The GPS Blog| Activity | Activity date | Activity description |
|---|---|---|
| Push The Boat Out at SYC | 2014-05-26 | SYC's "Push The Boat Out" day to offer people a taster of dinghy sailing. A very successful day - about 70 people got to try sailing and the winds were an ideal F2 to F3.
Liz got to try helming a Topper on dry land!
Tags:
Push the boat out
|
| Out to sea dinghy cruise | 2012-09-01 | Safety boat duty on an out to sea cruise. Big tides and light winds.
Tags:
Out to sea
Safety Boat
|
| Dawlish Air Show Dinghy Cruise | 2014-08-23 | "Officer of the day" and safety boat duty on an out to sea dinghy cruise that coincided with the Dawlish Air Show. A few dramas a long the way but saw the Red Arrows and, later, the battle of Britain memorial flight (including two Lancasters, a Spitfire and a Hurricane).
Tags:
Out to sea
Safety Boat
|
| Sail on Nigel's Dart | 2014-08-18 | A decent wind (gusting maybe F5) for a storming sail on Nigel's Dart. Some excellent speeds with a top speed of over 17 knots - probably the fastest I've been under sail. Top stuff
Tags:
Out to sea
|
| Darting about in light winds | 2014-07-21 | Down river and out to sea (a little bit) on Nigel's Dart. Light, and sometimes non-existent, winds suggested that venturing too far on an outgoing tide might be a problem. Interesting tacking back up the estuary against the ebb tide - couldn't do that in the Wayfarer.
Tags:
Out to sea
|
| Sail on Nigel's Dart | 2014-07-14 | Beach cafe and just a bit beyond on Nigel's Dart 18. A day of lulls and gusts. A max speed of 14.6 knots is just a bit faster than I'm used to with my Wayfarer
Tags:
Out to sea
|
| Out to sea dinghy cruise | 2014-05-31 | An SYC dinghy cruise out to sea that actually made it out to sea! It looked as though there would be no wind at all for quite a while but gentle F2 / F3 filled in for most of the time.
Tags:
Out to sea
|
| Liz's first safety boat drive | 2018-08-25 | Liz's first safety boat drive since getting her "Power Boat 2" training.
An out to sea dinghy cruise - out as far as the fairway buoy anyway.
Tags:
Out to sea
|
| Out to sea to avoid the World Cup | 2010-06-27 | Im not a great footie fan. In fact even though the Wayfarer had somewhat of a leak a solo sail to off Dawlish seemed like the best way of avoiding the match Unsurprisingly the 7.7 knots max boat speed was just off the Warren
Tags:
Out to sea
|
| RNLI pursuit safety boat | 2017-11-12 | Safety boat for the RNLI pursuit race at SYC. With both Windguru and the Met Office Inshore forecasting F6 gusting F8, it was always going to be "interesting".
The race was abandoned after about half an hour when it was gusting about F7 - but with not too many boats on the water (and only one broken mast).
As we were heading back to the slipway, the gusts did reach F8 with so much spray being raised off the water it was hard to see ahead from the rib!
No major problems though.
There's a video here that shows some of the "action". Starts off looking quite benign but quickly shows that it was proper windy.
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| Liz's first safety boat drive | 2018-05-20 | Liz doing safety boat duty for the Squire's Cup at SYC.
No capsizes but a bit of interest right at the end when it was briefly thought that one of the Darts was unaccounted for.
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| SYC safety boat | 2017-08-28 | Safety boat for free sailing day at SYC
Tags:
Safety Boat
|
| Safety boat at SYC | 2017-06-24 | Safety boat for SYC dinghy cruise. Nearly an out to sea cruise but it was a little lumpy just out towards the fairway buoy.
Tags:
Safety Boat
|
| Helford River | 2018-09-06 | A short walk down to one of our favourite canoeing spots on the Helford - without a canoe this time.
This is where Scooby previously learnt to swim just for the fun of it so Liz was keen to take him back for another paddle.
Tags:
Ferry Boat Inn
|
| Safety boat at SYC | 2017-06-18 | Safety boat crew for Bob J at SYC. Three races in a gentle sea breeze with not a cloud in the sky.
Tags:
Safety Boat
|
| Up river safety boat | 2024-05-04 | A lovely sunny May day with a F3 wind and little tide. Up to about the Goat Walk.
Tags:
Safety Boat
|
| SYC safety boat | 2016-11-27 | A last minute replacement safety boat duty at Starcross Yacht Club. No boats to rescue except us when the rather nice 50HP fuel injected outboard stopped working. Towed back to shore by the other safety boat!
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| SYC safety boat | 2018-11-25 | Safety boat crew for James B at SYC. After two weeks in Bangalore in 30 plus degrees of heat, a morning on the Exe Estuary just a few degrees above freezing was a shock to the system.
Tags:
Safety Boat
|
| SYC safety boat crew | 2019-03-31 | At SYC to pretend to be an experienced safety boat crew for Rebecca B on her first drive of a club safety boat. Rebecca was more than fine and there were no "customers" as it was about a F3 to maybe F4.
However, just as we were picking up the race mark buoys, a request from Solent Coastguard reached us via the club (Solent had rung SYC) to go the aid of "a cruiser stuck in the mud off Topsham". So we dropped the marks back into the water and hared off to Topsham where we found a Cornish Crabber (or something similar) stuck in the mud just yards outside of the channel. The water was down to about two foot so it was hard for us to do anything and the cruiser was well aground. After about 5 minutes the real RNLI inshore boat turned up and took over (they took the folk off the Crabber after re-deploying the anchor).
Tags:
Safety Boat
|
| SYC safety boat | 2020-05-30 | First SYC safety boat duty of 2020 and first organised SYC activity since lockdown.
