Hi all,

very interesting weekend was had after travelling 1000km. taking some 12hrs.by road and ferry, arrived at Milang, set up tent 1am.

Saturday morning dawned sunny with good breeze, locals gradualy turned up, F18 Tiger and Blade, F14 Alpha Omega's x 2, Taipans, Mossies and others. Wind died before afternoon start, two races in light shifty breeze where raced. Altered battled with F18's and Taipans for the lead in both, taking the lead at the right time to win both races.

Good social night was had at the club, however campsite social was a bit carried away, continuing long after tired sailors went to bed, making sleeping difficult.

Sunday mornings sky reflected the mood of sleepless sailors, overcast and windy. Wind continued to build, fleet headed out to start with many crashing including Altered (the only one silly enough to put spinnaker up), I was surprised to be able to stand up as I was about 1km. off shore, I know that Lake Alexandrina is shallow but that is scary!! Race was cancelled before it started, wind continued, blowing out the days racing, ending the regatta prematurely.

It was great to meet Darryl after all the conversations on the Forum, the AO F14 is a great looking little boat, pity it was not the conditions to test boat speed. But I am afraid to say I will be sticking with F16, the F14 is a very little cat in comparison to F16, to small for my 90 kg. frame.

Hope to have full results from Marcus soon, to give more detail.

Trip home was eventful, wind tried to blow Altered off the road in S.A. then heavy rain tried to wash car off the road, followed by wondering if I would get past Ballarat before the 8,000 hectare bushfire that was raging out of control cut the Western Highway. Thankfully I only had to deal with smoke and ash which covered car and boat, thoughts go out to the 6 family's that lost ther homes. Arrived home safely to find Darren one of the Mossie sailors, hit a roo on the way home, about a 1 hr. trip for him. The joys of travel in OZ, I was definetly lucky.

Regards Gary.

It was a real pleasure to see Gary and his dad over in South Australia for the long weekend. You have to really respect anyone who is willing to put as many miles as Gary does travelling on such a regular basis to "go sailing".
Although it wasn't "ideal" weather for racing by any means, it was good to see how consistent Gary sails "altered" around a racecourse, (and he is such a nice guy as well – I hope I don’t embarrass him by saying that), I do believe that Gary and a few others made up a little for the "lack" of racing by becoming familiar with South Australian "ale" on the Saturday night though.
Not much wind on the Saturday and the temperature in the very high 30's (38c I believe), with a “follow the leader” course, then 40knot gusts on the Sunday morning from the north with a temp' of 35c at 8.30am - not really the best for sailing? I don’t think anyone was too disappointed when the racing for Sunday was cancelled.
Oh, and about your weight for an Alpha F14 Gary, one of the F14’s sailing on Saturday carried a 90kg sailor on it, and the other one is usually sailed by a guy that tops the scales at 105kgs, and, who has finished in font of the 90kg one on 50% of their encounters (the sailor on it on Saturday weighs in at a miserly 75kg’s), so I don’t think that your “slim boyish” 90kg figure would be too much of a strain on an Alpha, particularly when there is over 20% greater buoyancy volume in it’s hulls than in an average pair of A class hulls. I just hope that we can sail with you again in the foreseeable future Gary, and return the compliment by doing it in “your backyard”.

Hi all,

I have put some pics on my site at: www.actionpics.biz

Regards

Chris Dean

Altered is one of the sexiest cats I've ever seen!

I concur! x 73242487624

[email]F@cking[/email] A ! Ehhh Altered !

I agree the boat looks spiffing.

Wouter

Iwas there on the weekend would like to say how very well this boat has been modified and how well she sails marcus got some good footage with the video camera. I have a question the carbon beams on the boat are they A cat striker less beams that have been ordered wider to suit f16 rule? also have you modified mast in any way or is this stadard A cat mast section

Can somebody please ask Marcus to send in the footage of Altered so we can put the clip on the F16 website /

Thanks

Wouter

will see marcus tomorrow and see what we can do

Wouter,

The video footage was the older style video recorder. I have transferred to DVD format for viewing on your home TV/DVD format, so when I can figure out how to edit the footage.........

Marcus

Hi Danny,

beams are alloy A cat section with dolphin striker to F16 width. Mast is Australian made A class Applied Composites section with aprox.4x2 western red cedar timber glued crossways inside, to prevent sidewall collapse and bring mast up to minimum weight.

Thanks for the positive comments.

regards Gary.

Attached are the results, thanks to Darryl Barret for supplying them,
Darryn
Mosquito 1704

The link to attachment is faulty. Can you check ?

Wouter

Once again,
Darryn