Sailing at Torquay

[khiemtran]

One of the nice things about knowing how to sail is that you can often hire boats on your holidays too. Here, Liem's cousins have gone out for a racing lesson, so we've hired a Hobie Wave to go chase them.



Here's the Wave by the beach. These little catamarans are designed to be as simple as possible for beginners, yet they are by no means boring. With a big sail and sleek hulls, they can slide through the water very quickly.



Here's Liem crewing for me. Note that there's no boom under the mainsail - a useful safety feature for novices as there's less risk of getting whacked in the head in an uncontrolled gybe.



Liem's cousin Billy, looking cool in his O'pen Bic. Liem took most of these photos.



And his other cousin, Oliver, with a brand new mylar racing sail.



Here's me helming. You can see that instead of a single tiller, there's one long bar that links both rudders.



Here we are cutting across the race course to get some photos. The Wave was easily fast enough to outpace the little Bics, so we were able to get quite close without interfering in the race.



Lining up to start the next race.



And practicing capsize recovery...



And here's Oliver in the background, demonstrating how to "hike out".

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The transparent sails are something I've never seen before. And "hiking out" seems like a move from The Matrix.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

The mylar sails are fast, but also loud. While fabric sails flap and sometimes growl when they're not happy, the mylar ones snap and crack, and you can hear it quite far away. Being able to see through the sail is also a big advantage, although with these little sailors, seeing under the boom is not a problem.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Sails growl! What a thought! I love it.

I guess mylar and fabric speak different languages.

[wongkk.livejournal.com]

Lovely photos, thank you! I adore the blue in these pictures :=) (Great antidote to being stuck indoors hunched over a computer during the grey English winter)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you liked it. We've got a blue sky this morning too (in Malaysia). Just wondering what we should do with it...