Europeans

From one Europeans and on to another. I’m now in Kiel, helping out the Star team of Percy and Simpson in the week leading up to their Europeans so it is a good time to reflect on the Moth Europeans just gone. It is quite funny going from flying around in a Moth the other week to a spot of Star helming and crewing! I’ve always loved the Star, but at 30-40kg underweight I think I’ll stick to the coachboat watching them for the moment!

So the Euros didn’t go so well for me, but more about that later.

In what is quickly becoming Moth tradition, we had a big case of ‘it’s not normally like this!’ 7-14knots during practice became 20/25knots with a nice chop.

Arnoud won, but it couldn’t have been any closer between him and Simon, all coming down to the final race after countback couldn’t break them. They were a class apart from the rest of the field, sharing all the race wins between them. Arnos regatta didn’t start very well when some rigging let go just a boatlength or two after launching for race 1. Fortunately the Swiss support team was quick to respond and he was back on the water after a quick re-rig, only to be back in again soon after with a wand issue. Ultimately I think Arnoud just started a fraction better than Simon, and Simon was on the back foot a little more. Third was Eelco Boers in a Bladerider VRX. Hadn’t really seen him before the event, and he kept a low profile on the race course (lots of black Bladeriders looking similar!) but good pace upwind in the breeze kept the results coming. Fourth was Mike Lennon. Always up there, but never quite able to challenge the top three. Fifth was Mike Cooke. A superb regatta from him in his new Ninja. Solid pace kept him in consistent results. Sixth: Rod Harris – A bit down before the regatta (“why spoil a good day with racing!”), Rod persevered with his wand set-up to ultimately find some good pace and control in the breeze and sailed a very solid regatta to keep chipping away good results.

Katherine and ‘Carbon Footprint’ had a great event to be first female competitor, and to get round in all four of the races on the last day, while many decided not to sail, or headed in early.
The Mini rig did her proud and once we’d tweaked the wand system to account for her lighter weight ‘The Print’ was much more controllable, with Katherine joining the 20 knot club with a 20.7 knot max. Quote of the day was; “When I die and I see the video of my life – those bear-aways will be in it!”

Unfortunately my regatta didn’t go so well. I’d done a few set-up changes before that were definitely better, and a few ride height tweaks just before racing helped again, but ultimately I was too set up for more moderate conditions and flat water. Too much sailing in Weymouth and no waves caught me out when we had breeze and waves come in, and I didn’t get the set-up changed enough to survive the downwinds, and did a fair bit of pitchpoling. The tramp ripping in half under me as I righted the boat on launching for the first race wasn’t a great way to start though! A 5th in race 2 was okay, but then a cam came off the mast in between races. So I capsized to go and try and get it back on, only for all the other ones to come off. Race three with no cams in was tricky.. Race 4 I struggled for control in the breeze downwind. More of the same on the last day until the gantry decided it had enough of the demands of me trying to survive the downwinds and left the program. It is not a nice sight still having a tiller extension in your hand but looking back at you gantry and rudder a few lengths behind you! The gantry is now back in better shape than before, and I’ll do a few wand tweaks when I get back. Slightly frustrating when I know I can fly early and had found new pace in the medium stuff. That will teach me for expecting a light wind regatta – where have we heard that before.... Ironically just down the coast in Kiel now we’ve only had one day of breeze over 10 knots all week. (Perfect Star sailing weather for me (well the under 5 knot day was anyway!)

Last day with the Star guys today then finish the drive home. Great week in Kiel, but that is a subject for another posting...

Horsens 06

Before we drive on up to Denmark again I thought I'd dig out some of my photos from the 06 Worlds. I'm looking forward to going back there.

The first public appearance of the much awaited Bladerider!

Simon, Sam, Burkhard and Russ ponder foil shapes...

Moth chaos

Inside the event tent.

Simon doing his bit for foreign relations (before the last night!) "I'm sorry, I hate it when it does that"

John trying to fix his watch with a hammer?

