Actual Bristol Mothing

Its been a while, but finally this Sunday saw more than one Moth out on the water at BCYC.
After sitting around for a couple of hours waiting for the wind to appear a nice 10 knot westerly turned up and Martin, Alan and myself all got out to do a quick race along with some boat swapping.
Martin hopped in my boat so I could try his out and give him some pointers but it was actually set up pretty well other than the ratchet block threaded the wrong way which he apparently doesn't use...
The race saw the three of us spreading out pretty quickly as it was a very short course and quick tacking made all the difference allowing me to pull out and lap the two of them in what turned out to be a 20 minute race. This caught out the Fireballs who hadn't kept track of how many times I'd lapped them and were spotted crossing the line with kites up not realising they had to do more laps and dropping them very quickly!
Alan and myself swapped boats after the race and carried on sailing around for half an hour as the sun was out and it was too good to miss. Even with some recent mods I found the Prowler pretty vague in height control - need to have another look at it... I still don't understand the dished deck on them either it seems to make crossing the boat unnecessarily hard going!

I've uploaded a few pics of the Squirrelcam mount as enquiring minds want to know...

Carbon cups get taped to the wingbar to hold them in place, the centre part of the tripod fixes on top of the rudder pin once the rudder is on.

Northampton training video

Sunday saw a chance for a bunch of us to get out and get followed around by Tom Castle in a rib (singlehanded, bit shakey!) with my camcorder. Interesting sailing around with the 600's. Very little in it speed wise upwind and down against Sam. We had a few short course races running windward leeward which was a good measure of performance. Generally we were all pretty close on speed and only seperated by the number of mistakes...

I also finally got around to taking out my wide angle Helmet Hero, fixed to a gantry on the back of the boat (which I've made months ago and never used!). Quite possibly the single most useful training aid I've found - I can see that I am not hiking at all really... Quite hard to tell what was going on outside the boat so I was going to overlay it with the first video but I had an argument with Final Cut so we've gone our seperate ways...

I've purposefully left off a review of the Steve Nicholson Race, as I'd like to do it justice properly later and have work to do!

Steve Nicholson Race this weekend

Sounds like a good fleet of foilers will be heading up to Pitsford res for the Steve Nicholson Race on saturday this weekend.
Its usually a really good day with two races for the fleets with a break and the chance to watch the other half of the boats racing (split between assymetric and non-assymetric) and we are racing windward leeward with the assymetric fleet which should be good for the foiler fleet if the wind plays nice...
Gary Ireson has sorted out a resuce boat to follow us around for some videoing/coaching on the Sunday too, making a good weekend of it.

Report to follow next week, although I'm sure it wont be as exciting as catching up on the aussie Nationals outcome...

Bloody (crazy) Mary

I've done the annual Bloody Mary pursuit about 8 times now and this was my second in the Moth. Its always interesting to see how you square up against other boats in this format but it is very condition dependent - especially in the foilers.

This year was quite possibly the coldest sailing event I have done. The wind looked too light for foiling so I didn't bother entering until the very last minute (With the Moth handicapped just faster than an 18 footer, this was ages after the slow boats started) when it was just foilable. Rigging was the first challenge, as we all found our various control systems frozen solid, so running around with buckets of water we eventually got that sorted. I was a couple of minutes late for the Moth start, but caught up with the fleet by the end of the second reach as I managed to get foiling and cruise through the middle of them.
Unfortunately, my now iced up tramps meant a gibe was a dangerous proposition and I dumped myself down again and a few folks foiled off down the run - Notably Gary Ireson in his Zero who was never really seen again by the rest of the foil fleet. Geoff Carveth and Andrew Friend both took the reins but neither knew where they were going and had to double back later on, letting myself and Sam Pascoe (600FF) back through. Sam and myself both had a good battle to the finish, following the puffs around and trying to maximise airtime and slowly reeling in Gary . The Moth seemed to have the best of the 600, until the wind died completely with a couple of minutes to go and he coasted through my lee...


Photos of telltales, frozen like that 30 seconds after launching, and my cleats, unusable after 10 minutes. Ratchet block stopped working before the start and at one point, the mainsheet was frozen in place... Air temperature -1, water temperature, plus 5... Ouch!


Top Moth was Martin Harrison making a welcome return finishing in 96th place.

This left the foiler fleet as follows:

1st Gary Ireson, P Zero
2nd Sam Pascoe, RS600FF
3rd Mike Cooke, Axiom v4
4th Geoff Carveth, Bladerider
5th Martin Fear, Axiom v4

Its worth noting that as we spent only about 10 minutes of our hour long race foiling, we were the last 5 finishers on the water... Should do wonders for the PY! The retiree's (and who can blame them) were Andrew Friend, Simon Propper and Adrian Murphy. Simon was spotted at one point trying to seperate his boat from its launching trolley as they were fused together by ice...

Most of the Mothies there are plannning on attending the Steve Nicholson Race on Saturday the 24th Jan, with potential for training the following day if Mr Garyman can organise it...

New Year, same goals

Welcome to 2009!

2008 was a pretty hectic year by all accounts. The Axiom v4 was pretty well received and turned out to be pretty quick when going the right way. The mission this year is to get it to go the right way more often and that means getting the which-way nut in shape and brain tuned up. I knew this would be a problem last year as I have been spending so long getting the Aardvark moths up to speed that I have sacrificed any proper training and racing I would usually have done. I've been to a few events, but bad luck and a touch of poor preparation have meant a failure to shine where I feel I could have... Bruised ribs ruined my nationals and the Foiltown worlds were a disaster for me - Secret Squirrel was ready for the job but I had exhausted myself in the process - A lesson in there somewhere...

