For better or worse, I’ve rearranged the site to display all the posts on the home page instead of the welcome message.
There are some (a lot) more photos from Racine here, professionally shot, though none of me – I was too far from where the action was!
Some pictures below from the Catfight Regatta at Racine this weekend. Most of the on-water shots (Sunday) were taken hand held with a long zoom, so are a bit blurry. However they give some idea of the action.
There was hardly any wind on Saturday, 15 knots and 3-4 ft waves on Sunday. I had trouble getting out through the waves on Sunday morning but managed to sail the afternoon though in the conditions wasn’t game to try getting out on the trapeze or hoisting the spinnaker.
My boat 
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I ran across this little classic piece of Kiwi culture on YouTube last week –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYvMeT2GC14&NR=1
I’m sure it will seem a little weird to US eyes, but full of meaning to those of us who grew up in NZ in the 70′s. For the uninitiated, the main performer here is the one and only John Clarke, aka Fred Dagg.
As a visitor here, I hesitate to comment too much on US domestic politics (no such reluctance to comment on US policies that affect the rest of the world), but I will confess to being more impressed by Mike Huckabee than anyone else I’ve seen in a long time. He appeared on Fox News Sunday this weekend. Here’s the video: click here.
The NZ Herald reports that the world price for NZ’s commodity exports has surged by 17% in the past 6 months, evidently driven mostly by increased prices for dairy products as a result of increased use of feed corn in the US for in ethanol production.
This is interesting because it is one thing that potentially justifies an otherwise excessively high exchange rate. However it is also going to put further upward pressure on interest rates, which is likely to suppress property values. Coincidentally, the Herald also reported a few days ago predictions from Kieran Trass of Suburbwatch.co.nz that house prices are going to drop in the next few months.
From MSNBC today, a report on intelligence assessments made before the war in Iraq -
The intelligence assessments, made in January 2003 and widely circulated within the Bush administration before the war, said that establishing democracy in Iraq would be “a long, difficult and probably turbulent challenge.” The assessments noted that Iraqi political culture was “largely bereft of the social underpinnings” to support democratic development.
…
At the time, the White House and the Pentagon were saying that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators, democracy would be quickly established and Iraq would become a model for the Middle East. Initial post-invasion plans called for U.S. troop withdrawals to begin in summer 2003.
The classified reports, however, predicted that establishing a stable democratic government would be a long challenge because Iraq’s political culture did “not foster liberalism or democracy” and there was “no concept of loyal opposition and no history of alternation of power.”
They also said that competing Sunni, Shiite and Kurd factions would “encourage terrorist groups to take advantage of a volatile security environment to launch attacks within Iraq.” Because of the divided Iraqi society, there was “a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other unless an occupying force prevented them from doing so.”
Last weekend I attended the first CRAW regatta for the year, towing the Blade up north on Friday night to Lake Ripley near Cambridge, Wisconsin. Mixed results – I broke a pintle after less than 30 minutes on the water on Saturday morning. I got to crew on JJ’s F18 for the last race of the day (very cool). Then overnight Wes was able, with the help of some heat, to drive the stainless steel pin out of the pintle fitting and replace it with a bolt, allowing me to return to the water Sunday morning – mind you, with temperatures in the 40′s (single figures celcius), I wasn’t sure I really wanted to sail .
The boat felt great, and I fully intended to race. However I made a complete hash of both starts, crossing the line way, way late, so didn’t bother to finish. But it was great experience, particularly getting some practice hoisting and dousing the spinnaker on my own. I blew the spin pole brace on the last downwind leg, so had to douse the sail early, but I was already way adrift of the rest of the fleet, so I didn’t mind.
Here are a few photos I took -
I came across the following video online that features the same kind of boat I sail (the Blade F16) in a race in Florida last year (the Space Coast 45).
Click Here
FYI, there is currently a problem with the site – the “Read more” links on blog articles are not working properly – you may see a message “You are not authorized to view this resource. You need to login”.
The problem is a bug in the Mambo software that runs the site. I will find a work-around when I can, but in the meantime, it is generally possible to get to the full articles by going through the apprproriate submenu item on the left hand side, such as “Comment-Scripture”. However this will only work if you know which submenu item to select.
