Rocket Launcher

 

So the Rocket finally took to the skies at Queen Mary yesterday. I'll post a bit more in depth later on but I figured I ought to put something up for those poor people not on Facebook ;-) . Things went hitch free thankfully and I spend a good couple of hours blasting around trying to remember how to sail (not been in a boat since October) and starting to figure out what settings need tweaking.

You'll have to forgive the ridiculously high boom, this was before I started playing with everything to get it all in the right place!

 

Fresh start

So, it's 2013. Wow - that one crept up pretty rapidly.

I've not sailed now since the Hayling open (which I failed to blog about as it sucked man balls) and as I've been boatless I was intrigued to see how fired I'd be when I finally got around to the thought of sailing again!

Suffice to say, I'm pretty excited about the whole thing. The build process for the Rocket has been a long one as I've been relying heavily on pulling favours for some major items (thanks Dave!) but as the end of it all approaches I've got a CnC'd hull blank and mould, a pretty awesome looking new mainfoil mould and a rudder mould landing any day. There's a good stash of new thinking on this boat mostly based on my experience with the Ninja builds, I had a good blueprint in my head as to where I wanted to go with it all and a lot of it is the sort of thing you can only do with a fresh start - no ties to the past or backwards compatibility. I suppose all will be revealed and if you've been following my Facebook page you'll probably have seen a few hints.

So, with my Fresh Start (TM) thinking in mind I've resigned from Cheddar. I'll probably sail a couple of times there in the winter series but I suspect I'll be doing most of my sailing from either Queen Mary or Weymouth - it'll be a mission, but the competition is what I need to try to bring myself back up to scratch and give the Rocket it's best chance. I've not been getting much use out of BCYC and there's all sorts of behind the scenes nobbery with the committee running the place that's forced other members out and it's just not a great place to hang out.

Not sure what that means for the blog, but at least I still live near Bristol....