We are in agreement twodogs. Ineos did use a couple of close cover tacks and later on in the race tacked a few times to stay between nz and the mark but didn’t engage in any tacking battles. Ineos got the better start then sailed their own race and generally minimised tacks which kept the boat speed up and reduced their tacking losses. Top speed (actually VMG) upwind on ineos in those bumpy conditions is better than nz but ineos take longer to get up to speed post tack so ineos do better when in the lead to generally hit the boundaries and avoid tacking battles. This tactic can backfire if they get on the wrong end of a big shift or sail into less pressure but it generally pays them.

According to mozzy’s analysis last night, Ineos lose about 25m per tack more than NZ. If they’re doing say 16 tacks a race that’s about 400m per race lost to tacking.

It also means that all other things being equal, Ineos are going to lose any tacking battles unless they get a close cover and give NZ dirty air almost immediately the tracking battle starts.

If I were ineos, I’d be figuring those tacks out ASAP.

@thisisnotaspoon – glad we made a better effort of it today. I’m just a cynical old GBR fireball sailor at heart and know how much fight Ben has in him. Would dearly love ineos to win so very happy to eat my words on that one.

I’m scanning using a lightbox, film holder from ‘essential film holder’, dslr, macro lens a tripod and tethered to lightroom. It’s quite a faff as you need to make sure everything is aligned and keep dirt, stray light and vibrations out. On the plus side the results in raw mode are excellent. Now I’ve got the process sorted, it’s about 20 minutes to set up, 1 minute per negative scan and then I’ll spend 5 minutes a photo processing in lightroom and negative lab pro. All very therapeutic and slow in a film related way. I scanned in several hundred of my dad’s this way and got excellent results.

NZ faster and tactically better. Game over. 7-0. F1 analogy is good.

Re shifts and wind speed changes over the course; in light to moderate conditions there is a significant increase in AC75 boat speed for a small increase in true windspeed. As a result, sailing into the gusts, both upwind and down, is gaining significantly and almost certainly more than using the shifts. On a related note, it takes ineos longer to get back up to speed after a tack than NZ which really isn’t helping tactics. I think mozzy did a video that mentioned this a week or so ago.

As @ampthill said earlier – the lead boat has a significant advantage in picking what wind to sail in and in dumping dirty air all over the following boat. It’s tough being second in these races.

Race 1 summary. Light airs. Poor start by ineos who were delayed by a battery change. NZ quicker upwind than Ineos and covered well. Game over after first beat. Ineos faster downwind but not enough to make up for upwind losses. Not a massive loss but not what you’d call tight. NZ to win in 9.

23 minutes and we find out what the delta is.

Meanwhile at Luton free dropoff and pickup is now a 10 minute walk away from the building presumably due to the diesel fire. I got in at 10pm the other night to find it heaving it down. I set off for the free pickup via the usual walk only to be told half way round that ‘this route is closed, you need to go the other way round the bus station’. Round I go, it’s still pissing down and this route doesn’t even try to give you temporary cover. Under the underpass and out the other side, it’s now biblical. Mrs W isn’t there yet so I head for the only dry area – a white tent. Joy of joys (not), the only dry area is the smokers tent. I head out into the dank dark night and flag mrs W down to be told by an officious person that she can’t stop there.

My old howies were great but have finally worn out so i went looking for some new ones. No sign of any on the web site now.

So, ineos beat luna rosa. An epic final series with the italians more fragile but quicker. Ineos more reliable and able to grind out the wins.  First tine since i was a dot that a uk boat has made the final. Now how do we stack up against the kiwis?

Another vote for the lion and the rustic crust at farnsfield. Once you’re headed that way, the wagon at halam was excellent last time i went (a couple of years ago). A little further and southwell is a fine town and the minster a very impressive church if you fancy a bit of norman architecture.

You know for sure it needs redoing when a puncture doesn’t fix itself. So do it as preventative maintenance.

Once every 6 months. And leave all the old crud in there it helps it seal. Use removable valve cores, remove them, top up through the value and replace the valve. Removing the bead to top up can result in much swearing as the excess gunk on the beads tends to prevent the bead reseating.

Savvy navvy is an excellent sailing app covering tides, weather and automated routing. They also have a version for kayaking which presumably doesn’t involve tacking upwind or doing more than a couple of knots / metres per second

My original mistake was to think the filter was a water softener – it isn’t. My second mistake was to not realise a backflush and a descale are different things and are often referred to as ‘cleaning’ in the manuals to confuse matters. When I backflush with descaler I usually do it 4 or 5 times to force descaler through the valve.

My sage barista has regular issues with it’s three way valve. The solution for me is to  descale regularly (once a month or more frequently) and backflush several times with descale in the machine once I’ve descaled. I also backflush daily with water and weekly with a tablet. Most of the problems for me are related to the valve. It clogs up with scale and general coffee crud so preventative maintenance is mandatory.

