Team

I'm hard headed. Usually I bin things like tuning guides and spend a season or two getting my own numbers through trial and error. For the most part the numbers end up being exactly like those in the binned tuning guide. Maybe that's not very smart. Maybe it is because I end up understanding the numbers. Moth sailing is different. It's not just about trial and error, it's about engineering. What looks the same to the naked eye can be miles apart in performance. It's about having a team of people with very special skills and putting theory and practice together. The most impressive improvement of the year required five minutes of work with 400 grit wet or dry. When our engineer suggested it I was skeptical - when the points scored dropped by an average of  30% I was eating humble pie.

We hit all the targets set for ourselves this year. The special parts we built proved reliable. Top speed has gone up 10%. We bring our individual exprerience together to make things better. We are a team. We're only just getting started.

Mile High

In 1910 Walter Brookins was first to fly a mile high. One hundred years later Moths take on Silvaplana - altitude: a mile and a bit.

Faster than the speed of light

There hasn't been much breeze in these parts. Wednesday, late it started picking up so I rigged for a sail. Got off the dock while the fleet was just starting the evening race half a mile downwind. I futzed around a bit and then decided I might as well go round the course. Turning corners, traffic, good practice. Staying within the patchy breeze, I had to take very different lines from the conventional boats. Twice the distance, three times the speed. On the second to last reach I overtook the leading Snipe. Three quarters of the way up the last beat I got off the foils and waited for the committee boat to set the finish. - they were taking their time. When I  went through no one stirred. Little lake I sail on - Dina was stting on a bench watching the whole race. Asked if she didn't think it was a little nasty not to score me - "Oh" she said, "I didn't notice you sailed the course". Faster than the speed of light - no one sees you....

Ratcheting up the difficulty level

I'm not much of a gamer but I've seen enough to know that you can choose your difficulty level to make life harder for yourself. Why you would want to, or why you would want to play video games at all I am not exactly sure and I am not going to go there. Certainly when it comes to Moth sailing I want it to be as easy as possible unless there is a big payoff in speed and then I still think twice about making life hard for myself on the water.

Last week end I tried the ultimate in difficulty level. Small cut down rudder (Mach 2), small flap on main foil (Prowler) and very flat sail (Raptor) in 20+ knots and extremely nasty short chop (Weymouth Cubed) over a shallow bottomed lake with 10 miles of fetch. It was as if I had just drawn a "go back to the bottom of the learning curve" card from the pack. Some hours of practice with this set up might improve things substantially but I don't even have to ask myself if I really ever want to race with such a narrow groove that strategic options and ability to get my head out of the boat are severely restricted. Sailability and versatility (ability to pick high or low modes) are key. Any foil/sail package has to be optimised and that means looking at more than just speed. Give me something fast but sweet.

Three men in their boats

This week end saw the first event of the Belgian - Dutch Moth season take place in Spakenburg. The greyish sky and fickle breeze were not totally encouraging but the organic mint tea boys turned out in full. Saturday was entirely calm so we did odds and ends of boat work but nothing involving exotic resins, custom made unis or vacuum pumps. Very low key, no glam, no bling. As Eelco explained to me Spakenburg is one of the last Calvinist enclaves in the Netherlands and pleasure seeking would have been entirely out of place and possibly sanctionable with pillorying in the village square. Meantime Constantijn instructed us on the different types of traditional Dutch fishing vessels and how they could be distinguished by the different styles of leeboards and presence or absence of shrouds. It was a lot of culture to take in just one week end... Sunday we got three races off in marginal conditions and I employed the strategy of tacking or jybing back to the rhumb line in pressure to stay foiling longer than the others with positive effects on the scoreline.

Galgenweel Instinct

The Galgenweel is an over sized skating rink in winter and an undersized regatta venue in summer. It is the home of Belgian dinghy sailing. Sitting at the bar overlooking the lake, you can see all the random and short lived cat's paws making their way accross the lake. Even from this privileged vantage point it is not always clear which boats on the race course will get the pressure or lift that takes them out in front. The sailors who have put in the most time here develop a rare quality: instinct.