Bristol Moth Flying Squadron

Bloody Mary Video

2012-01-20T21:15:00.000Z

James Phare was wielding my camcorder for the Bloody Mary so I've thrown together this montage of footage throughout the race. Having just moved house I have no broadband at home so only just found somewhere to upload it!

Minor Bristol Mothing

2012-01-16T21:13:00.001Z

Finally starting to get some momentum up at Cheddar after sailing on New Years day and this past Sunday.

The less said about New Years the better, Tom, Alan and I all took to the water in some very marginal foiling conditions that saw us only really foiling downwind when we got lucky in the puffs. It was a pursuit race and I only made up one of the two laps the rest of the fleet had on me so managed to finish dead last, after both Alan and Tom called it quits early.

Yesterday Tom, Leo and I took to the skies for the club racing. I launched just before the start in the biggest wind of the day peaking with 20+ knot gusts and I managed 28 knots in the first minute on the way to the start! I led Tom astray sailing the wrong course so we just settled on doing some windward/leewards and trying to remember how to sail again and getting the tacking back up to scratch.
Leo was out for his second sail of the year after a long period out of the boat and it was good to see him blasting around and reminding me just how much fun these boats are without taking them too seriously!

Martin was down collecting some bits from his boat for some pimping before he starts getting sailing again while Darren was out on Race duty, making it an almost full complement of Bristol Mothies and the most we've had down the club for ages. Everyone is keen and I think this year is going to be a bundle of fun.

I'm currently busy plotting my bid to regain my crown in the GB speed league as this Saturday is looking pretty bonkers down in Foiltown...

That Bloody Race!

2012-01-09T18:53:00.001Z

The 39th Bloody Mary took place on saturday and with sunshine and a gusty12+ knot breeze it was finally looking like Mothy weather!

And it was, with Jason Belben, Mike Lennon, Ricky Tagg and Pete Barton taking the top 4 spots overall in the 250+ boat fleet! Mike and Jason in particular had a real ding-dong battle with place changing all the way round and Mike eventually missing out by overstanding the finish line and allowing Jason inside. Mike also gets the good sportsmanship award for shouting Jason back after he missed a spacer mark although I'm sure he's regretting that now!

1st Jason Belben
2nd Mike Lennon
3rd Ricky Tagg
4th Pete Barton
15th Mike Cooke
21st Tom Offer
30th Doug Pybus
47th Geoff Carveth
63rd Andrew Friend
68th Richard Westbury
107th Ben Paton
164th Neil Baker
221st Leigh Albrecht
229th Andrea Biagioni

Full results here
Fotoboat gallery here
SurftoTurf gallery here
Sportography gallery here

This one of me thanks to James Phare - will post more of his later...

I had a pretty good race once I got around the windward mark. Unfortunately the bit before that saw me dropping the mainsheet and falling in, then getting caught by a gust post tack and mining hard. By the time I got up and going again the leaders were already around the 1st leeward mark! Thankfully whenever I saw them next (going the other way around the course) they weren't pulling away so I know I was going well enough to have hung with them if I hadn't cocked up so badly!

In true Cooke fashion, I changed a load of stuff on the boat since I last sailed and this was my first test for my settings - the boat felt good, although I had run out of pushrod adjustment. I'm finally starting to pencil in some days sailing over the next couple of months after a hectic christmas period/housemove/trytosqeezeinsomeworktoo so hope the next couple of winter events go a bit smoother!

Where did I leave that boat?

2011-12-15T21:12:00.000Z

Well, low and behold it was still at the sailing club. I think this was the longest period without any sailing since about 1989 for me - Life kinda took over and sailing took a back seat...

I'm still not sure if me and the Shredder are on talking terms after this absense as James Phare was the helm of the day on Sunday having a bit of a jolly and deciding on features for his Ninja in the new year. I meanwhile was testing out the latest Ninja to hit the water which has been a testbed boat for a customer who happened to have a lot of the same ideas as me for how to take the boat forward. It's been an interesting experience and I'm now considering my self imposed no-new-boat-beforethenextworlds rule as I think there is definitely something in it. What 'it' is you will have to wait and see!

James and I were joined at BCYC by Tom Lambert and Badger so we had 4 boats on the water, enjoying the relatively full lake and getting back into the swing of things.

I'm really excited about the upcoming Bloody Mary and the usual launch bunfighting. I doubt I'll do quite as well as last year as I've just not been sailing and I expect there will be a bit more competition from the south coast shandy drinkers with the event being part of the Moth winter series.

Nearly winter Solstice too. Roll on Summer!

X8 bladerider 3323 'badger' for sale

2011-12-10T17:18:00.001Z

white hull black outlines, very good condition, and well set up.

Loads of upgrades including ;
High modulus super skinny rudder longer than original,
High modulus daggerboard
Ride height adjuster
Adjustable wand
Also comes with covers for boat, foils, mast, boom, prodder
Rig is a 353 cst skinny mast and a almost new Aardvark skinny boom
Bladerider sail in good codition
Custom road trailer slide on slide off with side boxes

£7700 ono
Near bristol and other info call martin 07776192410

Long time no see

2011-11-22T19:08:00.001Z

It's been a while!

Life has been keeping me well occupied lately, so I've only had a brief spin in Shredder at Queen Mary since the Port Talbot regatta. This has mostly been down to a lack of water in the reservoir, which is now sorted so sailing can resume.

In the meantime I've been keeping busy with a bit of mountain biking with a few trips over to the Forest of Dean and some local action in the Mendips. I think cycling is probably the perfect companion for sailing; it's something you can actually do when there is no wind, unlike my other random hobbies like windsurfing and radio yachting! I did however make the mistake of going riding with Doug Pybus. It seems Doug is a bit of a demon on a bike. I couldn't keep up and ended up hitting a tree with very little damage to myself, thankfully! Mr Payne took some of Doug's advice on cycling last year and ended up with a fixie and hilarity ensued. So perhaps the message should be "don't listen to him"!

My early midlife crisis has taken me down to Gosport for a radio multihull open meeting. Everyone takes the piss out of me for this, as it's supposed to be a bit of an old man's sport, but I find it quite intriguing. Trying to get a boat to behave at its best upwind and down with no outside input other than helm and sail control is quite an interesting design challenge. This combined with my limited multihull experience (that's my old mans department!) means I've got my work cut out.

The other aspect I love is being able to watch a race unfold in front of you. When you are actually sailing in a boat it can be quite hard to place yourself on the track against others with regards to shifts and track position. This all plays out for you with models and you can instantly see the effect of line bias, shifts, puffs. I'll be back down there with my tri this Saturday for part two of the club championship. Day one was a tight fought affair and I narrowly missed out on the top spot after turning up late and missing a race - hopefully I can sneak ahead this time around!

So, winter is fast approaching and usually some of the best sailing is to be had. I'm looking forward to getting back out on the water to test a few things and get back into the swing of things for my Garda campaign!

Port Talbot regatta

2011-10-05T16:12:00.000+01:00

Richie Westbury and I joined DJ over at Port Talbot for the Tata Steel regatta on Saturday. We were blessed with 25+ degrees sunshine and 8-10 knots of breeze and had a all round ace time.

Richie now has his Bladerider pretty well pimped now with an Aardvark rudder and new high modulus daggerboard vertical and the results have been pretty impressive with the boat now foiling high and level and I was actually pleasantly surprised with it after a brief boat swap towards the end of the day. I think a new Ninja might have found it's way onto his christmas list though!

We did a couple of short course races with lots of laps and a good chance to sort out my awful tacking from Paignton. Finally getting my mojo back and nailing most of them. Hit some pretty good speeds over the course of the day putting in a 24.5 knot best in one of the bigger puffs.

Nick Dallimore took a load of photos which he's kindly letting me put up here... I never get over seeing my old boats sailing around. Must crack on with my new paintjob...

Post Paignton

2011-10-04T20:51:00.003+01:00

Sorry for the lack of blogging lately. The run up to Paignton was pretty manic getting Shredder vaguely sailable and after catching up with work a potential house move is interfering with the important task of Moth blogging.

Paignton was a success for me as far as I'm concerned! I managed to get the setup pretty much bang on for the first sail and in a marginal first race came in second. The breeze picked up a bit for the rest of the weekend and I proved incapable of tacking but started getting back on it by the final race to grab third overall from Andrew Friend who is really starting to get rapid in the Dazzle Moth.

I was especially pleased with the light airs stuff on Saturday as I was running a variant of the Skinny Ninja foils with 10% (hell, it worked for Rohan so why not eh?) off the span of both foils. I was still foiling about as early as Chris who has a bit of weight on me, but still earlier than the other boats I was around. There maybe a bit of potential for more to come off yet in my pursuit of that elusive 30 knots although I don't want to end up with a one trick pony thats only any good in 10 knots plus!

Paignton was probably the nicest weekends sailing I've had this year with good breezes and good competition. More of that please!

The Bristol crew are starting to get active again. Badger has a new high modulus daggerboard vertical in his Bladerider after an unfortunate incident with a faulty spare foil and a lack of manufacturer to send it back to! Darren had a prodder malfunction on his Prowler while Leo is threatening to get the saw out on Wasabi the Pimp Ninja. Hopefully Tom will be joining us again this winter too with potential for DJ and Richie Westbury to be sailing at Cheddar too - should be great to get some momentum going...

Stay tuned!

The Stealth Moth - Boatyard camo

2011-09-23T19:27:00.000+01:00

I couldn't let Andrews Dazzle camo Moth go sailing without a fellow stealthy vessel and taking my inspiration from a lack of time I present the Stealth Moth/Boatyard camo. Basically I've primed it and polished it with the intention of abusing the boat for a few months before it receives it's silly paintscheme!

I've just finished roping the boat up this afternoon and she's now ready for the high seas of the English Riviera - that makes it two opens this year where I've launched a boat for the first time! Hopefully something I won't be doing again for quite a while...

All quiet on the Weston front

2011-08-31T21:03:00.000+01:00

Life in Weston Super Mare has been pretty quiet lately. I sold my boat to DJ Edwards straight after Travemunde and have been getting my new one together slowly. This means no sailing (not full size anyway). It also means I will have a boat all through winter and will keep this one through to Garda, which means an uninterrupted run-up to a big event - something I've never managed before because I thought I knew better!
The new boat is mostly tweaks, with a few things taken onboard from Mr Rashley and a couple of things I've been meaning to do for a while. Hopefully I will be back on the water by Torbay albeit with a non-standard set of foils initially while the foil moulds go back to my good friends at Fathomtree in Nottingham in for a couple of tweaks while I'm on a well earned holiday!

Anyway. Enjoy this piece of vanity - should keep my sponsors happy! Thanks Anya!

Random Travemunde pictures

2011-08-08T23:03:00.000+01:00

Just a load of random non sailing pictures from the road trip... Anya has uploaded tons of sailing pictures on Picasa already...

Days 4 and 5

2011-07-30T20:09:00.001+01:00

After a nice delay parked up near Dortmund with a flat tire, Mr Pybus is now at the wheel of the Aardvark Tour Bus which is allowing me to muse over the last couple of days.

Thursday saw a frustrating day on the water. We launched out after lunch foiling all the way to the line only to find that once there the wind wasn't too happy to play ball. We loitered around for a while, tried to get a race in which was abandoned (with Ninjas in 1,2,3...) after a lap and then headed back in. We then headed back out again a short while later as we were informed that there was ten knots at the start boat. Unfortunately this wasn't strictly true and we sat around even longer with a start abandoned mid sequence and another race abandoned after one beat... The race officer wisely called it off at that point and the dash for cash took place next to the shore, the only place where there was actually a bit of wind! The big cheese Philip Kasermann won the big cheque for 1k euros and looked even happier than usual!

Friday saw the breeze on and we cracked on with two quick races, both won by Special Agent Barton on his chainsawed m2. I had a much better time of things with the boat doing what it was supposed to and despite being over the line and taking a dip on the finish mark thanks to Mr Paton I managed a ninth and after a bit more practice got 7th in the last one.

We had a good cheesey prizegiving on the other side of the river for the top ten, including podiums and stirring national music that wasn't actually the national anthem. The Mothie organisers had then laid on another massive free meal and 700 odd bottles of beer were still to polish off before a big night on the town for those that weren't hitting the road.

As an event I don't think this could have been done any better. The socials were excellent, our hosts friendly and welcoming, the local festival atmosphere was amazing and the race officer did a great job with what he was dealt. Everyone being in one place, camping together and having (free) breakfast together meant for plenty of chat and a good time in general. Anyone looking to take on organising a Moth event has just had the bar raised (HISC crew, I'm looking at you...).

On a personal note I'd like to congratulate Rashers for a job well done. I feel like I've let myself down a little and had a bit of bad luck go against me with races canned while im doing well. Suffice to say I might actually go and sail in waves for a few days before the next big event so I'm not so rusty!

Bring on Garda 2012...

Day three. Yesterday didn't happen!

2011-07-27T18:28:00.001+01:00

We've just got off the water after a day of beautifull sunshine and light sea breezes where we managed to get another 3 races in.

I was going to gloss over yesterday altogether but in brief: Jason broke a shroud while leading the first race. He managed to get a rib ride in and back out for the final race of the 4 but that effectively puts him out of contention. Chris won all the races putting on a convincing display in the confused seas. I had a bit of a nightmare day with several random control issues.

First. The rocker arm at the bow managed to screw its bolt up tight over the course of the first race resulting in a locked wand and many pitchpoles with me heading to shore for the second race to sort it out. After launching back out I found a sandbar 100 yards offshore which I ran into with thankfully no damage.

Second, in a dose of high amusement for me, my wand retaining string decided it was going to start hooking itself around the wand paddle resulting in a couple of mega pitchpoles (one right in front of the start boat, no doubt on Youtube already..).

I generally didn't have enough gearing either so was struggling for control. I made it round for the next two with a long list of things to do overnight...

Team GB had a bit of a Barbeque which was organised by Katie, Richard Westburys far better half which went down very well with everyone.

Today saw a return to the lighter winds with a light sea breeze and Chris would have won all three had the clew of his 10c not fallen off mid gibe in the final race. He lowrode across the line in second with Ben taking the win after I fluffed my final gibe letting him through. I ended the day with 2,2,3 and climbed to 5th even after yesterdays mishaps just behind Ben Paton, Matt Renker and Markus Steeg, all some 40 points adrift of Rashers!

We're now enjoying a fantastic FREE bbq in the hangar courtesy of the sponsors and sort of enjoying Ben and Josh's attempts at dj'ing although "danger zone" was just played so may have redeemed themselves...

Day one. One race.

2011-07-26T10:06:00.001+01:00

We had both an eventfull and eventless day!

We launched into a nice foiling breeze and got away nicely. I had a hundred yard lead on Jason before the wind went squiffy and Chris went past both of us. We lowrided down the last run only to have the race abandoned a hundred yards from the finish... After sitting around for a while we were sent back in to wait - I'd just decided to order a pizza when the race officer decided we were going back out!

Actual race one took place in marginal conditions and the Ninja's really shone taking the top 4 places with Chris just edging out Jason on the line and me a few seconds later after throwing my chance undercooking my final layline.

We then sat around a bit more, one start was abandoned in the sequence and another general recalled. We probably should have gone straight into another sequence then as the breeze was pretty good but we hung around a bit longer and then headed back in.

Last nights entertainment was on the barque (tall ship) Passat where we had a free hot buffet laid on with a couple of the other fleets and more free drinks before Ben and Josh led the charge onto the other side of the river to the beach club. I got a bit over excited when we finally found the donuts I'd been smelling from on the water.

Thankfully for a few sore heads there isn't much wind this morning so we're held onshore and the dash for cash has been put back even later in the week!

Not to worry, we're having a good time and a lof of people are making the most with some serious boatwork...

Blowing old boots

2011-07-24T13:10:00.001+01:00

Well, so far not much to report sailing wise...

The dash for cash was scheduled in for yesterday but unfortunately the wind wasn't playing ball with 15 knots gusting up to 30 at times. Rashers and Jason went out for a quick blast in the morning but with racing set to take place in the river off the quay it was even more gusty. We're now set to race the dash on Tuesday after racing. With the marquee's so close to the shoreline it will be a pretty good spectacle and a good showcase for the Moth...

This left team GB with the task of getting rather drunk as the forecast was for more wind again for the practice race and not much chance for sailing. Ben was leading the charge and when I left near midnight was mumbling something about girls dancing on poles outside the sailors beach tent. Apparently Pete Bartons dance floor skills involve pretending to be a hermit crab and then waving his arms around. Jif, Doug and James found their way onto a tall ship in an attempt to climb the rigging but were left making shapes in the spotlights and shouting down the funnels. Lochy and wingman Lambert weren't seen until well into the following morning.

This place is a pretty excellent event so far with a massive festival atmosphere, loads of places to eat and our German hosts have made a lot of effort to make sure we're well attended to with free breakfast and plenty of evening entertainment and prizes courtesy of Nordea, FSE and CTM.

Todays practice races have been called off with more big breeze. Tomorrows looking much better and the sun is even forecast to make an appearance to hopefully by the time the racing kicks off it'll be all good and Bens hangover will have gone and Jason R's need to hang out in the changing room (warmest place he's found) will have passed.

I'm off to find some donuts. The cake here is excellent but the tea leaves a bit to be desired, luckily I've found a box of earl grey in the supermarket...

On my way

2011-07-22T00:58:00.001+01:00

Me and Doug have just departed Dover on our mammoth trip to Germany.
I stopped off at queen mary earlier this evening to load up the monster trailer and now have 6 moths and a van full of moth related junk!

Hopefully by lunchtime tomorrow we will be in Travemunde where it sounds like there are already plenty of mothies to meet us...

- Posted using BlogPress from somewhere in the English channel...

The Curse Pt2

2011-07-12T21:42:00.000+01:00

So, my Nationals didn't go entirely to plan.

I was rigging up on Saturday to find my rear wingbar had split across the centreline. Bearing in mind it was absolutely honking at the time, I wasn't prepared to risk doing more damage to the boat by sailing on it so I packed up. It was a bit of an odd break really - I'd changed style of the rear wingbars on my boat to a single piece across the transom, rather than plug in socket style, as it should be a lighter solution. Good idea, not so good in practice for reasons I won't bore you with here! In hindsight (what a lovely thing it is) having dismantled it and had a closer look I could probably have gotten away with it...

It's a big 'what if' kinda decision. I don't tend to look too kindly on people who know something is wrong and sail on anyway, as the resulting mess is harder to clean up - so, if I talk the talk...!

It's a massive feeling of frustration, and the second consecutive nationals where a random breakage has put me out of contention early on. To all those who say you make your own luck, I tend to agree but I've been sailing in a lot of wind this year and am really surprised this hasn't come up sooner. If you believe in karma then maybe I should play the lottery this week!

Anyway. On a more upbeat note, Jason Belben put in a very solid performance to take the Nationals, beating off Arnaud for the open championship and a hard-charging Chris Rashley who put in a first and three seconds on the final day to take third (or second, depending on how you look at it!). Both were running the new skinny Ninja foils and will be a force to be reckoned with at the Euro's in 10 days time. Proof that the little Ninja from Somerset can mix it up with the best of them...

Final results are here
Photos from the event here

The curse of the moth nationals...

2011-07-08T10:49:00.000+01:00

Day two of the moth nationals. Its currently blowing up to 30 knots and doesnt look like abating over the course of the day. Currently looking like were going to do the agm this morning and then make a decision on where to can it for the day.

Day one was a bit of a baptism of fire with a nice chop going around with 15-20 knots at times. I was late getting onto the water and only just made the start of race one and capsised three times up the first beat while getting myself figured out as my flat water settings obviously weren't u to it! I pulled through the fleet over the next few laps and unded somewhee in the teens.
Race two I got my act together and didn't do anything silly pulling from 5th up to 3rd by the finish.
Unfortunately race three saw a return to my usual form, failing to make my first tack twice. There then happened to be a nice set of standing waves/wash from a passing ferry that saw about a dozen of us all stacked at the top mark going nowhere... A pretty dismal showing from my good self really but i was starting to get the hang of my annual outing on waves!

Jason Belben was on top, with a 1,1,2 followed by Arnaud, Si Payne and Chris Rashley all charging hard...

In the dinghy park, theres a few interesting developments. Arnaud has moved back to the larger Mach 2 rudder and also cut down his mainfoil slightly. I think that might have been the result of a night out in Portsmouth though. Most of the top guys are running adjustable wand length of some descripton. Mike and Richie are running a new evo of the current Hyde main and seem to be better paced when the breeze is up.

Now I've found the code for the wifi I'll try and get online a bit more. I'm also posting to the IMCA UK Twitter twitter feed when i can.

Messing about in boats

2011-06-29T21:58:00.000+01:00

I had my last sail prior to the "Dash for Cash" today, seems like the season has only just got started and already the Nationals is upon us.

As my poor abused 10.c is with Dave Bosnia at Dynamic Sails for some tender loving care I was using the afternoon for messing around with the Silly Sail and some different mast combinations. I'm persisting with it as it's blindingly quick in certain conditions but unwieldy when the wind gets up, something I'm starting to get my head around with a stiffer mast and some planned mods to the luff curve. Still, nothing ventured and all that...

Alan was out for a pre-nationals blast around and to test his boat out after it blew over his car while rigged the other week! Luckily it escaped with only a broken gantry that was easily fixed. Leo also popped down to pick up his boat. It's looking like the full complement of the Bristol Moth Squadron will be heading down to Stokes Bay next week and with the entry list approaching 50 boats it's going to be one hell of an event...

My 2011 Nationals form guide

2011-06-26T20:04:00.000+01:00

It's that time of year again and here's my take on the runners and riders. I'm not going to pick anyone as a winner, so as not to jinx the poor soul...

Top Tier: Those that may actually win the event...

I think you'd have to be pretty silly to write off the HISC M2 fleet. Master Payne and Mr Lennon have been a regular feature at the top of the UK circuit for a while now and the fact that they sail together frequently means they're able to push themselves and keep on top of their game.

Jason Belben and Chris Rashley have been doing the same thing down at Stokes Bay, which gives them a good home advantage. Chris has worked exceptionally hard at getting up to speed this year and it's shown with two open wins (in some pretty wild conditions) to boot. They've been there or thereabouts when the Hayling lot have come out to play and either would be a good bet.

Second tier: Those that might take a race here and there.

Ben Paton recorded the best non-M2 race position at the worlds, sailing on the original Ninja foils. He's now got his new 2011 foils and will be a force to be reckoned with. Lack of a medium setting means he may crash and burn while lit up to 11.

Richie Lovering has been starting to mix things up with the front runners this season and should be well up there when the breeze is on.

Ricki Tagg practically invented crash and burn sailing and may suffer a similar fate to Paton, but when he's upright there is no denying he's very fast.

Jason Russell is another one who's been slowly creeping his way up the results. He's very fit and works hard on the racecourse.

And then there is me. I've pretty much written off this season after promising myself so much. Nowhere near the right amount of time on the water, combined with a tiny bit of bad luck, has meant my season has been a bit of a non starter. A couple of race wins here and there show a glimmer of hope - the boat is obviously fast and I'm fitter than I've been in a while... Fingers crossed!

The great thing about an event like this is that it's actually nothing to do with the racing for me. A chance to spend time with a bunch of friendly, like-minded individuals isn't one to be missed and I hope loads of you join me!

Spoke too soon!

2011-06-20T22:36:00.000+01:00

I was just saying in my last post about the Moth not beating me up like it used to and then I went to Thorpe Bay. We were greeted by a pretty solid breeze which did it's best to give us all a good beating. When we rounded the windward mark we found the waves were suitably large that no-one could go downwind in any semblance of control. This resulted in a bunch of Moths sitting around, occasionally burning off for a few hundred yards before launching into a big ball of spray.

Top marks go to Ben Paton who's admirable workrate saw him furthest upwind and the most attempts at downwind. Chris Rashley was the only one who managed a lap of the course and therefore won the race. He was also the only one still on the water when the 45+knot squall blew through with lightning and hail and all. Apparently he was wary of holding onto the boat in the water while that went on...

I tried all sorts to get downwind and at one point was heeled and bore off so far by the lee that the boat started to gybe itself while I was still hiking! The resulting capsize went fully inverted in the not so deep waters of Southend and the combination of the sea bed, tide and big waves was too much for my poor mast. I've now got two massive bruises on my legs and a damaged ego which will take some healing I feel! It was quite interesting as you couldn't go slow enough to go down the waves without running into a steep dead end. You also couldn't stay on the wave peaks going across it as you just had to bear off at some point and you were then doing 24 knots into a trough!

Saturday night saw the obligatory Essex dodgy disco and Jason Russell demonstrating his sketching skills...

It was with some reluctance that the fleet assembled on Sunday. Chris was mega keen and went out for the first one and to show us that we were silly, before being joined by a small following for the next races. I'd already packed up by then and had a missing trailer wheel bearing to sort out so decided to nurse my wounds and contemplate how to survive that in the future...

The minor things

2011-06-13T21:20:00.001+01:00

The Moth is a tricky beast sometimes. It's a complicated package that relies on every single part doing its job. Once one part fails there is no redundancy to pick up the slack.

Hayling open was a write off for me for exactly this reason. A buckled pushrod at the top of the daggerboard caused all control to vanish a lap into the first race. With a long semi out of control sail back in there was no way it was getting fixed for that day. Unfortunately I made such a hash of replacing it that I damaged my flap hinge which I only noticed when I went to rig up on Sunday. A pretty epic weekend of fail really. Thankfully Jason was on hand to keep the HISC boys honest.

I've not been able to get much Mothing in lately as the conditions haven't been kind at BCYC. I've taken the opportunity to go windsurfing instead which has been doing my fitness levels the world of good as, being quite bad at it, get the kind of beatings I used to get when I started foiling (Garda anyone?).

So on to Thorpe Bay. I grew up in Burnham and used to sail at TBSC quite a bit but dont think I've visited since my teens. It's an excellent club and the waters should give a fairly good simulation of Stokes Bay. That reminds me - almost form guide time...

Don't run your friends over.

