Tupps.com
The following are the ramblings of Luke Tupper
Whether it is sailing, cycling, running, photography or other activities that Luke is involved in this is the place to read about them.
Racing on October 24
Nice steady spring breeze rolled in to Albert Park Lake just before the race. With a Starboard course the question of how to tackle the island/entrance to the narrows is a tricky one. It seems that there was better wind towards the island rather than out near the entrance to the narrows.
At present the weed is growing near the powerhouse retarding basin, which gives you even more reason to stay out in the middle of the narrows than hugging the wall.
Still trying to get the hang of setting the sail on the impulse, especially downwind. I suspect I have to be more aggressive with the boat to compensate for the weight difference.
Racing on Albert Park Lake at EveryTrail
Map created by EveryTrail: GPS Trail Maps
Pictures of Shauna Racing on Lygon St
Caught a bunch of Photos of Shauna (#84) racing in the Honda Hybrid Womens 3 Day tour.
Sailing Log 12th of September
Yesterday was an extremely windy day, with the wind was consistently over 25 knots, with the weather station at Royal Melbourne recording gusts at 47 knots (87 kmh) during our race. An idea of how windy this is, there was spray being blown off the surface of Albert Park Lake, and the boat got tipped over from just the wind getting under the hull of the boat. This is with me hiking out fully on the side of the boat.
So myself and 7 other foolish fellows took off and tried to sail in these conditions. The number one thing was to keep the boat moving and try to avoid being knocked over too many times. Nobody on the course managed to keep it upright all the time, but each capsize took a bit more out of you, and dulled your reaction times that little bit, making it more likely that you were going to capsize.
I noticed that as I got tired I was more likely to tip over, and every capsize takes a fair bit out of you. The final nail in the coffin was having my mainsheet coming undone at the bottom mark. Jumping in the water to retie this and then get back on the course was just to much. This was also the point that the 47 knot gusts started coming through.
From there it was just a battle to get back to shore. I wasn’t going to repeat the mistake of a few weeks ago and doing some high speed reaching at the end only to break my boat (Impulse that time). Through the strongest gusts it was sometimes prudent to just hold on, avoid capsizing without moving upwind.
I would definitely say that the day showed up my dropped level of fitness. So the next couple of weeks/months will be trying to bring that back up to scratch. As for boat handling, I was relatively happy with that, there isn’t to much you can do when the boat is being blown off the water. Of course more heavy weather sailing will always touch up the skills of handling the boat in these conditions.
Racelog 18/7/09: Didn’t Break Anything
Strong northly breezes provided challenging racing this week. This was the first decent breeze that I had the boat out in. The biggest news is that I didn’t break anything on the boat and everything pretty much held together.
The first couple of laps I took it relatively easy and made sure the boat was going to hold together. Once I was confident that the boat was working well I then hiked hard and worked the boat upwind. Surprisingly the boat worked well and nothing went wrong.
By the time I was pushing the boat hard I was well back in the fleet. In the last couple of laps I got a number of places and was able to keep the boat upright throughout the rest of the race.
While I hadn’t broken anything a shackle that I replaced in the morning was a bit bent out of shape:
It shouldn't be bent like that
Panoramic Photos from the Empire State Building
Photos from our recent trip to the US. Headed up the Empire State building around 10:00am one morning.
![[9] US Panos, Empire State 8, 8 images, IMGP8006 - IMGP8013 - 14999x3191 - SCUL-Smartblend](http://tupps.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/9-US-Panos-Empire-State-8-8-images-IMGP8006-IMGP8013-14999x3191-SCUL-Smartblend-300x63.png "[9] US Panos, Empire State 8, 8 images, IMGP8006 - IMGP8013 - 14999x3191 - SCUL-Smartblend")
Photos of Dad’s Boat ‘The Toad’
While I have put a number of photos of rebuilding and repairing Dad’s boat, I haven’t put any photos up of the finished boat. Unfortunately it would probably have been better to take these photos before breaking the mast and punching a hole in the deck.
I took a liberty with name of the boat. Dad originally had called it ‘Prince Toad’, with a view of naming his next boat ‘King Toad’ or some such. I simplified on just ‘The Toad’.
The toad logo was from Dad’s business. I vectorised the logo and the guys from Graphic Effects made the logo. They did the work on the back of the boat as well.
The cockpit was painted due to the amount of damage that had been sustained over the years, plus the new foam floor, didn’t lend itself well to varnish.
The signage and logo on the sail were done by Dad.
M&M Store
The store has 3 floors of M&M merchandise and of course some M&Ms.
Inside the Store
Liberty M
Elvis M
Inside the store
What merchandise you ask? Well anything is possible:
Need an M&M Golf Ball, or maybe Golf Club Cover?
M&M Monopoly
M&M Ron Lee Collectible ($2100)
Sexy M?
