darkside

I've dived one spot in the pig group for 40 + years. They have come and gone a bit over that time and 5 years ago were in pretty good shape. But after a summer snorkeling in Fiordland I had another look couldn't bring myself to take any. Hopefully the "caluerpa fishing reserve" helps the population rebuild at the Barrier.

Doubtful Sound works quite well

On TV Tuke said they had issues with wing control pre those starts. It all seemed pretty good as soon as the gun went...

Does anyone know if the boats will be out practicing on Thursday/Friday next week? I see the on water viewing is already sold out for the weekend.

Yep Aussie is very strict. When we did the Darwin Bali as cruisers there was no way the participants could meet the offshore racing requirements. Even signing a waiver made no difference. So the event was hosted in Bali, just happened to start in Darwin. Paying customers will be a legal nightmare.

Why not? Maybe because most are 230v feed? They don't have to be. We had a really good SSB setup, a mini M and had an Iridium go for a while but I'd back starlink any day to talk to someone who matters. In a medical event or similar starlink is ahead by miles.

Yep he's miles ahead of the others. Not sure why Ineos opened the door at the top mark, maybe they just missed lay line?

I think Saturday is the 19th and that will be a pretty sporty first night

Any word on what failed? 6m is some drop. Yep that was some pass on the Italians

Without Starlink if you want to be contactable would had to anchor where there was some cell reception. With it you anchor where you like, even really steep sided anchorages like Milford Sound made no difference. That said we turn it of at night.

We were fairly early adopters and have had it a couple of years now. Standard RV fitting was all you could get back then and it still works fine. Never missed a beat. Downloading Raymarine updates at anchor was a novelty. But our best fix was solving an auto pilot glitch that had had us hand steering for 300 miles to that point. We did that by video link from Pt Pegasus, Stewart Island. The bad thing is you can work from the boat, as I am today from Oneroa. Overall more days on the boat I guess so I'll take that. Excellent idea on the bigger AIS radius BK.

Yep the west coast of the Red Sea jumped about a mile east/west on Cmap at different zooms. They may have fixed that now as it was a while ago. Vavau used to move about a quarter mile.

It was pretty puffy last night. Anyone seen 100kn peaks in the Gulf before

Sail boat engine revs are constant and hopefully set at the most efficient revs. The gains of hybrid system on a yacht will be less than any machine with variable load and engine revs. The HH has plenty of roof for solar and should sail better than most cats in the light. It might work out OK. I would worry about long term reliability. I see you can get electric sail drives now. For a cat how about one diesel and one electric?

Yes could be useful thanks