Simon Payne - World Champion here in 06, and my odds on favourite for the Euros here this year.

PS: Apologies for the lack of blog posts - been a bit of a hectic period. Will try and report back in full after the Europeans. We've had a few Moth opens, a bit of Farr45 and Figaro sailing, a visit from the Queen, Holland regatta, squad camps and a fair bit of Moth sailing.

I'll try to get back on top of my postings soon, so Katherine's mum won't be left wondering if I'm ill or something!

Paralympic Mothing pt2

"Is it a by-product of foiling that you can't stop grinning?" Those were John's words to me as he reflected on his first spin in a Moth that evening.

A few weeks ago I'd read on Sailing Anarchy about Maureen McKinnon -Tucker having a go in one of the Puma Moths in Boston. I'd met Maureen on the Paralympic circuit, and watched her win Gold in China. I thought her sailing a Moth as a great story. She loved her go, but didn't get flying, so it got me thinking....

I mentioned it to our Sonar helm John Robertson, and he was very keen to give it a try.

With the whole Paralympic team training out of Weymouth this week, and some lovely evening breeze we saw our opportunity on Wednesday. Katherine was going for a sail in Carbon Footprint after work, and I was in a rib. We finished the formal session on the water, did a very quick pack up of the boats, and got John and the rest of our Moth support team into the rib.

It is worth noting here that we didn't just stick a paraplegic friend of ours into a Moth and let him go without a bit of thought. We'd done a fair bit of thinking about how to do it, and who'd do what. (I was slightly nervous about telling our Olympic manager about what I'd done to one of our squad if it all went wrong!) So the plan was to drive the rib up to Katherine, and get the wing onto the tube, and transfer John across. Onboard the rib we had Niki Birrell was our rib bowman and wing holder. (Niki was our Skud helm in China, and next on the list for the foiling Moth experience). Mark Rushall the Sonar team coach, and Steve Thomas the Sonar mainsheet man and our main muscle for getting John back into the rib. We had a recovery plan, and everybody knew what they were to do if we had any issues.

So we got him onboard and let go! First attempt was brief, but showed it was actually quite easy to do the transfer and recovery. Attempt 2 was good, John had full control of it at lowspeed, and covered some distance, but didn't quite manage to get the bearaway in to build enoough speed to foil. Attempt 3 was to go for the bearaway, the mainfoil popped up, briefly but we didn't quite get full flight. John was cold now (no wetsuit of drysuit on!) but had the taste of it, and wanted to go again. Attempt 4 was a good bearaway, an he was up! He wasn't up for long as it did a slow roll to windward but he'd been flying! It was a very happy man that we pulled into the rib after that one!

We'll be out again over the summer, when I think he'll happily be able to foil the width of the harbour next time now he's got the feel of it.

Paralympic Mothing

Mission accomplished. 2 times Sonar World Champion John Robertson left his wheelchair on the dock this evening and went for a quick spin in Katherine's Carbon Footprint! He couldn't stop grinning afterwards!

Full report and more pics tomorrow!

Close Encounters of the VX40 Kind.

We were fortunate enough to be able to squeeze in a spot of VX40 sailing yesterday in between sessions of training before Hyeres regatta starts tomorrow.

Shirley Robertson was down in Hyeres training with her iShares crew, and along with her mainsheet man Hugh Styles who was my Tornado helm in the Sydney Games, kindly offered us a quick ride.

Helena and Megan didn't stop grinning all day! They both had a spin on the helm, with Helena mentioning she'd never sailed a multihull before whilst flying a hull downwind at over 20 knots.

They finished their session with a fly-by of the 2.4 fleet.

The Weapon gets a new home

The Weapon has a new owner, Olivier Vidal, and many people will be sick to hear that during his test sail of the Weapon he was managing a few foiling gybes!

I got to sail Carbon Footprint for a bit and with a few (magic) wand tweaks she is flying well. Katherine was really quick with her the other day in sub foiling conditions, even with the mini rig up.

