side)


This looked like a nice aul pad. Use to belong to some bloke called Louis apparently, Id say he could have got a good few quid for it from an Irish developer 10 years ago

this is porn

Lots of happy kids out in Howth this morning when they hrard racing was been cancelled for the day

Spent most of Sunday out at the ISA youth nationals in Howth. A very blustery start to the day and still a good swell rolling in from the previous day which led to a few cases of kids suffering from sickness.










Howth Boat Club launching




Dinghy Supplies SB2o heading over to Dun Laoghaire for racing . 3 2nd places followed. The white marquees behind the marina was the Prawn festival which led to a jam packed Howth

Awesome - "Dad, I'm going to get 1000s of you tube hits"

It looked like they had released the spinnaker sheet and that it was just flying like a flag until he mentioned cutting it free. Was the sheet caught keeping the spinny filled and holding them in a broach?

Hard to believe that flappy spinny and the flappy main would hold them over with the boom in the water for that length of time But clearly they did!

I have a huge thing about knots in spinny sheets for this very reason - I'll tie a knot in every other sheet/halyard/rope I find on a boat, but never on a spinny sheet. I've heard arguments against, but none that has yet convinced me.

I've been on those J80's once in reasonably windy weather - they're INCREDIBLY skittish! (I did have a raging hangover, which probably didn't help my perception of things - I insisted on helming so I'd have something to hang onto!). And no guardrail :eek:

neris wrote: »

knots in a spinny sheet is a no no. a knoted spinny sheet is still filling kite which is even more out of control due to its distance away from the boat. Id rather loose 200 quids worth of rope then €2ks worth of aluminium and the rest

.... not to mention crew :eek: