FoilTown

I made it out to Dubai on Saturday to start my final preparations for the worlds. Things haven’t been as productive as I’d hoped so far. First the plane was delayed by a couple of hours while they tracked down a water leak. It took most of Saturday to get the boat together and do a few last tweaks. The wind was blowing off the desert so it was very hot before a thunderstorm arrived that night. Apparently it only rains about 4 times a year here and it’s forecast to rain again tonight!

Unfortunately today I’ve come down with food poisoning or heatstroke or something. The result being I decided after vomiting a couple of time to not to go for a sail, when the light breeze finally arrived, and make sure I fully recover for the event. Hopefully this won’t be a repeat of Garda and I’ll get this well out the way before the start of the event.

It looks like tomorrow could be too light to sail and Tuesday too windy. Hopefully not as it would be a shame to be here for four days without getting on the water.

The boat finally went to the shippers on Thursday and is on it’s way to Dubai as I write this. Unfortunately this means no moth sailing for the time being. Luckily the Invictus team were down again with the C-Class for the weekend. I had an interesting day on Saturday looking at how the wing works in a bit more detail and we managed to borrow a rib for a while so we could follow the boat around and took some video for them.

Then today I got to have a go at sailing the boat. The only multihull experience I’ve had has been on a SeaCart; the first time was again sailing with Paul and can be seen here. I was quickly given the helm of the C-Class before leaving the harbour at the Acadamy and we were quickly able to get the boat up and flew the hull in a gentle breeze. With only one slightly hairy moment sailing through moorings when a gust hit but I didn’t have room to luff up to bring the hull down and we got some good air. Paul then took the helm to demonstrate the downwind technique. I would trapeze to leeward and walk forward along the hull so as to be able to hold the forestay to stop me swinging backwards. Then Paul came down to leeward as well to make it as easy as possible to keep the windward hull out of the water.

I was then given the helm again. We were now easily able to twin upwind. Sailing downwind was really interesting. The aim seems to be to keep the boat balancing on one hull with Paul trapezing off the leeward bow again. Not being used to sailing a multihull I was a little nervous when the windward hull stated to rise up a bit much. Capsizing with a wing rig would never be a good look. The other interesting thing was the tell tales on the leading edge of the wing. These take a bit of getting used to but seem to work very well. They consist of a group of 4 wind vanes mounted just in front of the wing. The aim with these is to trim the wing so that the air flow on the leeward three is round the back of the rig with the windward one flowing over the windward side of the wing.

The control over the shape of the wing is very interesting. Like the wing on BMW Oracle the camber can be controlled by adjusting the angle of the flap relative to the front element; then the flap can be twisted as well. Although this is all achieved in different ways on the two wings, the wing on the C-Class has a few gadgets then Oracle didn’t have. The trailing edge of the leading element is flexible. This flexible section is often referred to as the second element however it isn’t really another element. As the camber is increased this section gets bent limiting the size of the slot at larger cambers. The other control available on the C is the ability to twist the front element of the wing as well as the flap.

Just twelve hours now till we finally get to see the most exciting boats in the history of the America’s Cup go head to head. Do the Swiss have any chance against such a mighty wing?

30 days to the start of the International Moth Worlds in Dubai. I’m starting to feel happy with the boat now. Not that I think you will see me lead the fleet but I think I should now be in a position to get a more respectable result then at my last world championships. The new rig went up for the first time on Saturday and all seemed very good. The branding went on the sail over the weekend for a new supporter! More on that later.

32 days to the start of the F1 season. This year could go any way. With the last two champions driving identical cars neither will have an excuse this year. Another past champion teamed up with the 2008 runner up driving what looked like a very quick Ferrari in last weeks practice will both need close attention. As will returning 7 times world champion driving for last years winning team. I’m sure a few others like Red Bull will not go unnoticed this season. Can’t wait to see who will have the upper hand this year.

In no more then 43 days we should know if Frank Cammas and his team on Groupama have been successful in beating the Jules Verne Record on this their third attempt.