With both Katherine and Olivier out trying gybes, and the last few visitors to Portland doing the same I really should update the foiling guide notes I'd started to write, as there are a few key points to figure out in the gybes that make a big difference.

I'm now out in Hyeres with the 2.4's, so unable to make the Haylng open. I hope they get luckier with the weather this weekend. I think we had the best of it in Weymouth!

Moth Sailors/Designers - A Special Breed!

1993 - drawing freaky Moth designs, then fast forward to 2009!

Sorting through my file of all Moth related info the other day I found a little cutting from a 1993 Yachts and Yachting magazine. It featured a wacky design for a Moth, designed by a young Richard Jenkins, who I mentioned the other day set the new Wind Powered Land Speed record.

Yes he was a Moth sailor! Richard the class salutes you!

So where are our next freaky designs?

Gill Advert

Just heard today that GILL are using this shot of me as one of their dinghy adverts this year. It is one of Oskar's shots from Garda.

(One of the most photographed boats around is still for sale!)

Over 50 knots

Just as I write about one speed record, it turns out that Macquarie Innovations has gone over the 50 knot mark!

Impressive stuff.

126.1 mph

Congratulations to Richard Kenkins for breaking the World Land Speed Record for wind powered vehicles. The 'Greenbird' driven by British engineer, Jenkins clocked 126.1 mph (202.9 km/h) , eclipsing the old, American held, record of 116 mph, set by Bob Schumacher in the Iron Duck in March 1999 at the same location.

More info on his website: http://www.greenbird.co.uk (He's trying to go for the Land, Ice and Water records!)

An interesting time for speed under sail! It is great to hear that Paul Larson is well after his last crash at high speed, and is about to enter into another period of attempts on the World Sailing Speed Record.

And it could be any day that we hear if the next AC will be in Multihulls or not....

Oh and the Formula One circuit begins again this weekend, so I'll be looking forward to watching that. Looks like the smaller teams have got a march on the bigger teams early in the season, so could be interesting to follow.

Gybing

Moth sailors around the World know our boats are quick, and also very efficient, but try and explain a foiling gybe to some other sailors and you are met with blank looks. Nobody seems to believe you that the apparent blows from the bow mid gybe. Hopefully these diagrams should be of interest to some Mothies and a few other sailors out there.

I’ve got quite a list of things to look at while testing the PI Garda box, but a diagram I saw in Seahorse has been in the back of my mind and I wanted to do a Moth version. In the Jan 2008 edition there was a great article by Steve Killing on the 2007 International C-Class Catamaran Championship, and there was a diagram that accompanied the text showing the anatomy of a C-Class gybe. I thought this was quite interesting, and following my own observations during the event I thought a foilborne gybe would be nice to try and show in this format. I’ll try and get some screen grabs from the video to go with it soon.

These gybes were selected for the consistency of the trace before and after the gybe. I got a bit carried away with having the box on, that I did quite a few gybes in quick succession and so the track wasn’t very smooth between them, with the exit from one gybe blending into the entry to the next. The gybes shown here are gybes 2, and 5 of the day, and probably not my best, but representative of good foiling gybes (I hope!). Both plots show the point of lowest speed, and when I was heading directly downwind. I got a bit more organised for the second plot, and all the points except the lowest speed one are separated by 2 seconds. So the average gybe takes about 10 seconds if you think of it terms of time taken from average reaching speed on one tack to getting back up to that speed on the other tack. This seems like a long time, but then you watch the video and it doesn’t seem that long. Now consider that your average VMG downwind through the whole manoeuvre is only just less than your standard VMG numbers…. Good gybes in these conditions have minimal loss, and open up a host of tactical options.

This was from my first day out sailing with the PI Garda box. There was an average windspeed of just over 9 knots for the period I was on the water. (Measured from my onboard weather station – which is a bit low at 1m above the sheerline on the bow, but more accurate than me guessing the windspeed or checking the harbour wall data afterwards.)

