Going North

Well, thats what the wind has done anyway - its now down to 5 degree air temp and water not much above that. Thanksfully this northerly has to be the steadiest I have seen, allowing Alan and myself to get out for some cracking racing yesterday - Ninja Tuna is at her finest so far allowing me to pop a few foiling tacks and lap the RS800 and Musto skiff twice in a 6 lap race.

I've been pushing as much ride height as much I can to get a handle on where the limits are, leading to a few sideways moments offwind when the mainfoil lets go. Thankfully this goes before the rudder meaning its easy to get it back into shape and continue. It's amazing how much difference a turn or two on the bias adjuster makes, dropping a bit of wand angle off and suddenly everything is happy again. Need to finish off my actual adjustable wand as I'm still convinced this is the better solution...

Last Saturday saw a good Bristol Mothie turnout, along with a couple of visitors in the shape of James Phare, Robin Wood and Alex Adams. Unfortunately the wind didnt show leading to a session of mostly lowriding and Alex and myself popping up and zooming around every now and again on our Ninja foils in the puffs.

Got a good few winter events to look forward to now, I'm happy that the Tuna is going to put a good showing in for them!

Bloody Mary - Saturday the 9th of Jan. Possibly followed by training on the Sunday if someone gets their act together!
Steve Nicholson Race - Saturday 30th of January
John Merricks Tiger Trophy - 6th and 7th February

Bristol Mothing weekender

The Bristol Moth fleet made good use of the fact that there was no wind on saturday and spent the day hiding in the sheds from the rain doing boatwork. Adjustable wands were created, paddles were added and gantries reassembled. One of the great things about the club is the fact that we get to keep our boats indoors which is rare for British sailing clubs which makes for a nice place to hide when winter kicks in! I spent the day adding continuous control lines and fitting the new tramps and foil bags from Hyde.

On Sunday we had 5 boats on the water and even three of us managed to do the first race of the winter series! I sailed off on my lonesome as I could keep foiling through the lighter patches but Chris and Alan had a good duke out with Alan eventually getting the upper hand. Leo was out but not racing as he hadn't sailed for a while and Martin overslept again but got out for a good lunchtime session where we all blasted around.

I'd got a new GPS to play with too - a Garmin 301 - pretty much the same as the 201, but now with added USB! Anyone who's tried to get their tracklogs off the 201 will know how crappy the serial link was on these things and the 301 just mounts as a mass storage device and off you go. Bargain at £130 too. Beats the expensive Fisher-Price gps units if you as me...