Miss Meliss…

I headed out on the water yesterday for the RQYS Ladies Sailing. I am currently involved in taking out the club’s Yngling keelboat for the afternoon and helping some great women build their confidence on the boat and building on their sailing skills.
It was the perfect day, clear sky, clear blue water, light winds—maybe too light! It was decided that we would head out and sail around green island and then back to the marina. Sounded great! We slowly made our way out of the leads and headed towards Green Island… I was encouraged to put the spinnaker up by Johnsee (sailing an Etchells), shame the spinnaker pole was back at the club! I put it up anyway and floated it most of the way over which helped with our speed (marginally!!). We started to head in between St Helena and Green and the wind just disappeared! Both boats were sitting in a big glassed out patch…we could see wind on the water but we couldn’t get to it. With a bit of a tow from the powerboat, we made it back to some wind and sailed around the island ever so slowly! It was taking far too long to get back in with the non existing wind so we ended up getting a tow all the way back to the club.

All in all though, a great day out on the bay…especially when its mid week!!

Well…I have not written a post on this page for almost a year and a half!!! Lots has happened since then as one could imagine.
I have travelled to America.
I have finished uni.
I accepted a graduate job.
I left that job.
I have accepted an offer for a new job.
I am still playing the job hunting game.
I have sailed my laser once or twice.
I have been working at a sailing school.
I have raced in Teams Racing.
I have sailed on a Stealth 7m Sportsboat once.
I have sailed on an Elliott 7 many times
I have been sailing on a Mumm 36 lots of times and I love it!

I have competed in the QLD IRC states on the Mumm 36….fun!

I have sailed to Canaipa on Russel Island for the first time…fun but cold.
I have put my laser on the market! (not so much fun!)
I want to teach my boyfriend how to sail so he can see how much fun it is.
I am sailing in the XXXX regatta this weekend…only one day though, I have sailed almost every weekend for the last month or so.
I am enjoying the new Ladies Sailing course that I am helping with at RQ.
I am enjoying only working 3 days a week inside and 2 days outside sailing.
I wish winter wasn’t cold!
I wish I could sail in the Brisbane to Keppel race and then…
I wish I could race in Hamilton Island race week!!

LOL i have basically summed up my sailing and non sailing antics for the last year!!!

Well it has been a while since I have written anything in this blog…partly due to uni and partly because I haven’t had anything to say (only a minor issue!). But now I do so I am under instructions to write all about it.

Ok..here goes.

As I mentioned in my last post, the 420 is gone to Victoria for new adventures. So the hunt began for a laser in the right price range. Easier said than done. When I couldn’t sell the 420..there were quite a few that would have been perfect…just like murphy’s law!

But through the grapevine we heard about a boat that maybe would be perfect for what I need. We had a look and decided to bite the bullet and make an offer.

So the Saturday just gone was hand-over day!! We welcomed a new (old) laser to our family boating lineage. She is a nice blue colour, sail no 166815, and Sam (my twin sister and co-owner) have decided to name her “mistaken identity”….quite suitable for a set of identical twins we think!! We just played around for the rest of the day rigging up the boat making sure its just right for my 4.7 rig. This Saturday will be my first outing in the new boat…hopefully we get some great weather to give me a chance to settle into the boat…not quite as stable as the ol’ 420.

Stay tuned for the update of that day!!

Love, mel

Well, it has been way too long since I have posted an entry on my site..I do feel a little guilty for neglecting the page! So what’s been happening in the world of me??
I have been quite busy with uni and work and life in general as ususal. Uni is just starting to gear up with mid-term exams and assignments. I am enjoying most of it…expect for Economic Analysis and Policy…that is just not fun at all! By the end of the semester I will only have 1 year to go! So close but yet so far it seems! I have been lucky enough to be accepted into the Golden Key International Honour Society. Membership is only offered to students who attain results within the top 15% of the uni, so I am very proud and happy to be accepted into the society.

Work has been very busy as well. Over the last few months we have had an upgrade to the entire computer system within the store, going from early 90’s technology (think black screens with green text) to the latest IBM touch screen technology and Windows XP! It took a lot of coordination and training to get up to date with the new system and procedures but I love the new system…it makes my job so much quicker and is very user-friendly.

