Here's a great article about crusing, perhaps not the type of cruising I have in mind, but a great read anyway.
Wednesday, 11 May 2016
Wednesday, 11 November 2015
Focus on the new year - Pico
Winter creeps on in the UK but here in New Zealand we start the summer and so thoughts turn to the great outdoors and what could be, rather than what should have been.
So with a renewed vigour I am going to be pushing for the Pico option this year. This is based around limited funds (whole project to be completed for less than NZ$2000 - $1000 Boat and $1000 refit and kit buying) and simply scaling back to weekend and evening cruising in a Dinghy, something Mirror-esk would be great.
This means that putting the Dinghy to one side I need to look at simpler ways of sailing and what I would be doing for an overnight as well as accommodating our 6 year old, should he want to venture out with his old dad!
So with a renewed vigour I am going to be pushing for the Pico option this year. This is based around limited funds (whole project to be completed for less than NZ$2000 - $1000 Boat and $1000 refit and kit buying) and simply scaling back to weekend and evening cruising in a Dinghy, something Mirror-esk would be great.
This means that putting the Dinghy to one side I need to look at simpler ways of sailing and what I would be doing for an overnight as well as accommodating our 6 year old, should he want to venture out with his old dad!
Thursday, 5 November 2015
NZ Maritime Restricted Operators Certificate (MROC) VHF License
So, I may as well keep current and so I was looking at ways of complying with the NZ 'rules of the road' and I happened to find eNautical. They offer the Maritime Restricted Operators Certificate (MROC) on-line (no exam, this is purchase separately for those that need it) for a remarkable NZ$59! For this you receive all your material and course-ware.
As the site says
"Study anywhere in the world online in the comfort of your own home"
So if this is of interest perhaps an offering on the other side of the world can help!?
Thursday, 29 October 2015
New Zealand pocket yachts- NOT UK pocket yachts
So, very occasionally, my afternoons may give me a few minutes to have
a trawl over TradeMe (New Zealand’s equivalent to eBay) looking for possible boats and/or projects.
What's very obvious, other than the odd Hunter 18, the small yachts I have seen are not common in the UK and so I have spent a little time digging around in the small yacht market that is here in Australia and New Zealand.
This afternoon I have come across what appears to be a great little Trailer Sailor at only NZ$1800! Which sadly is $1650 more than I have spare at the moment ;o)
What's very obvious, other than the odd Hunter 18, the small yachts I have seen are not common in the UK and so I have spent a little time digging around in the small yacht market that is here in Australia and New Zealand.
This afternoon I have come across what appears to be a great little Trailer Sailor at only NZ$1800! Which sadly is $1650 more than I have spare at the moment ;o)
17 ft Pelin Caribou - ready to
sail!
Tuesday, 27 October 2015
New Zealand, city of sails. Hauraki Gulf.
We are fast coming up to a year here in New Zealand and sadly, still no sign of a boat. More to the point, still no spare cash to buy a boat! So this has left me looking for very large projects (complete rebuilds) or give aways, which are very few and far between.
While I trudge onwards with my slow search, I take solice in crossing the harbour bridge every morning and being able I admire other people yachts in the city centres marina. Online scouting for New Zealand cruising books proved to be difficult. But now here the odd gem (books are insanely expensive here) does turn up in the clearance store. Cue William Owen's Hauraki Gulf guide for $15
The Hauraki Gulf is, broadly speaking, the expanse water that stretches between the East coast of the North Island up to Cape Rodney and the mirrored west coast of the Coromandel up to the top of the Great Barrier.
Calling home the North Shore, and working in the city, this would be my cruising ground and ny the looks of things I don't think I would need to look outside of here for a good few years to fulfil my simple sailing needs.
The book gives a great guide to the region for both fishing and cruising, as well as some great insites from the authors 50 years experience in the area.
Complete with anchorage suggestions and simple outlines of the areas, this book will be a firm favourite on the bus to work as well as, hopefully, in my future "micro sailers" library.
Anyone wanting to get a copy here's the ISBN. 978-1-86953-750-0
Apologies for spellings and brevity as this post has been sent from my mobile
While I trudge onwards with my slow search, I take solice in crossing the harbour bridge every morning and being able I admire other people yachts in the city centres marina. Online scouting for New Zealand cruising books proved to be difficult. But now here the odd gem (books are insanely expensive here) does turn up in the clearance store. Cue William Owen's Hauraki Gulf guide for $15
The Hauraki Gulf is, broadly speaking, the expanse water that stretches between the East coast of the North Island up to Cape Rodney and the mirrored west coast of the Coromandel up to the top of the Great Barrier.
