A bit of a warning to all, I diassembled the hoop on BAU last night and found that one side weld had almost completely failed. The crack was covered by the cheek block on the corner and the end of the traveller track, so would only have been discovered with a loud bang when sheeting on.

I would strongly recommend adding this area to everyone's winter maintenance programmes.

Yes Andy, this happened on MoP too, I got a welder to put in a diagonal brace across the corners,(He used 1/4" s/s rod) Must be weak construction in the '03 hoops.

Good job mines an '04 then!! I will check mine out on Saturday. 

Whilst on the subject, does anyone have know where I can get a hoop from for my old smokers. I would prefer a stainless square one so I can directly swap rigs but an old ali round one would do.

Funny thing was that I was only disassembling the hoop so that I can reuse the bits for a carbon one. The bare hoop weighed over 1.3kg in stainless.

Might just be a 2003 thing ... !

It's not a problem - you just need to get down the gym. After two beats from Gerston to Blackstone my shoulders were completely wrecked.

Was it any slower up wind?

Or did it just feel like it

I think we lost two or three places over the two beats. In many ways it was better in the gusts because the response could be so much quicker but you just couldn't keep it going all the time. And tacking was a bit exciting. Looking back, I think we probably lost the places by missing shifts through simple exhaustion.

That pic shows Rach to be holding the main and the jib. How did she manage the reaches? 

She must have strong teeth!