u/dwkfym

Are you drunk? You had all night to use your fireworks.

Last few days, I know of two boats, one confirmed abandoned (I was one of the shoreside support for this vessel and was on the phone with him as merchants started recovery ops). All happening while the A2B race is on. There is another requesting to be removed his vessel as of 6 hours earlier today. I do not know what is going on with this vessel either.

The following assessment is all speculation, one much less speculation than the other, but whats going on guys? My friend's vessel sounded like it was still able to be sailed. The owner and skipper just mentally quit.

The conditions sucked but it wasn't something someone couldn't have sailed through. 4-6ft seas with 5 second period, observed and forecasted yesterday. Typical gulf stream + northerly conditions. Today is much milder. My friend's vessel was 200nm offshore when abandoned, this recent one 180nm.

Worst comes to worst, a boat that can still be sailed, say with self steering and engine disabled as in this case. If you're single handed, go to sleep, wake up, steer as long as you can and go to sleep again. Figure out how to balance the sails. Most sloops will self-steer with balanced sails, locked helm and on a beam reach.

Don't blindly listen to auto-weather routing. Build up your skills and experience before attempting a real multi-day passage. Sail with crew if able. Shake out your systems for more than just a day. Get familiar with the systems before you go. Rescue services are not there to take you out of a uncomfortable but still easily survivable situation.

I don't know, a lot of mixed feelings about this. Relieved folks are okay, but also super annoyed they mentally quit and left a seaworthy vessel. Not only is it a nav hazard, a wrecked boat leaves so much litter (like a truck load) in the ocean.

My first year racing keelboats, though in the past I raced dinghies and absolutely loved it. I still like cruising more than anything else, but I am decent at getting the boat to move as quick as it can and I like the more social aspects of racing.

But in my area, all the racers are really designed for boats with PHRF ratings under 120. I'm tired of coming in late and making committee wait for a long time before we come in. Time limits, courses, and classing are all designed for really fast boats and the 'cruiser' class is still filled with very fast boats. If thats whats popular here, that is how it is. However, the Chesapeake bay is still full of boats like mine and I'd love to have a race against them.

I'm wondering if there are other old, tanky boat owners that enjoy racing their boats. No specific question or subject in this post, but I'd like to hear how it is in your region, what your experiences have been, etc.

One thing that has been annoying - I'd like to do well in a chill race one day! So far, the only races where we do ok is when the wind strong and there are threats of thunderstorms. Of course, that is expected; its easier to sail my boat fast under rough conditions.

This last weekend my PU jacket (Grunden Neptunes) finally leaked through a little bit. Parts of my sleeves, which are probably the highest wearing areas, let enough water through that my mid layer sleeves got wet. I would call it just under 'soaked.' I've had it for seven years with more than average use. I do remember when this jacket would keep me completely dry even when I was being slammed by big waves on scary dinghy rides, or if I was being rained on for days offshore. It was an arduous race weekend. All of my crew ended up with soaked-through clothes except for one who had a fairly new expensive DWR outfit.

So I'm thinking about getting a new jacket in the PVC material. PU breathes a little bit but its considered a bit less waterproof than PVC. I am also gonna make a trip down to west marine to look at their 'rubber' material jacket. I don't care about breathability, looks or super-comfort as I'm going to wear this on the boat when its absolutely pouring, as it was this past weekend. I'll keep the Neptune jacket for milder days and if I have crew whose foul weather gear is failing. I'm also going to keep more loaner disposable ponchos on the boat so I don't end up with crew suffering through a long leg of a journey.

Anyways, I wanted to ask what your experience was between PU and PVC. is PVC that much more waterproof and durable? how long did your PVCs last?

Still a 'slow' boat, but I gotta say, my boat sails faster than everyone said it would. Especially in choppy conditions, where she carries momentum right over the waves and keeps on going. Even in light wind she still moves, just not 'fast.' Upwind, she points so well for a boat of this design (and yes, with the mizzen) that I often tack too late around marks and question the GPS heading vector constantly. With enough wind this boat will do 7 knots close-hauled. My only complaint upwind is that the boat seems like she really needs to be canvassed enough to heel over quite a bit to get charging upwind, and the tacks are fairly slow.

