The Sailing Bug

I have just got back into the office after lunch to be told that I missed something good. It turns out that a truck was stopped by police cars right outside the office with 1 police car in front of it and 2 unmarked cars behind it. Apparentley Police officers armed with machine guns took the suspects out and laid them on the road at gunpoint before they where taken off in various other police cars that turned up. Apparentley a “metal case was swiftley recovered from the back of the van and taken away by another police car.” So if anyone was wondering why there was a large hold up over lunch then thsi may have some thing to do with it.

Legal disclaimer: This is all second hand information so it may not reflect the events and actions that actually happened so don`t get all mad and sue me or anything

Last night we had a GYC Boatworks+ spring series race. Despite being down by one crew member and the weather conditions being less than ideal with rain and pretty bad fog, we managed to finish in third place despite our nightmare time handicap we have been assigined. If it had not been for a very strong patch of tide right by the finishing line we may have finished in an even better position. We also had a bit of problem with the engine where it dropped off its latch and required some rather odd techniques to fix it and we got some VERY dodgy looks whilst we where fixing it as well but the less said about that the better!! Everyone did pretty well last night and if we can keep things going like this then it should be a good season.

With a long weekend due to a bank holiday looming over the horizon, I have been thinking about some jobs that could be done to give Mystere a bit of a tidy up as well as some general maintenance things that should be done so I thought I would post a list of things here that we need to have a look at or could have a look at if people are up for spending a day this weekend doing some work on the boat.

In no particular order:
Antifouling the hull - possibly but has to be dried out on pad though.
Move GPS outside to cockpit area
Check rigging tension
Give deck a proper clean to get rid of stubborn marks.
Refit aft locker handle with epoxy or similar
Fix new aft locker hinge
Clean up petrol spilt in aft locker from fuel can
Put additional sealant around shore power connector
Put screws in shore power connector so it does not pop out when you put the plug in!
Finish making and fit the new washboard!
Buy some Perspex and try replacing the side windows

That is it for now but I am sure there are things I have missed that need doing but if we can do even half of those jobs then we will have done well.

I thought it was about time I put an update on here that was in some way related to sailing after the spate of recent IT posts so here goes:

The racing season has really started to get into full swing now with Thursday and weekend races. (more…)

It has been a while since I last mentioned Asterix and my attempts to get it installed and working on an old machine I had at home. I finally managed to get it installed properly last night on an old machine I had kicking around. This time I was using version 0.9 of asterix@home which seemed to install OK, albeit a bit slowly maybe - that may have been caused by the machine spec though rather than any particular problem with Asterix. It did not take long to configure an extension via AMP (Asterix Management Portal) - a web based configuration GUI. I tried to configure a soft phone on my PC based on a “best guess” method of configuration but that failed miserably so it looks like I will be RTFM at some point for that one. Overall it looks like Asterix has got some pretty cool functionality but I will post more about this when I get to have a proper play around with it.

For a while now I have been just a little bit impressed with Google and its immense ability to find information. To the untrained eye the simple and uncluttered home page looks simple and utilitarian but delve a bit deeper and the flexibility and potential is incredible.

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If you are anything like me then you will probably find that you regularly get home to be greeted with a parcel that has arrived containing something that you have ordered off the internet or via mail order. Normally I can keep track of these and roughly know what will arrive and when. It was quite a surprise when I got home today to find a parcel left for me. At this point I was a bit confused - I have not ordered anything for a while and definitely was not expecting anything. Upon opening the package I see a letter from Microsoft. It turns out that I put my name down for an evaluation version of Windows Server 2003 a while back so that I could have a bit of a play around with it. Due to problems with production they have sent me a free full retail copy of Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 as an apology. I am quite happy with this - especially as I had totally forgotten about the evaluation software I had ordered in the first place!!

This weekend just gone I have been pretty busy working aboard Mystere. As previously posted, we where planning to moor Mystere on the drying pad in the marina and check and clean the hull. Given the state of the tides we worked out we had to move the boat about 10.30 on Sunday morning. We came up with the idea of going out for an Indian the night before and then staying on the boat and getting up in time to move the boat.

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Just a quick note to let those of you who know me that my mobile number has now changed. I have not got around to sending out mails / texts to people yet but will get round to it soon. If you want my new number drop me an email. This does mean as I now have GPRS I may set up some random blogging of comments and pictures from my mobile - more on this when I get a chance to look at options for this.

Tonight we are planning to make preperations for cleaning Mystere before the racing season gets into full swing. We are planning to pop down tonight to moor the boat on the drying pontoon in the marina before heading off into town to get a curry and a few drinks in before heading back to watch a film aboard and sleeping onboard. Eating an Indian before sleeping in a confined area that is in the middle of a marina does not sound wise possibily! I will also be taking my THX certified 5.1 speaker system from my computer as well as a laptop down to provide a suitable atmosphere whilst watching the film - that in itself should be intresting!! I will have my camera with me, so be prepared for some funny pictures of the ad hoc home cinema setup and the work on the boat soon.