Saturday sailing

Saturday saw the grand re-launching of Fat Bottomed Girl in new fully foiling mode. Emma took her out for a brief spin, but the weather was not playing nice for her first sail in a while and she returned to shore. The wind had quite a lot of northerly in it and is notoriously shifty as it comes down Cheddar Gorge. Sunshine and sea breezes shouldn't be too far away now.

I then took the FBG for a quick spin around the lake to make sure she was behaving nicely and was quite impressed. She's not too far from the right setup and hit 17.5 knots and I got the first gibe in too...

Alan, Martin and I (back in Edward now!) then spent a good hour getting some practice in, with Martin getting a new PB of 21.2. He has just got the Axeman7 back from a shiny respray and fitted a new Aardvark daggerboard to the boat. This gave us a good chance to sort out the boat's geometry, making it much nicer to sail.

Gawp Ban

Today I visited Aardvark HQ to say 'hello' to my shiny red boat. She had spent the winter hanging from the workshop roof and today was the day she was to be brought back down to earth. To begin with she wouldn't talk to me, as she felt she had been neglected for the last few months, but after some dusting of cobwebs and general TLC she was happy to have a bit of a chat.

And what did she say? Only that she was loving the high life and could she please fly more often!

So, ladies and gentlemen...get ready with your gawp bans for Fat Bottomed Girl is about to take to the skies as the UK's first (I believe) babe on foils. She has maintained her full-bodied figure very well over the winter and will only be getting hotter as the foils are added...what a thought!

Here are a few pics of progress so far:






I would like to note that both she and I were very brave when the drills came out!

Now let's just keep an eye on the forecast for the weekend....

Saturday Sailing

Alan, Tom W and myself all managed to get out for a bit of a sail at Cheddar on saturday with varying degrees of success.

Tom was reassembling his boat after some tweaks at the workshop and had forgotten to thread the mainsheet and had to go back in! unfortunately some flap problems put paid to his day.

I got out and had a good hour doing upwind/downwind and carrying on practicing the gybes and trying to do them with less warning to myself so I should be better in pressure situations.
I had a couple of pretty big downwind sessions at 20+ knots and every now and again heard a loud clicking noise... Turned out my threaded bottle screw for the gantry was slowly popping threads so figured I'd best make a line for the shore before something really nasty happened!

Alan was out for ages and is still working on his gibing with varying degrees of success - he had a bit of a play around outside the club with my recording from the shore - I will try and get the video up shortly...

DSS photos

Jason Belben checking out the lastest Topper developments... New boat in order?
Bladerider looking sweet as always
Edward with her shiny new graphics
Emma keeping up the traditions
Velociraptor with mk1 pancake sail :-)

Dinghy Sailing show 2008

Great show for the Moths this year, with 3 moths on stands in the show plus Si Paynes Prowler Zero on the main stage for the mid afternoon talk. I didn't really get much of a chance to look around due to a lack of hands on the Moth stand which meant Em and myself were on it pretty much the entire weekend... Thanks to Tom Whicher who did the Sat PM slot and then came back for more on Sunday and even helped pack up and get the gear in the van!

The Moths:

Mike Airey at BR UK had managed to get a boat onto the Spinlock stand

The Chiz had his new Velociraptor on the Carbonology stand - it was barely finished in time and was missing a few vital items and the cleats were held on with double sided tape but it looks pretty funky and will no doubt be quick once he gets the rest of it.

The Moth stand had Jamming with Edward on it, along with a load of funky cartoons by Em, plenty of photos from Garda, new video. Edward had a shinier Satin black finish for the show, along with some nice green graphics and foils - should be enough to make people reach for the sunnies once the sun comes back to England. (We just had 1/2 inch of snow/hail fall in 5 minutes at the workshop!)