After sitting around for a couple of hours waiting for the wind to appear a nice 10 knot westerly turned up and Martin, Alan and myself all got out to do a quick race along with some boat swapping.
Martin hopped in my boat so I could try his out and give him some pointers but it was actually set up pretty well other than the ratchet block threaded the wrong way which he apparently doesn't use...
The race saw the three of us spreading out pretty quickly as it was a very short course and quick tacking made all the difference allowing me to pull out and lap the two of them in what turned out to be a 20 minute race. This caught out the Fireballs who hadn't kept track of how many times I'd lapped them and were spotted crossing the line with kites up not realising they had to do more laps and dropping them very quickly!
Alan and myself swapped boats after the race and carried on sailing around for half an hour as the sun was out and it was too good to miss. Even with some recent mods I found the Prowler pretty vague in height control - need to have another look at it... I still don't understand the dished deck on them either it seems to make crossing the boat unnecessarily hard going!
I've uploaded a few pics of the Squirrelcam mount as enquiring minds want to know...
Carbon cups get taped to the wingbar to hold them in place, the centre part of the tripod fixes on top of the rudder pin once the rudder is on.
I agree totally about the dished decks they are crazy stupid. They made sense on the old magnum 5 I had, but now they do not make sense at all, however they keep getting molded. I guess that Aussie Moth builders are traditionalists.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is the tramp to hull joint. Fix that to have a small gap then the water flows off the flat deck and you do not need to have aft drainage, and a dished deck. The dish is bad for torsion resistance (enclosed area ...) flat panels are less material an lighter, and once you get used to running on the flat it is very fast for getting across the boat.
I tell you this flat decks and v hulls is the way to go. However no one listens to me which is probably a good thing.
Nice cam mount.
All the best,
Doug
The Aussies just follow the leader! Great to hear everyone else likes the nice flat strong deck. We have slight camber (up) in ours, structurally and weight wise it’s so much better I couldn’t make myself follow the Aussies
ReplyDeleteDo I see the famous carbon nordic walking sticks on your pole mount? I've got a few of them lying around ;)
ReplyDeleteKoos
Gui has been making I 14s with inverted V decks and now has done it on the Guillotine. Looks pretty good ergonomically but we'll see if he can get under the boom; it's easier to do now with less freeboard in most boats.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure about inverting the decks either for exactly the same reason - where do you put your feet? Moving across the boat on something that is pretty flat has got to be the easiest thing...
ReplyDeleteI had an inverted deck on Cardboard Tube Samurai and Silver Samurai, but this was to allow centre tramp fastening.