But that was last year, and this is a new one. I can't make the worlds this year due to bigger things going on in life (weddings and houses are pretty big!) but I have no intention of letting up on the Moth front. I have a couple of things in the pipeline which I believe I can improve on from the v4 and with new competition from Mach2 it will be interesting to see if the bar is raised again. I can't help feeling that the bigger gains aren't there to be had anymore and it will be a much more incremental evolution rather than revolution - but then I'm sure people said that about hydrofoils...

I intend to publish my some of my older designs for foils and get some basic building guide stuff worked out this year. I have helped a couple of people with homebuild projects and loaned out the Axiom v2 mould to a friend of mine to build himself a boat (pictured) and this will be available to a loving home as soon as he gets it back to me! This sort of thing should be encouraged as much as possible.


Off to Queen Mary for the annual bunfight that is the Bloody Mary Pursuit race on Saturday. Martin and Myself are going from BCYC and it looks like we could get 10 boats there, along with the 600FF's to play with it should be great fun if the wind gods play the game.

Fingers crossed!

Sunday sailing

Last sunday was my last sail of the year but it turned out to be a good one! The wind was in a vaguely normal direction and while a bit puffy allowed some great sailing.

Former Mothie Alex Knight was visiting in his foiling 600 and I had hoped for a good showdown to see how they square up to the Moth but unfortunately he missed the start of the first race and just blasted around. I couldn't blame him though, as the course was so complicated I had to keep sailing near to the club on the first lap to figure out which mark was next...

The second race was much simpler, but Alex was led astray by a Contender sailing the wrong course and the puffy conditions were not really suiting the 600 - while it was as quick as a Moth in a straight line it really suffers in the manuevers. Its early days though as he hasn't had the boat too long. I think for the near future the handicap for it won't be as quick as a Moth, but can see us racing off the same yardstick as more people get their handling down...

Good ol' BCYC is still racing me off 840 though through a bloody minded will to not start shifting PY's about unless the RYA says otherwise, so I am currently second in the winter series despite only doing three races so far while first place has done 6 now...

Did a bit of mini trimaran foiling after the races too and made the good move of wearing my wetsuit which helped retrieval as it is still over canvassed and doesnt like the big gusts!

Next race for me is the Bloody Mary on the 10th of Jan. Last year had 8 boats - lets see if we can beat that and give the organisers a real headache...

61 knots?!

Apparently Hydroptere wiped out doing a peak speed of 61 knots... Kinda puts things in perspective doesn't it - I think the water is hard enough at 20!

No pics or video of the crash as yet, but its upsidedown here and nicely standing on its nose here!

Return to Foiltown

This weekend was my first trip back to Weymouth since the worlds and after battling through flood ridden Somerset on Saturday morning I arrived to find no wind! Surely its always windy in Weymouth?


After hanging around for a bit drinking tea and eating cake, waiting for the wind to fill in we decided to play with the mini foiler instead. There wasn't really enough wind for that either...
Decided as the forecast was looking better for Sunday to hang around and try sailing on Sunday too which turned out to be a great plan.
Breeze was good, although a bit shifty blowing off the land and gave me the chance to do a few tuning runs with Adam May and Alex Adams while Helen Rollinson was bombing around the harbour practicing her skills. It was all pretty evenly matched really, not a lot to work on other than just going sailing!

We decided to run for cover at about midday though, as the breeze had kicked up and we were expecting 30+ knots (which never appeared!). After a bite of lunch, the breeze was about 15 knots and we decided to relaunch the foiler and see if we could get it working properly.
It then promptly surprised us all, by flying around the marina and while the sail was interspersed with pitchpoles it was all very promising! Everyone is now hooked, and plotting their own versions... Adam took a load of photos too which he's going to upload soon hopefully.

Secret Squirrel for sale

Secret Squirrel is for sale!

Built in 2008 for the Moth Worlds, this is one of the stiffest Moths out there - featuring profiled front wing bars and tapered high modulus rear bars (so stiff it doesn't need a bridle across the back).
This is the nicest Moth I have ever sailed with tons of control and will do foil tacks (if you can!) Top speed so far of 23.5 knots but you can do better...

The Axiom v4 is the lowest freeboard of all the Moth designs for minimum windage.
The foils feature high aspect ratio wings with swept tips on the rudder to reduce drag.

Hyde sail new in October 2008, Aardvark high modulus mast and boom and a full Harken hardware pack. The boat will have a respray prior to changing hands so will be "as new" again. Includes launching trolley, road base is negotiable

I am advertising the boat now, but it will not be available until early February 09, deposit to secure.

I can split the parts up, if you don't want the rig or foils, get in touch for a price.
Country : United Kingdom (The)

Price: £ 7500

Contact: Mike Cooke
Email: mike@aardvarkracing.co.uk
07887 775128

Get while the getting's good.

Decided to pop down to the club this morning (after getting rid of the thick layer of ice on the van) to do a bit of fiddling and play toys boats if the weather allowed, but unfortunately this is what we found...


While the fog did lift eventually, no wind materialised so we just sat around drinking tea... I was going to threaten to boycott the UK until the temperature is back above 10 degrees, but that means no sailing for months. Got to appreciate whatever you can get...

Apparently the Mach 2 wont be making its debut at the Bloody Mary anymore - pity really, as someone of Simon's calibre would put in another good show for the Moths (even if we still can't win the trophy).