Visit to Marlow

 

The safety boat wasn’t needed because of the light winds, so we had a trip up to the lock at Marlow. It was a nice sunny and warm day, so Paul, my son, at the Helm tried to work on his tan on his legs.

UTSC at Maltmans School

The Upper Thames Sailing Club went to the Maltmans school in Gerrards Cross for their sports activities in the area exhibition. Next time we will take a club boat with us and a jar of sweets. Paul and Ros showed off what the club can offer.

 

IT Problems resolved

 I started the week with IT support for a friend who did things he ought not to have done. The Network Failure was resolved, and he introduced me to a new game, Genius Square.

Battery charging problems Solved

 I spent a couple of hours figuring out why the house batteries were not charging last night and not picking up the solar today. A trip had gone. Error 64 and tracked it down. Reset and now it's ok, but what happened? It is a mystery.

Classroom Filming

Filming the effect of different charged plastic on a goldleaf electroscope in the lab.
 

Action Shots

 Trying to get some action shots of the cadets on the River was easy. The wind was quite strong and many of the cadets had an early bath, so the cadets had to work hard to control the dinghies.

Busy Weekend

It was a busy weekend out on the River, with races on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. The weather wasn't as good on Monday, so we were out in the camera boat taking action shots of the sailing and trying to stay a little drier under the bimini.
 

Ride on Mower

 Paul gets to mow the Sailing Club Car Park with a ride-on Mower. Not just mowing but moving 50 trailers and stacking them again, moving 10 dinghies and mowing underneath them and spreading the contents of a tree stump around the field. He had a wonderful time chomping 1ft high grass and weeds.

Launching a pontoon

It was not quite what I had planned for the Day. I was going to have fun sailing, but instead, I helped launch the new A-Rater pontoon into the River Thames. This pontoon takes the boat and then gently sinks to allow the boat to float off—well, that was the theory.

 

Wife takes over Organ

 My wife takes over the Wersi organ as a Piano for her online Piano Lessons with @TomHorton, She likes the sounds of the new Grand Piano which does seem to sound a little better than the 20 year old Casio AP-80R.

Creating Deploying the spinnaker

 Creating two shorts and a long on deploying the spinnaker. All was going well then the boat capsized. The shots from the boom arm showed closeup what happened to the crew. 

Wednesdays on the Water

I had the morning off so I drove to the sailing club. I had offered to do safety boat duty, but because it was windy, no one turned up, so we spent the morning trying to sort out the tree in the middle of the river.

 

Taking pictures from the River Bank

 Rivers are wonderful places to get good Photographs. There is a lot of wildlife, from cormorants to gulls to insects. There are also loads of people engaged in activities on and in the water, as well as those just walking by. So, if you want to get some interesting photos, get out and visit your local river and see what you can find.

Making ice cream

 

Today's job: I'm going to try out the new ice cream maker. After I read the instructions, raspberry ice cream and grapefruit sorbet are on the menu.

Jet washing

 Outside between the showers jet washing the patio, getting off the winter grime. 

Map creation

 I was using the GPS to mark waypoints at the sailing club so we could build a map of the site. With aerial photos, existing maps, and GPS coordinates, we can plot out where things are.

Glassware

 Perhaps one of my least favourite jobs is putting the glassware away after being washed in the dishwasher. With limited space, we stack the beakers as Russian Dolls, smallest inside largest.

Learning the Lowery Tabs

Trying out 16 and 4 flutes, 16ft flutes and 4ft strings and 8ft flutes with a vibraphone, to make some of those traditional sounds on the Lowery Module on the Wersi V3. Tom Horton guided me through some iconic sounds with an online lesson.
 

Arms as a gimbal

 Filming sailing from the Whaly powerboat, is it best to use a tripod with a gimbal to hold the camera or take it off the tripod and hold it? The camera in my hands produced much better and more stable shots, although my arms ached after an hour.

Wersi Vision and Chord Fixed

 I was having an interesting problem with Version 3. The Wersi Chord and Vision installed ok and worked ok, but no sound.

A telephone call to Allens Music Store with Tom in the UK and a Teamviewer session, and he then handed me over to Ulrich, who diagnosed the problem in seconds, and within a few minutes, the Vision and Chord were working.

Somehow, in the VST area, the mapping hadn't worked properly, Ulrich pulled the units out reconnected them and now it works. I'm playing with Wersi Vision and Wersi Chords and the Lowery. Great Fun.

Thanks to Ulrich Wildhack at the Music Store and Tom Horton - Professional Musician at Allens Music Centre

So if you have a similar problem with no sound from Wersi Vision and/or Wersi Chord, then try this.

From the Settings Menu, go into VST and then click/touch on the Green, Blue, Red, and Yellow tabs to call up the mappings.

These will expand out.

Drag out the Blue Wersi Vision and then on the dot connect this to both outputs.

Do the same with the Green Wersi Chord tab.

Remember to save this. Then all my VST's and the new Chord and Visions VST's worked.

Sailing Tuition

 I am so bad at sailing many members of the club spent time with me over the weekend trying to improve my skills - and it really did seem to make a difference so thanks to all of them.

One of the sailing Instructors at the club lives a few doors away from the club and watched Paul and I sail across the river and back for an hour or so not really making it past her window, so she offered to help me and by tying the boat to the shore with not sails getting me to learn to lean out of the boat further and further to balance the boat as my son did the same the other side. We then put this into practice as one of the Cadets took us out as the helm in windy conditions. All of that and their adventures will have to be made into a film.

New Sailing Rules Talk

 The 2025 New Sailing Rules. Recording the presentation for all the members to view who couldn't attend the talk at the Upper Thames Sailing Club 

Red Kite

 Just when you have the wrong lens on the camera the red kite decides to fly over you to check you out.

New Wersi problems

Version 3 of the new Wersi OAX programme is installed. The new Lowery organ emulator is working really well, but I am having problems with two other parts that are not working well. Wersi Vision - I can play around with the software, but no sound when I press the green button using the presets only and Wersi Chord, I can play with the software but can't hear any difference, and some lower parts on the Lowery Accompaniment section - no sound - but it works in some registrations. It's a new motherboard with Win 11 from Wersi, but still old other bits. That may be the difference - worked ok in 2.92. Any ideas?

 

Capsize

 It was quite a windy day on the River Thames, so I managed to capture one of the dinghy sailors in the water after his boat capsized. The rescue boat was with him all the time, just out of shot.

Wersi Version 3

 After a long wait, the new Wersi Upgrade has been released. I have paid my money and am awaiting the upgrade key so that I can install the software and try out all the new features of the full pack that I have been waiting for.