2011-05-31T19:24:00.000+01:00

There's been some minor Bristol Mothing lately. We had a bit of an open day two Saturdays ago with DJ, Andrew Friend and Rich Westbury all joining in and I think we had 7 boats out at various stages. Darren took a few pictures which he's posted on Facebook...

I als had an entertaining run in with Mr 'Badger' Fear on a Wednesday night when he went for an unexpected gibe and wiped out in front of me - leaving either a run up the concrete bank or a swift gibe as my only options. I went with the gibe and didn't quite make it, resulting in a small hole in my nice new sail! Live and learn. Nothing a bit of tape won't fix anyway and it could have been much worse!

I've been busy in the workshop, mostly knuckling down and getting some of the new 2011 foils out the door along with Tom Lambert's new 2011 Ninja in the most tasteful colour yet!

I have been able to sneak in a bit of time on Donatello, finally getting around to my take on an adjustable wand (also known as the Oligario Sissy Stick or Pimp Cane) and fitting my proper Hyde tramps.

Terry the spar man, has been making me a new mast to fit my MSL10, which is a bit stiffer than my usual, but with a longer topmast taper to force more bend from higher up. Might get the chance to have a look at that this weekend before the open in Hayling. If the W.I. can get out of bed for their own open meeting we might actually get a good turnout! ;-)

Parkstone Open

2011-05-10T20:25:00.001+01:00

24 Boats rocked up for the open at Parkstone over the weekend. After the lacklustre turnout at QM for the inlands I was a bit worried about the UK circuit but things are looking brighter now the sun is out.

The first race was some of the closest we've had in the UK with Si Payne, Mike Lennon, Chris Rashley, Jason Belben and me all duking it out for the top spot, swapping places in the puffs and putting a real emphasis on tacking as one drop put you at the back of the group. I seemed to have height on everyone and after a few tactical blunders pulled past on the penultimate beat before pulling out a bit of a lead to the finish. That was pretty much my only moment of glory for the day as I had a pretty shocking two races after that, with capsizes in both races and a botched start. I managed to pull back through in the second one to 4th but the last race was really bad with my rusty race skills and a lack of sailing fitness taking their toll and putting me back to 8th.

The Ninja death squad were on good form with Rashers putting in a 3,2,2 and Jason just behind him. Mike Lennon was out in front with a solid 2,1,1 (Must be the Ninja rudder...)

Rodders had us out and about for a good pizza before putting up with about half the fleet on his floor. Buck the truck still has the SYZ and Co sticker on from the Euro's although I'm not sure if the tiller of doom made an appearance...

Sunday dawned with a vicious streak and 30 knot gusts going across Poole harbour. There was a large hesitancy in the air with the monster gusts putting off a lot of the fleet, especially those about to pack for Spain. I wasn't too keen on the harbour launch and recovery and, bearing in mind the amount of work I've got on, didn't want to be putting Donatello back together again after finding the shallows!
The weather backed off nicely and the brave(er than me) enjoyed a good 15-20 knot blast. Simon P showed a return to form with 2 firsts and a second with Jason Belben taking the other race. It's going to be interesting to see how Jason gets on now he's got his set of 2011 foils!
I spent the day eating cake, pondering my wimpiness and sorting out Leo and Badger's wand systems.

With the top 3 separated by 3 points this season is going to be mighty good fun. I just need to make sure I can sail for more than one day in a row and man up a bit!

Gallery of Saturdays racing is here
Results from both days are here
Next open is here...

The 28.8 Knot club

2011-05-02T19:52:00.002+01:00

I don't think there is a 30 knot club in the UK yet, so I have here my highest bid. I also appear to have my rash vest on backwards.

Has anyone been faster over here? I know Rodders/Rashley and Offer have all put in 27 knots recently at least and Martin "Badger" Fear was the fastest in the UK for most of last year with a 26.9.

Anyway, Martin, Darren and I braved the ferocious land that is a crazy northerly at Axbridge today. With gusts coming out of the gorge like bullets it was a wild ride. It was actually surprisingly difficult to get any decent speed runs in as the gusts were so short that you tended to sail out the other side of them...

I went out about half an hour before Martin and had a couple of big runs, blowing away my previous 24.5 best with a 27.3 with the wand bouncing off the hull like a machine gun! I came in just as Martin was rigged up and he encouraged me back out and with gusts coming down on top of gusts I got pretty lucky and saw the GPS go over 28 briefly. It wasn't till I'd got back on land that I saw it had topped out at 28.8, with a 10 second run of 27.5. Martin also went faster than ever today, hitting 27.5 in his trusty pimped Bladerider - he also had far and away the best wipeout I've seen this year and I wouldn't be surprised if he'd beaten his own boats top speed on exit...

If I'm honest, there wasn't really much actual sailing to be done today - it was barely possible to get back upwind half the time as the change in windspeed and direction tended to have you underwater at a moments notice!

Still, looking forward to Poole this weekend and seeing if I can take some of this speed onto the racecourse...

Are you serious?

2011-05-02T09:56:00.001+01:00

Seems the latest craze with Mothies is blogging less. Even Phil Oligario is doing it!

I think it's a bit of a shame that in order to be competitive people seem to be spending less time online sharing their experiences - sure, most of the time it's just people like me spouting off about nothing in particular but there are always little gems hidden away in amongst the general sailing posts.
I think it's a sign of the newer people in the class bringing in a level of professionalism and not wanting to give their game away or share their secret tweaks. Probably also a sign of the pulls of modern life meaning there is so much to pack into a day.

So, to be serious about your Mothing you shouldn't be online spouting nonsense when you could be sailing, doing some boat work or going running or whatever fitness craze has taken hold since the new year!

I'm currently sitting in the sailing club watching some vicious gusts flying down the lake. Yesterday was blown off with 35 knot gusts and today looks a bit like more of the same. Normally I'd go windsurfing but my van is in the garage being sorted out and apparently you can't fit a free ride board in an mx5 or citroen c1! We did find that you can fit two mountain bikes in the c1 though but I won't let Em and myself's off road adventures get in the way of my blogging....

Summer time and the sailing's easy.

2011-04-24T10:52:00.000+01:00

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

2011-04-13T21:14:00.001+01:00

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

2011-04-06T21:59:00.000+01:00

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.

2011-04-03T19:17:00.001+01:00

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...

QMSC inlands

2011-03-28T23:10:00.001+01:00

Just had a great weekend at Queen Mary for the inlands. While the turnout was down, the fun was up and some great racing was had with new Ninja rider Chris Rashley taking three wins on the Saturday and after looking for and failing to find my foiling wings I then took the only race on Sunday.

Chris, Ben Paton and Tom Offer had some cracking racing on the Saturday with plenty of place changing and some close finishes in 10-15 knots. I meanwhile was busy with trying to remember how to sail having amassed about 5 hours on the water since October. I missed the first race with a minor pushrod problem, I also had far too much rake meaning whenever I fluffed a tack (often!) the boat would stick head to wind and stay there until I dumped the kicker altogether and reversed off... Regardless, I was very pleased with the boats performance given it was it's first day on the water and by the end of the races I was motoring and rapidly making up for my mistakes.

Saturday night saw the QM Ninja death squad lead us off into Staines for a fantastic curry buffet and as much rum, Jaegermeister and whiskey as Tom could handle!

Sunday looked breathless, but come race time a patchy 5-8 knot breeze floated in meaning we could fit in one race before the sun came out and the breeze evaporated. I was pleased to find the new foils were up the the usual Ninja light air abilities, taking the race by over 5 minutes from Ben, Tom, then Chris.

I'm very pleased with the new boat and will go over it a bit in a future post. A few batten changes have improved the mk2 Ellway sail and improved it in a bit more breeze and it's still excellent in the lighter airs. The new foils feel good and I'm looking forward to getting some hours in and seeing what they can do.

I'm also pleased to see Chris, Ben and Tom all sailing well, having put in a lot of time on the water over the winter and Chris winning his first Moth open.

Meanwhile, somewhere on the south coast, the Wailing Islanders (W.I. For short) couldn't pluck up enough enthusiasm to leave their sandy playpen and drive an hour up the road...

Blokart for sale - NOW SOLD

2011-03-16T21:05:00.001Z

Realise this isn't Moth related but it is windsport related!

I'm selling my classic Blokart which is one of the early ones with a pretty tired 3M sail and a new 4M and all the bits that go with...

Looking for £900ish - email mike 'at' aardvarkracing.co.uk

Dinghy Show

2011-03-08T20:06:00.000Z

For the first time in lord knows how long I've watched the dinghy show from the sidelines! I love going, for the same reason I love the silly winter events. Meet buddies from other classes, see shiny toys and ancient hulks of timber with tons of varnish and loads of string that doesn't make 'em any faster!

Well done to Phil for getting a concours nomination but ultimately losing out to the Aardvark built E6 Cherub! I still haven't seen it since it's been finished but everyone who has says it's a work of art...

I was busy in the workshop on my boat. I've finally got all my new pieces of moulding sorted out including the new deck mould for the 2011 Ninja now done. As this was coming off my boat it means I can now crack on and finish the paintwork and get back on the water. Hopefully by next weekend I can be sailing my new boat on my new foils.
I haven't decided what to do about sails just yet so will be sailing on my v2 crazymain from last summer. I still think this sail is amazing downhill but a bit unwieldy upwind. I'm hoping some batten mods I've got up my sleeve will correct this and I guess we'll find out at the inlands in a couple of weeks time...

Better hope that I've been able to develop myself past of the lack of sailing I've done lately!

If in doubt, get out!

2011-03-04T09:04:00.000Z

If you know you are going to crash - make sure you can leave the boat easily! It's a lot easier on the boat stopping itself than it is for it to stop your 80 kilo self too!

Some excellent crashing going on here and it shows just how windy it was in Belmont at times - 3 years ago at Weymouth people weren't even considering launching in some of those breezes...

Life goes on...

2011-02-27T21:04:00.000Z

Sitting in my usual spot (somewhere in the workshop with a half finished boat) I'm getting that feeling that the year is passing me by! Tom, Alan, Martin, Leo and Darren have all been out sailing at Cheddar and the best I can manage is dropping the mini40 in the lake and blasting that around.

The 2011 Ninja is shaping up nicely now though after a long gestation period. There are no drastic changes afoot. Lots of little tweaks to make life simpler for building and to neaten up little bits of stiffness and aero here and there. With the completion of the final piece of foil mould jigsaw over the weekend I'm left looking forward to finding out what Kevins' latest creations are capable of.
The first set is going to the Stokes Bay Ninja death squad where Chris Rashley and Jason Belben will be testing them against last years foils while I will no doubt be launching mine boat and foils on the morning of the inlands at Queen Mary.

On the plus side, I've taken up running (albeit very slowly) so I hopefully won't spend the first half of the season getting fit for sailing by going sailing. The sun even came out for a bit yesterday and I vaguely thought mountain biking would be doable again...

So, a bit of a ramble - which you've probably come to expect by now if you come here often. Bring on the season!

Normal service resumed

2011-02-06T13:06:00.000Z

The last two weekends have seen normal sailing resume at BCYC. Both Leo and Darren were out in their boats last weekend and Darren and Tom were both out this weekend despite gusts over 30 knots.

Tom is getting to grips with his M2 nicely now and it will be good to have him to race against at the club and hopefully we can both push our games up.

Simon has now bought the Ninja Turtle and should be on the water in that over the next few weeks while I'm busy trying to get the various pieces of the 2011 Ninja together with new moulds for pretty much everything including new foil designs. It's safe to say I'm pretty excited about this season as I believe the Turtle was very quick and Kevin is confident that he's moved the foils on again...

Roll on spring!!!

Steve Nicholson Race

2011-01-30T16:29:00.000Z

5 Moths rocked up at Northampton SC for the 2011 Steve Nicholson Race. There wasn't much wind when we turned up, but thankfully we weren't starting until after midday which gave a bit of time for the forecast 10 mph to kick in.

We were sailing with the asymmetric fleet which gave us a busy startline to play with and plenty of moving obstacles around the course to do battle with. After some vaguely synchronized port tack starting with Tom, I took and early lead and didn't really look back with the shifty lake sailing playing to my advantage and the Ninja Turtle doing the rest. After 7 laps I'd nearly lapped Tom in second with Martin a few minutes behind him posting a 23 knot best in not much breeze and very cold water...

The format of the event means we get to sit around and watch the other fleet race before going back out for a second race. With the weather being pretty cold it's quite hard to drag yourself back out again and it takes about 20 minutes back on the water just to get vaguely warm again! This became a bit of my downfall with two appalling tacks on the first lap, once with the tiller extension up the back of my buoyancy aid and another saw me kicking out my elbow while leaning on the wingbar post tack dumping me unceremoniously out of the boat! Anyway, I managed to get back in the groove and catch up with Tom and after having a good battle with him for a few laps sneaked away as the breeze died towards the end with Martin coming in third again.

Was very good fun as usual despite the ice on the ground and massive windchill! Results are up HERE and I will post links to photos when they materialise. I had the first chance to use my new ProStart and it's definitely idiot proof - Hopefully when I get back out at BCYC I can use it to sort out my starting issues!

It's Miller time

2011-01-22T15:47:00.000Z

No I've not started drinking again. Yet.

