Wednesday 13 October 2010

Tide Ride shenanigins

Hayling laid on its finest conditions for a weekend of riding the tide. With the demise of Holt last year the event was lacking the usual push and turnout was down by all classes and the 800s and Mustos got canned at the last minute due to a lack on entries.

So 17 boats took to the harbour for a load of short sharp racing, enough to blow the cobwebs away and sort out rusty boat handling. I had my new Hyde back up after a small luff round mod to flatten off the bottom 1/2 of the sail which resulted in some more upwind pace and I spent Saturday battling it out with Mike L and Si. I felt I was generally as fast upwind but quicker down while my racing was littered with the usual mistakes and dropped maneuvers, the sort of thing that not going sailing much does to you!

Saturday night saw a few mothies chilling out at the sailing club with Ben Paton feeding Pete Barton many rums, tequilas and anything else he could find and the look on Pete's face in the morning said it all!

Sunday got pretty hectic with a lot of chop and traffic crossing the course. We were running the gibing slalom course which was highly entertaining although I spent quite a while going down the mine and managed at least one lap of one race failing to land a single gibe - I managed one near flawless race in the lead but one more fluffed gibe let Mike through! It's pretty scary the distance that one mistake can cost you!

Quite a bit of random damage over the weekend, with two tillers sat on, one mainsail under the jetty, one downed rig and one rudder attached to one of the marks - would have been interesting to see how a solid sail would have coped with the many stacks and HISC sand!

Chris Bashall took load of photos which are on his website here.

So with winter ahead and still no water at the sailing club there's not going to be a lot of sailing for the near future at least which leaves me pondering wings and things...

Wednesday 6 October 2010

I'm over here with the wing!

I'm stuck in a circular loop on this one. I've been thinking about it and have got some preliminary ideas on how I'd do it. Just making a wing isn't the problem. Making one without ruining my Mothing is the difficult bit and I agree with Andrew's thoughts on this (see the M2 forum).

I want to go down the club, put my boat together and go sailing. I can do this in 15 minutes. I don't need help to make sure I get the rig up without damaging it. I dont need safe storage in the boat park for said rig as my mast is in 2 pieces under my cover along with my sail and boom. I don't have to worry about getting sand in the moving parts. I don't need a box trailer or van to take it to events as the boat goes on the roof.

The moth has a good track record of not managing development and letting things happen. The single biggest problem with that attitude this time around is that we have so much more to lose than before. Foils transformed the class - it's still ascending now and I can't see wings improving things rather destroying what's been built. The non circuit Mothies I have spoken to believe it's a step too far and it would stop them from joining in. That is a bad thing.
I personally think that a couple of year hold on using hard sails in competition would be the way forward as it would allow things to develop on the side and give the Moth the chance to grow and re-evaluate when more facts are present.


A seperate note:
Are they legal as it stands? A mainsail has to be held by it's luff to a mast as best as I can tell from the ISAF equipment rules which a separated split flap would go against.
My former class had a fairly simple restriction on the sail - it needed to be able to be rolled/folded without damage.

Tuesday 5 October 2010

Port Talbot pics

Nick Dallimore (Mothy Claire's dad) was out taking some pics on Sunday...






Monday 4 October 2010

Bristol Moth Port Talbot invasion

Leo, Simon and I decided we needed another sailing fix, so we braved the Ryder Cup traffic (there was none!) and the rather dubious forecast (it turned out lovely) to head over to Port Talbot and get some sailing in with DJ.

We were greeted by a nice 10-15 knots and a very welcoming Corus SC. After fueling up on a bit of tea and cake we hit the water for a good three hour session. I've got a couple of silly toys on the boat which I wanted to get my head around before heading down to the Tide Ride and thankfully they were both working pretty much as I'd expected. I've also got my 2b Hyde back from Tom so was good to be on the water figuring everything out and trying to get my setup truly sorted.

DJ and I did the middle race of the club regatta, giving a chance to show the locals what the Moth can do and on a short windward leeward course I was lapping the Musto skiff on every other round! While I'm definitely not as polished as I was this time last year I feel I'm getting back into the swing of things before the Moth Winter Champs series kicks off next weekend down at Hayling... Only 8 Moths pre-entered at the moment - GET ON IT!!!