Mike Cooke Launches New Boat

The latest Aardvark Moth hit the water yesterday. Mike has done a slightly more conventional version of his last boat, with a normal deck and bolt on wingbars.

After a few twists of the tiller to get into the ballpark rudder trim wise, he was soon off foiling across Bristol Corinthian. Standard first sail in a new boat issues such as line lengths and things prevented ideal sail trim, but it ticked all the boxes for the initial sea (lake!)trials.

It is gusting over 50 knots here in Weymouth today, and it doesn't look much better elsewhere around the country, so I doubt Mike has got out again today.

It was good to see 4 boats out on the water though on a cold winter day. Tom Whicher's old modified Axeman is up there now, with newly tweaked wingbars, and its looking good.

Sailrocket hits 40+ knots!

Congratulations to Paul Larson and his team who only days after another big crash have comeback to log a run at 42.4knot! A well deserved result. I hope they can find the backing to do justice to the whole project having come so far.

http://www.sailrocket.com/news.htm

Aardvark Launching

Sounds like Mike Cooke should have his new boat finished by the weekend. I'll try to dive up to Bristol to check it out, and grab some bits off him he's made up for me.

Photos coming soon hopefully...

SailingBits.com

Browsing through the various Moth blogs the other day I came across a new site set up by Scott Babbage, John & Alex Harris: http://www.sailingbits.com/

On there they had some cool little alloy thimbles for use in controls like the kicker. Certainly neat and light, so I've ordered a few! It would be interesting to compare the friction of the different systems, ie blocks or thimbles, so I might do a little test in the workshop as winter draws in here.

Also while on the site I noticed a link to their news partner sailr.com, that has sailing news for sailors. Sailr.com is a sailing news aggregation service, automatically scanning the best sailing news websites and providing a summary and links for the latest news from each sailing news website. So I clicked to see what sites they keep an eye on. I was surprised to find my blog on there, so now feel under pressure to actually keep up to date with relevant content!...

Smoothies and Trees

I've just planted a tree via the Innocent Smoothie website and found this interesting link.

It turns out that the government charges VAT on healthy fruit juices and smoothies. Whereas other foods, like biscuits and cakes, remain tax free. Not quite encouraging healthy eating, is it?

There is a petition on the Prime Minister's website to tell the government that they could help more people get to their five a day by removing this daft tax. To sign up go to

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/fruitjuiceVAT

That is enough petition signing for me for a while though!

Skandia Team GBR Awards Dinner

Last night the whole of Skandia Team GBR had a gala dinner at the Hampshire Cricket Club Rose Bowl. This is an annual function now to celebrate the success' of the year. It was a good year for the team with 5 Golds and 1 Silver at the Olympic Test event, so there was quite a party.

Jez fanstone did another great video presentation of the prestigious Golden Funnel Award for coaching that we've set up over the past few years. I'll try and get it up onto YouTube soon.

Postponed AC

After the fiasco of the ISAF conference, the 33rd AC then gets postponed amidst a court case and arguments over the protocol for the next event. I feel for all the teams now uncertain of their futures, and all those people it influences.

The DailySail had an interesting article on the whole AC issue, and the possibility of a ‘Deed of Gift’ America’s Cup is a fascinating one. Aside from the facts like 90ft waterline multihulls and 20 nautical mile race courses, what caught my eye was the following paragraph.

“Thus a GGYC(BMW Oracle/Ellison) win in New York means an America's Cup in multihulls presumably within the shortest possible time frame, ie more than 10 months from when the Challenge was delivered. In GGYC's challenge to the SNG (Alinghi / Bertarelli) of 11 July, it states the competition dates as being 4, 6 and 8 July 2008."

Mmmmm, the Moth Worlds in Weymouth starts on the 5th of July. What were the odds on two consecutive Moth Worlds clashing with the America’s Cup?

For the full story check out: www.thedailysail.com

Moth News

With the coaching season cooling down (literally!) it is time to catch up with some Mothing. 'The Weapon' has been in the workshop for a few mods, and to tidy up some things that I haven't had a chance to do since the Worlds and Nationals. The 180 swivels are off the kingpost, and controls are onto the wings where they seem neater, and lower profile, and the foredeck has had a slight cosmetic change in a small attempt to further reduce windage, and to play with some styling ideas. The front tank leak was also fixed so I'm almost ready for Garda! Doh!!!.... Only a few months late.

Saturday was a chance to sail against Jason Belben as he was in Weymouth with his son who was doing some Optimist training. Early on it didn't look good with a complete flat calm, but some breeze came in later on (with rain) and we got a good little sail in 10/12knots.

We tested a few things Jason had been playing with recently and then did a boat swap before heading in. After getting over how different our leg lengths are, I settled in to sail a Prowler again, and was taken back by how much bigger a boat it felt compared to my skimpy little hull!