Nope, it's that time of year again. I'm up in Nottingham getting the latest round of Ellway foils machined up. The very fast and skinny foils of last year are making way for something faster... Rudder mould is nearly done (this pic was taken late last night) and the wings and daggerboard will be done over the next few days...

2011, year of the Ninja.

Down in Flames

2011-01-14T09:57:00.000Z

Well, I think it's safe to say the ashes will be staying in Australia this time around...

I'd like to congratulate Nathan on a dominating performance on a relatively level playing field shows him to be a true class act. I would also like to congratulate Scott on a top result while running the event - This has been far and away the best worlds to watch online with the daily video and constant Facebook updates.

2011 is going to be an interesting year - I'm currently trying to get my head around how on earth the GBR fleet can up our game sufficiently!

Bloody Mary 2011

2011-01-09T17:29:00.000Z

11 Mothies braved the most reasonable forecast anyone has seen at QM for a long time. We arrived to find it blowing dogs off chains but due to the forecast drop after lunch and non freezing temperatures no-one was too phased.
With the first boats going off at midday and the Moths not due to start until 75 minutes later we all sat back to watch the race unfold which is a most bizarre thing to do! Got to feel sorry for the slower boats chugging around for all that time while we are ashore drinking tea...

Our startline proved quite entertaining as we had boats crossing on two different downwind legs while we were milling around and with the general tactics being to stay the hell out of trouble off we went.

With the wind having abated by our start, Alex Adams and I played a good game of cat and mouse as we sailed into and out of puffs pulling away then getting caught again. This was going to be the order of the day, although I gave Alex a good lead at one point when I missed a mark out due to following an MPS who obviously had no idea where he was going leading me astray (I never know where I'm going either...). We both spent a good leg lowriding on the second lap while the wind gods stopped for tea, but once they kicked back in we got the hammer down pulling through the fleet nicely. I had to stop for a break a couple of times too, having my mainsheet block break off the boom and need a lashing (figuratively and literally) and my pushrod bottle screw undoing itself while I wasn't looking meaning another nice dip and cool down while I reassembled on the water!

The final lap was a good one and with time ticking away we both tried to pull through as much of the fleet as possible getting around two big chunks of boats on two seperate legs. I pulled through to 10th in the end getting past 10 or so boats on the last reach and unfortunately left Alex just behind them in 25th.

Further back in the fleet DJ Edwards had a good race coming in 77th, Olivier Vidal in 80th, Geoff Carveth and Tim Penfold duking it out for 100th and 101st respectively, Martin Fear in 111th, Doug Pybus in 118th with an overtightened wand bolt causing some pretty special launch positions, Gareth Davies in 130th, Jon Peats came in 184th. Tom Offer had a nightmare, launching to a KA special with cams popping off, starting late and then taking half the tiller extension with him after missing the toestraps post tack... Overall was taken by the 14 of Roger Gilbert.

I always enjoy this event and this year was a good one with my personal best result being a mid teens in a N12, coming away with the first foiler trophy and first in class, although they are both pretty much the same thing now the 600 fleet has vanished. If anyone has any ideas what to do with 1.4L of Vodka when you don't drink, please let me know.

Next event is the Steve Nicholson Race on Saturday the 29th of Jan. Meanwhile Fotoboat and Ian Roman have both posted up some galleries from the event already...

UK Winter event pre entry

2011-01-03T16:49:00.000Z

For all you fellow winter idiots out there, here are the links for the rest of the Moth winter series events. So far we've had the Tide Ride and the Grafham Grand prix, although it looks like no-one went to the GGP! We usually have a big turnout for the Bloody Mary so lets make this one a bumper year...

Bloody Mary pre-entry is HERE....

Steve Nicholson pre-entry is HERE....

And finally the Tiger Trophy is HERE...

Seasons greetings

2010-12-31T09:54:00.000Z

Well another new year is about to rear its head and that always provides an opportunity for reminiscing. It's been a strange one from my point of view - I've done the least amount of sailing since I was about 7 and not through choice! I've tried pretty hard to go sailing and put the hours in but I've spent ages at the whim of weather, multiple club duties and now an empty lake. At some point you have to decide at what level you intend to compete and so far I have seen little point in driving hours across the country just to train but have come to the conclusion that I'm going to have to put the hours in! I know the boat is faster than ever and the TideRide proved that despite my rustyness so just the mission of getting back to racing fitness and getting on top of the boat handling again...

I suppose with the size of the UK and the broadness of sailing we have over here it's easy to take for granted what we have and while I am in a bit of a black hole in the country with only one club I could sail at, within 2-3 hours I could be at any one of a number of clubs with a load of other Moths enjoying some time on the water.
This has been one of my opposing thoughts on the wing topic in that in the UK we do travel frequently by trailer/cartop and hard sails would be a burden on that - not an insurmountable one certainly but a burden nonetheless and having had a chance to catch up with Adam over the Christmas period and check out his wing hasn't really alleviated my concerns in this area. Even the best case of it breaking down into 4 pieces still won't fit on a car and would need a large trailer (or a VW transporter, lucky me!). Don't even get me starting on the SA (stupid americans) forum wars. Too many people not knowing when to stfu, along with my favorite - I don't know who in their right mind believes there is an "anti wing lobby" makes it sound like the Illuminati is out to get us....

It's the usual exciting time in Mothland with Blog reports starting to come out (Matt Knowles has been excellent) and I'm looking forward to hearing all about it and wishing I was there. Someone asked me while I was feeling grumpy on Facebook how I could afford not to be there and I can see the sentiment but it's the harsh reality of self employment (and building things at that) in that just affording to go is only half the battle but it's what you can afford to miss out on workwise that's far more important. Those who can telecommute have it easy but nothing gets made while I'm gone...

Anyway. Looking forward - the Bristol Mothies are in good spirits despite not having been on the lake since September (July in my case!), and we all met up a couple of weeks back in Bath for drinks to catchup. It's been all change though, with Tom Offer picking up a Mach2, Simon Hindley sellling his Prowler to make way for the Turtle and me working on the 2011 boat and foils... Names and silly colour schemes on a postcard!

The winter silly season is kicking off with the Grafham GP this Sunday (sorry, too far for me for one day!) and the Bloody Mary the following Saturday which usually attracts a good bunch of Moths and I'm hoping for +figure temperatures at least...

Heres to 2011. May my blog posts be shorter and more interesting.

Bristol Moth ice skating squadron

2010-12-07T20:30:00.000Z

The recent cold spell, combined with the lack of water means the lake has now frozen over! What little sailing they were trying to run at BCYC has been canned for this weekend. Fingers cross it lets up enough to thaw out and that Bristol Water start filling up again.

Thankfully there has been no wind lately so I coulnd't have been sailing elsewhere! Aus is looking more and more sensible by the minute...

Bristol Moth tea drinking squadron

2010-12-02T19:54:00.002Z

Still no water. Rumour has it it's up a bit over the last few weeks and I'm hoping we'll be sailing again within a week...

Fingers crossed. I'm starting to forget what my boat looks like!

Solid Sail Society

2010-11-18T09:35:00.000Z

I'm still not a fully paid up member of this exclusive club. I've been thinking about it for a while but it is not that straightforward. Building a wing itself seems pretty easy but the rule interpretations around it and the fact that the measurers themselves can't agree on even the basics without resorting to throwing one design insults means I'm just not ready to jump yet.
The recently published rule interpretations surrounding the adoption of wings lends more to my feeling that it's a square peg, round hole argument. The rules as they stand obviously aren't worded or built to cope with wings which has left the whole thing open for some pretty wild assumptions and it's going to be interesting to see what appears in Belmont and how it goes down with those attending.

As it stands, regardless of whether the mast is a mast and the bit on the back is a sail the only reason the whole system works is because it behaves as two sails and that simple fact puts me on the side that they probably shouldn't be allowed at all!

There are those who say that we are a development class and we should allow it but the flaw in that argument is that we have banned multihulls, sailboards and have limits on things for very good reasons. Whether a wing rig is something the class wants remains to be seen but I am very hopeful that decisions aren't made in Belmont without consulting the rest of us. Those that can afford to get there in the first place have a very different perspective on things...

Rant over - I'm off to Hayling to help out with the class coaching this weekend. The reservoir is filling back up and will hopefully be mothable in a couple of weeks time. in the mean time I've made another toy that only needs 8 inches of water to go sailing!

Tide Ride shenanigins

2010-10-13T22:08:00.000+01:00

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...

I'm over here with the wing!

2010-10-06T08:31:00.000+01:00

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.

Port Talbot pics

2010-10-05T08:13:00.000+01:00

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

Bristol Moth Port Talbot invasion

2010-10-04T18:04:00.000+01:00

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!!!

Bristol Moth Foiltown invasion

2010-09-28T16:59:00.000+01:00

Theres been very little in the way of sailing at Axebridge since July now. Bristol water have a problem with one of their other reservoirs and have been using up all our lake! This looks set to continue for the next 4 weeks or so leaving us with very little else to do but go travelling when we can.

Last Sunday had us canning a planned trip to Port Talbot to sail with DJ due to a poor forecast but instead decamping to Weymouth. Foiltown did not disappoint giving us blue skies and 15 ish knots. Joining Foiltown resident Alex Adams were myself, Martin, Darren and Simon and we all got on the water around lunchtime for a good three hour session.

Martin was running a shiny new '10 North letting me play with his old X8 sail as I'd lent my Hyde to Tom Offer for a week in Rock (Tom still hasn't got his replacement sail after the Choppy incident in Switzerland). It was good to get on the water after only one sail myself since Silvaplana and while I struggled to get under the boom with the X8 sail up the boat felt really good. We did a load of windward/leeward, dodging the zone squaddies and generally having a very nice time!

Tom meanwhile has been living it up in Rock with Ninja Tuna, apparently getting out most evenings and playing around with his setups. Based on his progress this year I expect him to give me a good spanking next time we meet on the water!

We're reconvening at Port Talbot with DJ this Sunday if the wind gods play nice. Should be good to get out and play with some new toys I have on the boat and try to remind myself how to tack and gibe!

TIDE RIDE SOON!!!

Silvaplana

2010-09-06T13:44:00.000+01:00

I've now had a couple of weeks to mull over the trip to Switzerland and I was hoping hindsight might make it feel a bit rosier but unfortunately I still hate the place!

The sailing itself was actually not too bad and although I struggled to figure the place out it was a nice bit of water to go for a plod around. Unfortunately that was marred by too many boats in too small a space, combined with some lunatic course ideas. The Swiss interpretation of the grand-prix finishing system left much to be desired with many people not getting proper finishes or positions. The split gate at the bottom was too close together and one single Moth on its side in the middle pretty much closed the thing out which, led to quite a few wipeouts and one very scary incident that resulted in one of the first protests I can remember at a Moth event - a Rule 69 no less. It also shouldn't take 8 marks to set a windward/leeward!

The event looked great to pretty much everyone that wasn't there and they did an excellent job in getting the publicity out and to a high standard. I believe the event suffered from a lack of attention elsewhere. Where were the socials? One trip up a mountain for an overpriced school dinner barely qualifies and the event tent was pretty much wholely wasted serving overpriced bowls of pasta and little else. Bearing in mind there was little else to do within a 10 mile radius it should have been the hub of the whole thing...

The money. I knew this place was going to be expensive but we were stung for absolutely everything. 5chf for a jug of tap water, 5 chf to have your pizza cut so you can share it, £50 to have a boat measured, £30 to have a sail measured, road tax on your car, road tax on your trailer, £20+ for a pizza? Seriously? Steak was out of the question, much to Rod's disappointment!

I came away from the whole thing feeling shortchanged (figuratively and literally). I started the week well but made a poor equipment call and lost a race (went to change sails only to have the previously slow race committee turn us around very quickly). I lost another 2 races following a monster wipeout where I damaged the gantry attachment. This left me counting a DNS in my final score, which put me in the low teens rather than top dozen. I also had a pretty successful mental meltdown on the final day despite having tons of pace and put in two shockers, making mistakes left and right, and wasn't helped by being put in on the start by Rob Gough - one of the few times I was actually anywhere near the line!

I've obviously got a lot to work on, but the boat doesn't seem to be one of them. I can't get off a start line to save my life (I haven't sailed in a fleet that big since the early 90s!), my boat handling is all over the place and tactics non-existent. What was good was that when I was near the front I could stay there, providing I didn't do anything stupid!

In the rest of camp Ninja, Jason Belben finished in 10th and definitely showed pace around the course. Ben Paton proved himself to be one to watch in the future, almost breaking into the top ten on the last day after only 4 months in the boat. He rides high and fast and isn't afraid to take risks. The boy is quick!

I'm pretty confident that the best sailors won in Switzerland, rather than the best boats, and Team Ninja are going to step up next season - next stop Travemunde!

Silvaplana pictures

2010-08-24T20:47:00.000+01:00

Action man Paton - one to watch I think...

Brief appearance of the Ellway mk2

Special Agent Barton - weeks most improved

Mr Pybus in Lola

Turtle in action

Doug proud of his latest sponsor

A rare smile on my face!

4 Ninjas in the icy water

Phil's branding is a bit subtle...

Whereas James' will sell many tractors...

Martin peaked too soon! Fastest BR on the lake though...

Katherine sporting the mini rig

Where do you spend your time?

2010-08-05T18:39:00.000+01:00

Si's blog post about the May/Beer wing (kudos to Adam and Kev) has got me thinking. How do you decide where to focus your time on a campaign? Those of us without coaches or squaddie experience tend to have more of a point and shoot focus on sailing. Get in boat, go race.

But a Moth is more of a challenge than that. Do you focus on design and hope to get the leap on people with pure boatspeed. This is a tricky one as you have to be happy that you know the state of the art and know you can do better. I suspect as more and more people become adept at handling Moths that more focus will come onto this but the gains will be smaller and smaller.

Do you focus on handling - being able to nail one more tack and gibe than the next man has got to help

Tactics?

Who knows. I know I spend most of mine in the workshop working on other things!

Anyway, Martin and myself braved the weedy lake that is currently Cheddar for a quick sail yesterday. I was out for a blast checking new foil setups (vastly improved on the Nationals!) and testing out my new standard Hyde which I am very pleased with. Martin has a trial Skinny Ninja rudder on the back of his Bladerider which appears to be doing the business. Will be interesting to see how he gets on with it.

Training at Stokes Bay this weekend before the long drive out to Switzerland. Should be getting out there on Monday evening and hoping for a nice few days of mountain biking, bimbling and the occasional sail with Martin and Rodders. Anyone else out there early?

Weymouth Road trip

2010-07-31T22:17:00.000+01:00

Tom Offer and myself packed up the boats early this morning for a quick trip down to Foiltown (Not sure why we still call it that - Nostalgia maybe?) to get some weed free sailing in.

Turned out to be a cracking day for it and joining Me and Tom were Doug Pybus, Alex Adams and Helen Rollinson and later on in the day Adam May and Katherine Knight were spotted out as well although they launched from the Academy while we were all hiding on the beach at Castle Cove. The wind gods treated us well with a 15+ knot Westerly giving us all a chance to stretch out sea legs and blow the cobwebs away.
Alex also obliged with a bit of a measuring session as I've got my new Hyde, plus the Ellway sail to get sorted so I'm not panicking and running around Silvaplana. Speaking of which - 8 days till loadup!

Really looking forward to it. 80 boats... I think this is probably this years real world championships - a sign if any that 2 worlds within 8 months of each other were too many and hopefully a mistake the class wont make again.

Minor Bristol Mothing

2010-07-30T08:12:00.000+01:00

Not much has been going on since the Nationals. Tom and Alan have been off with their boats to Rock and Falmouth respectively to get in some sneaky practice away from my watchful gaze!

I got out for my first post Nationals sail on Wednesday with Tom only to be greeted by 20-25 knots and piles off weed lying around the lake making it less pleasant than needed. We've both decided to scarper off down to Foiltown on Saturday to try and get some real sailing in - time is running out before hitting the road to Silvaplana and I feel rusty!

On the tinkering front I've been busy butchering cams with the aim of trying to fit an extra one in the head of the sail to alleviate a bit of a crease that has appeared which has really smoothed out the head of the sail and given a much more progressive camber up the sail as it seemed to be flattening out too early in the top. I haven't yet decided whether to use the new Ellway sail at the euro's but it's currently looking good. I've just taken delivery of one of the new standard Hydes so I have a backup...

Nationals lessons

2010-07-20T09:23:00.000+01:00

Well, I've had a week to sit and ponder on my shortcomings at the Nationals and I think I have figured out what the lesson was. If you are going to take spares, you should be prepared and pretty happy with what you could possibly end up sailing with!

So my mast inexplicably fell down on day one right near the end of race one, leaving me out of race two. I headed back in and started trying to get my head around what I had and what I could make work.
My new mainsail was working better on the stiffer mast I was running and wasn't happy to go back to a bendy mast. I went hunting for a sail that might suit it and 2 boats down the dinghy park found Doug Pybus with a lovely MSL10 that he was prepared to lend.
So on to day two. After some rushing around with ropes and some overnight new shrouds at great expense I rigged up in the morning happy that I had something I could work with - until I tried to launch - first the bottom cam blew seconds after putting the boat into the harbour. Second attempt saw me two tacks in before the whole lot went at once. Third attempt, same deal. Gave up - not something I'm used to having to put up with.
I went back and figured my event was over now anyway as I was now counting DNS's so started rigging up the new Ellway sail as I just wanted to go sailing at this point. After a false start where the cams fell off (highly unusual on a Hyde, mostly to do with the big hole caused by the broken mast!) I finally made it out of the harbour and went to join in the final race of the day. Had pretty good downwind pace but was really struggling for height upwind. Ended up calling it a day after two laps in 5th as my prodder had come unattached and was making some nasty noises (didn't have a spare of that!).

Day three - Found Mike Lennon had a spare 2b (last years sail) which he would lend me and after duck taping an extra number on finally got on the water to see what this Turtle could do. 4th after 2 swims to sort gantry, a 6th after an appalling start and another swim to sort ride height adjuster and 12th after fouling Giovanni on the start line then fluffing my turns leaving me a good half a beat behind and a lot to catch up on. Not too shabby really although a bit rusty and getting myself into situations I would normally spot.

The final day saw a light 6-10 knot breeze and some careful sailing was required. I had a poor first beat but came to the top mark near the lead bunch and clawed my way up to third by the bottom gate. Managed to pull back 200 yards on Si and Arnaud up the next beat and stick with them for a round and just pipping Arnaud down the run when he fluffed his gibe.
The final race of the event had Arnaud and myself battling for the first lap or so before Mike Lennon pulled a flyer and rounded the top mark a couple of hundred yards ahead. I had managed to shake Arnaud in the marginal stuff on the beat and set about reeling Mike back in. Turned out to be not enough racecourse in the end and I finished just behind him.

So plenty of promise in there somewhere. I turned out to be fitter than I thought, faster than I'd hoped while being rustier than I'd expected! New foils felt good, rig was interesting and need more time with it. Team Ninja didn't fare too badly either. Jason Belben was always thereabouts, winning one of the races, Ben Paton, Tom Offer and Pete Barton all got into the top 20 despite sailing Moths for about three months and it was nice to see so many bright coloured boats there. DJ Edwards also managed 8th in his Ninja powered Bladerider!

The event itself was great and the dinghy park had the same camaraderie I've come to expect from Moth events and I'm glad the class continues to be friendly with all the fresh faces coming in.

Torbay Photos

2010-07-11T21:01:00.000+01:00

Emma took a load of photos while out on Terry's gin boat on Friday which I've uploaded to my FlickR page. The originals are massive, so if you want any of them to print out yourself for posterity please get in touch (£5 a time?).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aardvarkissues/

Proper report to follow, including the story of how I only managed 20th and only finished 5 races! Rockin'...

Nationals day one

2010-07-09T08:11:00.001+01:00

Well my defence of the nationals got off to a pretty appaling start.
I was finding my upwind speed was pretty much on par with everyone but I had enough depth downwind to more than make up for my tactical errors on the beats. After clawing myself into contention with the top bunch, trading places with Ricky Tagg and Jason Belben my mast folded up going up the last beat leaving me dissasembling and cutting ropes in the water.
Thankfully I have spares and have now borrowed an MSL10 from Doug Pybus. Spent most of yesterday evening reroping and sorting shrouds...

What fun!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Forming an opinion

2010-07-08T08:11:00.000+01:00

Well the nationals is finally upon us for another year and with the lack of any form guides on the web I'm sitting in my hotel writing one before heading down to the club!

Top gun has to be Simon Payne. He's world number one for a reason and while he's not had much time on the water that has never stopped him before.

Jason Belben is my next pick. He sails a lot and has had the better of Payne in several nationals - more likely to shine given a lighter regatta.

Mike Lennon has been sailing hard all year and has seems to be on top of his sail development with some cracking looking new rags. Very fast but too many toys in his boat for my liking...

I think Jason Russell is going to surprise a lot of people this year. He's fit and sails hard and has obviously been training hard at HISC.

I tipped DJ Edwards last year and the boyo let me down in the epic saundersfoot conditions. I still think he could be up there as he is a smart sailor with probably on of the best sorted bladeriders going. Perhaps the shifty Torbay breeze will play to his strengths?

As usual, I'm not tipping myself. I've barely sailed, have a ridiculous rig and some experimental sails. Maybe it will all come together... Just maybe!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Weekend sailing

2010-07-05T08:31:00.000+01:00

We very nearly had all 7 of us out on Saturday but a bit of boatwork got in the way. I was still trying to get all my lines in order/trimmed to length and in amongst that and tea drinking/chatting with the various Bristol Moth crew whom I'd not seen most of in a very long time it my boatwork took far longer than it ever should.
So, on Saturday Simon, Leo, Martin and Darren all got out on the water and all showing good signs of improvement. Darren's Prowler is now rebehaving after diagnosing a control system lockup which was stopping his flap going down more than halfway. Simon was back out after a long period off the water due to work commitments and while his boat is currently for sale I think he's reconsidering it. Martin was back out practicing with his KA sail as the North has gone back to be repaired again. Leo however was smoking around the lake - recording a 25 knots top speed in his 5 year old boat! He's also now starting to nail his gibes as the old girl gets more and more tuned up.

Sunday saw Tom, Martin and myself joined out on the water by DJ from Port Talbot. We got out for about three hours in a gusty southerly topping out at around 18 knots. We did our own windward leeward course and all waited around the bottom before restarting and going around again. It was awesome to be back on the water and the Turtle is showing good early promise with a new personal best for me of 24.1 knots. Everything feels stiff and is working as it should and just have to remind myself quite how all this sailing lark works.

Not sure if I'll fit any more sailing in between now and the start of the Nationals on Thursday. Needless to say I'm really looking forward to it and hope to see the biggest Moth nationals fleet for a long time.

Flying Turtle

2010-07-02T08:12:00.000+01:00

Wednesday saw Ninja Turtle take to the water/skies. My box of goodies from Hyde arrived just in time for me to roll out to Cheddar and get rigged.
Tom Offer was out there in my old boat getting some time in before the Nationals next week and is looking pretty tidy after having been firmly bitten by the bug.

Suffice to say, everything on the new boat went very nicely. The mk2 version of Kevin's mainsail design looks really good (props to Hyde) and I've got a few days of practice and fiddling to try and get the most out of the new foils and controls.
Terry (spar making Aardvark) has done me a cool 2 piece HM mast with interchangeable top sections so in theory I can gear up or down depending on the breeze but will have to see how they look rigged up first before getting too carried away!

All in all, very pleased with things. Unfortunately I just don't think I'm going to be fit enough to last a full regatta...

All work and no play

2010-06-28T22:08:00.000+01:00

Makes Mikey a dull boy... I'm pretty sure Emma has something like that in mind at the moment anyway. Just got back from a holiday in Greece and I'm straight back into the workshop (on a Sunday) trying to get my latest boat together. Ninja Turtle is taking shape and should be on the water by Wednesday (deliveries of sails and stuff better get here!)...

I suspect my late launching and the fact that I've been sailing less than 10 times in 6 months coupled with a load of new toys on the new boat probably means the possibility of conceding my Nationals title to a new champion. The difference between now and 12 months ago is that there are now other Ninja owners who have the potential to carry on in my stead!

I'm feeling a form guide coming on...

Final Sail

2010-05-28T08:14:00.000+01:00

Been a bit busy lately! Had a few laps of the Prodrive test track in a Lamborghini Gallardo (wedding present c/o Mrs Cooke) last weekend. Also been working all hours getting a new Cherub mould done along with working through the list of Ninja orders - it's great to be so busy but just need to keep on top of things!

Had my final brief sail in Ninja Tuna on Wednesday. Tom was down to go through rigging and launching and the breeze filled in just enough to give me a 20 minute blast and time for him to get some foiling runs in. I'm pretty sure that will be my last sail till the week before the Nationals!
Great prep really - fingers crossed that all my efforts on the new boat show some reward... Luckily my boat handling wasn't too rusty and as long as I keep my fitness up between now and then (windsurfing in greece for a week should help!) I'm sure I will be OK.

I will apologise in advance to those who've gone to the effort of putting on the Poole and Scottish opens as I would normally have been at both and hate to be unsupportive of what circuit has been put on. Got to look at the bigger picture at the moment for once and spending time building rather than sailing has to be done...

Ninja Tuna Sold!

2010-05-09T20:29:00.003+01:00

Edit - SOLD!

Tom Offer, a Musto Skiff sailor from Chew Valley has bought her and will hopefully be joining the Bristol Moth Squadron...

Bearing in mind how little sailing I'm doing at the moment and the fact that I'm building a new boat for the Europeans I've decided to put Ninja Tuna up for sale now...

GBR3618, Ninja Tuna
Built oct 2009, 31KG all up
Harken hardware
2010 Hyde sail, used once
HM Skinny Aardvark mast (353 equivalent) and boom
High modulus rear wing bars (very stiff boat)
Aero profiled compression bars
Ride height bias adjuster
Continuous control lines
Launching trolley
Foil bags
Top cover

Tuned up open meeting winner, ready to win. Can be repainted for £250 if you dont like pink...

£8000 mike '@' aardvarkracing.co.uk

Team Ninja rule the inlands!

2010-05-09T20:20:00.000+01:00

Well done to Top Ninja Jason Belben for winning the inlands this weekend beating Adam May and Ricky Tagg in their M2's along with Ninja Olivier Vidal in 4th. I couldn't make the event this year for various reasons but it was good to see just over 20 boats (6 Ninjas!) made the effort despite a miserable forecast.

I've barely been doing any sailing lately and am unlikely to be doing much for the next month or so as I've got quite a few projects on the go at the moment. Concentrating on the technical bits for now and hopefully leaving enough time to get up to speed - just have to rely on mountain biking to keep my fitness up!

Will keep posting here, so long as the rest of the Bristol crew keep me updated!

Sunday Sailing

2010-04-26T08:57:00.000+01:00

We had 4 boats out at the club yesterday enjoying a patchy 4-10 knot breeze.

Darren was out in his Prowler for the second time and while the lighter patches were hard going he's getting the boat going and will be flying fine in no time while Leo was out in the Pimp Ninja making the most of some new setup mods and is flying much earlier and more consistently.

Alan was going great in his Yellow boat and has made some massive improvements in his tacking and is very regularly foiling out the other side. Gibing is still entertaining however! Alan did the second and third races and was pulling out a good lead in the last one when the breeze was at it's most consistent.

I managed the first and second races. The first was heavy on lowriding with a couple of bursts of foiling meaning I just managed to beat the ent's on the water while the second saw a bit more foiling action but managed to keep in the puffs and shifts to keep up with the lead boat (300) while lowriding. I finished a good lap up in the end but don't think it will have been enough!

The crazy sail has some new battens in now, which seems to have fixed a couple of issues, but made another one worse! The sail doesn't gibe itself and you now have to hit it really hard to get the battens across in light airs meaning a mid-gibe-whack technique is called for. It is now flying closer to its design shape and we've got a pretty good idea where to go with the MK2 though however. It's been quite an interesting experience trying to get Kevin's theory to merge with the practical reality of sailmaking. It's great that we have Mike Lennon and the Hyde team on board to try and coax the ideas into reality...

While the breeze hasn't really been playing ball lately I've been getting out and doing some Mountain Biking with Emma. We've got a great playground around here in the mendips and I feel it's doing some good to my fitness - at least this year I might be able to persuade myself into a reasonable shape before the end of the season. Maybe one year I might be able to do that and get some practice in too!

Bristol Moth open

2010-04-13T20:08:00.000+01:00

Photos c/o Angela Cooke

The first International Moth open of 2010 took place on Saturday at Bristol Corinthian yacht club. With a dire forecast for no wind and a few boats still astray after the recent Worlds in Dubai, 10 of the most persistent Mothies took to the skies in a very patchy marginal foiling breeze including three attending their very first Moth event.

Race one took part in the most constant breeze of the day and started off with a tussel between Martin Fear and Chris Bishop in their Bladeriders and Mike Cooke in his Ninja with current national champion Cooke coming out on top making the most of the lighter patches to pull away.

Race two was a brief one lapper as the breeze was veering wildly. Cooke managed to throw away a hundred yard lead on the run watching Bishop sail around the edge of the lake in breeze and foil through the line. Robin Wood took third after a close battle with Gareth Davies.

The final race of the day saw a patchy couple of laps as the last of the breeze faded. Cooke drifted across the line to take the win, closely followed by Alan Watson in his Ninja with Bishop in third.

Overall results:

1st, 3618, Mike Cooke, Ninja, BCYC
2nd, 3511, Chris Bishop, Bladerider, BCYC
3rd, TBA, Alan Watson, Ninja, BCYC
4th, 3330, Robin Wood, Bladerider, British Steel
5th, 3323, Martin Fear, Bladerider, BCYC
6th, 3253, Gareth Davies, Bladerider, Stone SC
7th, 4085, Simon Hindley, Prowler, BCYC
8th, 3371, Leo Carswell, Axiom v1, BCYC
9th, TBA, Thomas Lambert, Ninja, Wilsonian SC
10th, 3495, Jon Peats, Bladerider, Queen Mary

Bristol open this weekend

2010-04-05T18:32:00.000+01:00

The first open of the season is this coming weekend at Bristol Corinthian YC. The event is set to be a 3 race series run on the Saturday 10th April starting at 11.30.
Now, I had planned on running a spectator friendly slalom event on the Sunday fitting around the club racing so as not to get in the way but it hasn't panned out particularly well. If anyone would like to stick around and sail on the Sunday in the club racing and do some tuning they will be most welcome and I will find us somewhere to go for grub on the Saturday night. This is a bit frustrating for me as we did something very similar two years ago with great feedback from those at the club about how good it was to watch.
The postcode for finding the club is BS26 2DL. It is pretty well signposted once you get near.
For accommodation, Axebridge is the closest village and Cheddar another good option.

Cheers, hope to see you all there.

Mike Cooke
GBR3618 Ninja Tuna

Queen Mary Coaching Weekend

2010-03-30T09:46:00.000+01:00

We had a unprecedented turnout of 16 boats at QMSC over the weekend with plenty of new faces turning out to polish their skills and several people stepping foot in Moths for the first time!

While I will admit that my organisation left a little to be desired, I'm pretty sure everyone left the weekend with some new tricks to ponder over. We have a ton load of footage of people which I am currently sifting through at the moment and getting up onto Youtube. While it won't win any awards for cinematography it does at least allow people to go back over it and see what they were doing.

So thanks to Alex Adams and Doug Pybus for helping out on the water with Phillipe and Helen covering the video on Saturday. James Roche and Ben Sutcliffe helped out with on the water footage on Sunday and some yelling of times for our mini racing sessions...

I had a great weekend and I hope everyone else did too! Heres the first video, I'm afraid it's me as it was the easiest one to pick out of the clips with that sail...

Sunday sailing

2010-03-17T21:01:00.001Z

While another world championships was being wrapped up (well done Si), Leo and myself were out enjoying the sunshine and the first double figure (air, but certainly not water!) temperatures of the year with a bit of a sail down at Axebridge.

I did the first race of the day in the blustery 15-20knots which was all over the place at times - it's very difficult trying to test out gear when the wind is like this as the combination of vicious gusts and big shifts mean you can't settle down and get a handle on things. I'm still pretty happy with how the crazy sail is behaving and have a couple of things in mind to improve a couple of its foibles. I'm very keen to sail with it against some fast boats and see how it stacks up as I have effectively been sailing in isolation all winter....

Leo had a wild ride and has posted his first 20 club speed, jumping on the ladder at 21.7 knots! I got very excited by my 25.9 before I spotted the units were in mph - I wondered why my takeoff speeds were a bit high...
Leo wasn't the only new 20+knotter over the weekend, with Jo Evans pushing her Ninja into the 20 knot club down at Stokes Bay which is quite an achievement given the Solent chop!

More sailing this sunday, hopefully team Wales will be joining us, along with a new Mothy in the shape of Darren Mcnamara who was bought Alan's Prowler.

Get pumped

2010-03-10T09:38:00.000Z

Sitting on the sidelines yet again watching another worlds go by is leaving me frustrated. I'm not much of a hindsight person tending to just get on with things and take it on board but this past week has been one of regret! Having spent the winter sailing in light airs alone Dubai looks like it would have been a great Ninja venue. I kinda knew this already but couldn't get excited enough by the venue to get my act together.

The pumping thing has come to the fore again, mostly thanks to Cleans commentary. I feel that if we de-restrict pumping in order to get foiling we are going to have another windsurfing style problem where suddenly you have a fleet of gulls flapping their wings to get started rather than using the finesse that rules currently. The raceboards had a situation when pumping was allowed and suddenly the fitness levels had to increase massively to cope with the increased workload and I feel that will be bad for the class - putting top level competition out of the reach of a 9-5er and favouring those who can go to the gym/sailing all the time.
Being allowed to pump won't mean the heavier guys get more of a level playing field, as the lighter guys will just foil earlier anwyay.
I may be biased as I'm currently not too bad at it, but I find marginal conditions incredibly testing and rewarding - sure you get the frustration as guys foil past you but the challenge of getting going, looking well up the course keeping in the breeze and picking your spot to gybe involves just as much finesse and technique as sheeting on and pelting downhill at 25 knots. As always, sailing is a sport of averages, every dog has his day and those that deal best with whats thrown at them tend to come out on top and if you spend your whole time practicing in 10+ knots you should wholely expect to get your ass handed to you in 5.

Anyway, well done to Amac, a triumph (so far) of brains over brawn. Also well done to Mike Lennon who regularly gets overlooked and is right up there, thanks to a winter of hard work (Aardvark spars help obviously!).

Rant over. Normal service to be resumed...

Sunday sailing

2010-02-28T18:22:00.002Z

Got out for a brief sail today and was joined by Martin and Robin Wood who was over from Wales for a bit of company. There wasn't much wind but I managed the first race pretty well, despite lowriding for most of the first lap. The wind started dying off over lunch so we all headed in. Martin however decided not to de-rig and went back out an hour later in a nice 10-15 knot breeze - Typical!
Martin has a new North V8 and CST mast to mess around with which are a huge leap on from the X8 rig he's been using up till now. He's looking pretty tidy now and is close to nailing some foiling tacks but still has a huge ventilation problem in the cold water. Robin has a new Ninja rudder fitted to the back of his X8 which seems to have cured it - He's now foiling much higher with no sign of the dreaded vent and the smaller rudder T doesn't seem to have affected his take off which was my main concern with the experiment. Will be interesting to see how he gets on with it in a bit more breeze.

Ninja Tuna is now back home for a bit of a tidy up before going to the dinghy show next weekend so no sailing for me then - come by the Moth stand and say hi as I will be there both days...

PS - Good luck to everyone out in Dubai - I shall be watching enviously yet again and if anyone suggests a worlds within 6 months of the next one at the AGM, please shoot them.

Rumour Mill Pt 2

2010-02-24T19:01:00.003Z

So the latest rumour flying around is that Rob Greenhalgh has picked up a Mach 2 and has yet another AC designer working on foil designs and shiny ally moulds... Make of that what you will - interesting to see people coming in and throwing money around. I'm sure fresh minds looking at the boats will produce some new ideas and will be good to see what they come up with...

Sunday sailing

2010-02-15T21:58:00.002Z

We had 4 Moths on the water on Sunday at Cheddar enjoying some sunshine and a very flakey north westerly with just enough to foil in the gusts.

I was out in Ninja Tuna, helping Tom Lambert launch his new Ninja "Very Orange". Tom will be sailing up at Draycote where there is a little bit of a fleet beginning to form. Leo was out in the Pimp Ninja, having done some hacksaw mods to the rudder which appear to have improved the flying characteristics somewhat! Martin was also out in his Bladerider practising some manuevers.

To be honest, there's not really much to blog about, but it was nice to get out and about with some fellow Mothies! Alan's new Ninja is nearly done and should be hitting the water in just over a week and with the dinghy show on the horizon it is starting to feel like the season is coming...

Steve Nicholson video

2010-02-13T16:41:00.000Z

Some video from the Steve Nicholson race by Shockwave40

The Tiger that wasn't

2010-02-09T08:11:00.002Z

This weekend saw an small fleet of Moths up at the Tiger Trophy at Rutland. Unfortunately the weather forecast was dire which meant that only myself, James Phare and newcomer Gareth Davies made the racing.

Saturday's racing got off to a slow start with the racing delayed while waiting for the mist to clear (which it didn't!). It was pretty marginal allowing foiling at times and keeping to the handicap of 700 was going to be damn near impossible. I had a pretty rotten start with a 800 tacking onto port at the pin end and parking in front of me leading to a capsize avoiding him. I managed to recover foiling downwind and up a bit of the beats and finished close to the leading boats but needing a lot of time on them to do any good. Similar story in the second race with lots of lowriding but some fun downhill rides dodging the masses of boats all parked on the run.

Unfortunately for me, for the second weekend on the trot the race team didn't seem to count all my laps, placing me behind Gareth overall, despite nearly lapping him in both. James had a disagreement with the black flag and was dsq'd from the second one!
With even less wind on the Sunday for the pursuit race we all decided to call it a day and get packed up. Eventual winner was a Merlin - hardly surprising given the top 20 was made up almost entirely of Merlins and Phantoms...

Hardly a classic weekend for the Moths but was still good to raise the profile a bit with all the youth squad teams who seem to inhabit Rutland...

Full results are HERE and some photos have been posted here

The rumour mill

2010-02-03T09:10:00.003Z

So there is finally a bit of a hint about this mystery new builder in the UK mentioned in a previous Mothcast.
Word is that Simon Maguire (builder of the M4 foiler from a few years back) has a Moth design on the go. Rumours of a tie in with Ovington abound and I wouldn't be surprised with at least one former Mothie working there. They are aiming to have a boat together in March apparently so would reckon on seeing one at the London Dinghy show.

It will be interesting to see what isolated development can bring to the table and whether they manage to persuade any top jockeys into a boat. If the last year has taught me anything, you can have the best boat in the world but it doesn't mean anything unless you get the results to prove it....

The other entertaining rumour heard at the weekend was that the new small rudder Amac was using in Australia came about after a small collision with a rock! No idea if there is much truth in that but stranger things have happened!

Steve Nicholson weekend

2010-01-31T19:27:00.003Z

* EDIT* Added link to Chunkypics website here...

6 Moths and one 600FF made up the foiler fleet at the Steve Nicholson race this weekend and were greeted by bright sunshine and a marginal 6-10 knots.

Race one was a battle to find the holes and avoid them as the gains and losses were huge. 4 boats all arrived at the windward mark at the same time and the battle was on to get foiling and keep there down the run. I used my Ninjapowers to pop up and make my way out right hoping to stay in the breeze which worked until near the bottom where I parked up with Geoff Carveth - leaving Mr Garyman and Alex Adams to sneak through. I pulled through by the leeward mark and then managed to sneak a bit of a lead which I kept to the finish with Alex in second and Gary third with the fleet quite spread out.
The second race was in a bit more breeze but still the occasional hole to find yourself in. I finally got my cobwebs blown away and figured out some tactics (if you want to tack, it helps to do it in breeze rather than a hole!) and stretched out to pull out a half lap lead after 4 laps with Alex again in second and Gary in third.

Overall results were:

1st Mike Cooke
2nd Alex Adams
3rd Gary Ireson
4th Martin Fear
5th James Phare
6th Geoff Carveth
7th George Hand (600)

George has traded in his 600 for Gary's Prowler and will be a welcome addition to the Moth fleet in the midlands which is starting to see a bit of growth with a couple of boats expected at Draycote.

We all hung around for a bit drinking tea and trying to get some feeling back in our feet (the lake was starting to freeze as we left!) before heading into Northampton for a curry and a few drinks followed by crashing out at Gary's.
Sunday dawned with plans for a bit of a coaching/video session but unfortunately the wind gods weren't playing that game so we resorted to some measuring and bimbling and some spreadsheet related nonsese.

I was pretty pleased to be honest, as I think I've sailed less than 10 times since the UK nationals and was expecting to be a bit ropey! I'm still foiling nice and early as is Alex in his NinjaMistress and it will be interesting to see how he gets on out in Dubai if it does turn out to be a light airs regatta that is expected...

Pics to follow hopefully!

Weight Weenie part 2

2010-01-24T19:21:00.002Z

While waiting for the wind to fill in today Leo and myself got a bit over enthused by the scales and went around weighing everything on all the boats we could find! Results were interesting, but the one thing we didn't have to hand was a Mach 2 or Assassin. I shall wave my scales at the next one I see... All up weights include the sail, but I have included them seperately as they varied quite a bit.

My Ninja
All up 30.5KG
Sail (Hyde crazymain) 3.2 KG

Leo's Axiom 1
All up 38.9KG
Hyde 2008 sail 3.8KG

Martins Bladerider X8
All up 35.8KG
Sail (KA X8) 4.5

Chris' Bladerider RX
All up 44.4KG
Sail (KA X8) 4.5

Simons Prowler 3
All up 36.9KG
Sail (KA MSL10) 4.5KG

The wind did fill in at lunch and we got a race in, although I missed the start due to a schoolboy rigging error (not sailed much since the Nationals...). Boat is going well and I'm looking forward to the Steve Nicholson race next saturday. Will be interesting to see how the new sail actually goes against some other Moths as I haven't lined up against anyone for ages.

Weight weenies

2010-01-21T21:16:00.003Z

Having signed up with Emma for a 100km charity bike ride later in the year I've been fiddling around with her mountain bike trying to figure out where I can shave a few grams.

It's pretty impressive how things add up and even small gains like 50g off each inner tube can all sum up to quite a big difference once you add in a bit of physics. It's easy to know where to focus on a bike, spinning weight is bad, all up weight is also bad, but not so much...
It's quite a lot like looking at Moths, except once a Moth is up to speed a bit of extra weight doesn't make a huge difference. It's a whole different ball game once you start looking at maneuvers though - every gram off helps, especially up top as it makes the boat so much easier to get through the gybes. This really came home for me sailing Emma's FBG at the Tide Ride - in a straight line I could pace a Bladerider offwind just through sheer guts and ride height, but carrying an extra 10 kilos couldn't land a gybe half the time (ok, I was rusty too...)! This soon adds up around the course...

Do I have a point? No, not really it's just a bit of food to feed the brain - on a Moth, start at the top and work down. I really need to get on and weigh the latest Ninja all up - everyone is always surprised when they pick one up...

Bloody crazy people

2010-01-10T16:14:00.003Z

Londons finest bunfight took place yesterday with a massively reduced turnout of 60 odd boats. Normally you can't fit in the dinghy park with the 300 others but the snow and ice put paid to the Bloody Mary's usual scale. The fact that the temperatures were barely above freezing and a bitterly cold northerly wind on top of that meant that most people thought sailing in the first place was a really bad idea - But somehow that didn't stop 7 intrepid/stupid (delete as you see fit) Moth sailors from attempting the silliest boat race in history. I think the fact that the Moths were lined up to start 74 minutes after the topper started (and two minutes after an 18 if there had been one!) at least meant the race would be shorter than for most...

2 and a half hours later and only one Moth was left standing in the shape of Geoff Carveth who came in 15th out of 30 finishers, beating home the two 600ff's of Sam Pascoe and Simon Hiscocks despite the fact that they had caught up with Geoff halfway around the first lap.

So, well done to these guys for giving it a shot - Geoff Carveth, Alex Adams, Doug Pybus, James Phare, Andrew Friend, Jon Peats and Ben Sutcliffe. Apparently making the biggest fleet in attendance. Also well done to moonlighting Mothies sneaking around in other classes - Pete Barton and Ben Paton sneaking in 4th in the GT60 Cherub, Sam Tozer crewing a 200 in 9th.

I was umming about going with a boat, but found out on Friday that BCYC is closed off at the moment due to the snow, leaving my boat firmly stuck out there. I kind-of missed not doing it, but seeing the guys launch soon made me think otherwise!

Steve Nicholson race at Pitsford is the next winter event on Saturday the 30th of January with a mini training event on the Sunday thanks to Gary Ireson and Tom Castle who have organised a rib for us.

New Year and the crazy mainsail

2010-01-03T16:21:00.003Z

Had a good sail on New Years day down at Axebridge with Mr Fear and Bishop. Unfortunately there wasn't really enough wind to shine with marginal foiling throughout. Martin and Chris had a good battle for the first couple of laps with Martin eventually pulling out and it took me most of the race to get in front of Martin after missing the start.
I was out for a quick test sail in Olivier Vidal's new Ninja before he picked it up the following day and this gave me a chance to test out my new main which went surprisingly well! Designer of all things boaty, Mr Kevin Ellway has been contemplating sails for a bit and has come up with a pretty radical looking thing which was expertly built and delivered by Hyde and looks top notch. Looking forward to getting some proper testing in with it over the winter events to see how i stacks up.
My campaign for Switzerland starts here - watch out Europe... ;-)

Happy new year everyone!

Going North

2009-12-14T09:08:00.003Z

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

2009-12-01T09:44:00.002Z

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...

Breeze on

2009-11-22T19:35:00.002Z

Saturday saw 5 of the Bristol mothies out on the water for what was supposed to be a mini coaching event but as the breeze was gusting over 25 knots at times there was a bit too much on to really get anything done.

Simon was back out on his Prowler after a set of tramps were rustled up courtesy of R and J Sails in Clevedon. Alans Prowler was dragged out of hiding by Guadaloupe Gavin as Alan was assisting the RS200 training. Martin and Chris were both out in their respective Bladeriders along with myself in Ninja Tuna after sending out Tom Offer from Chew Valley for a baptism of fire to see if Mothing was for him. Might not have been the wisest of moves as a few mining experiences were had!
We all generally blasted around for a bit before things got really silly in the afternoon when we called it a day and decamped to the pub.

Still nice to be out on the water and the lake has risen another half metre or so this last week so things are looking good for sailing from now on.

Finally - Water!

2009-11-15T16:53:00.002Z

While Saturday was just plain too windy to go sailing, Simon Hindley and myself made it down the club to do some boatwork and we were both surprised to find the lake has come up a metre in the last week. Pretty impressive on the part of Bristol Water as I'd struggle to put a number on how much water has been pumped in. This means it is now fully sailable - a fact which we put to good use on Sunday, both getting out for a good bit of playtime.

It's good to be back on the water and with a marginal breeze with some good puffs in double figures it was good practice too - remembering how to gybe and figuring out what needs doing to Ninja Tuna (not a lot thankfully!).
Simon had a nasty incident with his Prowler tramps, meaning his sail was cut short, but while he was out the boat was vastly improved after some setup work done on the Saturday.
Next Saturday we are doing a mini training event and hoping to get a couple of the South Wales Mothies over too, along with Martin who has just picked up a secondhand Bladerider (GBR3323) and is keen to get back on the water, and Chris who hasn't been able to sail his boat since he got it due to the lack of lake!

Let me know if you are interested in joining in...

The one equipment rule

2009-11-05T20:41:00.002Z

For anyone who has listened to the latest Mothcast I thought I'd chime in with my 2pence worth...

There is already a one equipment rule. It is an unwritten rule. Have one set and use it 100%. The finer points of skinny masts, V6, V8 or V whatever sails and smaller rudders are all chasing after tiny percentage gains and until you can sail with one set of everything to 90-100% how on earth are you to know if those things are doing anything for you?

The situation isn't broken, people aren't turning up with massive quivers of foils and sails and are unlikely to do so so why bother trying to come up with overcomplicated rules that will always be got around by anyone who wants to push it.

I've never had more than one sail to choose from, never a different mast or foils and I've no intention of starting a collection until I am the fastest I can be with what I have! That might involve going sailing which is proving a problem at the moment...

Champagne sailing on the English Riviera

2009-10-29T09:55:00.000Z

Report by Jonathan Peats

A combination of a high wind forecast and a late addition to the Moth calendar saw a smaller than usual turnout for the International Moth open at Royal Torbay Yacht Club on the 24th and 25th October. Not to be deterred by the forecast four travelling Moths from Queen Mary were joined by Mike Cooke who was keen to try out his new 2010 Ninja design and treated to some Champagne sailing over the weekend although someone had definitely shaken the bottle up.

Saturday’s start was delayed by an hour as the PRO waited for the conditions to moderate from the 29 knot gusts being recorded in the bay. Conditions eased slightly but with 25 knots still hitting the committee boat, the fleet launched. James Phare was an early casualty breaking his boom on the exit to the harbour, but the rest of the fleet made it safely to the start and the PRO started the racing promptly. The conditions however quickly took their toll and Doug Pybus retired after his mast came down. Mike Cooke was finding the new Ninja’s setup still needed some tweaking to cope with the extreme conditions and also decided to come back in.

This left Andrew Friend and Jonathan Peats battling the conditions as much as each other round the course. Andrew Friend took an early lead but after a number of capsizes by both boats it was Jonathan Peats who made it to the windward mark first. Further capsizes allowed Andrew Friend to take the lead by the leeward mark, and having battled round a single lap of the mile long course both boats were not too disappointed to find the PRO had decided that conditions had deteriorated too far and cancelled racing for the day.

Sunday greeted the fleet with near perfect foiling conditions of bright sunshine and a steady 18 knot breeze. Despite the clocks changing James Phare had an early start, driving halfway to Bristol and back to pick up a new boom, allowing all five boats to line up to launch. The first race saw Mike Cooke and Andrew Friend covering each other on the left of the course with Doug Pybus recovering from a poor start, heading inland which put him right back in contention. Mike Cooke and Andrew Friend both got knocked over by a big gust coming into the windward mark allowing Doug Pybus to round first and set off on the fast and exciting downwind leg. With the wind increasing significantly towards the bottom of the course conditions were back to being tricky and Mike Cooke with a much improved setup, overhauled Doug Pybus to take the lead by the leeward mark. Andrew Friend was still in touch in his Bladerider X8 and followed Mike Cooke closely up the next leg. With the wind gradually increasing all boats capsized a number of times and Andrew Friend managed to overhaul Mike Cooke on the next windward leg and then hold on to take the win.

Race 2 saw Doug Pybus retire early on with technical problems leaving Mike Cooke and Andrew Friend to have a close battle round the course with Jonathan Peats further back. Conditions worsened through the race and again it was the boat to capsize the least taking line honours with Andrew Friend just in front of Mike Cooke. Jonathan Peats followed about half a lap behind to finish third and record the fastest speed of the weekend with 25.0 knots recorded on the GPS in a big gust towards the bottom of the course.

With only three boats left and the wind still increasing, a decision to halt the racing was taken leaving Andrew Friend taking 1st place from Mike Cooke in 2nd, Jonathan Peats 3rd, Doug Pybus 4th. An unlucky James Phare was in 5th who had barely got out of the harbour before gear failure on both days.

Special thanks to Royal Torbay Yacht Club for putting on the open meeting at short notice and for the good race organisation in tricky conditions. Royal Torbay is a possible venue for the National Championships next year, and all who attended agreed it would be a fantastic event if it were held there.

Torquay pics

2009-10-27T13:32:00.002Z

I've had a couple of pictures through from Richard Meek from the Torquay mini open over the weekend. It looks quite sedate in the pictures but that was far from the case! Will have a proper report shortly...

Carbon badassery

2009-10-19T20:47:00.004+01:00

Ninja Tuna is now ready and raring to go. Tried to go launch her this weekend but discovered that you can walk across most of the lake at the moment as the water level is so low! Should be going down to Torquay for an unofficial open this weekend if the forecast looks OK...

Got some interesting sail development stuff going on at the moment with Mike Lennon and Kevin Ellway working on a prototype sail for me which I'm looking forward to getting my hands on. Building is in full swing at Aardvark HQ with a boat for Jason Belben half done and Olivier Vidal following soon after but after a long spell off the water I'm looking forward to actually going sailing myself!

Riding the Tide

2009-10-09T07:44:00.003+01:00

Hayling did the usual thing it does most octobers and blew it's nuts off. Leaving us all trying to cram in a load of races on the Sunday. The Moths had the biggest turnout at the event, which was great news although the Hayling fleet alone could have added 50% to the numbers if they had all gone sailing!

The breeze was blowing across the club, making things pretty shifty and there wasn't quite enough wind to keep foiling all the way meaning the fleet spread out quite a lot and shutting out most people from the 5 minute time window after the first place finisher.
Fat Bottomed Girl was doing me proud though, as once she was foiling she was putting many of the newer boats to shame! The setup and geometry was a bit of a best guess and the lack of early foiling could have been solved with a bit more a-o-a on the main foil - unfortunately I had no time for a test sail to figure such things out...

In most races I managed to sneak into the top 5 at the windward mark, but the runs were always my undoing as I seemed to luck out with lulls and fluffed gybes and at least one HISC rib driving in front of me while not looking... I was certainly in the top half of the fleet by the finish of most races. Unfortunately Hayling decided to run a final race at nearly 4 oclock in the afternoon leaving me with little time to pack up and get home so I decided to skip this part.

It was quite an interesting format, with a miniseries in the morning counting for half of your score and the final race counting for the other half. The slalon style gated course was actually quite entertaining and certainly put boat handling to the test.
Adam put in a good score in the miniseries but lost it in the final to Rod Harris who is continuing his fine form and showing everyone the Prowler still cuts it at the pointy end.

My new Ninja is about to have some paint thrown its way - will get some pictures up when she starts looking finished. I am really looking forward to getting back on the water for the winter and all the crazy handicap events England throws at us!

All quiet

2009-09-29T08:04:00.002+01:00

Not much going on here really so just a random collection of musings!

First off, well done to Bora who has just posted a GPS trace showing some 30 knot peak speeds. As someone who still hasn't gone over 25 I dread to think what hitting the water feels like at that speed.
Second off, well done to Martin Fear down at BCYC who has in my absense been going faster and faster, posting 26.9knots a couple of weeks ago which I think makes him the fastest Mothie in the UK. There hasn't been much wind lately so generally not a lot of sailing going on at the club and more bimbling getting done instead.
I finally got out to the club on Sunday to pick up Emmas Moth. I have spent the last day fitting the foils from my new unfinished boat to it in time for the Tide Ride down at Hayling Island this weekend. Should be pretty good fun and Emma has made a bet with me as to how far up the fleet I can get her Fat Bottomed Girl as she thinks Mothing has become a bit chequebook...
My new Ninja is rapidly taking shape in the workshop though. Nearly onto the painting and decorating stage. Safe to say the 2010 Ninja is looking leaner and meaner than ever and if the paint job I have lined up works will be something to behold!

Cheers for now, update again after the Tide Ride.

September sailing

2009-09-01T16:29:00.003+01:00

I'm boatless, but there are currently more mothies than ever down at BCYC! Chris Bishop has picked up a BL RX nice and cheap using all the spares they seemed to have lying around. Simon Hindley has been out in his Prowler now and Leo has returned from the depths of Wales and remembered his boat too. Martin has suddenly turned into the fastest on the lake, posting a 25.3 knot personal best!
I'm now off to get hitched, followed by a week of windsurfing before getting stuck into building my new Ninja, along with digging Fat Bottomed Girl out of her hiding place in the shed and taking her to the Tide Ride in October.

Pics by Laura Bishop

The green eyed monster

2009-08-09T21:00:00.003+01:00

I can't help but look at all the news and views coming from Oregon and feel like I should be there.
I made my choice early in the year that the Worlds was going to be too much but had no idea that the rest of the season would go so well. I'm on the fence about Dubai too as I'm holding out for the worlds in Aus...
While it looks like it's too windy for sensible sailing the competition looks hot. I'm not going to bless the internets with a form guide, but I'd love to see someone like Scott take it as he's a nice chap and always tells it like it is.

I've only been sailing twice since the Nationals and have since sold the Ninja on, as I'm going to be pretty busy for the next 6 weeks and not get much sailing in. I think Fat Bottomed Girl will get dug out of the shed at BCYC until I get a new boat up and running for myself in the Autumn.
Bristol Moth Squadron seems to be holding up nicely though in my absense with Martin going out and getting a 25knot personal best and Alan back out enjoying his sailing after some knee problems. Chris Bishop is borrowing my sisters still unsold Axiom 3 and getting to grips with it and a likely new Mothy in the shape of Simon Hindley who has picked up Paul Haydens old Prowler 3 and will hopefully be getting involved.

Ninja's 2 and 3 are now down at Stokes Bay with their new owners Kevin and Jo who are fast coming to terms with Moth sailing on the Solent. Now he's got his own Kevin has a whole line of interesting thoughts on taking the boats forward...

2009 Moth Nationals

2009-07-18T19:24:00.003+01:00

I've just returned from a few days holiday in Wales following the Nationals, so thought I'd go through the event while it was still vaguely fresh in my head!

What a rollercoaster ride. Saundersfoot delivered some pretty crazy conditions with 15-25 knots and some big swells (well, being a pond sailor, probably not that big!) Everything was pretty tight at the top between Mike L, Rodders and myself and to be honest no-one on the beach after sailing knew who'd got it and we were all wondering around the beach congratulating each other anyway. Such is the way of the Moth fleet - most people were just glad to be alive after some of the sailing we had...

I had plenty of speed and control, leading to three bullets, but a lack of experience and a little bad luck took their toll when things were otherwise going well. It's amazing how rapidly things can unravel! My 9th in race 5 had started so well until I wiped out on top of the windward mark avoiding an excersise in reverse parking by Paul Hayden and it took me so long to unwrap myself and do my turns that the fleet was long gone... I was also leading the penultimate race before a shocker of a downwind where I just couldn't get going again after a wipeout.
Nothing like making life hard for yourself anyway...

The usual Mothy Spirit was in full flow, plenty of fixing parties trying to heal collective wounds to make sure everyone back on the water the following day.

I still can't quite believe it and every now and again have a little chuckle to myself. Thanks to everyone who has sent me messages over the past few days, Kevin for designing a fast hull and foils, along with everyone who has supported me and Emma for putting up with my sailing related nonsense when I should be worrying about the wedding!

Saundersfoot pictures

2009-07-18T19:10:00.005+01:00

I can never get on with the Blogger photo upload thingy, so these are all jumbled up...

Alex Adams and myself getting a bit of Blokarting in on the windy day when we didn't go real sailing.

Me, having just discovered that actually Rod wasn't the National champion! Sorry Rod!

Team Stowaway before a soaking wet session in the Go Karts. Adrian is a pretty nifty kart driver...

Adrian trying his hand at some Robin Hood action, thankfully I got my revenge at the Archery.

Emma decided we should raid the pound shop for painting materials so we all sat in the van on another rainy day painting away. Emma was the champ at this one, although Adey's attempt to sell his painting to a passer by deserves a worthy mention.

Followed by loads of photos of us all dragging our boats out through the surf and going sailing...

Nationals form guide

2009-07-07T07:33:00.001+01:00

With the GB Nationals almost upon us I figured someone ought to do a bit of a form guide for it!

1. Simon Payne
The old boy has been at the top of his game for so long now, it's hard to see any of the young pretenders knocking him off the top spot. Super fit and going fast, but lacking in the marginal stuff where he used to be king.

2. Mike Lennon
Put in some solid results this year in his new M2. Will he pull some new sail out of the bag to give him that extra edge? Will his boat work for an entire regatta?

3. Adam May
You can never discount Adam from the top of the UK fleet and with his dissapointing result in Horsens you can bet he will be back with a vengeance - as long as he can keep his hacksaw away from his foils and his gantry attached...

4. DJ Edwards
Local (ish, he lives in Wales at least!) boy Dave was going fast at Corus at the end of last season but hasn't been seen since. A sailor of his pedigree won't have been sitting idle.

5. Rod Harris
"He's just a good club sailor", but capable of going very fast in breeze and rapidly getting his Prowler very well sorted. May become distracted by alternative use of the tiller.

6. James Roche
James has been struggling to find the form he had with the "Flying Lime" in his new boat, but in light airs he's very quick and probably does more of that cycling/fitness stuff than the rest of the fleet put together...

7. Andrew Friend
Always there or thereabouts in his BR, the mad professor of the Moth fleet. Usually has some crazy contraption on his mind so will be interesting to see if he's come up with anything.

8. Robin Wood
Another local laddy, Robin knows what it takes to win Moth regattas and with his very light weight should be a force to be reckoned with in the marginal stuff. Not very long in the boat yet though - he will be up there soon enough.

9. Jason Russell
Jif has been the best of the rest at a lot of the regattas this year but for some reason really struggled at Horsens with a load of boat mods before the event. Hopefully he will have it all tuned up in time for Saundersfoot.

10. Gary Ireson
Been out of the country most of this year, so lacking in time on the water but he will be keen to get back in the mix. May become distracted by Rods tiller...

There are always others that get missed/forgotten in this sort of thing, Geoff Carveth for one - will his SB3 commitments clash? Will Doug Pybus Franken-NinjaProwler hold together for an event? Will Adrian Murphy be allowed out from Work? Has Jason Belben got a boat yet?
Then there is me. In the true spirit of the form guide, you dont rate yourself. Been going fast in the light stuff and Denmark was a surprise in that I wasn't slow in the windy stuff either. I've got a few extra toys on the boat since the Euro's but haven't really had time to get them truely pimped up so we shall see what happens I suppose...

Euro photos

2009-07-03T08:00:00.003+01:00

Post Euro's comedown

2009-06-29T15:51:00.003+01:00

I've just returned to Sunny England (seems summer arrived while I was out) and have had plenty of time sitting in the car to ponder over the Euro's in Denmark.
It's always sad at the end of a great event when what was once home to a fleet of Moths, tents, tools and epoxy becomes an empty field again. Horsens was a great venue - everyone all staying together, rigging together and helping each other launch from the one slipway made us all get involved - from bbq's to Rods Tiller of Doom, along with the occasional shout across the dinghy park of 'epoxy going spare' as we healed our mechanical wounds.

Everyone expected this event to be a light winds affair and I went in secretly hoping for some of the marginal stuff in which the Ninja has proved so potent. What we got instead was 3 races in 20-25, 1 race in 25, and 4 races in 15-20 which proved a good test for boat, body and foil systems! I've put very little time into sailing in waves/chop as I just don't get the opportunity at BCYC. The boat handled it admirably and going into the last day with some practice under my belt I was starting to mix it up with the M2's upwind but still hesitant downwind but gradually improving and making less mistakes resulting in a 4th in the final race.
Rodders and myself had a good ding dong all week long, tied going into the final race as we'd both been consistently thereabouts and having no alphabet to worry about meant a proper showdown which went my way in the end. In hindsight, I'm glad it was as breezey as it was, hopefully showing that I'm/the boat are not a one trick pony!

Everyone had their fair share of breakages, given the wind strength and hazardous launching area with all the brands suffering a bit. You can build strong, or you can build light - its a tricky line to walk...

I've got a few random photos on various cameras and when I have dug them from the van I will get some up.

Europeans, alternative baby.

2009-06-25T21:29:00.002+01:00

The europeans so far has been pretty entertaining, mostly for the wrong reasons, but for a lot of good ones too.
It all started with a day long drive from Calais in the UK team convoy which consisted of myself with Doug Pybus in the Aardvark tour bus along with 7 boats and a load of junk, following Rod Harris in his bus with Jason, Heather and James. After a 2 hour round trip of Calais due to satnav failure we were finally on the right road.

We managed to stop at a Burger King in most countries and also stop for four hours on the motorway in Germany due to a bridge being destroyed and a rubbish diversion leading to us playing in the traffic with clingfilm and windscreen wipers.
24 hours later we arrive in Denmark where I crashed out after a Haribo induced sugar rush and everyone else headed into town at midnight to find a bar. Doug was befriended up a local whose english wasn't the best and mostly consisted of saying he loved him, followed by F*** you, many times over. It was later revealed that the bar had been shot at the night before by a crazy with a shotgun. We couldn't tell whether this was Soren winding us up or not.

Rod "roll on death" Harris has been keeping moral high, with his usual high standard of impromptu catchphrases and boundless energy and inventive things to do with Musto LED baseball caps and the best way to enjoy a mallard.

We got a couple of days of practice/tuning in in beautiful sunny conditions before all hell broke loose on day one of racing.

To be continued...