Wednesday 27 January 2010
We have a boat!
It's official - after a long time with no boat we have just bought a Stewart 34 named "Pride". The Stewart 34 is a local NZ class designed by Bob Stewart in 1958. They are extremely fast for their size and are very seaworthy boats whilst offering fantastic cruising space at a reasonable price. They were used for many years as the Citizen World Match Racing Series and many of the top international sailors have cut their teeth in them. I have been racing on "Pahi" since coming to NZ in 2001 and we have all fallen in love with the class.
More information can be found here.
Pride is in excellent condition, having been out of the water for 2 years and undergoing a major rebuild of the coachroof and cockpit, and being re-rigged. Best of all is her fantastic paint job - keeping it up will keep the whole family busy!
More information can be found here.
Pride is in excellent condition, having been out of the water for 2 years and undergoing a major rebuild of the coachroof and cockpit, and being re-rigged. Best of all is her fantastic paint job - keeping it up will keep the whole family busy!
Saturday 9 January 2010
VSPARS up and running
If you happen to have spent the whole of 2009 looking around for an affordable yet accurate and lightweight sail and rig vision system, your dreams have now come true. Owen Modral and I have set up our own company called VSPARS. The product is a very hi-tec system using cameras mounted on the deck of a yacht which look up at stripes on the sails and targets on the mast. The software is able to track the movement of these stripes in real time and use them to work out the sail shape and mast deflection, and feed this data back to a display on deck.
"What's the point?", I hear you cry! Well, if the sail trimmers can see what the actual sail shape is on a display, and be able to alter the sail until the shape matches a target optimum shape (you can save sail shapes from when you were going "fast" and load them in as targets) then the boat will go faster. Anyway, for a full description visit the website where there are some nice pictures of the system in action!
"What's the point?", I hear you cry! Well, if the sail trimmers can see what the actual sail shape is on a display, and be able to alter the sail until the shape matches a target optimum shape (you can save sail shapes from when you were going "fast" and load them in as targets) then the boat will go faster. Anyway, for a full description visit the website where there are some nice pictures of the system in action!
2010 update
2009, like all good years, had a lot of cakes....
and visitors....
plus hairy things, woodwork and a bit of kayaking...
Over Christmas both Adrienne and Cameron have got very proficient on their bikes, and Erica has picked up a very cheeky smile::
We only got away for one windy day of boating, but we managed to climb Browns Island again:
After a fantastic game of Guernseyopoly on New Year's Eve we had some nice beach days and Kate and I even got away for a couple of nights thanks to Gran and Grandpa!
and visitors....
plus hairy things, woodwork and a bit of kayaking...
Over Christmas both Adrienne and Cameron have got very proficient on their bikes, and Erica has picked up a very cheeky smile::
We only got away for one windy day of boating, but we managed to climb Browns Island again:
After a fantastic game of Guernseyopoly on New Year's Eve we had some nice beach days and Kate and I even got away for a couple of nights thanks to Gran and Grandpa!
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