I think that will be the last time I sail in the wetsuit in the UK. Reports of snow around the country today, so Winter is here. Time to play in the workshop until its time to go to Miami in Jan!... (Any Mothies out in Miami yet?)

Cat Petition

Following the recent ISAF decision to drop the Multihull disipline from the 2012 Olympics the catamaran world is already up in arms. There is a petition set up online by the UK Catamaran Racing Association:

"Allow the multihull to compete in the Olympics"
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/multihullinolympics?e

Dropping the fastest class currently in the Games is unlikely to help make the sailing event in Weymouth a spectacle. It is a tricky call though, and I expected a series of petitions by whatever class got kicked out. Everyone has got too settled with the current classes, and it all really needs a bit of a shake up.

Interestingly nobody is complaining about the loss of the Yngling! Surprise surprise! Finally a good decision by ISAF.

Hot of the press.....

The ISAF Council meeting is going on at the moment, and it looks like they have just dropped the Tornado and Yngling as Olympic classes for 2012, and included Womens match racing.....

Interesting......

Email Notice.

I've just checked my spam inbox for my Gmail account and found quite a few emails that were not spam. If you have emailed me recently and I've not got back to you please try again.

Broadband Up and Running!

I've finally got my broadband internet connection sorted at home so I can get back up to speed with updating my blog.

I'm currently helping out film a sail and rig tuning DVD for the RYA so long days at the moment, but plenty of Moth news to update on here shortly.

2.4s in Weymouth

From the RYA press release by Lindsey Bell:

RYA National Ranking Series winners crowned at Weymouth.
The RYA Olympic Classes National Ranking Series drew to a close this weekend, with both seasoned campaigners and young guns clinching victories after the final event of the three-weekend Series at the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy (20-21 October).

The 2.4mR class missed out on the two previous Series events due to a clash with the IFDS World Disabled Championships in Rochester, USA, but they were in action for this final event this weekend. With racing open to disabled and able-bodied sailors, Skandia Team GBR’s 2.4mR coach Adam May took the opportunity to race against his charges Helena Lucas and Megan Pascoe, and clinched victory with four wins from the six races – Lucas finished second with Pascoe in third.

For results from the 20-21 October event, visit www.wpnsa.org.uk



I'd talked about sailing in an open meeting for ages, but timescales and boat logistics had never quite allowed it. Fortunately this weekend worked out nicely. Helena's second boat had just come back from the USA, and we'd been based in Weymouth all week for a squad camp.

I was slightly nervous as I've only done a little bit of tuning in a 2.4, and a few practice races. Helena got the march on me in the first two races, but I managed to get it all figured out eventually. I was vulnerable downwind, as I wasn't very used to the angles downwind, but managed the shifts okay upwind to gain more upwind than I lost downwind. I won the remaining 2 races on day one, and then the two races on Sunday, but it was much closer racing than the scoreline suggests. I often managed to make my biggest moves on the final beats of the three lap races.

So I might have to retire from my 2.4 sailing and remain in the coach boat now! It was very fun close tactical racing though, so I'm likely to be tempted back for more. I learnt a lot from the weekend, and it was great to sail against my squad sailors, Helena and Megan. I picked up a lot of things from actually racing them.

Back in the UK

Just got back from China, where I couldn't access my blog or any others that run a .blogspot account actually. I'll do a full update soon, once I've caught up with everything. Great trip though and we even got to do the Great Wall of China on the way home!

F27 Cruise Photos

C Wings

C Class

A foiling C Class Cat. But the event is currently being led by its more 'conventional' sistership. The foiling boat is yet to be perfected, and actually had the foils cut off tonight!

More photos and a full report soon, but I'm going to do the return trip on John's trimaran to Kingston tomorrow as the sail over was so much fun.

Toronto

I'm now in Toronto to watch some of the C Class Catamaran Championships. I sailed down here from Kingston at the other end of the lake with an old Tornado friend of mine John Curtis in his F27 Trimaran. It was light and upwind most of the way and we covered 170nm in 26hrs! Great fun though! Loads of photos coming soon. (Internet access on the boat from the club, but no battery life left!)

IFDS Worlds Day 1

Only 5knots of breeze and slowly dropping resulted in only one race for the 2.4's today at the IFDS Worlds. The practice race was abandoned yesterday after a period of 20k overnight had built up quite a large swell. There was still a fair bit of swell left over today, and it made for a hard race in the dying breeze. Helena Lucas finished 2nd, and Megan Pascoe finished 4th.

Niagra Falls

Having had a very productive week of training here in Rochester we took the opportunity to take a day off yesterday and go over to Niagra falls which was only a short drive around Lake Ontario.

It really is very impressive, and an incredible sight up close. We did the 'Maid of the Mist' boat tour, and have the trendy blue ponchos to show for it!