Top speed measured on the day was 19.1 knots in 10.0 knots of breeze.

Plenty more data coming as I learn more about the software and what it can do.

Performance Analysis

I was approached recently by the guys at Cosworth about testing their new PI Garda GPS sailing system, and providing them with some data they can use. I’ve come across the PI kit before in my work with Skandia Team GBR, and Victory Challenge, but I’ve not seen it used on anything quite as small as a Moth. I’ve now had it on the boat a few times and should be able to publish the data here soon.

The Pi Garda system from Cosworth Electronics, is a sophisticated GPS linked to wind gear that records and analyses a lot of interesting factors such as wind speed and direction to produce key performance measures such as VMG and polars along with standard tracking data. On top of this the analysis software used can do a variety of analysis tasks such as; automatic tacking and gybing analysis and layline & startline tools, all synchronised with relevant video. I’m still learning about all the different features that can be done, analysed or added on in the way of sensors or custom fittings. Strain gauges, rudder sensors and inertial measurement tools have all been mentioned, but to start with I’m sailing with a system that has the ‘black box’ GPS, with an IMU giving me heel and pitch angles, all linked to some Raymarine wind gear mounted on the bow.

Testing has begun – so technical minds out there – what data would you be interested in? Data I’ve got so far to be posted soon.

About Cosworth Electronics: Cosworth Electronics’ pioneering technologies heralded a turning point in racecar innovation, helping to create champions in Formula 1, IndyCar, and many more. Now their marine division are looking into the world of performance sailing, including Americas Cup Syndicates, speed record challengers and Olympic sailors.

www.cosworth-electronics.com

www.pi-garda.com

Poole Open Day 2

A slight reversal on the wind fortunes today. We got keen and went out, but it was light - very light. A few who'd come out of the marina the other way got foiling briefly, so I drifted over to sample a bit of the breeze they had. I got foiling twice, but it soon died off and we drifted back down to where the committee boat was.

It always amazes me how often you sail in really light conditions, but you manage to foil at least once in the day, and it all seems worth it. What was satisfying was that I was about to be overtaken by a Laser sailor who shouted over 'Not so fast today are you!', just as I got a little puff and popped up onto the foils and off into the distance before I thought of a smart reply.

Zero wind tricks soon became the order of the day:

• Stern sinking - how far can you go without doing the full spin over backwards. - (The going over the front option was attempted but aborted early on!)


• The transom sink spin whilst capsized - but climbing over the board to stay dry during the operation.


• Bow sink spin whilst capsized - again going over the board and staying dry.

Eventually we canned it and went in for tea and cakes!

Cheers to Parkstone YC and Rod Harris for organising - A good start to the season, and congratulations to Mike Lennon for the win.

Poole Open Day 1

A good turnout of about 15 boats today I think at Poole for the first open of the year. There were a few nervous people who hadn't sailed much over the winter as the breeze was certainly up while we rigged and sailed out to the course area.

Mike Lennon won the day with a 1,1,1,ocs scoreline, to my 2,2,2,rtd. It was good close racing though, with the lead changing about 4 times in the first race, and Mike just getting through underneath me on the final beat in the first race to win by about a boatlength. Race two he lead initially but I crossed ahead up one of the beats only for him to hook into a nice shift on the right to get me back. A silly capsize mid tack on the first beat in the third race left me with a bit to do, but I had a good run to be third at the leeward mark, and slowly ground down Rod Harris to pass him on the final run for another 2nd. A few big nosedives before the next race resulted in my little wand nipple attachment parting company with my wand bracket just before the start of the fourth race, and unable to fix it on the water, I headed home downwind in lowrider mode - which was rather wet!

A few suffered gear failure in the breeze, with unfortunately Simon Payne in his new UK Mach 2 on its second outing being amongst them. Simon was out early, and looking very fast in the early big breeze. He was high upwind, and looked very solid downwind, but his forestay attachment didn't want to stay out for the races and the mast took on a little bit more rake than intended. An issue with the first prototype boats only, so no big deal, but a shame we didn't get to properly line up against him. First impressions though - that boat is quick.

