Andrew Heathcote writes with news from the Durban fleet.
On the fourth Saturday of January we finally had some Extra sailing in Durban. Unfortunately due to numerous other commitments it wants only the third time this summer that we have managed to get the majority of our fleet out. Three of our four boats were on water.
We had four sailors though with Jof out from the UK for a bit of sun so we did a bit of boat swapping. As you can see from the pictures it was a scintillating day on the water with about 4 to 6 knots of wind and about 32° of temperature not to mention the humidity! Some new innovations we tested, most notably Andrew Tarboton’s new ‘Tarbofoils’ (patent pending). It is not clear to us if the foils are new or just a new colour, but it is clear that they are orange! It is also clear that although they are not necessarily any faster through the water they will ensure that the rescue boat sees and gets to you quickly, which leads us wonder what it is that Tarboton is worried about?
For the third and final race of the day Tarboton lent his boat to one of our Laser sailors with a view to converting him. The end result was a gybe mark tangle between the potential convert and other Laser resulting in a reasonably large hole in the side of Tarboton’s boat. The ‘Tarbofoils’ were however undamaged. Apparently the hole will be fixed by next Saturday when we hope to have more on the water action.
