This weekend, The Good, The Bad and the Downright Ugly

The Good

Broke through another speed barrier. 20 knots now ticked off. Next stop, 25kts (then that'll do me...for now!)
Another six or seven hours closer to really knowing how to sail a Moth clocked up this weekend
KA MSL13 - Much less effort required to get foiling in the lighter stuff, will compare some more to the recut North V6 when it comes back from sail hospital
Point to Point sailing. If it doesn't involve a corner I can probably now get the boat from point A to Point B fairly reliably upwind or down... most of the time...

The Bad
Corners. Lowriding, foiling or anywhere in between (!) the corners still get me every time. I have mastered the lowriding tack to head to wind and resultant capsize to windward, and the foiling gybe nosedive and cannon ball into rig (see second to last blog entry) along with a long list of party tricks once I get a bit fatigued.
Getting to the point where this isn't a problem is just time on the water, but I am at the stage where I think a little on the water coaching may pay dividends to tell me where I should be positioning my body, instead of what I am doing now which is clearly wrong!

Body Maintenence

These boats are physically taxing to sail. I need to eat and drink more when spending a long time on the water, need to come up with a good system for Belmont. Anyone have experience with the Energy Gels cyclists use? These may be a lightwight and readily accessible solution. But I think you need to drink heaps of water to go with these.

The Downright Ugly
My FrankenTramp. The stitching one of my tramps let go where it wraps around the wingbar. Managed to stitch it up so I could keep sailing, but its an ugly job. Request for a new set of tramps has been sent off to the sailmakers. I am sure those guys are happy I chose to get a Moth, seems now every week I am sending them some extra work.

Strings. If there is a string to get caught up on my feet will find it at the worst possible time. I think my bungy system needs updating

Toestraps. If I can find the strings wrapped around my feet when I least need it, then why can't I find the toestraps when I most need them.... (I think they just need retightening again, but there is nothing worse than hiking out and keeping on going, or capsizing whilst trying to fit my feet under the straps.)

All in all another couple of days of very slow progress (except the 20 knots. I know its not fast at the pointy end of the fleet, but it was plenty fast enough for me today. How you top guys gybe at those speeds has me in awe!

Open Source Wingo Design?

Sitting out in the middle of the Timor Sea at work, 6 hours by air from the nearest hospital (not to self: don't break important human bits) gives one many opportunities to think about things they would rather be doing. For me, being back at home hanging out with my wife is top of the list, but all this talk of wings sails has prompted a flurry of internet searching, sketches, load assumptions and the like in my off time.

My only problem is, as I assume for the majority of moth sailors, I have an understanding of the concepts of what needs to go into the wing from a basic structure, shape and function point of view, but I can't afford the time to come up with a prototype and then continue to break it as I develop it.

So I was thinking that there must be others in the same boat. Brilliant fabricators who can build any shape from carbon but wouldn't know where to start with calulating the loads, aerodynamic gurus who know what the shape needs to be but can't envisage the controls to make that happen etc. And a bunch of Do It Yourselfers who for their different reasons would rather build than buy off the shelf.

So I propose the Moth Open Source Wingo Sail project. A collaboration of likeminded moth sailors developing a base wingsail design from which we can all further develop to suit our individual requirements, knowing that the chance that the majority of the potential flaws have been ironed out at the design stage and not discovered after the build is complete.

This concept has worked in the past (the Flying Tiger 10m project on Sailing Anarchy is a good example), but does it fit in with the "Reclusive Mad Scientist in the Basement" Moth culture. A a relatively new mothie I'll ask for your guidance on that!

Let me know your thought by leaving a comment below. Who knows, this might grow wings... and fly!

Technora is not an impervious membrane

Fantastic moth sailing weather today on the Swan River. I started sailing into a lightish northerly which after about 10 minutes had swung to the south-west and built to about 10 knots, perfect!

Sailed for about 15 minutes until I popped a couple of cams. Not enough cunningham will do that. Sailed into the beach to pop the cams back in and replace a couple of batteries on my ATC2k camera focussed on the main foil.

I had changed my main foil push rod length to have the flap at an approximately neutral position when the wand is about 30 degrees off vertical. Made a huge difference to the ride quality, especially with the new and improved  lower wand section. Video of the main foil only lasts 1m:30s, and doesn't show anything interesting, but will keep recording in future to try and find out more about my set up and maybe capture a fly out or something else interesting.

Went straight back out for another spin, and had more good breeze with nice foiling runs.

Big Congrats to John who launched his new boat this weekend. Foiled almost as soon as he came out of the channel, flew across the river and nailed a foiling gybe. They say its like riding a bike!

My day ended early with the below misfortune whilst trying to work on my foiling gybes. Apparently 6'2" 100kg Humans do not bounce off a V6 North Main...