CHICAGO, UNITED STATES (Team Geared Up) - Ger Owens and Phil Lawton have moved into the top ten after winning their second race in the 470 class. I’ve just finished watching the video replay of Race 5 and they lead the fleet all the way. Fantastic stuff from two Dubliners.

More from RTE

-Robin.

CHICAGO, UNITED STATES (Team Geared Up) - 28-year-old Ciara Peelo from Malahide in Dublin will carry the Irish flag at the Olympics opening ceremony today. I remember sailing against Ciara when I was just 11 years old in our local sailing club. Look where she got to, fantastic.

RTE Report:

Sailing star Ciara Peelo will carry the Irish flag at today’s opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, watched by some 91,000 spectators in the Bird’s Nest Stadium and an estimated TV audience of four billion.

Good luck Ciara!

-Robin.

Next up we have a Japanese inventor who found a way to use the raw kinetic energy of the ocean to to provide means of powering a boat. Yutaka Terao has developed the latest in a long running series of vessels that use the eco friendly propulsion of waves.

The Suntory Mermaid II uses a pair of movable fins mounted under the bow to generate forward propulsion using dolphin like kicks. While the maximum speed is a modest 5 knots, this shouldn’t bother the Mermaid II’s 69 year old skipper Kenichi Horie, as he attempts to sail 4,350 miles from Hawaii to Japan later this month. Let’s just hope that he remembers to turn off the left turn signal after pulling out of port.

Although the vessel isn’t breaking any speed records having this system equipped on a boat with an engine or sail could be handy if they main method of propusion is somehow damaged or lost. It would be interesting if this could also be applied to large scale vessels like yachts or even tankers. via Treehugger

-Alx-

SINGAPORE (Team Geared Up) - TGU Alumni blogger Darran reports that Irishman, Damian Foxall and his French team mate Jean-Pierre Dick will sail into Barcelona tonight in the Paprec-Virbac 2 winning the 1st ever Barcelona World Race.

The Barcelona World Race is a new two-handed, non-stop round the world yacht race starting on the 11th November, 2007 [and to be held every four years]. For the first time, this race will see the world’s best professional sailors from both solo and fully crewed disciplines coming together to compete against each other in teams of two.

Kerryman Damian Foxall has clocked-up more than 280,000 nautical miles in the past 25 years, racing the planet’s most competitive boats.

Damian is sailing in a pair with French skipper Jean-Pierre Dick.

-Robin-

(Image Credit: Barcelona World Race)

SINGAPORE - The Piton posted it so I stole their title, they got it right in one go “47.2 knots of pure awesome-ness”. This video is of The French Hydroptère when it broke a world record for the fastest sailing speed (not including icesailing) when they hit 47.2 knots. Unreal.

I love the comments:

I wouldn’t want to be on this thing if it pitchpoled.

what happens if you hit a whale?

you die, whale dies

:-)

-Robin-

DUBLIN, IRELAND (Team Geared Up) - The Water-Buoy, a flotation device for your keys has appeared on Springwise, one of my favourite sites for ideas.

As featured on BBC’s Dragons’ Den last night, young entrepreneur James Halliburton is bringing an innovative solution to market for boaters who are worried about losing valuable items overboard

It works very much like a hydrostatic release on a lifejacket. At a certain water pressure it pops open a valve releasing gas. The impressive thing here is, this tiny keyring can lift 1kg.

Once the Waterbuoy hits the water, the gas inflates the balloon and the submerged item is pulled up to the water’s surface. Aiding retrieval at night, an integrated LED light switches on and keeps flashing for 24 hours.

Much like Alex’s dark thoughts about his Life Bag being used on long flights, I can’t help but wonder what would happen if this went off in your pocket on a dance floor.

-Robin-

(Image Credit: Images from Water-Buoy, montage made by Springwise)