Video thread

Rob
Great footage! How about a couple of photos of the mount you are using?

Cape Town is famous (infamous?) for its windy weather - especially in summer when the southeasters blow almost every day...

In winter, when the weather systems come in from the south, the frontal winds are north westerly... So we go the other way and our "Millers Run" becomes a "Reverse Millers"...

But when the wind blows from the NNW, we carry on past Millers Point to Buffels Bay in the Cape Point Nature Reserve; a wonderful route just a touch longer than 20km.

The whole of last week, WindGuru - and Windfinder and another half dozen sites that we check regularly (read "every couple of hours") - was calling a very strong NNW of 35kt gusting to over 40kt. Fantastic!

Intending to film the group, I set off slightly ahead and expected to be overtaken... One I didn't know was that one of the skis had developed rudder problems and the whole group ended up putting in to Millers Point leaving yours truly to carry on by myself!

Since a car had to come fetch me anyway, two of the youngsters set out to follow me and arrived about five minutes after I got to Buffels.

This is one of the classic downwind routes in Cape Town...

It doesn't work very frequently and you have to be careful when there's more west in the wind - there's a section where the gusts roll off vertical cliffs in great swathes of squall and we call it Hurricane Alley. On a day like yesterday, the squalls come from behind - but if there's west in the wind, they can swirl side-on, pushing you straight out to sea.

Fantastic stuff, I just love it.

Here's the 4min video.

I recommend clicking the vimeo logo to watch it on the vimeo.com site widescreen in HD!

vimeo.com/96435391

And yep, I'll write a piece on my thoughts about the mast shortly... not that there's much to it and the current one is rather heavy and definitely affects the boat's trim and balance. I'm getting used to it, but I'm finding it relatively difficult to catch small runs when the mast is mounted. Big runs, not so much.

There it is - in the process of having the base plate moulded to the shape of the deck. The mast itself is part of an old windsurfer mast; the base plate is just regular (heavy) old glassfibre.

Rob,

Great footage and perspective. Mast looks good but the diameter and weight might be able to be decreased if you can find an old salt water fishing pole. Should still be plenty stiff.

Hey Robin,

That is a great way to spread the load/stress along the ski.

What do you use to secure the mount to your ski, when it is on the water....tape or do you have some other way of keeping the mount from sliding?

Cool stuff!

joel

Mast looks good but the diameter and weight might be able to be decreased if you can find an old salt water fishing pole

...or a piece of paddle shaft! That's my plan for version 2.0!

What do you use to secure the mount to your ski, when it is on the water....tape or do you have some other way of keeping the mount from sliding?

It's attached with Velcro. Once it's on, then I put multiple strips of duct tape to hold it steady. And I attach a safety rope just in case. My plan if I capsize and the mast comes off is to put it onto the back deck under the bungees.

So here's what we came up with. Old paddle shaft inserted into a rudder hatch cover. Simply take off normal hatch, replace with this and you're set up. The main weight issue here is the camera, and that's very light, so not really an issue at all.

Currently using Contour cameras, so their simple handle bar mount is screwed to the top of the paddle shaft. The same mount fits perfectly on the front or rear handle of any Think ski.

I like the idea of using the rudder control lid! No glue or permanent change on the ski as well as simple removal. Also the threads would make a nice interface for a solid fit. Still would look for a carbon or aluminum [6061-T6 0r 7073-T6 ]shaft. Maybe an old ski pole? Less cross section = less mass and less windage. Maybe a 1/2" (13mm) diameter or less?

Dan

just started building a mast today, although I've gone the way of balsa wood for the upright.

the 19mm balsa shaft will take a surfboard plug gopro mount perfectly and is very very light. I'll give it a coat or two of marine varnish too.

Only drama I'm having is finding a rudder port cover that will screwinto the epic one - anyone got any ideas. I'll probably need a couple to test, so really don't want to get them from epic 9sounds expensive)

Three minutes of paddling in the Columbia River gorge on a moderate day (winds at 20mph).

Sweet. Sitting here with full iMac cinema screen going "left, left" and you'd swing left, then "right, right" etc. Brilliant. Cheers mate.

Thanks Watto, I still consider myself a noob (just started paddling a little over a year ago, no prior water experience), especially when it comes to downwind. Much to learn.

Another angle / edit from that same stretch of river.

Ha! Here's something different!

David Grainger just posted this on the yahoo surfski newsgroup...

He said:

This may take some getting used to. It's shot with a 3 axis brushless gimbal stabilized for roll, pitch, and yaw, so the boat moves instead of the horizon. I think it gives a better idea of what it's like to paddle a tippy ski than just slapping a GoPro on the deck. What do you think? The drinking music seemed appropriate.

For those wondering how this was done, here ya go:

The camera is stabilized with a 3 axis computer controlled brushless gimbal. Brushless gimbals have become commonplace in the Radio Controlled drone community. I believe the software was developed by Aleksey Moskalenko . This one is an Arris CM3000 . The gimbal picture shows large anti-vibration plates to dampen drone motor vibrations, which I did not use. I made a waterproof housing for the gimbal and camera.

To keep the rig light (2lb with helmet) I put the 12v. LiPo battery that powers the gimbal in a separate Pelican Micro Case with an on/off switch, and connected the case to the housing with a 2 conductor insulated wire using waterproof connectors on both the housing and the case. The motors in the gimbal generate a very small amount of heat, and I didn't want overheating in the small housing which has no ventilation, so I turn the power to the gimbal off when I'm not filming.

I use a GoPro Hero3 Black on the gimbal, controlled by the GoPro wifi remote. To film the video, I taped the housing with helmet on the foredeck of my ski with 3M Extreme Shipping Tape , and taped the battery case on the foot strap. You can see the top of the battery case in the video.

A very important part of the whole rig is the squeegee made out of a car windshield wiper section hot glued to some foam to take care of water drops on the lens of the housing. I hot glued 2 clothes pins on the foam. You can see the squeegee clipped to the right of the pocket on my Mocke vest. When I'm ready to clean the lens I attach the squeegee to the tip of my wing paddle with the clothes pins, so I can reach the housing. This maneuver is definitely a "when in doubt, feet out" procedure.

Thanks Dave! (Sorry you were temporarily banned by the dastardly anti-spam system!)

That's pretty cool. It shows what the paddler experiences. Would like to see a high behind the paddler view using this technology

Like this view , only stabilized. Working on it. Tough to get it light enough with housing for gimbal and camera.

In time maybe the cameras will use software to stabilise rather than just vibration removal as they do now. My son has a Sony ActionCam & it's very noticeable when the stabilise function is on

Stunning video of a recent race in Hawaii... The drone footage is exquisite.