Tag Archives: derby

Practice Derby #7

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I went to the York River again for the last practice derby entry before the NCC. Since I damaged one of my amas and I feared I could not do an adequate repair before the big race, I borrowed some amas from the dealer (Peter) in Florida. These amas were previously damages and repaired and I like the repair job. As the video shows, a large piece of twill weave fabric (wither fiberglass or carbon) was placed as a cap over the whole wing connection area (and farther) to really distribute the forces from the ama. I plan on doing something like this to repair my own amas after the NCC race.

The day testing them out was a fairly light wind day but they at least remained water-tight.

Practice Derby #4

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The following video shows some good watertribe weather.

Rain Rain Rain.

Amazingly, my hat blew off my head and then I found it about an hour later when I was heading back in the direction I had come from. A one in a million happening.

Too bad I wasn’t so lucky when I lost my $100 sunglasses in the ocean breakers earlier in the summer.

Practice Derby #3

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I had to cut my 3rd practice derby short due to a broken rudder bracket. At least I was able to figure out I had the problem and get to a beach to make some kind of jury-rig to then enable me to get back to the launch place. I was looking forward to going 20 miles, though. Perhaps next time. At least the rudder bracket failed in a practice session and not the actual race. I’ll have to make a replacement bracket part and then make a 2nd one as a spare to keep in the boat.

Practice Derby #2 NCC2012

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I went out for a 20 mile paddle with a polygon course. It was a very light wind day so not much sailing. I paddled almost the entire course. I got a little wind right at the end so only got a free mile or so. Needless to say I was much slower this week compared to last week. I was much better operating the continuous loop line this week than last week. Every time I felt even the slighted hint of wind, I would deploy a sail… and then usually drop it again and get back to paddling.