Any more youtube videos of voyages involving Mirrors?

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In another thread, Gernot linked to a 15 minute video of a group of people (himself included) sailing on Achterwasser (a coastal lagoon crossing the border between Germany and Poland): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa2zNOLOpqY . I've only just been able to watch it now after a dramatic improvement in the speed of my Internet access (although I'm still just as restricted in the amount I can watch). It was well worth watching, and it's left me keen to take a boat there myself some day to go exploring. If anyone else has uploaded anything of this kind to youtube, I'd love to see it too. I've been off the water for a very long time and don't expect to be able to get back out onto it for a good while yet, so watching this kind of thing is the next best thing to doing it.

curlew's picture

I have a channel on Youtube with many Mirror videos. My latest one is at the following URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0loZSJq2b8g
David
(Curlew - M37755)

That's exactly the kind of thing I was after, and it was all the more interesting just to see how you've rigged your mirror. It's also good to see someone daring to undertake a voyage of that kind in a Mirror. You're right to be cautious not to carry too much sail - one one occasion my sister and I raced our Mirror in heavy sea conditions that stressed the hull so much that the joins between the plywood sheets fractured in places and all the buoyancy tanks started taking in water - we only just got back into harbour in time to avoid sinking. It was an old hull and was already rotten in places when we got it, so it wasn't quite as strong as it should have been. (It wasn't worth repairing either, and that's why I now have every part of a Mirror except for a hull.)

I've found the list of your 22 videos and will work my way through them over time. I've only got three gigabytes a month to play with and have to be very careful to stay within that, so I'll only ever be able to watch a lot of video towards the end of a month when I'm sure I've got plenty left, but I'm looking forward to finding out more about how your rig works.

62816inBerlin's picture

Hello David &David:
my youtube channel is http://www.youtube.com/user/Ger1ger but as I am not the only one in our JollenFlottille group to make videos, another member has set up the channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/JollenFlottille
for collective use.
Next year's event is already being shaped up, the suggested venue being the lakes at Schwerin and the suggested dates are 28.05.2014 (arrrival date ) to 01.06.2014, as ascension day (the 29th of May is a public holiday in Germany. It will be the 5th year we are meeting. A spin-off "JollenFlottille" met in the Netherlands in the past three years. All "JollenFlottillen" are open to all comers. However interested parties should join the "Segeln Forum" and follow the thread
https://www.segeln-forum.de/board9-news/board10-termine/44493-29-05-2014...
Most Germans have a working knowledge of English, so you can post in English and if you have questions, I'm prepared to help.
Blake Gookin (CaptainNobody) has a channel for his Mirror, too:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Mirror62188Sweetpea
He has put up more clips than I have. There is real "footage" of his Texas 200 experience.

Cheers,

Gernot H.

Subscribed to all of those, so that's plenty to watch now! There is no realistic possibility of me being able to take part in with next year's JollenFlottille, but I'd certainly love to do so in some future year. I'll need to improve my understanding of German a fair bit too though as the last thing I'd want to do is put pressure on anyone there to speak a killer language like English.

PuffinInTegel's picture

Hello David,
As you will see or have seen in the 2011 video, our friend Carlo (who is Italian) from the Rolls-Royce 470s crews did not speak much German either. As I wrote, most Germans have at least a school-level command of English.
If the venues in the Baltic coast regions or North Germany in general are too far to travel from the UK, keep an eye on the "Segeln-Forum" for a "JollenFlottille Friesland" which is a spin-off started by the Lis - crews who were at the first messabout in 2010. The dates of the following events did not meet their needs/vacation times and so they decided to meet in the Netherlands, as the majority of them live in North-Rhine Westphalia. They usually stage their meeting earlier in May.
If you're interested, I'll look out to see whether, where and when their next messabout is planned.
Gernot H.