(one caveat is that I do have a feathering prop and a full batten mainsail)

Hi,
I'm setting up a specialized aerial photography service, and I'd like to connect with a local business that can do professional photo printing. If you know of any good relaible ones, please let me know.

Hi everyone,
I recently passed my part 107 and I'm on my way setting up my part time business idea.
I shoot a lot of boats and stuff around the water. I really only care about shooting classic video footage. Here is the thing - I have an excellent eye for composition and can shoot and put together some good looking, almost emotionally moving footage. But I'm actually not that technically competent with photography. Yes, I know more about cameras than the average person but I am really not any sort of pro photographer.

I've narrowed down my next drones to two options - Mavic 3 Pro, or a Air3S. I would buy either one used. You can get a Mavic 3 pro with RC-pro controller for a bit over 2k now.

The Mavic's large sensor and adjustable aperture is very tempting. I think I could shoot photos like I have a good MFT camera in the sky. However I also feel like I'll become task-saturated flying the Mavic 3 pro with all the options.

But with the Air3S I feel like I can just slap on the right ND filter, take off and 100% focus on getting the right composition and angles, e.g. just hyper concentrate on flying, much like what I do with my Mini 3 right now. The air3s also seems to have all the bells and whistles with the flight modes and automatic modes, even though I don't use auto tracking modes and can track and shoot objects with fully manual controls. Its nice that I can get all those features on less money I would spend on the Mavic 3 pro.

I don't need S tier obstacle avoidance either as I'm usually shooting in completely open air spaces.

The photographer in me wants the Mavic 3 pro, and the drone pilot in me wants the Air3S.

I drool over the Mavic 4 pro but the extra 5-700 dollars really puts it past my budget. I feel like I need to make some money with the lower tier drones first, then invest in a top tier flagship drone.

Anyone with direct experiences doing video and photo services with either of these drones? Sorry if this violates rules, but I wanted to get some very specific advice with folks who have direct experience.

When I finished the exam, I was just hoping to barely pass so I was quite surprised at the result.
I took pilot institute - did all the lectures once, took notes, then reviewed the notes once. Then I took the practice exam once, reviewed the areas I was lacking a few times, then took another practice exam and repeated the process. I'm not sure if I'd recommend taking a third practice exam as the question bank is sort of limited. The questions themselves were excellent -- they were close enough to the real exam questions, but not identical so you weren't just memorizing a question bank.

I have shit memorization skills but great test taking skills. Honestly, the exam itself isn't the easiest but its geared to let you pass - if you read the questions carefully and think about it for a while, you'll get it right. I did a medium speed pass, then went over all the questions again fairly quickly, then submitted my exam. I did change the answers to 2 or 3 questions, and I guess I nailed it on the 2nd pass.

BTW the exam is now 65 questions and 150 minutes long. I also never had to look at the figures in the handbook, but I used the P out of the legend. BTW, I recommend you thumb through the handbook so you can get an idea of where the useful legends are.

Anyways, the other thing to remember is your exam score has absolutely no bearing on how well you'll do as a commercial drone pilot in real life. Good luck everyone!

Ever since 2019 or so, every single time I've been to the Sailboat show in Annapolis, I have my card skimmed. I think this time my phone got skimmed though I am really not sure how the multiple layers of authorization fail to have a transaction go through.

This time it was just a 150 dollar charge - no big deal, disputed and new card issued, but I've had charges of a few thousand dollars too.

Many years ago I bought a MMC prep course at the boat show. I was surprised when the owner of the school pulled out an old school carbon copier credit card machine. He explained that its really common to get your card info stolen at the show, so he just does that now. Though now, none of my cards have stamped lettering anymore. I imagine this happens to other people. Anyways, be careful! I bought a new RFID blocking wallet just in case.