Light winds forecast for tomorrow...

Figaro Sailing

I got to do a bit of Figaro sailing today. Nigel King is based out of the new Dean & Reddyhoff marina in Portland, and I joined him for a quick shake down sail before he sets off for the Solo Les Sables from Les Sables d’Olonne, France.

I'd met Nigel years ago on the J145 Jazz, where I did a number of the RORC races with them, and the Middle Sea Race. I bumped into him again recently at an RYA coaching meeting, and offered any help while he was Weymouth based. Hopefully I'll be able to help out a bit more when he's back in town.

Its been a while since I sailed anything much bigger than the Moth, so it was good fun to sail a new boat, and learn about the demands of solo sailing.

www.nigelkingyachting.com

Back in the country

I've been offline for a little while as we've been away snowboarding and skiing in the resorts around Lake Tahoe, USA. Very cool - with loads of snow, and great fun off-piste in the powder!

Now just trying to catch up with stuff. Poole open this weekend, so better get ready for that.

Posts to come shortly:

• Figaro sailing in Weymouth
• A new foiler in town.
• Full GPS instrumentation inc wind gear on a Moth - eagle eyed readers will have noticed a new supporter of mine, or seen some footage at the dinghy show.... More in full soon.
  
  

Sailrocket - Going for it again

It is good to see Paul Larson and his team back down in Namibia for another crack at the World Sailing speed record.

Although there was little press about it, several days after Paul raised the 'boat' record last year before going flying, Macquaire Innovations down in Melbourne nudged it up a little more. Up to 48.11k from 47.36!

In Moth related news, Alex Adams has taken some time off work to go down and help out. I'm sure it will be a fascinating period, and I wish the whole team well.

Carbon Footprint Video

Katherine has edited up a video of the build and first flight of Carbon Footprint.

Carbon Footprint Flies!

Carbon Footprint took to the air today. We had to dust off the snow and ice this morning, but a light breeze was forecast to build during the day for perfect first flight conditions.

As she is in essence a completely new boat we planned on a short shake down sail. I took Envy out as wingman, with video and stills cameras. While I was concerned about foil angles, take off speeds, wand settings, and structural integrity, Katherine's main concern was that we got a photo of her in the air! We had a bit of lowriding first thing, but when Carbon Footprint flew she flew early and high. No adjustments needed, just flying straight away.

I was allowed a quick go, and was quite impressed. This is an old boat, but she feels like a new one. Stiff and responsive, and although we haven't weighed her yet, she feels light lifting off the trolley.

Looking a little different now from her former life as a purple seahugger!

One happy owner!

Magic Wand in action!

"This is Maverick requesting a flyby!"

Building 'The Weapon'

I must apologise to everybody, it appears I could have warned you all about the financial situation that seems to have covered the globe...

A few years back whilst working at Airbus I chose to invest. I used up my ISA allowance, so I was advised by my local bank that an investment in their stocks and shares savings account thingy would be a good idea. All looked good on the graphs and things, with lots of things invested in across the board, perfect I'll do it. Only one problem, this was September the 10th 2001. Oddly enough my shares plummeted in value over the next few days..

The odd thing is that whenever I get the paperwork through to show that I'm almost back to what I initially invested there seems to be another worldwide financial issue. I checked it again the other day – it is still down by quite a way…

Oh well I'll continue to invest in Moths instead.

Being a sophisticated bit of kit current Moths are quite expensive. My route into the fleet has always to build / finish my own boats. You don't have to build from scratch, as this is a long process, but buying the key elements and finishing it off is a viable option for many people.

Doug Culnane and I had chatted during the Denmark Worlds about designing an easy to build boat, and the Flasheart was born. (Woof Woof) Flat panels, joined over a simple mould was the order of the day. Doug was keen to press fwd and we pressed print on the design after only the first iteration, mindful of the benefits of getting on the water. I think a Flasheart 2 could be made even easier to build, and its something I’d like to work on. I especially like the flat pack design of the Slino moth on the Perverted Moth Blog. It is great to see many other Moth build projects out there.

