Summer time and the sailing's easy.

Darren, Alan, Martin and I made it down to BCYC yesterday for the first proper sea breeze session of the year. The hot weather lately has been warming things up nicely and by midday there was a nice 8-10 knot breeze that increased slightly over the afternoon. This gave Martin and I a good couple of hours in, practicing our tacking and gibing and doing speed runs. Martin is going very nicely now and we're slowly pinning down the areas that need inprovement.

I've been quite surprised with my own progress after doing next to no sailing for over 6 months. The foiling tacks are still there and I'm just not quite as smooth as I was. The new boat is going really nicely and I'm looking forward to getting to a couple of events now to really see how things shape up! My fitness doesn't seem too bad either, having taken up running a couple of months ago to make sure I was vaguely fit before the season started rather than being vaguely fit by the time it finishes...

I've got my nice swivel-jammer based Pro-start mount working now, with a couple of tacking lines running off the mainsheet bridle bringing it up to windward every time. I've never really sailed with visible boatspeed before, just recording my tracks for viewing later but it is quite interesting getting into a groove and seeing how the boat behaves.

Emma was on camera duty, enjoying the sunshine.

Wednesday sailing

Well despite the greyness and sudden re-emergence of winter I journeyed out to Axbridge for a nice quiet sail this afternoon.

The wind was all over the place and coming and going quite frequently. This made for plenty of string twiddling trying to get the most from the rig. I feel I'm finally starting to get the foils and gearing how I like it and this is allowing me to start getting into the rhythm of tacking and gibing again and even pulled off a few no touch tacks.

I've been tinkering with a mount for my Prostart as it's impossible to read from hiking if it's mounted facing aft at the mast. After hacking up a mainsheet swivel jammer and building a mounting plate around it I just need to figure out how to tack it now. Bungee onto the kicker didn't work unless the boom was well off the centreline. Thinking either toestraps or mainsheet bridle next...

I'm off down to Weymouth on Friday afternoon for a bit of sailing with some other moths before the coaching kicks off on Saturday.

MSL - Main Sail Limbo

Sailed for the first time with a MSL 10C on my boat today and discovered I can barely get under the boom! Going to have to put a second clew eye in I think and lose a bit of area off the foot. You don't get the niceties that you get with the Hydes like leech or luff telltales although my cams didn't fall off so that was a good start!

Had a beautiful sail down at Axbridge this afternoon - the first wednesday of the year and with 10-12 knots it was good to try and get back into the routine of Moth sailing, trying to remember how to tack and gibe and start to get my setup dialed. The boat and new foils are behaving themselves and I managed to crack out a 23 knot run in one of the bigger puffs which could have been no more than 15 knots.

Darren and Martin were both down a little later but unfortunately the wind was shutting off by this time, leaving me as race officer to run a race with next to no wind by the finish...

We're having a bit of a Bristol Moth Fest on Sunday with most of the club boats likely to be out + DJ visiting us from Port Talbot - should be fun!

Fast as lightning.

I would love to say that I am describing my new boat. While it does indeed feel very fast it's also early days.

Instead I am describing quite how quickly I left the lake earlier today after the sudden onset of thunder and lightning alarmingly close to the lake at Cheddar...
There wasn't much wind for my sail and when the breeze kicked in I thought I was in for a nice ride, until a bolt of lightning made me nervous and we all evacuated the lake pretty rapidly. One of the sailors was telling me afterwards how he didn't mind too much as he had a carbon mast. He wasn't sure if I was joking when I told him that carbon was an excellent conductor!

No other mothies about. Martin was off for sneaky practice in Wales with DJ, Tom is off down in Rock with his boat, Darren was 200 sailing while Leo has a fractured rib! I'm hoping we can get our act back together and all get out again soon...