Sunday, 8 June 2008

Hi All,

It was a beautiful day today the sun was shining and 32 blokart sailors turned up ready to enjoy a great day sailing. Well a great day it was, but the sailing was not so great as the forecast wind never arrived.  We managed to get one round of racing in before the wind completely faded away.  So this round of results will be kept for points but we will try and have another race day next Sunday the 15^th of June.  The wind forecast at this stage is not brilliant but who knows after today’s performance of the forecast.  The day wasn’t a waste as a lot of free sailing around the track was done before the racing which all helps to understand the track better. One Traveller turned up at 8:30 in the morning to sail and another traveller turned up on Saturday.

Saturday was a great day shared by a couple of us with a good wind and at one stage we shared the track with 19 hirers using only half the track made for some heart stopping moments as you are never quite sure where a hirer is going to go and we had to take evasive action a couple of times across the grass.  Keeps your reaction time nice a sharp at time like that.

Anyway a couple of points of interest

All 8 supers (95 kg+) were out in 5.5 meter sails today and it was awesome the supers successfully completed a race with the wind ranging between 3 to 5 knots without resorting to hand scuffing.  The 5.5 proved themselves as the Supers could not have normally sailed in those conditions at all. 

We also tested a new function on the lap timing software were the software voice engine ‘Mary’ did the pre start countdowns.  The first race had to be restarted as the voice was difficult to hear over the music playing on the track but once that was sorted the races flowed well.  The system went well overall a couple of small hiccups but the new laptop I ordered this week should sort out some of the remaining issues and some more education for the users.  The new chipx transponders and decoder are working faultlessly and have removed many of the issues we used to have with switches and batteries.

The new FM transmitter was put through the paces today for the first time and performed without fault which was great.  The reception was crystal clear across the track with even the cheapest of radio.  I will be trying out a wireless earphones this week so if that works we can eliminate the cable for the earphones which sometimes get tangled.  I let people know if successful as these wireless earphones will be a great asset at the worlds for less than $20.  Hopefully next week also we will have the first of our wireless speakers working which will allow us to have the race information relayed to any part of the track.

A big thanks to all the travellers, We appreciate the fact you travel for the events as petrol is not cheap and time for leisure activities is becoming harder to find. For those how travelled from out of town for this race day, not only did you get a free sausages from the BBQ but as an incentive to come back we will waive race day and transponder hire fees if you come back on Sunday 15th.   I’m sure  we all need the practice before the worlds especially after seeing the quality of the starts today a couple of the races the start horn went and no one was even close to the line, that includes myself, although it was a nice surprise to start 4 seconds late and be the first over the line.

Cheers

Richard