Light air family fun on the Viper
Saturday, September 13th, 2008 Posted in sailing, viper 640 | No Comments »A few weeks ago, we took the Viper 640 out on a light air day with my 6-yr old daughter and her 63-yr old grandmother... Three generations of the family out for a relaxed day-sail on the lake.[singlepic=89,320,240,,right] And who would've ...
Viper 640 North American Championship
Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 Posted in gps, sailing, viper 640 | 2 Comments »[singlepic=80,320,240,,right]The Viper 640 North American Championship was held last week (July 24-27), as part of the Marblehead NOOD regatta. As a new owner of a Viper 640, I was thrilled to be offered the opportunity to charter a boat for ...
New Toy - Velocitek SC-1
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 Posted in gps, sailing, viper 640 | 1 Comment »Well, I couldn't resist any more... I finally succumbed to the temptation and bought a Velocitek SC-1 GPS-based Speedometer/Compass/VMG/Timer. Made by a little outfit in Hawaii, the SC-1 can display real-time speed, heading, or VMG, all based on a GPS ...
Installing new hardware in a challenging location
Thursday, May 1st, 2008 Posted in hack, sailing, viper 640 | 1 Comment »As I upgrade my Viper 640 to mirror the placement of the controls on the new Rondar-built boats, I needed to relocate a turning block for the spinnaker halyard/retrieval line to a new location on the cockpit floor. Unfortunately, the ...
First sail on the Viper 640
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 Posted in sailing, viper 640 | No Comments »This past weekend we finally launched the Viper for the fitst time. After several hours on Saturday getting the new carbon mast stepped, rig tuned (approximately) and a bunch of other little rigging projects done, we put the boat in the ...
Got a new boat!
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 Posted in sailing, viper 640 | No Comments »You may know that we sold our Capri 22 keelboat last year, and had been looking for a new race boat. I settled on a Viper 640 sportboat as the ideal blend of speed, simplicity, and family-friendliness (in lighter air). ...
2008 Bridge Too Far Regatta - GPS Replay
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 Posted in gps, sailing | 1 Comment »Last weekend was the Stillhouse Sailing Club "Bridge Too Far" Regatta, an annual long distance race (20+ miles!) on Lake Stillhouse Hollow. Dave K. and I sailed it on my Laser2 dinghy, Pterodactyl. Click on the link below to view ...
GPS VMG Waypoint Circle Generator
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 Posted in download, gps, hack, sailing | No Comments »This Excel-based utility lets you set up a GPS receiver to calculate VMG (velocity made good) relative to a desired heading, to help you fine tune your sailing angles (choosing between pinching and footing upwind, and heating up vs. soaking ...
Lat/Lon Format Converter
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 Posted in download, gps, sailing | 1 Comment »Latitude/Longitude Format Converter Have you ever suffered the frustration of having to manually convert a latitude/longitude between degrees-minutes-seconds and decimal degrees, or degrees with decimal minutes? Different GPS receivers, maps, web sites, and documents will express lat/lon in one of the three ...
Goodbye Condor
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007 Posted in sailing | No Comments »Well, it's a bittersweet moment. After three years of enjoyment, we've just sold Condor, our 1986 Capri 22 sailboat. We had some great times on that boat, learned some lessons, and even had a couple of close calls (stories for ...