Hi all, well we are all cocked and ready to roll but the weather has gone dead flat. We now have two weeks left for this trial session.

We will take this opportunity to take a day away from the boat and head into the great Namibian wilderness 5 up  in our way overpriced 15 year old rental unaffectionately dubbed 'Shite Rider'. The bottle shops all shut at 1 so we'll have to get creative in that department.

On our last sail we still didn't manage to get over the dreaded 8 knot speed 'hump' but we did gain a lot of confidence in the all round handling of the boat. I am now happy to head out in winds over 20 knots andgive it a good push. There is not much point modifying the boat to make it work in the low wind range when everything we want this single purpose boat to achieve is further up the wind range. Being able to get going in light winds is really just a bonus. I'll get concerned if we can't get over it at 22 knots.

The top section of the wing is now on to also give us some more 'boost' and the gaps between the different wing sections are getting sealed to reduce pressure leakage.

A fixed rudder has also been fitted to the rear float to reduce low speed leeway. This was a pre-fitted option which we will now try.

So lot's of things have been changed... enough for now and most of them are low risk.

There is nothing we can do about the weather though so we will head inland before cabin fever sets in. We will head up around Brandberg and Uis where the wild desert elephants hang out. We've seen them a few time up there but with all the rains they could be anywhere.

Hopefully the wind will return on Monday in which case we will too.

At least if we have some time off now, we can push on to the end non-stop to the airport.

The wind will come.

Cheers, Paul.