I asked chatgpt to generate some names for my business based on the first letter of my children’s names. It’s best effort was Razzle Labs. Oh how we laughed.

We started with a delonghi magnifica. That was ok but then junior trumped it with a sage barista which made great coffee. Junior and the barista decided to move out, so we bought a pre-used Sage Bambino and sage smart grinder pro for £220 all in. This is definitely a another step up in terms of both coffee quality and reduced preparation times.

Whatever you buy, spend a morning learning about ‘dialling in’ your machine – it really does make a tremendous difference. Aldi #3 cheap beans dialled in are way better than expensive beans done badly.

Fan shaped tails = martins. Swallows (no white on the under body) and swifts (white on the under body) have long and longer tails respectively. I may have spent too long watching our house martins. Enjoy them, they are great guests but aren’t particularly well toilet trained.

@scardypants the route crossing clay pits bottom was challenging in a muddy bog sort of way. The route there wasn’t very clear but I suspect the locals know the best way  through.

Dashed green line with alternating crenelations means “restricted byway. (Not for use by mechanically powered vehicles)”. Now i need a lawyer to confirm that me and my pedal powered bike is not a mechanically powered vehicle but all my google foo suggests i am not.

Very rideable on the day once in the woods. Very rooty but pretty dry apart from the odd muddy patch.

I should add – we have dog encounters locally on a daily basis and like you we get on with the vast majority of them.

@fieldmarshall south of telegraph hill on the bridleway in eyeworth woods.

6 or 7 dogs of the spaniel variety notably all the same breed. One older dog that was short cropped and going grey. She was definitely mobile and likely related to the queen judging by her accent. Walking with her husband who appeared somewhat embarrassed by it all.

Sorry fighting with images on google photo and the forum.

img src=”https://photos.app.goo.gl/TXF2rtTVdCWM5wFJA”

@hyper_real We did most of ox drove and glad we did – beautiful views and great tracks. Croucheston grove was the evil bit. Completely overgrown but it was steeply downhill and we did laugh about it at the bottom.

We are three grumpy old men so i doubt she would have managed it. She did threaten to take our photos and post them online on some verderer website though. Obviously if she did we would have taken her photo and posted it on a well known mountain biking site but she decided we weren’t all as bad as the pair of bikes who’d passed her minutes before.

The irony of having the entire ‘open space’ to walk her dogs but taking them on the only bridleway and off-lead was lost on her with a ‘you could kill one of my dogs’.

Standing our ground, knowing our rights and not being ***** was a winner for us.

We did it 6-9 jun this year. Absolutely magic. Dodged nettle alley (thanks above) but took a few liberties with the route. Notably dropping off ox drive to the north 10kish before salisbury and found our own nettle alley. Glad we had the hardtails with Suspension forks too – chapeau to those who complete it on gravel bikes, it’s rough in places.

Had a lovely run in with a verderer, and her 6 dogs off-leads. She thought she knew the special rules but she ran into Brian Clough Dave. After 30 minutes of lively debate they agreed Dave was right.

For reference you can ride on bridleways (and various other routes – see link below) in the new forest and what we were on was a bridleway (thanks OS maps and the .gov.uk site). Yes we all have bells but don’t usually use them, preferring to ‘hello’ or ‘excuse me’ to be friendly and not make them jump into our path.

Meanwhile she’d lost one of her cocker spaniels roaming the vast ‘open space’ of the new forest that we are banned from.

Cycling routes

Morris k99. Cheap as chips, goes in all my bearings etc.  Adds a tiny bit of drag but trade that for less frequent service intervals.

We’ve had an induction hob for the last 20 years. Fantastic. Pretty much instant heat, cleans with a quick wipe and has never had any issues. I didn’t install it but as far as I can see its running on a separate supply.

Take your pick of any of the ‘toughest climbs in the chilterns’, find the nearest off piste and pray its not muddy. If you just want a short steep shock – ‘the wall’ at great missenden is truly horrible.

https://www.broleur.com/top-ten-toughest-cycling-climbs-chilterns-hills/

Great info. Our route has been updated.

@jimmy748 what’s the east creech / Borden farm issue during the day and is there an alternate route?

Thanks everyone – with that info, the forecast and the photos on the rat run page, i’ll take the summer hardtail and discard the mudguards.

Ben and Jerry’s chunky monkey. Lord knows why they stopped selling the tubs in the uk though you do occasionally get it in the cinema. I’d like to combine it with movenpick rhubarb-vanilla but that is also as rare as hens’ teeth in these parts.

In answer to the OP. Yes, my current van nicholas mk3 tuareg is still going strong. Its predecessors, a 26″ mk1 tuareg, and a 26″ mk2 tuareg, both failed on their rather beautiful welds. On average they are lasting 6 years or about 12k km of ground-based rooty xc duty.

Chapeau to van nic – they covered both failures on the original lifetime warranty.

Vastly superior to dandelions and one of the local field is full of them.