Mothodology

I didn't just write Summer of 86 so I could parody Ray Chandler. There's something about the primitive Liberas that is relevant to the Moth evolution of today. At that stage Liberas were still derivative of established type forms. Either scaled up Fd's or modified IOR designs or a combination of both. This made them highly flawed boats requiring idiosynchratic gear adaptation and out of the ordinary sailing techniques. It's only later that better understanding and application of physics led to rational designs with a performance envelope that was previously unimaginable. Eventually it all became very simple and very fast.

Foiling Moths and the way they are sailed are evolving in a similar way. Foils have been developed empirically and slapped together in configurations believed to be optimal. This has given rise to Mothodology - the quasi mystical pseudo science of tweaking a bunch of parameters to try to get the things to behave properly. There are various religious schools that worship AOA, gearing, wand length and other talismans so powerful that they must be kept secret and pixellated lest the uninitiated lay their eyes upon them.

The ones who don't tweak and just sail win the major championships -Ok they do let the Gurus help them with the set up but they don't seem to waste too much time on the various religions.

Mothodology gets more complicated by the day, mesmerizing the neophytes, luring them into the labyrinth from which escape is difficult. So let me be the prophet of the One True Way. Physics is simple, it is clear and its truth serves humanity well, it will serve the practicing Moth sailor too. If you flunked it in school stick to sailing and let the believers do the work for you.

Sooner than later, light will shine and Moth sailing will get simpler and much faster. But beware: lose yourself not in the temples of Mothodology.

Shark Again

Back on Shark. Time to see if we can repeat a clean score, or if those three firsts had just been flukes. http://giovannigaleotti.blogspot.com/2008/12/317.html.

We face a couple of challenges right off the bat. First the weather. The racing area is smack dab in the middle of three minor lows. The forecast is for a shift 50 degrees to the left at pretty much a constant rate throughout the day. Looking at the isobars the only predictable thing is unpredictability. That's how it turns out; the wind ends up shifting 30 degrees to the right. On top of that, the breeze is a patchy 10 to 14 with a minefield of holes.

The second challenge is our new beautiful, super fast 3DL 850 carbon sails. There has been no time for tuning and we will be playing with the rig tension between races. Given the tricky conditions our beautiful but unfamiliar sails could become a distraction if we only give it half a chance.

When expecting large random shifts, the thing to do is start well and then consolidate any gains immediately. I ask the guys to prepare for a fight as there is no way we will lead 100% of the time as we had in the steadier conditions of our previous sail.

We are early on the line in the first start and have to shed too much speed. Terrible start. We take some transoms and after a couple of tacks to clear our air find a lane that takes us to the weather mark in fourth. A couple of well placed jybes on the first run and we get inside at the leeward mark and into second. The first boat is too far ahead and that's how we finish.

The next two races good starts, tight covering and good tactical runs allow us two victories, one comfortable, one tight despite some minor boathandling issues.

With a 2,1,1 we win the day, not perfect but we will take it. Good job, Christopher, Jan, Jim, Steve, Joost, and Giel. Those sweet new sails are well deserved.

Summer of 86

She was deeply flawed but I was passionate about her. I made her better, I made her sing and she performed for me and for me alone.

Belfagor was a Libera D, 7,50 metres long. The hull had been designed with the IOR in mind, canoe body, fine in the ends, tiny little laser sized rudder to reduce wetted surface. What were they thinking when they took out 500kgs. and slapped racks and trapezes on her?

No one had managed to sail her more than a few hundred metres when they asked me to see what could be done. For starters you just had to sail. You had to know that if you heeled more than 15degrees you had to call a tack because tack she would, like it or not.

We went to work on an improvement program. The number of crew trapezing was increased to 5. The next step was to control her on the downwinds. I remembered having heard tall tales about 18s and how they were using such long poles (before A sails) that in a puff you reportedly had to push the tiller down as the boat would just bear off on its own, going sideways through the water. The equivalent of opposite lock to correct oversteer on a car; you had to align the rudder blade with the flow just to avoid tripping over it. So ass backwards, it was said to spoil a helmsman's reflexes for anything else.

On goes a 6 m long pole and a narrow head, wide foot, super flat 100 sq. m. spinnaker. The tall tale turns out to be not so far from the truth. We win our class in the Cento and a bunch of other races too.

That summer I sailed four long distances on her, each one 19 hours long, never taking my hand off her helm (nobody else on board dared to touch it). What did she give me for all that attention? Pain. I know no one's made her sing since but is that consolation?

Ambrogio's Law

Ambrogio's Law: Always go to bed hungry.

Was Ambrogio Morelli right? I don't know. He was second in the 1935 Tour de France among other things. For me those are serious creds.