First solo mission !

Did my first solo trip on Friday morning, just Ramsgate to sandwich, and learnt a couple of fairly valuable lessons.

1) - Always plot Lat/Long co-ordinates you've been given before sticking them in the GPS ! I entered a 51.x.7 longtitude, thinking the 7 meant .7 minutes. It didn't. It obviously meant 7 seconds. So I ran aground :) gently mind you, I did a 180 before I got stuck to the sand for a 10 hour wait.

2) on your own, its nice to get a hand with the lines when entering/leaving marinas! Don't be too proud, I asked a nice swedish chap to grab a line, and pulled the bow through the eye of the wind. If I hadn't asked, I would have been parked across some fishing boats.

3) Dont drive 4 wheel drive cars across river beds - as I went up the stour, I saw a shiny new Vauxhall Frontera under water. Looks like the owner stalled whilst trying to cross the riverbed.. oops !

nice day the beach in deal

nice day the beach in deal
Posted by: angus.

Complete with 70's shelter!

10.5knots from a 25ft yacht

I sailed my boat ("playtime" - an awful name which I didn't choose !) from Ipswich to Ramsgate with a friend at the weekend. Crossing the thames was pretty rough, it felt like force 8 - but was probably only a gusty 6. Toughest bit for me was probably when the GPS started switching itself off as we were jybing down the main entrance channel to the thames, which is about a mile wide. It got kindof hard to work out the course with a big commercial boat behind us, no gps, and bloody great waves everywhere. And felt as sick as a dog, which I guess is the effect of a lightweight lift keel, in a lumpy sea.

All in all not much fun, but a good experience.

1st post - planes trains and automobiles

HI, this is my blog, which I will be quite surprised if anyone reads:)
Its a place where I'm going to jot down notes about stuff I'm interested in - which is usually about boats and geeky toys like pointless digital cameraphones.

Hopefully some of it may be interesting to a few fellow geeks.