Sailspace has a new sister site devoted to Classified Adverts.

ALL CLASSIFIED ADVERTS ARE FREE AND ANYONE CAN POST ADS AND VIDEO ADS

So if you need to find some crew, or are looking for a boat please check in. If you want to buy or sell a dinghy, yacht, powerboat or jetski - then check the ads out. The site also contains search results from other classified sites - so it will be a large central database of marine craft and equipment for sale.

You can access the Classifieds by choosing the TOP MENU > FOR SALE > SAILSPACE CLASSIFIEDS or visit the site direct at

http://www.sailpace.co.za/openclass

Sailing Courses at Vaal Sail Sailing School

We finally have a sailing school operating on the Vaal and a couple of days ago the first 4 graduates emerged from their studies as qualified Inland skippers! The aim is to offer Theory courses all the way to Yachtmaster so that us Vaalies no longer have to trek all the way to Durban to get qualified. This is likely to be a big cost saving, particularly with the longer courses. So congratulations to Thys and Adrian on graduating their first class and setting up such a valuable service for us. You can find course dates and more at www.vaalsail.co.za.

Thys and Adrian are the co-owners of Vaalsail Sailing School. Thys completed his RYA Yachtmaster Offshore 2007 and RYA Cruising Instructors in 2008 – he also holds a SAS Day skipper qualification. Adrian completed his RYA Yachtmaster Offshore in 2008 – he also holds a SAS Coastal Skipper qualification and SAAMSA surf launching motorboat qualification.

Image courtesy of Vaal Sail Sailing School

Well the gear has finally arrived! Albeit attended by unsightly and unexpected bills for customs duty.

The Tacktick NMEA Wireless output came first shipped via Amazon.co.uk with all the efficiency and cost effectiveness you would expect. Next came a RS232-Bluetooth converter, which incidentally is redundant due to the move to the Apple iPad platform, from USconverters.com in the States. This was followed by a lenghty wait for a key ingredient. The Digital  WNL10 wireless router. DHL had this sitting for 15 days in a warehouse while losing my telephone number. And finally, after an incredibly difficult search Accessory Village.co.uk was able to supply the militarised Griffin Survivor iPad case as a first line of defence for the my new yachting iPad.

All this added significantly to the pile of cash thrown into the money pit. The worst was paying USD 30 duty on an item that costs USD 28 plus USD 30 shipping. This is an industrial part impossible to find in SA. It's very difficult to understand why the government insists of fleecing us at every opportunity. ZAR 450 duty on a silicone case costing GBP30. The duty on the Tacktick was only ZAR 154 on a GBP240 item - someone in customs must have been really puzzled as to what it was... The Digital yacht WNL10 came as a shock. Digital yacht didn't subtract UK VAT from the item and charged me GBP60 for the privilege of having it sit in a DHL warehouse for 2 weeks. Having said that Digital yacht replied to my email and located the item within 5 minutes. I don't doubt the quality of the product or the service.

So the stuff is all here! I connected it up to a 12v battery and the software all works too. The iPad chugs away reading NMEA sentences and spitting out into lots of lovely interchangeable and colourful displays. The software is the most reasonable part of the deal. USD 11 for iRegatta, USD14.99 for Mid WiFi and a free App from Digital Yacht.

Next steps are to design and build some shelves and a dryish electrical box for my gadgets and a Mk1 iPad housing to hold my militarised iPad in the more dangerous deck environment. All in all I am delighted with the software and equally chuffed that I can now wirelessly stream music, watch videos or browse the internet while drifiting around waiting for the start of the MOD!

More on the fitting and testing to follow...

See the 2012 Vaal Dam Round the Island Race Photo Wall Here

Well the weather forecast was wrong again and in my book the wind gods have a lot to answer for! After a week spent looking out of my office window at the glorious sun striking the windblown summer green trees and a Christmas spent far away from my boat in deepest Zimbabwe. My sailing shoes were shrieking to be dusted off and taken for an outing.

Well dusted off they were and duly packed for an expected perfect days sailing at the Muster mark. Windfinder put the breeze at 9-13 knots, the lower edge of the JS stomping ground, and I set off at 5:30 full of enthusiasm for the first day back on the vaal.

And I had some first day jitters too. They're not just for schoolkids. For over the Christmas break people had been doing mysterious things to their boats. New Christmas presents, new sails, new gadgets, new skills - honed over the Turkey no doubt.

READ ON AND SEE THE PICTURES