Damn it... missed todays weather window!
Hi all,
Well we made a bad call today with the weather and stood the team down a little too early. The wind was from the North and stubbornly refused to swing. It was still in the North at midday and the day was overcast. This usuall indicates that the SW wind will not come through with much strength and will probably have a large West component if it does.
I sent Hiskia home and cracked on with building a skeg-flap locking system. Whilst that was curing I headed into town on the motorbike and bought a bunch of necessary items such as a new cordless drill. The Walvis Bay weather siezed up the chuck on the last Bosch drill in around 6 months... my impatients with dodgy tools finished it off!
The bike decided that it would just pour petrol out of the carby overflow all day until I stopped and switched off the fuel. Then I would have to get on, turn on the tap and kick this big 650 single over whilst balancing shopping bags. Throughout this the bike doused itself with fuel. My plan in case of a sudden and semi-expected fireball involved alot of sliding down the road, rolling, wild flailing of arms and general acceptance of great waves of pain. Fortunately the flow would slow once underway as the fuel had other places to go. Thankfully she made it home... well... to the container anyway.
We also got a new Sim card for the MTC 3G box from Mobile Home in town. This is as close to Broadband as you get in these parts and allows us to get online from the container. Our project would really struggle without it. Besides updating websites and sending e-mails it also allows me to have long phone calls via Skype to the design and support team. You don't realise how important and dependent you are on these modern marvels until they are gone. In a gig like this, they are essential.
Whilst in town, the light breeze swung and built. The grey skies cleared and voila... The Walvis Bay wind tunnel turned it on again. It became a perfect Sailrocket day but it was too late to get out there. I sat inside and pretended it wasn't that good. Frank turned up thinking we must have already been out. I tried a few excuses that might have bluffed a less experienced local but he knew. We got it wrong today.
Oh well, that's the good thing about this place, it WILL come again and probably quite soon. As soon as we made the weather call we rolled straight into our alternative mode and worked on improving the boat. As of tomorrow we will have a neat little trigger mechanism which will keep the skeg flap locked in a central position until it is needed. Simple, light, functional and with a couple of neat little extras. That's how I like to build things.
Tomorrow we will go out no matter what... which I guess is what we should have done today.
Meanwhile, I will chuck in a few pics of us making the new skeg fences. The foil is also a new one fresh out of the wrapper. The one we have used to date is the first one that was built by Nick and the boys at DESIGNCRAFT. It had a couple of imperfections so they built a second one that came out perfect. I almost forgot we had it. This one is much cleaner in shape and it was a shame to add the fences. Makes the foil look like something out of the Jetsons. Who cares? As long as it works.
Cheers, Paul
Well we made a bad call today with the weather and stood the team down a little too early. The wind was from the North and stubbornly refused to swing. It was still in the North at midday and the day was overcast. This usuall indicates that the SW wind will not come through with much strength and will probably have a large West component if it does.
I sent Hiskia home and cracked on with building a skeg-flap locking system. Whilst that was curing I headed into town on the motorbike and bought a bunch of necessary items such as a new cordless drill. The Walvis Bay weather siezed up the chuck on the last Bosch drill in around 6 months... my impatients with dodgy tools finished it off!
The bike decided that it would just pour petrol out of the carby overflow all day until I stopped and switched off the fuel. Then I would have to get on, turn on the tap and kick this big 650 single over whilst balancing shopping bags. Throughout this the bike doused itself with fuel. My plan in case of a sudden and semi-expected fireball involved alot of sliding down the road, rolling, wild flailing of arms and general acceptance of great waves of pain. Fortunately the flow would slow once underway as the fuel had other places to go. Thankfully she made it home... well... to the container anyway.
We also got a new Sim card for the MTC 3G box from Mobile Home in town. This is as close to Broadband as you get in these parts and allows us to get online from the container. Our project would really struggle without it. Besides updating websites and sending e-mails it also allows me to have long phone calls via Skype to the design and support team. You don't realise how important and dependent you are on these modern marvels until they are gone. In a gig like this, they are essential.
Whilst in town, the light breeze swung and built. The grey skies cleared and voila... The Walvis Bay wind tunnel turned it on again. It became a perfect Sailrocket day but it was too late to get out there. I sat inside and pretended it wasn't that good. Frank turned up thinking we must have already been out. I tried a few excuses that might have bluffed a less experienced local but he knew. We got it wrong today.
Oh well, that's the good thing about this place, it WILL come again and probably quite soon. As soon as we made the weather call we rolled straight into our alternative mode and worked on improving the boat. As of tomorrow we will have a neat little trigger mechanism which will keep the skeg flap locked in a central position until it is needed. Simple, light, functional and with a couple of neat little extras. That's how I like to build things.
Tomorrow we will go out no matter what... which I guess is what we should have done today.
Meanwhile, I will chuck in a few pics of us making the new skeg fences. The foil is also a new one fresh out of the wrapper. The one we have used to date is the first one that was built by Nick and the boys at DESIGNCRAFT. It had a couple of imperfections so they built a second one that came out perfect. I almost forgot we had it. This one is much cleaner in shape and it was a shame to add the fences. Makes the foil look like something out of the Jetsons. Who cares? As long as it works.
Cheers, Paul
posted by Paul at 5:34 pm
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