madyottie

Hmmm I'm thinking they'd be just outside caa jurisdiction so you should get away with it. Quite hard to pinpoint the little dot without a pretty good scope though.

The ISS passes over NZ airspace quite often. It orbits at around 410km altitude and travels at about 27,500km/h. I have Astroviewer on my phone and check it when I think of it. You get a view for about 30 seconds to a minute depending on where it is, and it can be pretty hard to spot, especially if you're in an area with a lot of light pollution. Really it just looks like any other high flying fast plane. As mentioned earlier, it follows a pretty weird orbit pattern, weaving it's way up and down the planet.

Just a side note I thought interesting ... The contact for the lj research has an email @PRdept. PR? Is that what this is? I thought it was BS. Any laws should be written in plain English by people who have subject knowledge, not a silly job title.

Hmmm at risk of sounding like a troll, in my experience most jetskiers wear ski vests. Also canoe clubs insist on paddlers wearing buoyancy aids when on the water. I have heard of kayakers being kicked out of clubs when found paddling without one. Then again, with the huge sales of sit-ons there could be a lot of dummies out there.

Never heard that before but I'm gonna give it a try some time over the break. Brilliant idea! Or good con, either way one of us will be happy! Talk about thread drift! Although I guess Paua from Kaikoura are vaguely like mussels!

+1

Here's a thought peeps. I took a new job in an industry I know well recently. After seeing the same mistakes causing the same problems every day (at a customers site) I asked the guy in charge why he insisted his staff did it that way. Instead of thinking about the issue came the instant attacks. The very first response was "how long have you been coming here? What can you know, you're only new!" Just like the question that keeps coming up here regarding poster's experience. Seems like a position of insecurity to me.

Sadly I'll be working on the day. Usually I take the day off for this one and really make it an event, but this time I can't do that. Next year I should be back

Nope, that's not what I'm saying. I know very little about the man. A little more about his boat, twenty years ago the variant "Wings" belonged to a friend of mine. I may be wrong but I think Shane also sailed somewhere on a tall ship recently. What I think is that people should be able to seek advice from wherever they like. And live how they please, without the constant negativity and derision from the high and mighty. As someone said above, Shane will do what he wants to do, whether he gets helpful advice here or not. If someone asks for help to achieve a goal, I'm more than

From what I understand, that's probably the least exciting of your early adventures! When I recollect some of the stories I heard from one of our (now departed) mutual friends, I realise just how little I've lived. Then I consider what people can get up to today, and I'm glad to have done as much as I did! Shane is a perfect example of the spirit we all once had, just get out there and live, cos you're a long time dead afterwards.

I'm with Wheels on this one. We know Shane has difficulty expressing himself online, I have difficulty doing it in person! That doesn't mean we can't learn by doing. Hell, if we're talking irrelevant qualifications to make ourselves sound big, try this for size... Offered a place at Lincoln uni at age 14. Chose not to take it up. Have a degree in sports coaching (sailing) from Bath uni in the UK. Have RYA and YNZ instructor tickets. Have a stack of unrelated qualifications as well. All of which mean nothing in the real world, and if I relied on those I'd be long dead. In

Brings a whole new meaning to the term "Wreck diving"

Maybe we should add a paddle section with the next 8.5 riverhead cruise. Those keen can paddle up and sail back with kayaks on deck? That way guys like yourself could join in without fear of overhead wires or underbutt sandbanks

That's brave, I just bought an old venturer and after so many.years away even that feels tippy. I think a DR boat would drown me within a minute. I've got so bad its even hard to lift myself out of the boat after a paddle!

Shane if you want to do this seriously, talk to some very experienced sea kayakers. As Wheels suggested, a bulletproof eskimo roll helps, although not essential if you have the right gear and boat setup. You can get inflatable floats to attach to paddles to stabilise the kayak while you pump it out after ditching. Bare minimum you'll need a good 5+ meter seakayak, ideally a nordkapp or similar. Good lightweight paddle, spare split shaft paddle, bilge pump, flares, charts, camelbak for your drink, camp cooking /eating stuff, and several drybags full of clothes. And a strobe light on a p

Looks like perfect weather for it. So frustrating waiting for my repairs to be finished. I left the experts to it instead of building my own new boards, but now wishing I'd done both, 'cos I'd be sailing again by now!

Yeah once we got there it was sheltered. Blowing enough to make the family nervous both ways. There's another fleet cruise up there planned for this season unless I've already missed it. Clive may have the date, I've forgotten what was arranged but think it was around February. By then we should be back in action, it's taken a bit longer than expected. Sadly I'm gonna miss Kawau next weekend but might drive up for a nosey.

We all anchored just upstream of the pub. It was quite breezy but held well on the Danforth. The hardest part was finding enough space on the jetty to get the dinghy in between all the other boats. No height issues in the gbe. Didn't notice the tide flow but we went with it both ways.

The 8.5 fleet (well, 4 of us) went up last season. The mulleties were there at the same time. Short tacking all the way to the pub was interesting that's for sure. We ended up motoring the last bit as the family were sick of tacking! Great day out

Here's a thought, As you were working for the marina, forward them the ticket. Or charge it back as unforeseen expenses. Alternatively ignore it for a while and if, as suggested above, they clamp you, invoice them for your wasted time and send it to small claims when they refuse to pay. Neither option would probably actually help, but you could get some satisfaction from it. I like annoying the h@ll out of companies like that!

Jeez I dunno what happened to the font in my last post! We made it over, just left a few little bits of carbon as memorials.

Has Dave relocated? I thought he was still near warkworth? Then again, I haven't seen him since the turn of the century!

Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy that incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. (Wikipedia definition). Or, in sailing terms, it's kinda like the attire worn in Waterworld. Which I think would look pretty awesome in the clubhouse later! Euphoria may be there, It kinda depends on my workload. I may just offer it to some mates for the night, the course won't be going the southern side of bean rock will it?

I know there were two in the Whangarei area a few years back, both owned by Jim Kettlewell. One, Marama, was the race version with a big fractional rig, always dry sailed. Went really well, we struggled to get away in the Noelex 22. Downwind they were quicker. Their second boat lived on a mooring somewhere near Oakura and was the cruising model, with a much shorter masthead rig and heavy skeg under the hull so it could be beached without damage. I think she was called Syzigy, or something similar. Jim used to run one of the aircon places in Whangarei, could be worth finding as he k

Steampunk? Sounds cool! Not sure I'll be able to score the early finish at work on the day tho.