Another day at the office

Murray Grimwood describes a typical day "at the office".

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I call it my office. Four square metres of trampoline. Usually wet, occasionally frozen, sometimes both.

It is stretched between a couple of plywood coffins which, according to legend, were designed on a pub beer coaster back in '68.

Aptly known as Paper Tigers, there have been 3500 of them registered since, mostly in Australasia, mostly home-built.

Mine's a factory job, but like its skipper, it's seen better days.

It came with the two-fingers-down-the-throat name of COOL SENSATIONS.

I kept removing the letraset, until it read O SENS, which appropriately makes no sense.

Before that I had Ziggy, further back PT56, and our first was Snagglepuss.

I sail summer and winter, right through, clear ice on the deck, snow on the hills, doesn't matter: some folk go for bigger boats to stay further away from the water - warmer and drier - but I figure by the time you've spent a grand on clothing, you've beaten those two problems just as you've beaten the bigger boat on the water, and you're quids ahead in outlay terms.

My winter garb is: polyprop long-sleeve top and pants, 3mm long-sleeve wet-suit over that, and a 3mm short-sleeve over that again, wet-weather parka and over-trou, wetsuit-boots with woollen socks, sometimes gloves and sometimes a diver's wet-suit balaclava.

Make sure you go before you go, if you catch my drift.

This sport doesn't quite give you the highs my other sport - hang-gliding - does.

It's much easier logistically, though, and the same stuff applies - just in 2-D rather than 3-D.

Weather lore applies equally to both, as do aerodynamics, physics and engineering.

I can look at the sky (and don't I marvel at the folk who never do? Half their visual periphery and they never give it a thought. Go figure!) and read the state of the nor'wester from the Lentic's (wave-clouds - they look like long bars, cigars, or orange-pips), know when a front is approaching, can judge how big a lapse-rate it trails, and whether the resultant thermal activity will produce Cumulus-Nimbus (those big ice-cream clouds) often presaged by gust-fronts.

Even so, you can be caught out, find it is a little stronger than you anticipated.

One day I had Ziggy away down past the Cove when the sou'wester hit.

There was a two-foot (600mm) wall of spume hurtling past, rigging shrieking, mast shaking, waves building.

Coming back across, she would lift out of a wave, fly sideways into the next, still sailing, still upright, still in control.

Looking up the wind recordings that night, Goat Island had had a steady 50 knots ...

Recently, I partook in the trailer-yacht/keeler Round the Harbour race - unofficially as I always do (they're worried about safety, don't you know ... ).

It only hit 33 knots on that occasion, but I had the boat packed and me changed before the next boat finished. And there were a lot which didn't.

Basically, I know I can survive anything upwind, but that I'm into mast-breaking territory over about 30 knots downwind.

Meaning Peru in a sou'wester is a doubly-bad option (me being single-lingual and all).

I knew this was the class for me when I went to my first nationals, woefully off-the-pace boat, woefully off-the-pace skipper.

At the end of the ice-breaking (not that kind - they hold them in summer) ''invitation race'', two fellows from the North Island quietly came over.

''Would you like some help setting up your boat?''

Three hours later, they moved off, friends for life.

They didn't have to do what they'd done, and in many other sports, heck, in many other classes in this sport, they wouldn't have.

At a more recent nationals held in Nelson, I was hanging on to them upwind, staying within a wave or two of them downwind, but getting trashed on the reaches (sailing across the wind).

I said as much between races, to a 65-year-old top-10 sailor, down from Auckland, no doubt cold and tired.

''We'd better go back to the start via the wing-mark, then,'' he said. ''Let's see what you're doing.''

He didn't have to. Needn't have bothered.

They're all like that, a great bunch to be part of. I still go back, but I'm a club sailor rather than a national one, rating myself to finish between 20 and 30.

No point eyeing-up the ''veteran'' trophy, either. Half those ahead of me are older, too!

Sometimes I run unofficially in the ''outside'' races, sailing down from Dunedin to Aramoana, racing from there to Warrington or Waikouaiti - once to Moeraki - and return, then I'll slog my lone way back up the harbour thinking of hot showers and a quiet shiraz.

Wondering whether those car-clad folk notice me, whether it looks like just another day at the office.

• Murray Grimwood lives at Waitati.