There was a problem with righting an RS Feva - bloody boats keep going over.
Then we had to tow a "submerged to the gunwhales" boat back to Lympstone.
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| SYC safety boat | 2020-09-27 | Late request to do a safety boat duty at SYC.
Quite a short drive as the wind got up so the course was shortened to just one lap to comply with RYA Covid recommendations.
Attended one rather good capsize.
Camera decided that some photos would be better in black and white!
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| SYC safety boat | 2022-06-04 | Forecast of F4 gusting F6 and heavy rain meant that we turned the dinghy cruise into a sail around the club.
But then there was actually very little wind and no real rain.
Can't win sometimes.
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| Yacht towing | 2023-04-29 | Went down to SYC for a paddle but ended up towing a members 33 foot yacht back up the estuary as it has lost its prop and the winds were light and fading.
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| SYC safety boat | 2023-06-21 | Wednesday evening SYC safety boat duty. Mostly very light winds
Tags:
safety boat
|
| Squires Cup safety boat | 2014-06-08 | Safety boat duty on a rather damp and drizzly Sunday in June. Free tea though!
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| Safety boat at SYC | 2013-02-17 | Too windy for us to go out sailing as we havent been out for a couple of months. So ended up doing safety boat. Good fun - a little bouncy. Suspect the occasional max speed peaks are GPS data anomalies.
Tags:
safety boat
|
| March safety boat | 2013-03-24 | Safety boat at SYC. A cold march day - two degrees centrigrade. The windchill factor made it feel like minus four. GPS data anomalies account for the three or four short peaks in speed.
Tags:
safety boat
|
| Another cold safety boat duty | 2013-04-01 | Force 5 to force 6 winds but not many boats out. Usual caveat about top speeds and GPS data anomalies.
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| Safety boat for Hurricane and Dart open meeting | 2013-06-30 | A lovely morning / afternoon on the water doing safety boat duty for the Dart and Hurricane Open Meeting at SYC. Plenty of sun and wind.
Tags:
Safety Boat
|
| Commodores Cruise | 2013-07-06 | Strawberries and cream at the Warren. Glorious weather. Liz doing safety boat driving.
Tags:
Safety Boat
|
| Safety boat at SYC | 2013-11-10 | Safety boat at SYC on a pleasant autumn morning. Not a lot of wind so not much work for us on the safety boat (apart from trying to figure out how to make the race marks stand upright). Some GPS data anomalies... hence max speed figures out...
Tags:
Safety Boat
|
| Bouncy safety boat duty | 2014-04-20 | A very wet and bouncy safety boat duty in mid April. About a force 6 on the estuary with waves of about 1 metre. Meant there was a lot of water coming over the front of the rib. Just the thing to help clear out a cold..
Forgot to turn the GPS on!
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| Sunny beach cafe safety boat duty | 2014-05-17 | A lovely sunny May sail down to the beach cafe and back. Light winds but just enough.
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| Topper Open At SYC | 2016-10-09 | Junior Topper Open event at Starcross Yacht Club.
Safety boat crew for the 4 back-to-back races for the 23 boats at this open sailing event.
Decent winds all day between F2 and F4 from the north east.
GPS battery ran out after only a couple of hours so most of the track is missing.
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| Safety boat for cancelled dinghy cruise | 2015-05-16 | The weather forecast was for F4 with F5 gusts and that is pretty much exactly what we got. The NW F5 gusts were too strong for a safe down river dinghy cruise so it ended up being replaced by a quick sail near the club
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| Safety boat at Laser Open meeting | 2015-08-08 | Safety boat with Bob J at the Laser Open meeting at SYC.
The day started flat calm so we tied up to a buoy and listened to England retain the Ashes.
A sea breeze started about 12:15 and the sailing started shortly after that. Four back to back races. We spent all our time at the leeward mark - hence the "ball of wool" GPS track. All in all, a very pleasant way to idle away a sunny August Saturday.
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| Dawlish air show dinghy cruise | 2015-08-22 | "Officer of the day" for the Dawlish air show dinghy cruise. A good day out even though not everything went to plan. The thunder and lightening was a bit of a surprise and curtailed the "out to sea" bit of the dinghy cruise a bit early and stopped the later parts of the show from happening e.g. the Red Arrows. The Vulcan bomber on its last ever visit to the Dawlish show was very impressive. All in all a very good day out!
Tags:
safety boat
|
| Wednesday evening safety boat duty | 2015-09-09 | A Wednesday evening on the Exe Estuary crewing for Bob J on safety boat
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| March Safety Boat | 2016-03-13 | Shamefully, this is the first time we'd been on the water in 2016. A safety boat duty at SYC. Very little wind to start with but it filled in to be a nice south easterly (after half the fleet had given up due to lack of wind). First sailing photos with the new camera.
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| Squires Cup Safety Boat | 2016-06-12 | Safety boat for the Squires Cup racing for dinghies and cats on the Exe Estuary. Not a lot of wind so not much call for our services. Some rain at times.
Tags:
Safety boat
|
| SYC Mystery Dinghy Cruise | 2016-07-13 | "Officer Of The Day" for the SYC "mystery dinghy cruise". What the mystery was to be was, er, a mystery to us.
So we decided that it would be cricket and drinkies on the Bull Sands in the middle of the Exe Estuary at low water.
F4 gusting F5 a fair bit of the time but it seems a good time was had by all.
Tags:
Safety Boat
|
| Free Sailing Safety Boat | 2016-08-13 | Doing safety boat for a Free Sailing at SYC on a lovely summer's afternoon. A pleasant F3 with the occasional gust made for almost ideal sailing conditions with just a few things to keep us slightly busy. A surprising overall distance as we spent the first 15 minutes at anchor (and expected to remain there for much of the afternoon!)
Tags:
Safety Boat
|
