Norfolk Punt club regatta - Part 2

Back at the Moth worlds, while sitting in a caravan in the rain with the wind blowing its usual nuts off, a plan was formed.

Norfolk resident Andrew Friend had a cunning plan - it involved going to Norfolk and sailing on a funny bit of water, launching in a canal and sailing to a raft in the middle of said piece of water, where tea and cake are consumed, races are done - entered just before at £1.50 a time if you fancy it. Having just spent over £200 for a handful of races over a couple of days this sounded tempting!

Andrew's brief description didn't do the place justice - it is quite possibly the single most mental place you can hope to sail a moth. The courses are short, the wind is a bit shifty, the other river users are slow and have the maneuverability of the biggest bus you can think of. Brilliant!

Saturday didn't see much wind, but gave the chance to consume my own body weight in very fine cake and tea. The sun was out and all was good..

Sunday had a better breeze, but it was raining a bit. Sort of attempted a race, but Andrew forgot to enter and the committee thought I hadn't entered either so we didn't get a finish. Did a bit of boat swapping and had a general play around. Avoiding the White boat fleet turned out to be easier said than done but it was all so light hearted none of it seemed to matter...

Monday was a different pile of kettles of fish, it was breezy and this is where the real fun began, as the gusts were coming through thick and fast and in a boat that really only goes where it wants to avoiding boats was now a real challenge. I had a couple of wipeouts trying to not bear away and land on a passing river cruiser. Only fitted in one race, which was the Bloodbath - this is a race involving every fleet going at once, spaced by staggered starts and all figured out on PY. We had entered the weekend sailing off 900 as the wind had been light and we were being overtaken by 200's and the like - with the breeze up I managed to win it and nearly got away with some silverware until the 200 took offence and asked for a harsher handicap. They settled on 850 instead, which put me second with - surprise, the 200 in first...

I'm going to push for an open here next year. With a raft to stand on for spectating and a generator and some floodlights we could sail all night... Rent in a couple of cruisers for everyone to sleep in and it would be awesome!

More Tea vicar?

Norfolk Punt club regatta...

In no particular order...

• Emma, chillin' on the tea raft/committee raft/mooring raft
• The Tea hut, complete with old school kettles...
• The White boat fleet - also known as travelling road block
• Andrew Friends Punt, giving me a lift to my moored Moth
• Me, pootling about on the Saturday in not a lot of wind
• Me, saluting on my now mudweight moored Moth
• The committee hut
• Swimming back from the Moth
• Andrew in his Bladerider
• A White boat, and a Shed - not sure if they are actually called Sheds, but everyone referred to them as such!
• Mooring raft action
• 3 Moored Moths
• Fudge

Foils for homebuilds

While I hate doing the shameless advertising thing on this site, I thought I would post this here..

Foils for homebuilds

I've made a few sets of foils for people doing their own thing and this should be encouraged. I'm also going to try and do a technical breakdown of how linkages and various bits all work on the current boats - its amazing how far these things have come in just a few years and the older converted boats can be made into different beasts with a bit of tinkering...

Falmouth

Not much going on at the moment - everyone seems to be taking a bit of time out to do things other than sailing! And who can blame them, the weather over here is still shocking with torrential downpours and large amounts of wind coming through.

Tim Laws (new owner of Jamming with Edward) and Myself made our way down to Falmouth last weekend for a couple of days worth of Falmouth week to check the venue out. Got down there pretty late on the Sunday missing the racing, although it was pretty damn windy by all accounts. Falmouth Town is really nice, plenty of good pubs and restaurants/bars etc - the Sailing water is pretty sweet too, with plenty of options from protected estuary, going right out to sea. Would make an awesome worlds/nationals venue!
We both hit the water on Monday with very marginal breeze to start with, only foiling for a few minutes of the first lap, but it soon picked up giving some great rides and the chance to scare the fast handicap fleet until I carried on to do another lap when I should have gone to the finish! Oops!
A shackle holding my shrouds on let go on the second start line causing my rig to fall off so I packed up with help from a very capable rib and headed to shore to enjoy the tea and cake of Restronguet SC. Wind really picked up though - some excellent wipe outs from Tim who is still getting used to Moth sailing - especially in waves....

I'm starting to get myself back together again to work on fitness and boat handling - i'm confident in the Squirrels abilities now and just need to make sure I'm happy with mine! Just ordered a new MTB from Giant bikes to make use of the great riding nearby when the sailing at BCYC backs off - Should allow me to keep active rather than internet Mothing all winter.

Si Payne is over in the states right now at the North American nationals - Best of luck - is it really that windy over there?!

Weekend warriors

This weekend has seen the most sailing I have done for ages! Saturday was blowing 15-17 knots and both Martin and myself were out blasting and practicing maneuvers. Martin set the pace for the day with a 23.5 knot speed early on in a big gust of wind on the Morocco Mole which is his new personal best. 

My morning session saw only 21.5, so had to get back out there in the afternoon and get him back. Had a few downwind works with some nice puffs and had only managed 22.7 and just as I was about to call it a day got a monster gust and pelted off downwind. I didn't get a chance to look at the GPS again until I was ashore. I had to have a little chuckle to myself when I did though, as I'd matched Martins' exactly, setting a new personal best for myself in the process - Beating my best speed from the Silver Samurai of 23.1 on its tiny foils.

Tim Laws (new owner of Jamming with Edward) was up and he took the Squirrel out for a spin while I did some camcording. I did have the headcam out for the morning session but forgot to start it! Will check out the footage and see if any of it is any good!

Helen was down the club reassembling the Blue Mouse after Weymouth and we did a bit of fiddling with new wands and bits.

Sunday saw a good 10-15  knot breeze and the chance for my first club race of the season which went pretty well, until the wind dropped halfway around the last lap. 

The second race saw me lap pretty much everyone twice and had caught 9 minutes on the RS200's in half a lap. Need to go fishing for the race times somewhere and work out a handicap. Helen got out a bit later testing her new set up and seemed to be flying well and Alan has rematerialised at the club with a nice new CST mast and MSL 13 although he didn't get on the water today.