Carriage repairs were sucessfull. I gave it a pretty hard work out yesterday. Wind was solid 15 with some 25 gusts so it was also a test of my boat handling. That did not come up so well.

My excuse was the failure of my Ratchet block which meant I was physically wrecked after a couple of works and consequently spent a lot of time in the drink from bad tacks and gybes.

Only my pride damaged though.

I have listed the boat for sale on the IC Marketplace: http://www.intcanoe.org/forum2/viewforum.php?f=20

$A6500 after McCrae if you are interested.

Another brief day's sailing. A good breeze and even another canoe to sail against as Seth finally got past his family commitments.

Unfortunatley my carriage failed again like it did in February so it did not last long.

But we did have 10 minutes of upwind sailing and at least I was on the pace with Seth, unlike when I sailed against Hayden last Month. Hopefully is this as a result of my work on the boat, battens, technique etc and not because Seth is out of form.

He also showed me some better ideas to improve my carriage and so this week I have some rebuilding to do.

It sure helps having some proven Canoes and canoe people about rather than winging it. Seth even bought Eric with him to add canoe heritage.

I had a good outing yesterday at Balmoral. Due to continued lack of canoes I raced 10 moths at their first NSW interclub event.

A patchy 10-12 kt S-SE was ideal for me but not enough for most of the foiling moths. I lead for almost one lap until Dave Lister got enough to slip past, after which he went further ahead. No one else got close and in the end I lapped most of the fleet. They all seemed to be able to fly for most of the time but when they get light patches they park while the canoe just glides on. It was good to see such moth numbers with a few new faces.

A nice confidence booster with no handling or apparent speed problems. The new gloss finish on the board and rudder might have helped too. Stils ome fiddling to do with battens.

Seth is tied up with his family for another couple of weekends so no DC/IC tuning just yet.

Sailed the moth last weekend instead, at least I had a fleet to sail against. Its obvious that the moth is where I should be putting the effort once the Canoe Worlds is over. The young guys who have been out every week are now legs ahead of me.

I hope to get out on the canoe mid week for some more solo practice, but without any other canoes I have no idea how fast it is going. At least all the UK and US competition are without their boats while in transit.

So who wants a cheap DC after January?