Calling home the North Shore, and working in the city, this would be my cruising ground and ny the looks of things I don't think I would need to look outside of here for a good few years to fulfil my simple sailing needs.
The book gives a great guide to the region for both fishing and cruising, as well as some great insites from the authors 50 years experience in the area.
Complete with anchorage suggestions and simple outlines of the areas, this book will be a firm favourite on the bus to work as well as, hopefully, in my future "micro sailers" library.
Anyone wanting to get a copy here's the ISBN. 978-1-86953-750-0
Apologies for spellings and brevity as this post has been sent from my mobile
Wednesday, 1 October 2014
Roger Taylor - A Blog for our times
I found this Blog post from June 2009 on Roger Taylors (skipper of the amazing MingMing) web site (http://www.thesimplesailor.com/), which made me laugh and think how 5 years later, nothing has changed...
"June 2009
CONFESSIONS OF A CREDIT CRUNCH CRUISER
(Warning: This article is not suitable for those of a nervous disposition)
The signs are omninous. The portents are not good. The outlook is bleak. The prospects for my particular sailing business look worse and worse. I'm worried. Very, very worried. I'm not sleeping well. My attention span, never great at the best at times, can now be measured in nanoseconds. I'm permanently irritable. My conversation has become monosyllabic. I now write very short sentences. Can't manage long ones. My world is falling apart.
I blame the credit crunch. It's ruining my business. I was on a roll. I was a high-flyer. Now, if you'll pardon my French, I'm foutu. Stuffed. I thought I had cornered the market. Got myself a nice little monopoly. Found my ideal niche. Worked up a unique selling point. I thought I had it made. Now I'm not so sure.
At first I didn't take them too seriously. The signs, the indications, that is. A yacht broker gone bust here. A superyacht builder closed down there. A boat show cancelled. A marina offering discounts. Yes, I'll say that again. A marina offering discounts. Maybe you'd like it a little bigger. A MARINA OFFERING DISCOUNTS. Something was in the air and I didn't spot it.
It's the old story. Complacency. Self-satisfaction. Or, if you want it in business-speak, a failure to critically re-examine, while successfully splitting infinitives, market forces in the light of ongoing changes to the econometric paradigm. Asleep on the job, that is.
My own behaviour should have alerted me. There's me stocking up for my next voyage. Do I buy, as usual, ten packets of Jordan's Super Luxury Specially Selected Exotic Fruit and Hand Picked Nut Muesli, at an eye-watering price? I do not. A strange magnetic force pulls my hand towards the Sainsburys Basic Muesli at 58p per packet. It is dry and dusty muck, with scarcely a shrivelled currant to be found therein, but I load my trolley with it. And feel good and virtuous into the bargain. It's the same story at the tinned vegetable shelves. Forget Hartleys Individually Polished Garden Peas in a Sumptuous Home Mixed Brine. Those cheapo tins of, yes, you guessed it, Sainsburys Basic Leftover Reject Damaged But Very Credit Crunch Friendly Pea Scrapings will do just fine. Yes, I'm stocking up for a voyage to the Arctic, and happily buying duff provisions in order to knock £3.57 off my food bill.
I just didn't get it. Now I do.
Every man and his dog is going Basic. No more superyachts. No more gin palaces. No more gin. No more conspicuous consumption. No more extrovert extravagance. No more chuckaway chequebook Charliedom. Forget your Fairlines. Forget your Oysters. Think more, well...yes...Corribee.
Yes, dammit, the world is coming my way, and I don't like it.
It's taken a lifetime of sacrifice and deprivation to become a Simple Sailor. It's not been easy, honing those skills of sailing frugality. I've suffered, let me tell you, to get where I am today. Don't think it's easy, being a contrarian. If only you knew what I've had to put up with. Those condescending smiles. That amused disbelief. You go to sea in THAT? How on earth do you manage without a satellite telephone and an inbuilt entertainment system? Have you had a sanity check recently?
Yes, I've suffered every kind of insult and innuendo and not-so-subtle put-down. But that's the lot of the contrarian and, of course, I enjoy it. There's nothing better than getting up people's noses. Challenging their assumptions. Cocking a snoop at convention. Presenting two fingers to the established mind-set. A spot of iconoclasm is good for the soul.
