stuart midgley

A nice picture today of where we meet before, and drink after, each race. The CYCA (Cruising Yacht Club of Australia) is one of the real big clubs on the global scale of yacht racing importance. They race large boats offshore every Saturday in summer, have hundreds of millions of dollars of yachts hanging off their marina and they put on one of the biggest ocean races of them all - the Sydney to Hobart. There’s only a select group of clubs right up there at the top and the CYC is one of them.

The good news is that they’re also quite friendly and the downstairs bar, with its outdoor deck is, I reckon, about the best place in Sydney for a beer on the harbour.

I post this because we all spent a lot more time at the bar last Saturday than had been expected, due a small mix-up involving our skipper not realising that there was no race on this long-weekend Saturday. So we all tooled up, headed out onto the harbour, and couldn’t find a fleet or a start boat to race with! A few embarrassed phone calls later and we were heading back to the marina, wet through (it was raining all day) and aiming for the bar. Ah well, the joy of sailing!

Still, sitting by the harbour, telling tall tales and watching the mega-dollar yachts float around ain’t too bad a way to spend a Saturday. At least once you squeeze the rain out of your clothes!

I met an old school friend on Facebook last week, turns out he’s a professional sailer now. (Not a bad life, if you can get it!)

Last Saturday I ended up helping crew on a brand new yacht he’s helping sail - a Flying Tiger 10m sports boat called Tigger. It’s been more than 10 years since I last sailed regularly so I was looking forward to getting out there.

Wow! Boats have moved along a little in the last decade. These boats are 30 foot long, designed only for racing and they scream. There’s no fitout below decks (no toilet, seats, bunks, anything except a radio and one chart table), they have a rig that really belongs on a 40 foot yacht instead of a 30 footer, a huuuuuge asymetric spinnaker that hangs off an 8 foot bow extension pole… and they are a wild, twitchy, high performance ride!

There’s a video below this post that give some footage - even in light air these boats scream along. We were posting 8 knots boat speed in 12 knots of wind - that’s a very fast boat!

It seems I’ve got a regular crew position on her, so I’ll post updates as I get back into the sailing groove over the next few months. This week was a practice sail, next week is the first race in the 08/09 season. Let the games commence!

I’ve been getting over a very sad relationship break-up the last six weeks so I decided to get out and meet some new people and try to jolly myself along into a better frame of mind. After a quick Google search of bushwalking clubs in the Sydney area I found one that seemed to have a good range of activities.

Today I went for my third walk with them, around Patonga Ridge on the Hawkesbury River. We covered from where the Brooklyn ferry drops you off, out to the point looking down onto Patonga and then all the way back to The Palisades before dropping back down to the ferry wharf for the ride back to Brooklyn.

A very interesting day. The wildflowers on the shrubs and smaller plants were starting to flower all over the place. (They flower more in mid-late winter than spring in the Sydney area). Little delicate flowers of blue, purple, pink and every shade in between, set against the beautiful greens of the leaves and leavened with the occasional yellow flowering bush for contrast.

The banksias are all old and grumpy (see May Gibbs) from last spring’s flowering and the strong winds made the trees swish away above us for hours.

Throw in some amazing rock formations on the ridge - wind-hewn caves, overhangs, ledges, tunnels - and it was some walk! It was about 14km with a reasonable bit of up and down and a fair amount of off-track walking. It was a great day, but now I’m quite ready for a hot shower and bed!

But I still miss my Elisa.

This afternoon Qantas have had a very serious accident with one of their Boeing 747 aircraft. The bare facts are all over the mainstream news reports at the moment. A rapid decompression at altitude an hour out from Hong Kong followed by an emergency landing at Manila airport. Photos from Manila show the pressure hull of the aircraft with a 1 metre by 2 metre section missing and clearly blown outwards immediately forward of the right hand side wing root.

The Australian Transportation Safety Board has begun an investigation, as has Qantas themselves but at this early stage it is fair to undertake some informed speculation as to possible causes.

Qantas has had some troubles earlier this year with incorrectly installed or damaged drip shields under the galleys in their 747’s. Most notoriously this led to a complete electrical failure on another of their 747’s over the Pacific and the aircraft being landed, at night, with the pilot’s instruments running on reserve battery power with only minutes remaining.

It is interesting to note that the hole in the fuselage in this accident is almost immediately below a galley and toilet area.

Could a lengthy period of improperly contained moisture below the galley/toilet area have led to corrosion in the hull and finally failure by metal fatigue? Was the area properly tested for corrosion and fatigue in the last heavy maintenance check?

No doubt the ATSB will be looking at this as well as other scenarios. But I’d put 5 bucks on this one.

Only 2 days to go until the iPhone 3G is upon us and for all the tech tragics out there I pose this question:

What are you going to wait for once the iPhone arrives?

Telstra have announced this evening that they have concluded an agreement with Apple and will be offering the iPhone from the global launch date. That’s great for the millions of us Australians who are stuck with Telstra for various reasons (company policy, rural coverage etc.).

Here’s the big question - will Telstra still force all internet enquiries to go through their stupid My Place search portal?

All previous smart phones sold onto the Telstra network have been modified so that as soon as you go the web browser you are forced onto Telstra’s My Space search portal - a portal universally regarded as one of the poorest attempts at internet search since… ever! It’s bloody annoying because every time you launch your browser you have to wait for the page to load before you can then navigate over to Google.

All the media reports this evening note that the delay in announcing the Telstra deal was caused by a dispute over Telstra’s content services. Which knowing Telstra, means they wanted to lock users to their search portal and, probably, to their upcoming 3G broadcasting services.

Who won? I hope to god it was Apple.