Now to sailing. I havent actually been out on the water since the training camp down at Runaway Bay in July!! Don’t talk to me about withdrawl symptoms! I have had to work every second Saturday and it seems every other Saturday is either feral weather or I have uni work, house work, etc!! But there has been some more developments in my “quest” for another boat. I have finally sold my 420!!! It took a little while but No Direction is headed to Victoria this weekend! So now I am on the hunt for a laser in my price range. I am looking for a laser preferrably with a radial rig, turbo kit and trailer in the range from $4000 to $4700ish. I now have fought at work so that I have every single Saturday off.. free to sail (oh and maybe uni work :o) ). So if anyone out there knows of a good laser thats on the market…drop me a line or leave me a comment, it’d be greatly appreciated

Well…it has been a little while since my last blog but I finally have some time to sit at the computer without feeling guilty about not doing study for my uni exams or stressing out about the state of my desk with lecture notes and textbooks spread out all over the place.

I finished my last exam, Comparitive Managment, last Thursday night and then migrated over to the uni pub for a well-earned celebration. I am now half way through my uni degree!! It finally feels like I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. I am really enjoying most of the subjects and have made some really great study mates and friends along the way. I have to wait until the 5th July to get my marks back, but I think I did reasonably well, considering I picked 2 3rd year courses, in an attempt to spread them out over the degree…it was a great idea in theory but the workload was considerably higher than the 1st and 2nd year courses. I now have four weeks to recover before we get back into it for another 16 weeks.
Now, for the fun stuff…enough about uni

I have made a few developments in my efforts to get some more sailing back into my life. My 420 is, officially and more publicly, for sale now. I have had some interest from Victoria, where the 420 fleet is substantially bigger, however when they realise the boat is in Queensland, they usually lose interest quickly. We have priced it very reasonably so hopefully it will sell a little quicker.

Meanwhile, I have purchased myself a second hand 4.7 Laser rig! These are like gold at the moment…and you are lucky to see any advertised for sale..they are selling that fast. It has been perfect timing for me as I have been hoping to be able to sail at my LAST EVER youth training camp that is being held at Runaway Bay Yacht Club this weekend. The age for this camp was raised to 19 for some reason? I dont mind because I had thought that the training camp before Sail Brisbane was my last “youth” experience. So now I had the 4.7 rig…just the minor technicality of the hull… hehe I have been lucky enough to get some help to organise to borrow a laser by some of the awesome women involved in laser sailing here in Brisbane. I now have a boat to borrow and my rig!! All set! I went out and bought myself some new hiking pants, I have done a race here and there in Lasers before without them but everyone has told me I was mad! They weren’t so necessary in the 420 either

Now for the best bit…..I got to sail yesterday afternoon for the second time since Easter!! There has been a QLA training event on at RQ for the last two days, with 16 or so lasers getting some coaching from Peter Robba. I went out on the coach boat with Peter yesterday morning. It was great weather (for fishing), lovely and clear with almost a non-existent SW breeze. In the afternoon, I was very grateful to be offered a laser to sail. Ken was so kind to let me use his Laser Radial for the afternoon training!! The breeze was there, but nice and not too heavy, perfect for 50kg me in a laser radail. I did need a bit of outhaul and downhaul to depower the boat but i felt good..hiking out but not in survival mode! It was excellent…I think I had a permanent grin plastered across my face the entire afternoon. It even made going to work bareable…I was runnung a little late and I walked into work 5 minutes last still in my wet hiking pants and rash shirt, ran up to the locker room and got changed into my work clothes…got a few interesting comments!

Feeling a bit sore today in the shoulders from the mile-long mainsheet that lasers have (in comparison to the 5 m 420 mainsheet that I am used to!) but I feel great otherwise! Now I am really looking forward to the training on the weekend….only three sleeps!!!

Love always,

Missmeliss

Welcome to my Blog….if anyone ever visits hehe

First things first…what a great opportunity this is..to the team at livesaildie.com, thanks for creating a place where sailors can have their own piece of the world wide web.

Now, maybe I should introduce myself for those who visit this blog…probably no-one!

My name is Mel, I am a 19 year old uni student from Brisbane, Australia.

