Arthur's Column

With thanks to my mate Bill Rini I submit this joke as my candidate for the 2009 Christmas Cheer Joke.

A police officer pulls over a speeding car. The officer says, ‘I clocked you at 80 miles per hour, sir.’. The driver says, ‘Christ, officer I had it on cruise control at 60, perhaps your radar gun needs calibrating?’. Not looking up from her knitting the wife says: ‘Now don’t be silly dear, you know that this car doesn’t have cruise control.’.

As the officer writes out the ticket, the driver looks over at his wife and growls, ‘Can’t you please keep your mouth shut for once?’. The wife smiles demurely and says, ‘You should be thankful your radar detector went off when it did.’.

As the officer makes out the second ticket for the illegal radar detector unit, the man glowers at his wife and says through clenched teeth, ‘F.k it, woman, can’t you keep your mouth shut?’, The officer frowns and says, ‘And I notice that you’re not wearing your seat belt, sir. That’s an automatic $60 fine.’. The driver says, ‘Yeah, well, you see officer, I had it on, but took it off when you pulled me over so that I could get my licence out of my back pocket.’. The wife says, ‘Now, dear, you know very well that you didn’t have your seat belt on. You never wear your seat belt when you’re driving.’.

And as the police officer is writing out the third ticket the driver turns to his wife and barks, ‘WHY DON’T You shut the f..k up??’. The officer looks over at the woman and asks, ‘Does your husband always talk to you this way, Ma’am?’. ‘Only when he’s drunk.’.

I stumbled across some great pictures of the foiling moths doing what they do best and thought I would share them with you.  The entire gallery along with some more really beautiful sailing photography can be found at Christophe Launay’s website – he sells these photos as posters etc so please go and buy some from him!

Moths in Anger (c) Christophe Launay

This revolutionary dinghy class emerged from class rules that were suitably open minded so as to encourage innovation.  Similar great things have emerged (on a larger scale) in the Open 60 and large Multihull classes – by reducing the restraints it is amazing what can result.

Moths (c) Christophe Launay

Using the same principle as L’Hydroptere – the use of lifting foils to lift the hull (and hence the resistance) out of the water, these boats are truly astounding in their speed even on quite rough water.  There have been two similar developments in small multihulls over the past few decades – the Hobie Trifoiler which was a foiling trimaran with twin masts (I really wanted one of those!) but was discontinued – I think they were prone to breakages – and the Windrider Rave.  The latter is a stronger trimaran, and features a single mast.  Check out this Rave video …

The Rave is still in production – I have half an eye on one!  More pics of the Moth below including a nice shot of the hull on land where you can see the huge fin that supports the boat when it is at speed.

How much fun is this!!!! (c) Christophe Launay

The mechanics of it all (c) Christophe Launay

Some great pics and a very interesting article on the situation with the America’s cup from Alinghi’s point of view can be found here at The Daily Sail.

Alinghi lifting a leg

It seems the new piece of kit was a longer bow sprit enabling them to fly genikers that are simply huge.  It is interesting to note how truly huge and almost wing shaped the rig is …

A huge rig