The main issues at the moment are lack of money, lack of a passport, lack of a hull, and lack of a driving licence, and none of those are going to be fixed in a hurry, but things should change in the future as the work I've been tied up with for many years finally reaches completion, though I can't see it happening within the next year. The other big problem I foresee is the whole business of transporting a boat a huge distance, because I'd be starting out from Scotland and would have to hire a car (and I don't know how long you have to have a driving licence before you can hire a car). It would maybe be best to travel by more environmentally friendly means anyway, buy a boat locally each time and then sell it or even give it away afterwards - people often sell perfectly sound dinghies for very little money. Borrowing a boat is not a good option as it could pick up the odd scratch along the way, and if that happens it's horribly awkward.

I can read German just well enough to make sense of the forum, so I'll use it from now on as reading material to help improve my German further, but it's possible that I might miss the key threads about these events, so it would indeed be helpful if someone posts links to them here each year. I don't know if there are groups like JollenFlotille in many other countries (I see Italy gets a mention on the forum as having a JollenFlotille event this year at Gardasee [which I assume is Lake Garda]), but it is clearly an idea that will keep spreading. Every country with enough water should be doing it.

PuffinInTegel's picture

Sorry to hear about your predicament. If you have a usable Mirror rig, you could try posting a "looking for a Mirror hull" message on the web-sites of clubs in your vicinity. Perhaps some kind member would also help you with the transportation problems.
Over the years, I have stumbled upon reports on several events similar to the JollenFlottille on the WWW, the most famous being the Everglades challenge and the Texas 200. Try googling or yahooing or ... for the words or phrases above. There is a group in the Netherlands that meets regularly and the Raid Finland is also an established event. Most of these cost nothing or very little and you attend at your own risk and liability. Participants of the Sea Tribe events such as the Everglades Challenge have to sign a paper acknowledging that "they may die..." and that the organizers accept no liability. In that respect, our messabout is an afternoon tea party, even if we have experienced a few wild hours.
The Scottish ""Sail Caledonia" is a bit more upscale than most but you could even try to find a crewing place there. Some of the JollenFlottille skippers will take on a crew member too.
However, as the Mirror is always the smallest and therefore slowest boat in the fleet, I prefer to sail single-handed.
I hope the storm is not hitting you too hard ... have heard that power is out in parts of Scotland already.
It's due to reach us tonight and continue over the weekend. "Puffin" normally lives outdoors but I put her in the boat house last night in case anothe one of those alders does come down ( see http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthread.php?134990-Lucky-Escape-! ).
Cheers,
Gernot

The storm didn't seem too out of the ordinary here, though 100,000 homes were left without electricity. Is the boat house out of range of the trees, because if it isn't you could have a tree smash right through it and still hit the boat.

As for getting a new hull, there are plenty available and there's no rush. I'll maybe buy a plastic mark 3 for racing (I'd need to borrow a child to train up and put on the helm), and then I can take my time to build a wooden one to use with the old rig which is much more aesthetically pleasing, and I'd use that for cruising. My work means that I'm not free to spend time sailing at the moment at all, but once it's finished I should hopefully have plenty of cash to sort things out. I'm only limited in money terms at the moment because I invested everything into my work and there's no escape from that until it's done (two different projects, one highly risky but with potentially huge rewards, and one not too risky which should ensure that I still come out of it well even if the risky project fails: either way I hope to be free to spend the rest of my life sailing).

PuffinInTegel's picture

It's still gusting here, at around 8 a.m. the wind report for the airport (about 2 km as the crow flies from where we live) registered a 40-knot gust ( http://www.windfinder.com/report/berlin-tegel ) and the sleet outside my office window is passing horizontally.
Our boathouse is the substantial-looking building in the background here:
tree down
The ground floor walls are solid concrete blocks. If another alder does come down, it may damage our assembly-hall/party room upstairs. One of our co-operative's members used to have a flat up there, but when he dropped out, the co-op decided to buy his rights back and use it for communal purposes (e.g. annual plenary meeting) and member's private parties.
Good to hear that things have not been too bad up your way.
Cheers,
Gernot H.

That building's fairly substantial then, though concrete block walls can still topple, so you still want to look at which places could be hit by trees at the worst angle leading to the most sideways force being applied to the top of the wall, and avoid putting a boat inside too near to those points. A lot of roof debris could also fall in and punch holes through a hull. I suppose there's no right answer though. If you leave it outside away from trees it can still be damaged by flying debris or be turned into flying debris itself.

Houses in Scotland are required to be built to survive winds about 20mph greater than houses in England, and the trees tend to grow stronger root systems, so we worry more about storms hitting far south of us. In the northern isles (e.g. Shetland) houses have been hit with 200mph gusts and withstood them, but it's a survival-of-the-fittest thing - if you build too weak a house in the wrong place it will soon get destroyed, so you learn from the design of the ones that survive. We get hit by vicious storms powered by the jetstream as standard, but in places where it happens more rarely, there's much less feedback from this survival-of-the-fittest mechanism, so more houses that aren't strong enough will be put to the test by a single storm. There isn't much news on the storm today due to another story dominating, but it doesn't sound as if the wind's been stripping any roofs off. Higher than normal sea level due to low air pressure appears to be doing the most damage, leading to floods and extra coastal erosion in eastern England. 1400 homes flooded there, just mentioned this moment on the news.

beermatt's picture

Interesting stuff about the storms, it's been a rough couple of months. I'd noticed the wind usually seems stronger up in Scotland and wondered how you got on.

Back to the original post, none of my videos are exciting because during the interesting bits I'm hanging on for dear life lol and in no position to do any filming! I've since bought an action camera to hopefully remedy this but it's not had chance to use it properly yet. This is all I have so far:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaQMcbXDNu4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMcnNPvqQiU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U50Klq2lpLM

Trip on the river just outboard (no sails):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmsDGOy01Ok

There's also this stlightly unusual one - not a sailing video, this was me demonstrating our wonderful little craft's stability by putting my entire weight on one gunwale (notice my feet are lifted up out of the water) and it not even coming close to a capsize. There's not many small dinghies you can say that about!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJfzkNu1mEY

Hi beermatt,

There have been rather a lot of storms, but only one of them howled round the house, so it wasn't too bad, and there was no damage.

There are always things of interest in the videos of different people, such as differences in rigging. The speed of those Mirror's sailing under jib alone was impressive too.

It's also interesting from the point of view of comparing different ways to film while sailing, seeing how different camera positions work without having to try them out, and also seeing the quality of the video - it would be good to know makes and models of any cameras people are using as there's no better test of them than seeing the actual results that people get from them out in the field. The most successful position for a camera for showing the boat and crew appears to be to sling it under the end of the boom, but using one either handheld or worn on the head is better for showing where you're going or for looking around, so using two cameras leads to more comfortable videos to watch. Using more than two is probably too much trouble. It should get easier though as SD card capacities go up and battery life goes on improving - it may eventually become practical to stick one up the mast as well and just leave it filming all day, even if half the time it's only recording the back of a sail. Getting good sound's a problem on most of the videos I've seen where the wind blows straight into the microphone. It would be interesting to hear what people have tried to tackle that.

PuffinInTegel's picture

My personal clips (the JollenFlottille videos are put together using clips from various cameras and by different people) are made with a Canon PowerShot A 710 that my wife passed down to me when she bought a digital SLR. The A 710 burns up a lot of AA batteries and will not accept NiMH or NiCad accumulators and using it one-handed has ended up with me messing up the settings totally. That's why some of the scenes in the 2012 video (about 10 minutes into http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa2zNOLOpqY) are in quasi-black&white. The sound recording quality is amazingly good for a camera not designed as a video camera.

The sound on your recordings is indeed pretty good - when you talk to the camera to explain what's going on it works well too, whether you're speaking in German or English. With some sailing videos I've watched, the noise of the wind in the microphone dominates and can make them painful to watch (sticking a bit of cotton wool over the microphone might help with this, but I don't know if that would still work once it gets wet - there's probably a better material that can be used), while others put music over everything instead, with similarly painful results. [The particular examples I'm thinking of here were not shot by any members on this forum.] Capturing the actual sounds of water gurgling against hull and wind on canvas certainly adds greatly to the enjoyment of a video. I don't imagine that the ideal camera exists yet, but by seeing and hearing the results other people are getting and the way they're setting things up, it's a useful guide as to what I should be looking for.

beermatt's picture

My previous vids were all with my trusty old Samsung Digimax S700. That camera's been through so much it's a wonder it's still going! Given me some great service and survived a lot of risky adventures! It's primarily a compact camera rather than video.

Earler this week I managed to put my new (unbranded yet well reputed) action camera into service:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00EL0ANZM/ref=oh_details_o07_s00_i00...

Once again I missed the best bits unfortunately :( The wind really picked up later on, big waves crashing over the bow and I was sat out on the gunwale with my head almost in the water at times! But i'd put the camera down long before then, this is just the "calm" start. It was mounted on my helmet, which I couldn't fit on top of my hat so had to swap them round because I was getting cold. It is January! Will try to readjust it so I can wear both next time. Also seemed to get condensation on the inside of the waterproof housing so it was very blurred after a while :-/

It's quite a long video because once it's on my head I can't turn it on and off :-/ I might try to do a cut down one with the "highlights" (if there is such a thing lol) or something, although you can always skip through with the bar along the bottom so might just leave it.

Head mounted definitely has it's advantages of being able to look round. I'd highly recomend the a wide angle / fish eye lense, this one is supposedly 120 degrees.

The sound isn't that good inside it's waterproof case so my occasional commentary didn't come through very well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ1yrtvgaDI

curlew's picture

I am very interested in your results but I can't see your video because it is Private! Maybe you can change the permissions to a closed group.
David

beermatt's picture

Oops! Sorry corrected now, thanks for letting me know

That's pretty good value. Have you found out how long you can film with it before the battery's flat?

beermatt's picture

Think I got about 1h40 out of it. I forgot to stop it after I took it off my head lol so there was an hour or so of the inside of the stowage compartments!

There's a review and hundreds of hundreds of comments (check the page numbers at the bottom!) here for more info:
http://www.techmoan.com/blog/2013/6/9/sj1000-at-lasta-good-cheap-action-...

2 hours 15 (or maybe 2 hours 30 with the screen off) is mentioned there for battery life. There's also a mention of a 90 degree angle version which may be better in some ways and not as good in others, depending on how you want to use it, so that's something worth checking on before buying. [I see there's a movement detection mode which could be useful off the boat too - it films for at least ten seconds every time something moves.] Great value.

muckle moose's picture

I'm using a Go Pro Hero 2 for filming when out on the water, or out for a nice winter walk along the coast (Blowing 60 knots!). I put off buying one of the go pros because of the price and had been using a digital camera (older olympus tough camera) but when the 'Hero 3' came out, I noticed Argos had the 'Hero 2' reduce to £200, saving £100 on what it was previously. Of course I still never told my wife how much it really cost, and the kids were eating jam sandwiches for lunch for lunch for the best part of 6 months, but after using the camera for over 1 year now, I'm very pleased with the results. I've took it snorkelling, kayaking and sailing and handles this kind of environment very well. Only down side is that the lens starts to fog up, especially on cold days which can be annoying. Heres the link to my last Mirror sailing film filmed with the Hero 2. Initially on the end of the boom using a 'Joby' tripod (the one with the ball jointed legs) and later the camera was secured to supplied head band.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELzRJPm9xpo
Euan,
Muckle Moose

You can see the difference in picture quality - it must be doing a lot more work on processing the compression, though with the downside that battery life is shorter. I see that the Go Pro Hero 3 has improved the battery life to > 2 hours, but they seem to be riddled with other problems, so it looks as if you got the right model. Is it possible to take the battery out when it's flat to put in a spare charged one?

muckle moose's picture

Hi David,

Yes I'm sure that you can fire in another battery when required as all the data is saved to a memory card. I just use the one battery which seems to be fine (as long as you remember to fully charge it before you go out sailing!) To help save battery power I try to film short clips and turn the camera off rather than leaving it on all the time. This makes video editing easier as you have a series of short clips to shorten and play about with rather than 40 minutes of footage which would take me and my computer ages to do anything with. It also stops the camera housing getting too warm and fogging up the inside of the lens. I've heard that storing the camera in a sealed back of rice or silica gel sachets (like the ones you find when you buy a new pair of shoes) helps dry the moisture out the camera/housing reducing the fogging effect.
Cheers,
Euan

Given the battery limitations, and the reality that only a small percentage of a trip really needs to be filmed, it's clear that the key thing is being able to switch cameras on and off easily, and that means remotely. The ideal setup would have multiple cameras which all start and stop recording at the same time, all under the command of some kind of remote control which works them all collectively with just two buttons. If they all keep in perfect sync (which could be done through radio links - is that why they put wifi on them, I wonder), it would make editing footage from multiple cameras much easier, and if the sound is bad on one at any point in time you could take the sound from another instead. With such a setup, there'd be plenty of battery power for a whole day of sailing, once you've learned when it's worth pressing the record button and when it isn't. Ideally you'd also have sound recorders working as part of the system too (without cameras) to pick up conversation between the crew at a quality fit for broadcast.

muckle moose's picture

Yes I've found with the go pro that sound quality is poor as the camera is encased in its housing and some what muffled. I have a feeling that it may be difficult to get decent audio in many sailing conditions using most small cameras built in mic's, and if that was your thing a dedicated sound recorder would be a good idea. As most of my sailing is on my tod I wouldn't go down this road (there'd be too much singing/swearing and me talking to myself that the men in white coats would be waiting on the beach for me! I would suggest experimenting with one camera first, playing around with different mounts and camera positions and you'll get enough footage over a few trips out on the water to make an interesting video. A camera which can be operated remotely is a great idea as it keeps your hands free for running the boat and would mean your not putting yourself and the boat at risk when leaning out over the side fiddling with buttons (the downside of having the camera on the end of the boom!)
Euan

The other issue is the problem of keeping lithium batteries alive - all gadgets using them really ought to come with a device to keep them on life support when you arn't using them for a long stretch of time (e.g. over the winter), because if they go flat and are left flat for too long they become useless. I've got a rota of devices which need to be checked and partially charged from time to time just to keep them alive, and it's becoming a bigger chore all the time. A set of cameras and sound recorders should really come with one central gadget which keeps them all alive when they're not being used, as well as making it easy to charge them all at once, and also to make it easy to edit a film together out of all the different simultaneous recordings. Until they make that, I suppose we just have to muddle through as best we can with whatever's available, and minimising the number of devices used will remain necessary just because of all the unnecessary problems which manufacturers haven't yet had the wit to design around.

Great video Mr. Moose. I especially like the curvature of the boom and mast. Were you wearing the Go Pro Hero 2 on your head part of the time?

Pete

muckle moose's picture

Hi Pete,
Yes thats right, I initially had the camera mounted upside down on the end of the boom (using the windows movie maker program to rotate the footage back the right way round on the laptop). Then I mounted the camera in the headband mount (similar idea to one of those head torches with the elasticated straps) the head mount also helps keep my woolly hat in place! I have a shoe lace tied on to the camera in case it tries to make a bid for freedom which is tied off to my buoyancy aid.
I think the bend you see in the spars is from the fish eye lens of the camera which helps increase the field of view.
Cheers!
Euan
Muckle Moose

Hi Euan,

I assumed the curvature was from a fish eye lens. I thought it added a lot of appeal. Some may disagree.

It is impressive how steady your images are. I assume there must be some image steadying technology associated with the camera.

Your annotations were very helpful. However near the end they were not in view quite long enough for me to get their full impact.

Thanks for the interesting contribution to the MDDF.

Pete

beermatt's picture

Hi Euan, I've seen your videos before, great to have you on the forum! I'd love to do a tour round the Scottish islands like that. Too many commitments to drive that far and spend any length of time atm :-( Hoping in a couple of years time things'll have quietened down a bit and I'll be able to sail some of the Scottish coastline.

"As most of my sailing is on my tod I wouldn't go down this road (there'd be too much singing/swearing and me talking to myself that the men in white coats would be waiting on the beach for me!" - Haha I know that feeling all too well! I'm glad some of my solo ramblings can't be heard from the land, and I do have a habit of swearing at the boat when it starts frustrating me like when the lacing line getting tangled up hoisting/drpping the main and other little annoyances. Apparently I'm so loud that once even a few hundred yards off shore I embarassed my gf watching from the harbour lol.

In regards to the batteries issue, I try to keep as many devices as possible using AAs because then you only have to worry about maintaining one set of rechargeables that are interchangable between devices, throw them out more regularly, cheaper to replace, and of course you can always keep some alkalines on standby. The advantage of Lithiums is their size and weight, which is quite pertinent on an action cam so unfortunately there's very few that take AAs.

Yes a remote switch would definitely be advantagous. The wireless idea would mean the devices would have to remean in a standby mode with the wireless reciever running which would consume some power, but much less than filming I'd imagine.

Something that really winds me up about my budget action cam is that it beeps for absolutely everything (changing mode, taking a photo, flicking through settings, etc, etc) EXCEPT for when you start/stop recording!! I've looked in settings and there's only one option related to sound - on or off. With it on it bleeps at everything apart from the one thing you could really do with! Pressing the start/stop button with cold hands through a waterpoof case it's difficult to tell whether it registered or not. A loud piercing two beeps for start, once for stop or something would be really handy. You can just take your helmet off to do it, but that's not always convenient and you end up missing some good action.

PuffinInTegel's picture

After all, our main aim is to enjoy the sailing. Documenting our exploits should take a back seat ;-{)
I just finished viewing through the oodles of mp4s, avis, wmvs and MTSs of last year's JollenFlottille and even though most of us only took sporadic clips (except for Ingo & Ingo on the trimaran who have a gopro as well as two normal digicams) it seems an insurmountable task to condense all that material into a reasonable-length film.
Past Saturday (22nd February), I resisted the temptation to pack the camera and simply went sailing instead!
Gernot H.

muckle moose's picture

Yes your absolutely right, more often than not, I don't take the camera out when out on the water as it can be a distraction at times, although sometimes it's nice to look back at footage and reflect on trips and plan for new trips. I use to think that one of the days I left my camera behind, would be the day a pod a killer whales make an appearance, but I was lucky enough for this to happen last summer and I had the camera charged and a memory card installed! Although I wasn't in my Mirror dinghy : (
Maybe this summer Muckle Moose will get to meet them!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qrqhq3pgxQ

I'm interested in the flat patches on the water left by the whales. Any idea how they're doing it? Springwatch/Autumnwatch/Winterwatch should be given access to a music-free version of your video.

PuffinInTegel's picture

... here in Germany, the artists' fees settlements people are at loggerheads with YouTube about any copyrighted music by artists on their database. I'm afraid you must have used one of these tunes.
Is there an undubbed version without music ?
Looking at the other related videos -- do you know what they were feeding on (it looks as if they were diving for something specific)? Or do they come for the seal pups?
Cheers,
Gernot H.

muckle moose's picture

Evening Gernot,

Yes youtube can be funny at times, some of my sailing videos we're removed due to copyright infringements, others available on computers and laptops, but not showing on ipads and mobile device? all very strange. I'm sure it's just a ploy by google to get more information on us for there huge database of personal information! Here's a short clip of the whales, but misses out some of the 'spy hopping' (sticking there heads out the water to look as us) and swimming alongside the boat. All in all they spent about 20 minutes entertaining us before we left them to it. Yes your absolutely right, they are feeding on young seals, the next day i found a perfectly skinned seal pelt, stripped clean of flesh. I thought it would have made a nice hand bag, but Laura didn't agree!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6cKAiCDmWQ

Cheers,
Euan

PuffinInTegel's picture

As mentioned elsewhere in this forum, the former owner of #43511 and I did a leak-test/shakedown/inspection earlier this year and I seized the opportunity to practice video editing, here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzlkMhyb0oA
"Puffin" and I attended the first two days of this year's "JollenFlottille", held on Lake Schwerin* between 28th May and 1st of June. A group member who was not able to attend has taken the trouble to create a little film which gives a brief impression of the fine time we had:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzTOn9nJQv4

I'll post a short account and some still photos soon.

Gernot H.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerin