my new boat

Hurricane Irene is one mean gal. She has us in her sights here in Virginia Beach and will arrive Saturday. Forecasts are that she will go right over us before heading for New York, Boston and points North.

There is likely to be a lot of flood and wind damage around here, with prolonged power outages that could go on for a fortnight or more. If you are unable to make contact with us in the aftermath of Irene, please bear with us. We will be back on-line and working as soon as we can. We have a generator to keep the office and household going but will still have no contact with the outside world if there are widespread outages that shut down communications.

For now, we are battening down the hatches and moving all loose stuff indoors. This will be the first major storm test for my new boat shed, in which my Paper Jet is hiding from the angry elements.

Dudley

I returned home yesterday from the 24th Metal Boat Festival, held 19-21 August at the Cap Sante Boat Haven in Anacortes, WA. The venue was good, there was an interesting array of metal boats to be viewed on the  marinas and great people to meet and with whom to socialise.

I was lucky to be the guest of Ian and Laurie Clark, on their centre cockpit Dix 43 "Namo". She was beautifully built by John Dearden of Gibsons, BC. I was made to feel very welcome and tried very hard to behave myself (not that easy).


Highlight of the weekend was the very interesting presentation by Charmaine Lingard (assisted by daughter Sindella) about their voyaging in the Antarctic and Chile aboard Vickers 45AC "Vlakvark". Charmaine had the audience enthralled with her video showing the interaction of her family with nature in this extreme climate. This part of the 3-day program alone was worth the effort of flying across the continent to attend.

My thanks to Charmaine Lingard and Brian Russell for their presentations, which supported my own talks, helping to make this a successful event.

Every now and then I am sent a truely gorgeous photo of one of my boats, which I just have to show off.

Today I received this beautiful one from Tony and Angela Maslin, of their Dix 43HD "Tana Vika". They were sailing in company with Beth Leonard and Evans Starzinger on "Hawk" along the Newfoundland coast. Thanks to Beth for the photo.

 "Tana Vika" was built by Neriede Yachting in Czech Republic. Tony and Angela took delivery at the yard in motor-away state, without the rig. They motored through the rivers and canals of Europe to UK, where the rig was fitted. Since then they have crossed the Atlantic and cruised the Caribbean and East Coast of USA and Canada.

Her construction is aluminium and she was built from a kit that was pre-cut by CNC using cutting files prepared by Robert Christinger of Alumar Yachts.

PS. When Tony sent me the photo he said that they were able to hold "Hawk", a Samoa 47, for the 30 mile beat during which the photo was taken. I didn't initially include it in my blog in case Tony was stretching the truth a bit. Since then Beth has confirmed that the two boats had a great race and were a good match.