Of course it wouldn’t be the M&M store unless you could buy M&Ms:
World's Biggest Wall of Chocolate
M&M Medicine Box
Choose your flavor
Speciality Mixes
Strawberried Peanut Butter?
More M&M Wal
22 Colors!
Touchdown Mix (NY Jets Colors)
More Colors
Make your own color mix
Valentines Day Mix
Thanksgiving Mix, or should this be Hawks Mix?
Putting the toad back together
After the trouble on the 25th, ‘The Toad’ needed to be put back together again. Of course the obvious initial solution would be to stick a piece of tape over the hole and keep sailing. However that solution would persist for some time until the boat was brought home. Seeing I needed the trailer to get the mast to and from the club I decided to bring the boat home as well.
The hole hadn’t damaged any of the structural parts of the boat, but had come very close.
If you look through the hole in the above photo (the straight mark is a cut I had already made). Just behind the back of the hole is a small support beam that supports the mast step. The first step was to neaten up the hole. I did this by cutting up the hole square.
Unfortunately I was unable to leave any of the existing wood alongside the mast step. The mast step is supported underneath by several structural support and doesn’t gain any strength from the plywood next to it.
To support the new piece of wood in the boat I cut a supporting piece of marine ply to be placed behind the hole to support the new piece in the deck. This was epoxied into place. With the colder weather I used the West System with the fast hardener. Due to the colder weather I had the place a work light nearby to allow the epoxy to harden properly.
Note the arrows showing which way the piece should fit into the hole. This is important when you are in the process of gluing and clamping the piece. You don’t want to be worrying about which way things need to go when everything is covered in epoxy.
One worry when clamping the support into the boat was that the epoxy would squeeze out and permanently attach the clamp to the boat. Luckily after a day I removed the clamp and it came out of the boat and the support piece stayed in the hole. Steve Dunn has noted that mistakes with epoxy can be rectified with a little bit of cautious heat from a heat gun. After a bit of heat the epoxy will soften and mistakes can be removed and re-glued.
With the support piece in place the new bit of deck could be cut out. I cut the new piece for the deck slightly large than was needed and then filed the sides down until it fitted snugly.
You can’t see it in the picture but again the piece has markings on the back to make sure the orientation is correct when gluing everything. In this case the piece had epoxy applied on the back and the support piece had epoxy applied as well. I don’t have pictures of the epoxying process as epoxy and cameras don’t mix!
Here the final piece is in place. There is a small gap around piece and this will be filled with bog.
Sailing on the 25th of April
Saturday’s sailing was quite windy. I figured that it was going to be a great day to shake the last of the troubles out of the boat. With the help of Gary Todd I got the rudder pintels back on tight, after they had been working loose against a misaligned support at the back of the boat.
There was a strong breeze from the north which allowed some hiking but you had to quick getting back into the boat. The first lap of the race went well, falling only a short way behind Steve Dunn, Dan Simpson and Paul Farrell. Again it seems my tacking was causing me problems, I should have spent more time concentrating on getting speed out of the boat.
Thanks to Simon Cassin for the photo
The second lap of the race I had fallen a little behind, getting caught out approaching the top mark. As I rounded the bottom gybe mark the wind started picking up. By the time I reached the mouth of the narrow the boat was flying and starting to get out of control going down wind. As I approach the entrance to the narrows I noticed that the forestay of the boat had gone quite slack. I assume that this was just the force from the wind pushing on the sail. The second time I looked moments later the forestay was extremely slack, and the mast came crashing down.
Thanks to Simon Cassin for the photo
The mast broke between the spreaders and he hound (where the stays attach to the mast). Surprisingly there wasn’t any stress points (rivets or holes) on the mast.
At the time I was happy that the mast didn’t put a hole in the deck as it came down. The pin that the impulse mast rotates on is notorious for putting holes in decks. Unfortunately as the boat was pushed in the wind the rotation arm put a hole in the deck next to the mast step.
Looks like there will be a bit of work to do on the boat!
Look at the details from everytrail I hit around 20km before the mast broke:
Sailing on the 25th of April at EveryTrail
Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging
Supersprint Otway Ride
On Saturday the 28th I wasn’t sailing as there were some cars driving around the lake.
It transpires that I the Supersprint Otway & Ocean ride was this weekend.
It was a very early start, with me needing to get down to Torquay by 7:00AM. I left home just after 5:00AM, and had a pretty good run, arriving 15 minutes early.
At the start I was caught in bunches of slower riders, and took nearly an hour to get to the first stop 25 km into the race. After that I made sure I hooked up with groups of faster rides and my average speed rose quiet nicely. The descents were fantastic with broad sweeping corners and no cars.
After Lorne the course ‘levelled’ out undulating all the way back to Toquay. I was a fantastic day for a ride and the 25 degrees and no wind made it a joy. The other great thing was that there very few incidents on the day and most people were reasonably experienced, or they weren’t in front of me.
Supersprint Otways Ride at EveryTrail
Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging