Take the Long Way Home

An awesome days sailing was over early when my vang snapped in a bear away. Bugger! Tried to re rig it using the 2mm ride height adjuster line, the yellow line in the pic, but by then the cams had all popped off (Yes Dan I can hear you laughing now, its was the 13b!:)) and without a working vang, I couldn't get them back on and stayed on. Usually even if they have come off I can get them on in the water, but not without a vang! After a 20 min fight I gave up and sailed slowly back to ABYC. Still managed to foil part of the way with a very rickety rig! Up till then Nat and I were having a ball, Long Beach turning it on yet again, with solid 15s and dead flat water under the break water.

The vang line had snapped about 1/3 way down the cascade, so spent today cutting off all the Chinese Dynema and replacing it. Also gave me the chance to think through adding a purchase to the vang.

The trailer has arrived, good news! Although very over engineered, and over designed by Moi and built by Bear Trailer Sports in LA, it has come out great. Need to get one small adjustment made to the boat supports, but really pleased! Makes going Mothing ten times easier!

Training for the Gorge going well, we should be finalizing shipping for the SoCal boats this week. Want to get the vang sorted, plus the Raptor on the Nano 4 and Chris is sending me a nice set of North Spectra Hikers, so teh boat will be sweet! Roll on the event.

Physical, Physical, I wanna get Physical

THAT was a full on day.

My hands hurt, my shoulders feel like they've been wrenched out of their sockets, I tore the ass out of my skiff suit, broke the main sheet bridle, Nat lost his wand paddle and went through another rudder. Yup SoCal Moth training at it's best!

We had about 15s, I'm guessing, but unusually from the South so plenty of swell and chop which was great practice for the Gorge. We did umpteen upwind down winds about a mile a leg, and basically sailed till we couldn't hike anymore, and had accumulated the above list of damage. The on water photography continued, not bad from a Moth doing 18s!

What did we learn:

• Continued to play with the settings on the 13b. Not too much foot tension, and use the d haul to play between pointing mode (not on full) and over powered mode ( on full). Had plenty of height and speed. Vang on hard except in softer conditions.
• Keep practicing sailing with one hand, mess up a change of setting and the boat with you is gooone!
• Nat's Raptor looks good, fast up wind, but down wind in medium air I could sail through him, well once! Seems to have more speed, though both up wind and down in bigger pressure. But if we were both concentrating and hiking hard, no really difference in speed.
• He who sails the most..... wins.
• Finally, a crazy work week, and a bottle of wine / cigar the night before, doesn't make for a fit fast Mothista, almost threw up on the first long windward leg :).

Choices, choice there are always choices.........

There's Raptors Waiting in the Long Grass

The new Raptors have arrived in Long Beach! First shot you can see Nat's sail rigged, other three shots you can see my sail laid out over my trusty 13b. So what do we see Mothistas?

Although Nats sail is not loaded, it clearly sets up well on the stiff McConnachy mast. Smooth skin, flat up top, power where you'd want it.

Compared to the 13b, and yes only laid out on the floor, the plan shape is narrower, more area up top, quite a bit actually, higher clew (much easier gybing or go like Bora with a massive amount of rake!), and slightly lower luff curve. I can see why it really suits the Nano 4.

I'm planning to continue training with the 13b, stick the sail numbers on the Raptor, and then do a bit of testing with the Raptor before Gorge Madness. We're in the middle of a major product launch so don't have much time to burn of testing and finding set ups, so will need to be careful in my selection. I've got a nice set up going at the moment, and plenty of speed.

Bad Moon Rising, an American Memorial Day

Had some off Moth fun this weekend. Friends invited us out to the Mojave, rode dirt bikes, smoked cigars, drank Tequilla and Howled at the Moon....

Dont worry Mothistas, the boat will be wheeled out again next weekend... :)

I Can Sail for Miles and Miles

Finally got around to down loading my Velocitek. Quite some interesting data there:

First speed:

As chart above shows got very close to cracking 25 knots in our recent regatta. Came down the last leeward leg in the pressure of the day and still in relatively flat water. Even with the wand flicking like crazy I still had a ton of control in the Mach 2. It's really made me wonder about how to go for a max speed run. I think bear off, hike like hell and sail deep, using VMG to keep speed building. Been trying some other stuff recently, but next time its on, I'm going to give it a go. Recon if I start high up under breakwater at Long Beach where its super flat, shoudl be abe to build some good ol' velocity....

Distance:

Interesting stats. Thursday and Friday I sailed 45Km and 51Km respectively, whilst at ABYC regatta sailed 66.7Km on Saturday and 51.6Km on Sunday. Make you think that some long distance racing such as Border Run or the Ditch Run could be on the cards with the right weather and right suport boat, i.e. faaaaasst!

My Random Walk Down the Start Line

This week, I was really fortunate to have 2 days coaching with Charlie and to be joined on the Friday by a mystery Mothista for some windward leeward fun. Massive amount of learning from an excellent coach, who was able to diagnose and break down my "issues" into manageable chunks that I can work on and improve on my own. Great breeze, up to 25 knts on Thursday and a more modest 18 knts on Friday, made for some great foiling. We just have to have the NAs or US Champs here in 2011.

Biggest "ahah" for me was the exercise "pick a point before line and accelerate into pin end start". I knew sort of where I wanted to put the boat, but either couldn't put it there, or couldn't hold it there for long enough. Made me wonder about just how random my starting has been. Yes I can basically figure out which end of the line to aim at, but the rest for me was then a random wander down the start line reacting to what ever I encountered and if lucky enough foiling off the line roughly as the gun went and in a direction the boat just happened to be pointing at that moment. It really made me think about just what have I been doing or not doing. Still now I have a system to break it down and hopefully remove the randomness! Next regatta we will see!

I also got much better at gybing on the whistle, so much so that Liz is now thinking of getting one to see if she can train me at home: "peep" do the dishes, "peep" do the ironing, "peep...." ok I am sure you get the idea....

Whilst the cats are away: Post Script

I thought about this some more last night. Whilst we only had 4 boats there, we really went at it on the start lines. 7 races and every start was really hotly contested by all 4 boats. Closest I have been to other Moths all played out at high speed. I pushed Nat over the line, he pushed me over, we both pushed Dan over, port starboards, Eric trying to catch us on the line with a starboard start. This was much closer than ever. I am guessing but without the "Heads of State" to keep order, and with fewer boats, we had more room to dial up, both contributed to some white hot starting action. There were definitely a few starts where I couldn't believe what we were doing. I could have thrown my water bottle and hit all three other boats easily. Awesome practice and a ton of fun.....