On staying at home and a spidey sense inducing race...

Shameful fuckery from you know who, security theatre hijinks, and in the "Poorly developed health services and infrastructure" department...

Being that, like hopefully most of you, we're hunkered down at anchor being anti-social social distancing because it's the smart thing to do for the foreseeable future. To underline that fact we woke up today with the news that the USVI now has possible cases.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that you should all take this rodeo very seriously. Stay home, don't go out unless you seriously need to, and work on the assumption that it's going to be a long haul.

For me, being that I live on a fifty-year-old boat, there are plenty of jobs to be done to keep me busy and a backlog of reading and writing that needs to be caught up with.

Speaking of which, I finally got around to reading all of the material published so far on the Mini5.80 and to be honest, I found some of it just a bit irksome.

First of all, I'll go on record that a new affordable class race based, more or less, on the Mini 6,50 would be a very good thing. That said, I'm of mixed mind where said race should be a one-design or not. On the one hand, one-design classes are a great way to highlight a sailor's skill but, on the other hand, they don't do anything for the development of boat design. I have a lot of ideas on the subject which I'll get to in another post but for the moment let's leave it at I'm fifty/fifty on this.

The one thing I do know about the reality of the Mini5.80 is it really is all about making money. Truth be told, I don't have an issue with folks making money but, after reading the available material I found myself being less enthused about the various races than I had been at first glance. Or, to be more precise, my Spidey sense kicked in.

As it happens, I have some boat chores to do but I'll, no doubt, be writing more on the Mini5.80 as more information comes my way. In the meantime, you might want to check out the Jester Challenge for what I consider to be a more interesting, accessible to just about anyone sort of race.

Listening to Ilyas Ahmed

So it goes...