The other version of this is of course the Carbon Footprint project, using an old boat for the key components and giving it a new lease of life. She is all finished and on the trailer outside, just waiting for a weather window to launch in, but that is a post for another day.

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Building the Weapon

With the Weapon on the market it seemed like a good time to publish some photos of her being built as she had a rather interesting build. Several different locations, and a lot of miles on the road, for a very last minute Garda Worlds campaign.

I purchased a Mistress 3 hull and deck from Full Force in shiny new prepreg carbon, collecting it just before Christmas 06. It went back to my parents house with me for Christmas and I pondered the changes I'd been considering.

I was keen to have some aerofoil wingbars and through my Tornado links with Marstrom I managed to get hold of a test A class cat mast, and set about hacksawing it up into Moth wingbars.

I was also keen to make the bow a bit finer and smaller than the original m3, so I jigsawed down the bow, opened it up a bit, and stuck in some foam.

This enabled me to reprofile the bow, and cut off some excess off the transom as I was also keen to have a slightly higher volume transom.

The original transom was removed from the deck, and a new angled one made to match the angled forward rear wingbars. Freeboard was also dropped slightly.

Then I went out to Miami coaching, and on my return I went straight out to Valencia to work for Victory Challenge through AC32.

The new shell went on the roof and Nemesis was on the road trailer ( just in case I had some spare time to get some sailing in - yeah big mistake - the only time I had time to get the boat on the water was during our final end of event party when it was all over!)

While many would suspect a Moth built within the midst of an America’s Cup would enable you access to an awesome build facility with a whole host of tools, gadgets and people. The reality isn’t quite like that! Victory Challenge was a relatively small team, that was pushed for time, so we don’t have much time for exciting little projects like the Moth. Sure I’ve picked the brains of some smart people in the know, made many useful contacts, but I was never going to see the benefit whist in the thick of it.

An America’s Cup base is purely the domain of AC yachts and the associated kit and support vessels that go with them. There isn’t actually much spare space on site for the construction of something even as small as a Moth. So construction took place under the tarpaulin covers of the Swedish Match 40’s the team used to use for Match racing, and are now in storage amongst a pile of containers behind the base!

Here is Nemesis tucked in under the 40's with AC Television kit now blocking us in. The photo below shows the rear wing bars being mocked up to check angles before bonding.

You can just see the Gill sticker on Nemesis showing through the gap.

After early small parts production, the new boat lived on the lifting framework just out in front of the 40's.

The security guards were friendly, although they were baffled by what I was building! I needed to show accreditation to get into the container area that was Moth central! After a long day on the base and out on the water, I'd try to get a few hours in my mini workshop late at night to do a few key jobs, operating out of my trailer!

While in Valencia, the centreboard case went in, the transom in, wingbars on, and foredeck. Then Victory Challenge were knocked out of the event, and after a week of wrap up meetings and final reports, I was back on the road with a half finished boat and less than a month to the Worlds...

Just before going to Valencia, I'd bought my house in Weymouth, or rather I'd bought a workshop with a nice house attached! So it was straight back into there.

Deck on and gantry nearing completion.

Ready for paint.

An attack with a spray can later...

I went to Garda via Kiel, as I was coaching the Paralympic team out there. I finished putting the fittings on in Kiel, then drove on to Garda to launch her! Perfect regatta prep, but I had less isssues at the regatta than mos. And if only I knew then what I now know about wands, the downwinds might not have been so sketchy.

There you go, a little insight into a silly bit of Moth building against the clock, and a lesson in how not to prepare for a World Championships! Good fun though.. and I was one of the most photographed boats there.

Crazy though thinking back on it now..Sometime soon I'll try not to launch a boat just before the regatta! I just have too many ideas I'd like to try...