Close to the action video

Some really good video taken by TB4E.com at the recent Regfest cat meeting in Brightlingsea. It was a wet and windy weekend, but the film is great.

The RIB driver deserves a lot of credit for really knowing his/her stuff. Too often RIB drivers are happy to follow behind the boat - not ever having seen anyone drop off of a trapeze! [The thought of what would happen makes me cringe]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnHAJkEqgkk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkfy3v-cGLA

The Shpongle music choice in the second video unique and pretty cool.

awesome.

Spitfires always seem to have some epic pitchpoles.

I think Clean was driving that RIB :P

The red spi is on an F18! Spitties are a mass4ive amount of fun!

Like most boats, I'd like to try one. Don't have them here though.

They look cool, what are the specs?

http://www.swell-catamarans.co.uk/products/spitfire/index.html

would make me pretty nervous having one of those boats follow me that closely.... the about ran them over when the ppoled

The camera is on a pole so it's not as dicey as it looks

Maybe you and I have different definition on what close is, but that looks pretty damn close to me!

btw: The guys face in the first video at 3:40 is priceless! "WTH?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnHAJkEqgkk

This Tornado video is pretty good as well, its quite rare you get to see boathandling maneuvers from this close.

The guy with the WTH look is Henry White; The late Reg White's Grandson!

Looking at the video, the Shadow is really still on the edge of sticking the bows down even with two fairly heavy guys hanging off the back, sort of really brings it home how good the Stealth still is considering its age of design, it will submarine but never tip over on its bows.

I have got so unfazed about worrying that the bow might go down that I've now started to move foward to bring the bows more level. Maybe its just I'm a big fattee and ballast is everything

Wayne, you mean the Spitfire!

No one could call Henry heavy
Spitfires still come out on top - just better sailors I suppose

Bigger sail area helps but I think with all the coaching and resources that is helping the youngsters, as is at present, then they can only get better and better.

Just to add my two pence - most of the footage was filmed in + 25 knots, it looks pretty sedate out there on the film but i can tell you it was far from that, the racing was close in to the estuary and the breeze offshore and as for "too close for comfort" Geoff driving the Rib wwas fantastic, he really seemed to know where to put the boat at the right times to get great footage but without risk to crews or boats - BTW shameless plug for my new blog here - http://catguruuk.blogspot.com/