Cruising & Racing
Members voyages
1) Maxi 1050 finishes 7th in 2009 ARC
A French owned Maxi 1050, “Minimaxi”, finished 7th overall in the Cruiser Section & 1st in her Class in the 2009 ARC.
Her blog can be viewed at http://blog.mailasail.com/minimaxi and can be read in English using Google’s Translate toolbar. Hearty congratulations to “Minimaxi” from the M-O-A!!
This is the second Maxi (that we know of!) that has participated successfully in the ARC. The other one was a Maxi 33 ‘Kjempekjekk’ back in 2003.
2) More on Maxi Yachts, AGM and Rallies, and web project!
The Maxi 1300 has been exhibited at both the recent Hamburg and Düsseldorf boat shows, with an order already placed for a French customer. We have just heard the new Maxi 1060 is already at the Gothenburg Boat Show which opens tomorrow until the 14th Feb. A string of new agents are being established across Europe, with Turkey, Slovenia and Croatia joining those already signed in Italy, France and Holland and starting their own marketing activities. We now look forward to seeing similar progress in the UK, historically one of the most important markets for Maxi Yachts.
M-O-A members will be pleased to see dates announced in the members area for this year’s AGM and our popular Solent Rallies. The AGM venue will be announced as soon as possible, together with further details on the Rally programme.
We have been quietly working on a new web project to replace our FrontPage-based web (which has become somewhat cumbersome) with a more interactive Web 2.0 CMS offering far better user functionality for both public and members-only. It is too early to make firm promises as the new project (which will be based on Joomla 1.5/1.6) depends solely on volunteer effort but we are learning fast! We are looking for a new webmaster from within the membership to administer and manage our new Joomla web. We hope their task will be less time consuming than our current FrontPage web because various committee and other members will contribute or update their own items directly from any web browser. So the inevitable plea of “help!” to our members – can you help us finalise our web project, or would you consider volunteering as our new web master?
Chris
RWYC TWO-HANDED ROUND BRITAIN & IRELAND RACE IN A MAXI 1100
I bought my Maxi 1100 Blue Demon new last year and specified a number of cruising gear items that added weight – eg extra tankage, batteries, cupboards & fridge.Double Handed Round the Island 2004 with all 10 nails in tact!
By Jean Findlay – Superted IV
Bereft from the loss of his crew to Laser sailing and suffering from racing withdrawal symptoms, Matt suggested we should enter the Royal Southampton annual double handed Round the Island Race. Against my better judgement and with a promise of no ranting and raving, I agreed. (In 20 years of sailing I’ve never seen the back of the Island so was looking forward to seeing all those lovely places).
Thursday saw me preparing, not for the race, but for our daughter’s graduation on Friday. As I’d not been anywhere near the boat for 2 weeks, I actually had reasonable nails so thought I’d make the best of them .. 2 coats of base polish and 3 coats of clear top coat – and very nice they looked too! (No bruises on my legs either)! A long drive to York that afternoon and then a long drive back again on Friday evening didn’t leave me much time to think about the impending race. Finally got to Cowes at about midnight Friday and crashed out.
In August this year, father and son Matt and Matthew Findlay took part in the Rolex Fastnet race in their Maxi 1100 Superted. The race was the culmination of a great deal of preparation which involved completing RORC offshore qualification races, meeting the strict offshore special safety regulations, as well as preparing the boat and crew for five days of non stop racing.
Round Britain with Moonshine
Read John Hooper’s account of his voyage in his Maxi 1100, summer 2006
Five years ago I was fortunate to be invited to crew on a friend’s yacht from Peterhead to Oban through the Caledonian Canal. This was a memorable and enjoyable experience which gave me my first taste of sailing in Scotland and which I was determined to build on.
Having done the Canal, as crew, I was keen to see if I could go right round the top, as skipper, and started to make my plans with that in mind. The pilot books do their best to make the Pentland Firth and Cape Wrath seem as frightening as possible but it became clear that the Summer months provide reasonable periods of calm enough weather if one is lucky. The key lies in getting the tides right and, for the Pentland Firth in particular, it’s best by far to tackle it at neaps, as Spring tides can run in excess of 8 knots. Provided there’s an absence of fog and winds are less than F4 there shouldn’t be too much of a problem…We set off from Harwich on June 5th, which allowed us 12 days to get to Wick, the jumping-off point for the Firth, neap tides starting on 17th. If the weather turned foul before we got there, we’d go through the Canal, making our decision at Peterhead. In the event, when we got to Peterhead, conditions looked pretty stable and we had a good passage across the Moray Firth, arriving at Wick in late afternoon on the 14th. In fact, winds were so light that we had to motor most of the way. Continue reading