Tag Archives: datchet radio sailing

Bouybot Trial – GPS Robotic Marker Buoys

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Have you been following the debate about using gps marker buoys for racing that stay on a fixed location? If you are with a Club that has to bring its race marks ashore frequently, or resets courses a lot, it will be of interest.

It’s very interesting. Datchet dinghy club has had a large GPS located marker on trial for a couple of years. Datchet Radio Sailing group was trialling one mark this last Saturday for the Tens racing. The concept is for six gps controlled buoys, great for our purposes, all linked together by radio.

This is the hand controller for what would be a fleet of six buoys.

Results of the trial? Despite it being blowy with a bit of a swell running, the buoy held station for three to four hours very accurately. It used 18% battery in that period, so that’s one big question answered.

There’s a really good Australian video about them in operation that you can see here:-

Racing Report – July 29th and 30th

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After three successive weekends of Marbleheads… and strong breezes, we changed gear to Tens and IOMS… and strong breezes !!

Results from the weekend.

Congratulations to Richard Uttley and Nic Charles winning on Saturday and Sunday respectively.  Four tens starting racing on Saturday in second suits, possibly it should have been Third suits.  Graham had rudder issues and only completed one race.  During the fourth race I lost rudder control and then sheeting and the boat took off heading north of the Castle later to be rescued by a RIB,  on getting the boat ashore it was discovered that a suspect short/overload in the rudder servo had caused a small electrical fire and the servo wiring was still smouldering.  Needless to say this put pay to any further racing for myself and Phil and Richard U decided to give up.

1st Richard. 4 pts
2nd Phil. 5 pts
3rd Hugh. 6 pts
4th Graham. 14 pts

On Sunday we had 5 IOMs and Roger who decided not to sail his borrowed boat.  We started in Third (smallest rig) and after 4 races we decided that no. 2 Rig would be OK.  In all we did ten races and the scores were

1st Nic Charles. 10 pts (6 wins)
2nd Hugh. 16 pts
3rd David. 20pts
4th Peter. 30 pts
5th Phil. 36 pts
It’s fair to say that both Peter and Phil had boat issues which accounts for their relatively high points tally. 

Marbleheads next weekend.

The Rigs is The Expensive Bit? Well, …Start with Fewer Rigs Maybe??

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In One Metres we have three rigs – big, medium and small. Easy to get your head around ! In Marbleheads, there seem to be …loads of them. If you are buying a used boat, simply take what’s on offer and get going. If you are buying a new boat, what do you do?

Wise people in the Fleet say:-

  • for Club racing, have three rigs (A, B and C) and that will be fine
  • For racing Open Meetings maybe four
  • For National and International, maybe five

In the current times, the fashion seems to be that A is a swing rig (just starting with the class? don’t worry…), and then B and C’ smaller rigs are conventional rigs. So really …big, medium, small just like the IOMs…. What else is there?

Well, you can get C2 and C3, which are based on the C rig geometry and C2 and C3 have progressively lower rig heights for windier days. You can, from some sail makers, also get B2, B3 which are based on the B rig but with progressively lower rig heights. Plus I’m told that B2 is even smaller than C3…. At least, I think that’s it!! Head spinning???!! Don’t worry!!

There is quite a good explanation here:-

http://www.docplayer.net/21859555-Choosing-Rigs-for-Marblehead-Class-Yachts.html

Hilariously, I always tell people that our club has 80-90% of its race days at 12mph breeze and below. So a sail wardrobe of A,B & C will be fine.

As I write (July 2023), the last four sundays have had enough breeze to blow your head off. Probably C3 days… all of them… Terribly exciting with Marbleheads. Anyway, you can only be wrong!! For myself, I’ve decided to start on A,B,C.

For the F6, we get our rigs from here, Red Ant Yachts. They supply A,B,C,C2,C3 :-

http://www.redantradioyachts.com/sails-and-rigs

If you are in UK, there is a UK Red Ant distributor in the shape of the fabulous K7yachts.