Straight Laced

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

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.