Crocket

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

I may be getting my boats mixed up, but wasn't it a Centreboarder from the late '70s? I'm sure I remember that boat doing a race up in the BOI and the board was stuck up and they had to do a dash back to the wharf where they poured dishwashing detergent down the case and jumped on top of the board to free it.' Also may have been called "The Russell Pumper" for the '80 or '81 1/4 ton trials? Outdated by the newer boats though and finished mid pack.

This is all very hypothetical without being on board with 2 possibly very sh*t scared people. All I know is that I learnt from a very young age that it can get pretty bad along that coast. I was always taught to leave your last resorts until you have no other options left. As I have previously stated, I remember once being hove to outside the BOI because it was deemed too risky to head in. Not necessarily because we couldn't, but if anything happened like losing the rig or rudder or whatever, then you are in a rather large spot of bother that could have been avoided by just sticking your ta

The biggest problem I can remember is that, it's comparatively shallower than a bit further out so the waves tend to stand up a fair bit. Not as bad as the Colville channel, but still a handful. If you go further out towards the Mokes, you would start getting shelter from the Barrier, which I would think be a bit more comfortable.

I spent the earlier years of my life going up and down that coast to the point where I would not like to even guess how many times I've sailed between Whangarei and the BOI and also down to Auckland. It can get nasty. I've even spent a night hove to way outside Cape Brett because the sea state entering the Bay was bordering on suicidal, let alone any of the other entrances along the coast. Nobody knows the circumstances aboard this boat, but I know exactly what I would have been doing and it would not have involved any rocks or coastline. Anything within 10 or 15 miles off the coast in s

In another report, the mark hook was earlier on, which may have hurt it structurally. You can see in 1 of the videos that the stern comes off when it crashes back down. I'm no expert on this, but there seems to be a very large surface area underneath this beast and at 40-50kts apparent, I can't see how they are going to stop these things trying to leave the water.

A few people have quite a bit of money riding on the success of these. They’re hoping to rival the 18s in their heyday. The early testing showed that they were blindingly fast from day 1, but are a real handful. They have a tendency to absolutely launch with spectacular results. I think the 1st injury was in the first few hours. Corporate money and selling the show to the public is going to be the biggest hurdle, because they are not cheap and the guys sailing them will want to be paid well.

Same day, another fishing boat collided with a cargo ship. 1 confirmed dead and 7 others still missing. How common is this?

Agreed. I think there may be a few stern words over this one.

Found it. “We were in the middle of countless fishing boats. There were two areas previously that were just as dense. This was the last area before we got to Hong Kong," the 45-year-old, who skippered the winning Groupama IV in the 2011-2012 race, told AFP. He added that these kinds of accidents were "extremely rare" because vessels usually have equipment on board to help spot other boats. "We had to slalom a little bit... We were almost at the boat's maximum speed, around 20 knots, with boats where everyone is concentrating on controlling the sails, with a lot of water in your face t

Read somewhere that Franck Cammas has commented that they had to slalom their way through the final stretch into Hong Kong. I can’t find the article, but he says along the lines of they were coming in at 20+ knots with water over the decks and there were boats all over the place, which they had to avoid in the dark. Very dangerous.

Just drink red and the whole problem goes away.

Wow, I can see it now. Design meeting #1: OK guys and girls how about a few suggestions on where the design hurdles may lie. It will be like the New York Stock exchange during the '87 crash. Oh to be a fly on the wall.

What ever happened with Akzo Nobel with their crew? I've been looking ever since the start of leg 1 and either I'm looking in the wrong places, or there is absolutely no news regarding the re appointment of Simon Tienpont. It seems that his return has led to the demise of 4 others??? There has to be a story.

Went 2 whole seasons on a Townson 34 without an engine. Even carried a kite all the way into the Town Basin in Whangarei. Dropped both sails a few hundred metres short and coasted straight into the piles.

Sad to hear. We only crossed paths a few times, but he wasn't scared to give it a go, whether it was a good idea or not. He had a 1/2 tonner called Delphin, which he took to Noumea in 1980 and did very well. He announced on 1 very drunken night while up there that he was building a boat to go in the next Whitbread, of course nobody believed him, but Outward Bound was launched about 6 months later and the rest is history. He told me a story one night after that race, where they got stuck on the wrong side of a weather system in the Southern Ocean and got so far south that everything froze up.