The Sailing Bug

Today we went out for a Boxing Day sail to the neighbouring Island of Herm for a spot of lunch and a pint. Despite the near freezing conditions and wind chill that left all of us with no feeling in our hands after a few minutes we managed to sail across in a fairly respectable time. Our fist challenge after dropping the anchor was get the outboard motor fitted to the dingy and get it started. This may not sound to difficult but I think it was last started about 5 months ago! Despite our best efforts it refused to start – I even remembered to switch the fuel line on correctly this time!!
After having to row in it was time to queue for drinks and then when we realised that we had to buy food vouchers at the bar, queue again for those before queuing for food. We had just about enough time to eat the partially raw burgers and “poached” sausages before heading back to the boat. With Daves’s engineering expertise we eventually managed to get the motor on the dingy running and keep it running before getting back to the boat.

It was a fairly relaxed sail back with the spinnaker up and almost 8 knots showing followed by the quickest packing up of the boat I have ever seen. Hopefully it will not be quite as cold tomorrow for the Sunsport Marine Iceberg race although the weather forecast shows a wind chill of -1 so that should be fun!

After much consideration and research I have finally decided to get round to the case upgrade for my computer. My current case was designed for over clocking and has been with me for about 4 years or so now. The key reason for upgrading was noise reduction and I have been looking at ways to reduce the noise levels of my computer. To try and minimise noise as much as possible I have ordered the following:

Antec P180 case
Acousti AcoustiPack Deluxe (v2) Acoustic Material Kit
Gigabyte G-Power Silent Blue Light Cooler
Artic cooling VGA silencer
Zalman ZM-NB47J Northbridge Cooler
Silverstone SST-FP52 Silver Aluminium Fan Controller
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
Vantec Vibration Dampening Kits for all Case Fans
Vantec Vibration Dampening Kit for Power Supply
120mm Zalman quiet case fan

Phrixus has offered to help build this new case which will be a big help seeing as the bare case weighs 14kgs and the sound proofing kit alone is 3kgs!! Hopefully I will be able to get some pictures and a nice write up done in the next few weeks once all of this stuff arrives and a little review of all the items I have ordered. One thing is for sure is that it should be a heck of a lot quieter than my current case.

Today was the last of the GYC frostbite series and the penultimate race of the year. It certainly lived up to it’s name with temperatures hovering at near freezing this morning on the drive down. Despite an earlier start than usual at the boat with the intention of trying out some start line tactics that Phrixus had be busy researching, we made it as far as the end of the pontoon before we heard the radio announcement cancelling the race! Unfortunately there was almost no wind at all so we could not go out for a practice before the Iceberg race on the 27th December. All being well we should be able to get a good result next week before looking at taking the boat out the water in the New Year for some long overdue maintenance in time for the start of the next season.