Straight Laced

Yes, it's certainly not for the faint hearted. but not planning on selling her anytime soon so I guess I'll eventually forget how much it's costing. And yes I've had a look at Titus Canby and they've set the bar very high. I hope the finish on Straight Laced can come close to Titus, but I'm no boatbuilder so will just be happy to see it floating to be honest.

Her big sister (Love Lace) is getting the same treatment a few bays down also

Officially a year into the restoration and should probably post a few of the many photos taken so far. What I thought was going to be a fairly straight forward resto when I first saw her has turned into an almost complete rebuild when I finally got inside and started digging into it. New cabin is built and will be positioned in place once a bit more of the interior is done. Hoping to be in the water sometime around Christmas.

Cool. I have a connector spot already planned within a metre of each instrument

Looking at purchasing a B&G Triton instrument pack for the little boat. Also possible Vulcan chart plotter. Does anyone know if they are plug and play, or do they need something special to talk to each other?

Yes and it's going back to pink.

Probably should be a good example of IOR landfill, but I guess it deserves to be brought back to life. Predecessor to the Farr 727 and sistership to Fantzipants. The rebuild will start later this year, when I get some time to move it out of its current nest.

Working out exactly where we were and how many miles to the next waypoint was something that was practiced often on the countless trips made between Whangarei and Auckland or BOI for a weekend of racing. A hand bearing compass would always be close by for anyone to use, however if you touched it, you would be required to tell everyone exactly where we were. I sincerely hope this practice still happens. I must clarify the boat I do occasionally go out on these days would never venture more than 20 miles from its mooring, so we're fairly safe. It just that it doesn't feel right not to have

Having not been involved in this generation of electronic charts and GPS plotting, is the old method of taking sights off landmarks and DR still relevant or is this totally relegated to the history books? With the limited outings I have these days doing the odd twilight and short coastal events, I just can't get comfortable with the knowledge that there are no charts on board, apart from the phone that the owner gets out of his pocket occasionally.

My father bought the plug used for the production Townson 34s and finished it off himself. Although he never got a visit from Des, he did get a phone call regarding the shape of the cockpit coamings and a request to redo them to the exact design. The relationship then completely degenerated when Des found out that dad had installed the engine under the cockpit and not up by the mast. From my recollection, the method of construction was not necessarily a problem, rather than how the boat looked. He certainly had his spies out keeping an eye on things.

Would love to know where the pivot point for those foil arms are located. If it's centre of that large radius drum arrangement, then they would be sacrificing righting moment. But if that drum is like a cam arrangement, which would get the pivot further outboard, one would think they would be getting a little too close to exceeding the max draft when the arms a fully down.

Isn't there a minimum weight the foils must be? Which would suggest that ETNZ foils may be constructed of something heavier than the other 3 to bring them up to min weight. Wouldn't think any of the teams would have 1 gram of extra weight that isn't required.

I read on another web site that they were still able to sail on starboard tack but unable to sail on port, which ultimately led to them getting blown further off shore. However its refreshing to hear of a crew at least trying to make it back. I guess the real story of why they abandoned after the rig ultimately failed will come out in due course.

My dad built the original chined version of this. To my knowledge only 2 of them were ever built (Searcher and Mischief) before the plans were drawn up for a round bilge production variant. Both launched in the late '60s. They rated 1/2 ton and performed quite well, but they very quickly got outdated by the Cavs, Lidgards and many other 1/2 ton designs through the '70s. Searcher went to Noumea in 71 and placed quite well amongst a pretty competitive fleet of 1 tonners. From my memory, the Cavs were just a click faster, being a larger boat but the racing was always close.

Don't want to make any assumptions, but I'm sure I recall an incident on leg 2, where a lifejacket did auto inflate on 1 of the boats and this also triggered the PLB. Certainly wouldn't want to speculate on being clipped on or not, but with wetsuit gloves and then mittens on top, it would be an easy mistake to think you're hooked on but not quite. Think what you like of David Witt and some of the comments that come out of his mouth, but this is tragic. He's only recently spoken about how stressed out he was regarding the safety of the crew down there. They also have their hands full just ge