There’s still a lot of controversy in San Francisco over the plans for the America Cup. I’m sure the organisers of the America’s Cup didn’t anticipate all the publicity over the plans for the piers in the harbour. For what is such a great event it seems a shame that the plans aren’t being carried out as planned. I’m sure the sailboat racing will be spectacular in such a venue. It looks like the original plan to spend over $80million on improving the piers is proving to be a stumbling block. It’s likely that the focus could be moved to another part of the harbour that’s further away from the usual spectator areas. Still the America’s Cup will be fantastic racing and hopefully some great sailboat racing.

Pwllheli Marina

Work has started already on the new centre for sailing and training our top sailors. Hopefully in a couple of years time the centre will be finished. It’s going to provide a fantastic centre to rival Weymouth for its facilities to the sailors of all types.

I was visiting the club on Saturday and met Chris Blackburn one of the high performance coaches for the RYA in the north west. I had the chance to explain how the wot-tac works and give him one to use with the youngsters he’s training. The wot-tac is just the sort of simple learning tool that will help everyone learning to sail and race.

There’s a great report on Scuttlebutt this week about the Thistle class racing in San Diego CA . It reminds me about the Fife class and the Dragon class racing. There’s something timeless about racing in a fleet of one design keelboats. It makes the sailing exciting and it’s great to see a good fleet of keelboats on the water.

There are going to be a small hopefully much larger and developing fleet of J109’s in Pwllheli this year. So hopefully the interest in getting more racing in Caernarfon Bay is a good sign for the future. I was reading recently about the damage to the boats sailing up to Sanya, China and each of the competitors have a lot of work to do during their stop over. I hope they get their keelboats repaired quickly and they can get a good start for the next leg to Auckland.

At many events we find the start line is laid to late to ‘ping’ both ends with our electronic systems. With Wottac I take a bearing on the line when the bowman gets his transit, then as the wind angle changes Wottac tells me the bias. Wottac makes all the calculations allowing me to focus on the start.

It is also great for quickly working out wind angles and sail choice for the next downwind leg. It has no battery to run out, no standby mode to wake up from and can be kept in a pocket.

I am really pleased with my Wottac and won’t go racing without one.

The wot-tac SailclothBag is our latest product – a fun lightweight and multifunctional bag made in Wales from recycled sail material. Each bag is unique and each will have a portion of a sail number. Use your wot-tac SailclothBag for carrying your sailing kit, to the beach or for the regular trips to the supermarket or gym.

The wot-tac SailclothBag is made from re-cycled sails – the only thing that isn’t green is the colour. Designed by the Wot-tac team in Wales and inspired by a lifetime of sailing and sail making by Jonathan Abrahams, the inventor of the Wot-tac.

Jonathan says “I love the thought of being able to offer a bag made from recycled sails. When we’re all told to recycle more and more then the wot-tac SailclothBag ticks all the boxes.”

The wot-tac sail bags are

• unique – no two bags are the same
• made from 100% recycled sail cloth
• strong and durable
• will carry heavy items without tearing
• fully washable
• incredibly strong and very flexible

Dimensions

Size 33 cm x 18cm x 37cm with a handle length of 52cm

Size 13” x 6” x 15” with handle length of 20”

21 L Sailcloth Bag – £20.00 (inclusive of Vat @20%)

Customers from outside the EU do not pay VAT at the checkout.

The wot-tac is supplied in a blister pack with a lanyard and instructions for use. To buy click the Add to Cart button and proceed to the Shopping Cart.

Price £25.00

Price $39.56

Price €30.12

inclusive of Value Added Tax (VAT) @20% plus postage and packaging

International

We regularly ship the wot-tac to the United States, Canada, Europe ,Australia and New Zealand as well as other countries. Customers from outside the European Union do not pay VAT on their purchase and the appropriate allowance is made at the checkout.

Postage & Delivery details -Click here

I returned recently from a very eventful weekend at the Tasar World championships in Torquay. It was a fantastic weekend and Sheila and I met some enthusiastic sailors from all over the world. There were fifty six entries in the Tasar Worlds at the Royal Torquay Yacht Club. There were 21 entries from Australia and 17 from the UK and eight from Japan.

Wot-tac were one of the day sponsors at the world championships and we provided wot-tacs as prizes for the various races. The only drawback with Torquay is that it’s such a long way from north Wales and it took us six hours to drive down. On the Saturday morning we had great breakfast at Gino’s and then organised the banners along the slipway where the entrants for the Tasar worlds entered the water. I met up with Pete Ellis the Tasar chairman and I helped him to get the boats weighed.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with a Tasar then I hope the association won’t mind the following description which is on their website.

Some background on the Tasar

The Tasar was designed to be sailed by a man and a woman and it delivers exciting performance without using either spinnaker or trapeze. The hull has a fine angle at the bow to reduce wave impact drag with unusually clean and sharp chines aft to ensure very free planing and outstanding stability. The foam cored hull is stiff and light and the advanced hull shape, together with an innovative rig which combines a rotating mast with a fully battened main sail, allows the Tasar to plane upwind with the crew normally hiked. The wide beam and a cockpit designed for comfortable hiking make the Tasar easy, fun and very exciting to sail in winds up to 25 knots.

They are a really great, light weight boat that provide some great sailing.

More blog and photographs of the Tasar Worlds coming soon.