It's become my business, this advocacy of plain sailing. And now it's under threat. Every Tom, Dick and Hooray Henry wants to get in on the act. If we end up with a world full of Simple Sailors there'll be nothing left for me to do. It's pretty clear the way things are going. The Chief Executive Officers of FTSE 100 companies will soon be hosting corporate bashes aboard Hurley 18's and Westerly 22's. Ageing billionaire playboys will lure nubile arm candy aboard their Pandoras, anchored enticingly in pristine sun-drenched waters off Southend-on-Sea. The Vivacity will be the must-have status symbol for A-list celebs. Offshore powerboat racing will be sponsored by Seagull. I have it on good authority that the next America's Cup will be contested in Halcyon 23's. Well hotted-up, of course. Team Alinghi is already scouring the mudberths of the East Coast for a nice little hull to renovate. I've gone very long on the designs of Maurice Griffiths. Even as I write, Camper and Nicholson are securing the rights to a production run of luxury Eventides, with an eye to the Mediterranean Classics Circuit. No expense will be spared, with the top of the range model featuring a Portapotti with varnished MDF seat. And, joy of joys, the OSTAR, which, by the way, should really be the NOOSTAR - the Not the Original Observer Singlehanded Trans Atlantic Race - will have a maximum overall length limit of 25'.
Yes, the world is going Simple and I, dammit, am almost out of a job. Redundant. On the scrap heap. Yesterday's man. As relevant to the New Order as Gordon 'My MP's Kept Strictly Within the Rules While Diddling the Taxpayer' Brown. Let's face it, there's not much mileage in preaching to the converted.
So I'm considering my options. Thinking outside the box.
Keep this to yourself, but I just might abandon the Simple Sailor monicker. Go for some corporate re-branding. Get myself back on the other side of the fence with something brazen and consumerist and nicely at odds with the zeitgeist. I've been rolling a few possibilities around my head. The Buy-it-Quick Boater. The High-Spend Helmsman. Hmmm. How about the Chandlers' Chum? Or the Size-Is-All Seaman? You get my drift.
Mingming, of course, will have to go. From here on I wouldn't be seen dead in a thirty-year-old ridiculous-sized junk-rigged Corribee. Junk-rigged? Yu-uck! How sad can you get? What I want now is size, shiny brute power, gizmos galore, fifty or sixty feet of thrusting phallic aggression. What I need now is a montrous throbbing engine, an illegal decibel count of good old-fashioned pollutive noise, infinite excess, whale-loads of wastefulness. Henceforth I'm not going anywhere at less than twenty-five knots. Watch out for the Great White Monster! Mobility Dick's a-comin'! Hold on to your hats! Yee-haa! "
"June 2009
CONFESSIONS OF A CREDIT CRUNCH CRUISER
(Warning: This article is not suitable for those of a nervous disposition)
The signs are omninous. The portents are not good. The outlook is bleak. The prospects for my particular sailing business look worse and worse. I'm worried. Very, very worried. I'm not sleeping well. My attention span, never great at the best at times, can now be measured in nanoseconds. I'm permanently irritable. My conversation has become monosyllabic. I now write very short sentences. Can't manage long ones. My world is falling apart.
I blame the credit crunch. It's ruining my business. I was on a roll. I was a high-flyer. Now, if you'll pardon my French, I'm foutu. Stuffed. I thought I had cornered the market. Got myself a nice little monopoly. Found my ideal niche. Worked up a unique selling point. I thought I had it made. Now I'm not so sure.
At first I didn't take them too seriously. The signs, the indications, that is. A yacht broker gone bust here. A superyacht builder closed down there. A boat show cancelled. A marina offering discounts. Yes, I'll say that again. A marina offering discounts. Maybe you'd like it a little bigger. A MARINA OFFERING DISCOUNTS. Something was in the air and I didn't spot it.
It's the old story. Complacency. Self-satisfaction. Or, if you want it in business-speak, a failure to critically re-examine, while successfully splitting infinitives, market forces in the light of ongoing changes to the econometric paradigm. Asleep on the job, that is.
My own behaviour should have alerted me. There's me stocking up for my next voyage. Do I buy, as usual, ten packets of Jordan's Super Luxury Specially Selected Exotic Fruit and Hand Picked Nut Muesli, at an eye-watering price? I do not. A strange magnetic force pulls my hand towards the Sainsburys Basic Muesli at 58p per packet. It is dry and dusty muck, with scarcely a shrivelled currant to be found therein, but I load my trolley with it. And feel good and virtuous into the bargain. It's the same story at the tinned vegetable shelves. Forget Hartleys Individually Polished Garden Peas in a Sumptuous Home Mixed Brine. Those cheapo tins of, yes, you guessed it, Sainsburys Basic Leftover Reject Damaged But Very Credit Crunch Friendly Pea Scrapings will do just fine. Yes, I'm stocking up for a voyage to the Arctic, and happily buying duff provisions in order to knock £3.57 off my food bill.
I just didn't get it. Now I do.
