For the last few years I have taken the remainder of my annual leave after the Summer as Fridays working backwards from the Christmas holidays and that usually means that from the middle of September I only work a 4 day week. Needless to say, whenever the wind is suitable you will find me going for a sail and today was no different. The forecast was for force 3 gusting 4 from 6am until around noon when it would be force 2 gusting 4 until dark. Once I had finished making some bread I set off for Naiad and pushed back out of the mooring at 11:25.

This time I had remembered not only to bring the camera but also to charge all the batteries and to bring the clamp and mounting and here is the result:

The gimbal mount is only held on with cable ties right now as I wanted to see that the arrangement worked before doing anything permanent. The gimbal mount is a "FeiyuTech G6 3-Axis Stabilized Splash-Proof Handheld Action Camera Gimbal Stabilizer" and although expensive I bought it for one particular feature and that it that the camera can be plugged into the gimbal to share the battery thus extending the file of the camera in use from about 90 minutes to 4 hours. The setup I have here is that the gimbal itself is also plugged into the ship's battery via a USB power output on the electrical box so the system will last as long as there is space left on the memory card.

The three hours trip today used up 37Gb of the 128Gb memory card meaning that I theoretically can continue to video using this setup for just over 10 hours. If I reduce the frame rate from 60 frames per second to 30 I could video even more, but for now, 10 hours is more than enough.

So, back to the sailing. The wind was from the East, an unusual direction in these parts meaning that the best direction to go is upriver towards Littleport. I only hoisted the main and stays'l, at the time it was just a little to breezy for full sail. Normally the trip as far as the Ship Inn take between 60-120 minutes as I'm usually beating against the wind. Not today. The wind was such that I was close hauled most of the way there and arrived about 30 minutes after setting off. That was far too short a time to be sailing so I carried on with the hope that the Black Holes would not be too bad.

It was not as bad as normal, I did not have to resort to using the paddle but the wind was all over the place. Still I made it out the other side and headed for Littleport. There are a lot more wind obstructions from the East along the next section of river but I continued on until the wind died completely due to the trees and then turned around and headed back. By this time I had put gloves on as the wind was quite cold.

By 13:45 I had reached the Ship Inn again and 35 minutes later saw me back on my mooring just 5 minutes under a trip of 3 hours. A lovely sail I have to say.

I wonder what the video will look like.