I have only been sailing for 5 years but have found sailing to be more than a sport, but rather a lifestyle. I am not the best sailor in the fleet, but if enjoyment was a competition I’d win every time. I learnt to sail after an early end to a competitive netball career due to injury. I started sailing at 14, learning to sail at PCSC in a club sabot. Six months later, after showing interest, my Dad bought me my first boat, an older wooden sabot called Woodstock. Although Woodstock was an older boat, it was built by Ces Lea, who was a master of sabot building. At the end of the season, and after winning my novice division club championship, my Dad bought me a much better boat. Intrinsic was a 2 year old dinghy sports boat with all the go-fast gear ad georgous red blades :). It took me a while to get the hang of the new boat, but I finally found success and enjoyment by the end of the season. In my first big regatta in intrinsic, the bay titles, i finished 10th behind the best sailors in the state, my next regatta (the CQ titles), I won. By this time, after only 2 years sailing, I was deemed as “too old” to sail sabots anymore, despite being the perfect size and weight.

After much consideration, my Dad decided to sell Intrinisc (however hard it was) and buy my sister and myself a 420 to sail together. We ended up with “No Direction”, a 6 year old 420, which had been well looked after and done very well in national regattas. Having only sailed for 2 years, stepping up into a 420 was and still is, a huge learning curve. Dad was great, teaching us about 3-sail boats and we also have had great coaching from Dave, Ben and Marty. We often struggle along, being 20 plus kg too light for the boat.

One and a half seasons later (early 2005), I left PCSC as I moved to Brisbane to start University…leaving my 420 at home indefinately or until we settled into university life and lving away from home. I didn’t sail for almost 6 months (pure torture) and it wasn’t until the annual Bundaberg camp, that I convinced Dad to bring the 420 to, that we got to sail again…and my god did it feel good! It almost felt like I had been sailing the whole time…Marty convinced us that we had to get the boat to brisbane, no matter what!

So after a bit of organising we got the boat to Brisbane and we joined RQYS at Manly…we are very busy with uni study and part-time work, trying to sail as much as we can, which hasn’t been as much as I would like The 420 is an uphill stuggle for us..with lots of tears and still a lot of good times. We sailed in Sail Brisbane…which was my first major regatta (hard to believe, I’ve never had the chance to compete in a state/national regatta), it was a whole lot of fun..we aimed to finish every race, which was a realistic goal given our sailing time for the year. We almost achieved it, sailing every race (even winning one), except the last race which blew in at 25 knots.

Since then, I havent had a lot of time to sail, spending a month in Townsville and settling into a new job and new responsibilties at work, all while doing 4 subjects at University. During the past 8 moths since joining RQ I have come to the realisation that, while i love the 420, it maybe isnt the best option for me and my sister…it is a big boat with waay too many ropes,heavy masts, etc and without Dad here to help us rig, it is often a frustrating exercise and sometimes limits my enjoyment. Another factor is the lack of a 420 fleet in Qld. There is a huge fleet of Lasers: Full, Radial and 4.7, with some of the best laser sailors in the country and the world. The 4.7 would be ideal for me, much more managable rigging wise (and time wise) and also a more realistic sail area for me to control. Given these factors, I put the 420 on the market so I can re-invest in a moderate condition laser and a 4.7 rig..I am not sure how long it will take to sell the boat, given the lack of fleet size and interest in the class…Dad wont buy me a laser without selling the 420, which is understandable. I now have every second Saturday off work, and am saving up to buy myself an older laser. Study time permitting hopefully next season will be my chance to actually get back competitively into the sport i am insanely passionate about

Eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later…I would love to get into yachts and sportboats and sail the Brisbane to Gladstone yacht race. My dad has always sailed yachts and PCSC was predominately a yacht club. I have had a number of races on yachts there and a few out of of RQ here and there but I would love to be good enough to race in the 60th race in a few years.

I feel that my summarised history of my sailing life and my hopes and dreams is a great way to start my new blog..even if no one reads it..it feels great to see it all in words. I havent had any major sailing achievements such as national titles but I love the sport and am willingly to continue to learn and hopefully improve as long as possible. I cant imagine having a life without sailing, even its means letting it take a back seat until I finish my uni degree..

Love always,

Missmeliss

Welcome to missmeliss.livesaildie.com, my new sailing blog hosted by Live Sail Die, the best sailing site in Australia, if not the world!!!