The wind was back to what is becoming normal around these parts. At the south channel it was 25kn gusting to 28 at 1400 and 24kn gusting to 28 at 1600. Your scribe’s app on his phone suggested that it was not much better at Point Richards.

This may have contributed to a lack of sailors at IHYC on Saturday. Alternatively it may have been someone’s 70th birthday party or it may have been some desperate last minute packing prior to an earlier than anticipated move to a new home with less storage space, whatever the reason we didn’t have many starters on Saturday. Your scribe was there to do crash boat stuff, but eager to be away as the whole family had decided that he should do a BBQ for the Taser forward committee person’s birthday, Peter Creak had come with Harry and Ash, but was nursing a possibly ailing back, Tony Creak was ready to go and Paul Simmons, who had volunteered to be race officer, had brought Aidan and Callum and their respective Lasers. Peter V was there and able to talk to a prospective learner sailor and Julie did some great food.

It was warm, sunny but blowing a lot as Peter C told us that last week he had been at Lake Macquarie with Harry and 90 other boats including the NZ sailing team. They had three days training and then three days racing with temperatures of mid to high 20’s and breeze 10 to 15 knots each day. We did not have these idyllic conditions and by consensus called sailing off at 2.00ish.

We did do some stuff. The clock on the wall has now been advanced and the scribe had another go at the tap in the yard. (It now seems it may be a pipe problem and possibly beyond your scribe’s capabilities).

Aidan and Callum did rig and did sail down the coast to home, but it looked challenging.

Coming up:

Saturday 18 October 2025.
1400 Ozone series continues (and Commodore Cup races).

With no sailing over the winter your scribe had a bit of spare time which he put to use by borrowing a couple of books from the Club so he could learn to navigate. Here are some of the things he learnt:
Distances in coastal navigation are measured in ‘sea miles’. A sea mile is equivalent to 1852 metres and corresponds to the distance at the earth’s surface of one minute of latitude.
Speed is measured in ‘knots’. A knot is a distance of one sea mile run in one hour. It particularly should be noted that the terms for distance and speed are not interchangeable so it is incorrect to describe a sea mile, when referring to distance, as a knot.