Every man and his dog is going Basic. No more superyachts. No more gin palaces. No more gin. No more conspicuous consumption. No more extrovert extravagance. No more chuckaway chequebook Charliedom. Forget your Fairlines. Forget your Oysters. Think more, well...yes...Corribee.
Yes, dammit, the world is coming my way, and I don't like it.
It's taken a lifetime of sacrifice and deprivation to become a Simple Sailor. It's not been easy, honing those skills of sailing frugality. I've suffered, let me tell you, to get where I am today. Don't think it's easy, being a contrarian. If only you knew what I've had to put up with. Those condescending smiles. That amused disbelief. You go to sea in THAT? How on earth do you manage without a satellite telephone and an inbuilt entertainment system? Have you had a sanity check recently?
Yes, I've suffered every kind of insult and innuendo and not-so-subtle put-down. But that's the lot of the contrarian and, of course, I enjoy it. There's nothing better than getting up people's noses. Challenging their assumptions. Cocking a snoop at convention. Presenting two fingers to the established mind-set. A spot of iconoclasm is good for the soul.
It's become my business, this advocacy of plain sailing. And now it's under threat. Every Tom, Dick and Hooray Henry wants to get in on the act. If we end up with a world full of Simple Sailors there'll be nothing left for me to do. It's pretty clear the way things are going. The Chief Executive Officers of FTSE 100 companies will soon be hosting corporate bashes aboard Hurley 18's and Westerly 22's. Ageing billionaire playboys will lure nubile arm candy aboard their Pandoras, anchored enticingly in pristine sun-drenched waters off Southend-on-Sea. The Vivacity will be the must-have status symbol for A-list celebs. Offshore powerboat racing will be sponsored by Seagull. I have it on good authority that the next America's Cup will be contested in Halcyon 23's. Well hotted-up, of course. Team Alinghi is already scouring the mudberths of the East Coast for a nice little hull to renovate. I've gone very long on the designs of Maurice Griffiths. Even as I write, Camper and Nicholson are securing the rights to a production run of luxury Eventides, with an eye to the Mediterranean Classics Circuit. No expense will be spared, with the top of the range model featuring a Portapotti with varnished MDF seat. And, joy of joys, the OSTAR, which, by the way, should really be the NOOSTAR - the Not the Original Observer Singlehanded Trans Atlantic Race - will have a maximum overall length limit of 25'.
Yes, the world is going Simple and I, dammit, am almost out of a job. Redundant. On the scrap heap. Yesterday's man. As relevant to the New Order as Gordon 'My MP's Kept Strictly Within the Rules While Diddling the Taxpayer' Brown. Let's face it, there's not much mileage in preaching to the converted.
So I'm considering my options. Thinking outside the box.
Keep this to yourself, but I just might abandon the Simple Sailor monicker. Go for some corporate re-branding. Get myself back on the other side of the fence with something brazen and consumerist and nicely at odds with the zeitgeist. I've been rolling a few possibilities around my head. The Buy-it-Quick Boater. The High-Spend Helmsman. Hmmm. How about the Chandlers' Chum? Or the Size-Is-All Seaman? You get my drift.
Mingming, of course, will have to go. From here on I wouldn't be seen dead in a thirty-year-old ridiculous-sized junk-rigged Corribee. Junk-rigged? Yu-uck! How sad can you get? What I want now is size, shiny brute power, gizmos galore, fifty or sixty feet of thrusting phallic aggression. What I need now is a montrous throbbing engine, an illegal decibel count of good old-fashioned pollutive noise, infinite excess, whale-loads of wastefulness. Henceforth I'm not going anywhere at less than twenty-five knots. Watch out for the Great White Monster! Mobility Dick's a-comin'! Hold on to your hats! Yee-haa! "
Monday, 29 September 2014
PBO and Pocket Cruisers
There is also a great article on a Kelt 550 having its rig tweaked for better performance to windward too.
Peter Poland (of Hunter Boats fame) is obviously very well experienced in smaller yachts and rather than discuss his own option on boats he offers other peoples insight into their own experience of smaller craft so that they can 'own small and charter large.'
The list is varied but I took heart from a number of boats that are not on my 'Nano' budget and would be keen to investigate.
New to the list from the article has come the following pocket rockets.
- Prelude 19
- Sailfish 18
- Express Pirate
The magazine is also packed with relevant projects tips and reviews such as Non Slip paints and Electric vs Propane outboards and all the usual.
Priced almost the same as a paper back book all magazines are becoming an expensive luxury, but I do love a good thumb through, but the digital lovers you can subscribe at a much reduced rate here http://www.pbo.co.uk/digital-editions/uk
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