Friday and Saturday look good

May need to be a spectator for a few sessions.

After a week of pain following a high speed catapult at RQ with the board attached I decided to get an X-ray

Bone chipped. - moon boot for a while




Cheers Jeff

Can we tow him on a wakeboard?

Hi Paddles

You said

'Hi Morg's, I'm one of the Sandstone newbies being helped out by Jeff and our grand master Pete, Roofer Adam is the other newbie and we egg each other on to learn quicker. You say fin size matters, I want to compare notes with you on fin size because I find it makes a difference too. Our nearby sailing spots are very shallow on lower tides so I use a 42cm when there's not much water and use the 56cm one (that came with my board) when I've got enough water. I reckon the 56cm one seems to give a lot better forwards drive to go faster (ie less sideways slip) but wouldn't mind hearing what you reckon is the effect of fin size on your sailing. I've only got 3 sails to choose from, 5.5 for 18kn+, 6.2 for 12-18kn and 7.0 as my light wind sail but I haven't even used it yet. My intent is to slowly use the sails in stronger wind as my skills improve. Board is a 180L Starboard Express at 250cm x 100cm, I weigh 102kg and I get planing and in the straps quite a bit now with those sail/wind combos but obviously my goal is to up the sail sizes for the wind speed to get the big Express planing all the time. Keen to hear what seems to work best for you.'


Good to hear you are doing so well, you are definitely in good hands over there.

In reference to fin size - I am a learner too - you have very good mentors at Sandstone Peter is a great guy with plenty of experience. Jeff is the man for helping out newbies get on the water.

Advice wise I always go to Simon at BoardCrazy he is my go to person when it comes to advice another good guy - he has lots of experience and I must say it really is like being in a lolly shop for gear....:-)

I am by no means someone who can give advice as I am a learner myself. My fin size depends on what I own at the time, at the moment and I am not going to spend any money on the Naish 180L as I feel I will bounce through it fairly quickly so 41 is my biggest power box - I will just have to adjust my technique and deal with spin out when I use my new 8.8 sail or stick with the 7.8m Naish sail.

Happy sailing
Cheers
Morgan

Cheers Morgan, I was more after a description of what you feel on your board with a given sail size and fin size so I can compare it to what I think is going on with my sailing right now with my limited experience. But you've pretty much given me the info I was chasing anyway, my take on it is that you've been mainly sailing the same volume/buoyancy board as I am with a slightly narrower/longer plan shape. But you're doing it with more sail area/power and generally a smaller fin as you have got more experience than I have. You're now sometimes stepping up to a 160L board which was going to be the next step in board size for me. Adam has already done this with his Funster but it put his sailing backwards for a few weeks whilst he adapted to the new board from Jeff's Start but now he's back on track again. I'm now going to try to use larger sail sizes for any given wind conditions and I'll still change between the 42cm and the 56cm fin to see what the different feel is between the two. Thanks again and have a good sail this weekend in these northerlies.

Hi Jeff, good to hear you're still heading down to RQ with Max, they'll have a heap of fun today. Good plan on the revenue raising for more toys I'll let you know how we go today. It's a fine line between an illness and a fetish, I'm starting to keep my eyes open for 160L boards ..............

Keep up the good work Pete, happy holidays. Another dud day's sailing here today from what looked to be a real good forecast, the wind dropped out and never came back in until late afternoon. Thomas, Tony and myself sailed very slowly backwards and forwards across the passage for a bit before the wind completely died and Wade looked on in disgust, it was still a nice day for a swim and it beat mowing the lawn in this heat.

The NNW wind started to gust up a bit after lunch so Wade and I met up over at Turner's Camp for a quick blast at 3. We met another local, Dennis, who got curious enough to try Turner's, he was about to give it away at 3 when we first showed up but then the wind came in and we got a couple of hours of gusty wind before it dropped again and we all headed off home.

Some more good rigging lessons for me with my new 7m sail, the correct downhaul is everything and then I had to sort out the batten tensions. Fin lesson for the day was that for the bigger sail in a bit more wind, the big 56cm fin is heaps better than the 42cm one.

It certainly was a weird wind day.
Went from overpowered with a 7.3 to unable to water start then back to overpowered over again.
I'm on the look out for a trim box Weed fin if anyone has a spare.
Nice to meet you Denis

Forecast for Saturday looking good. ( Although Bones is not convinced apparently ).
Anyone going to be there Saturday morning early?

Hi guys,
I will be there too,so hopefully we get some nice wind

Righto, I'll join you there early. I messaged Tony and he's taking one for the team and working

Got the lawn done this arvo (well most of it) so I should be good for Saturday morning

Another up and down day in the Northern Bay. At Beachmere the wind dropped out when the tide turned around 2am but was hammering again early morning and tricked us into rigging 6m sails, it then went up and down making us switch to bigger sails before really coming in early afternoon but we'd run out of water by then and the fins were starting to scrub the bottom. A few of the regular faces were missing including our sailing co-ordinator Jeff, coaching director Pete and sparky boy Tony but they were replaced by some new faces, Duncan made the journey up to the North to join Adam, myself, Denis, Brad, Wade and Thomas for a social sail that's starting to become the norm for a Saturday. Looks like it might be more of the same again tomorrow so I reckon I'll get up early to watch the first couple of hours of the Bathurst 12 hour, sneak a few hours sailing in with whoever's keen (Adam's always keen) and then get square eyes again to watch the last few hours of the race

Nah, just filling in for Pete our regular media officer while he's on annual leave. Get that dancing foot back in the game Jeff, its not the same without you and Pete showing up.

Thanks guys for a great morning sail yesterday. Nice little spot you have hidden away there!

Great to see an old school board setting the pace Wade

Jeff heal quickly and hope to see you at the lake to test my new(er) sail