First time at the pond this year

Another very warm day but with a nice bit of wind to keep the bugs away, and the chance to give the sailboats a good workout. Not only that, but we had enough time at the pond to give most of the boats a good run before the weather started to get a bit stormy. It was an an enjoyable afternoon and time for the guys to do a bit of sitting around (July 14th).

Don brought his static model of the Rodney, it's now close to the finish. And, of course, we had our experts on hand to scrutinize the work!

Consider the images of the crew at work as both "icing on the cake" and a teaser for what I hope the next blog will show about the model. A couple of detailed video scans are planned, on completion ("unveiling date" has not yet been fixed).

There was the usual heavy lifting to get some of the models into the water but once launched, they looked pretty good. Unfortunately Clair's Kyle Rhea had some problems and was recovered while still close to the dock. But the detail looks great on the water.

John had his hovercraft and did some practice runs near the dock, where there is a small sandy beach.

Unfortunately, extremely dry weather over the past several weeks had produced a lot of leaf fall, and the wind had caused a lot of this floating material to accumulate at the beach. The craft worked well over the leaf material, which is more than can be said for the two small tugs which had to be kept well away from this hazard! There's a camera mounted on the hovercraft and I hope we can blog an onboard video clip, when John has a bit more experience with it's use; neat!

It's always great when we can give some video shots at the pond and, as I said, the hovercraft worked well over the floating debris. Peter's Bantam tug, with its kitchen rudder was also successful in open water but quickly developed problems with the floating leaves which wrapped around the prop shaft and became a tangled mat that was difficult to remove. Clearly, the structure of the rotating shells (used to steer and to create forward/reverse thrust) intensified the problem of leaf capture. A move to dry dock for further changes to the boat may be in order. In it's present form, it is of limited use for rescue duty at the pond.