In 195 days the Little Americas Cup will be held in New York with several new boats in the build. The British challenger was out training in Weymouth this weekend. It was great to see them sailing well. Higher and similar speed upwind with a better vmg. Downwind it seemed harder to keep in the groove but when it was going flat out it didn’t seem too far off the moth

So there is plenty of exciting stuff going on in the world at the moment. And what virtually all of them have in common is that they aren’t attempting to make lead weights travel as fast as possible!

Just over a week after relaunching Goose and I’ve sailed almost ninety miles in her. Fifty of which was at Hayling Island over the weekend. It was great to sail against such a group of moths again. Having spent a lot of time on the water sailing on my own I found it very useful to practice sailing against other boats as well as test my pace against others. Despite sailing a four year old boat it was good to see that I could mix with a group of mach2’s even if it was in light winds.

I went for sail again on Tuesday but it was unbelievably cold. I was probably colder out on the water then I was during the Bloody Mary. After less then an hour I came in as it was just too cold. However that was long enough to confirm that the wand has geared to highly causing the boat to rise up and down over chop very aggressively. The wind was blowing about 15 knots so it was good to give the boat a test in a bit more breeze after a very light weekend.

Thursday was a bit warmer allowing me to get a good couple of hours on the water and further gain some confidence in the boat. Especially when the wind started gusting just over twenty knots. I had been worried that I hadn’t been able to foiling tack in Goose while I had been able to in Road Runner. After a bit of practice however I started to get the hang of it and managed a few good tacks.

Next up, Northampton for the weekend followed by Rutland for the Tiger Trophy the following weekend.

For a while now I’ve had two Mistresses on the go having not managed to sell the old one. Now I know that it’s normal that every year or two one should find a new younger and slimmer mistress. However I’ve had a change of heart. I’ve decided to give give the old girl another go. Assuming she agrees to a bit of surgery to bring her up to standard.
My older boat, Goose, has removable wing bars while Road Runner has fixed wing bars. So it makes more sense to take Goose to the Worlds as she packs into a box more easily. I got a new set of foils for Road Runner at the end of the summer from Mike Cooke and I’ve been very happy with how the boat has sailed since. What I decided to do was to fit Road Runners foils to Goose and go racing. The main differences will be the daggerboard case is further forward on Road Runner. However the position on Goose is only 9cm behind a Ninja so it should not be too much of a problem. Road Runner was built with a wing mast in mind and ended up a few kilos heavier. Also there has been a bit too much friction in the wand system on Road Runner so while I was fitting the foils to Goose I spent extra time removing all this friction. I’m confident that Goose should end up being as fast as the Road Runner with the current setup especially as i have a skinny mast and new sail on the way.

While most of the UK has ground to a halt with some of the heaviest snow seen in decades so to has Weymouth suffered. During the course of the day almost 1mm of snow has fallen, settling almost no where. This much snow hasn’t been seen since the last ice age when snow actually settled on Portland Bill. The snow has meant record numbers of people have actually turned up for work, not wanting to skive off work and go sailing or windsurfing.

Several schools in the area closed shortly after the snow had stopped. Presumably so the teachers could go to pub and get some skittles practice in after the Christmas break. Seriously this bit isn’t a joke the schools closed for an afternoon because of the snow which didn’t manage to settle.

After cancelling the training in Weymouth due to the forecast being too strong I headed up to Axebridge searching for a bit less wind. Unfortunately I was a little too successfully and arrived to find almost no wind. A group of six moths got on the water for a little over an hour of drifting split with brief moments of foiling. It was the first time I’d sailed against Mike since I’d fitted a set of his foils although we couldn’t really compare speed I did learn that my light wind take off wasn’t too bad.

Sitting at Axebridge in so little breeze made me worry that we had made the wrong call to can the weekend. However when I returned it was clear that the only time when it was possible to sail on Saturday was for a couple of hours after lunch and even then it would have only just been ok. I think it would have been survival conditions for all, not a productive group training session. Sunday was ballistic as it it is again now. It sounds like I should have gone to Hayling on Saturday instead but never mind.

Away from mothing I got the mini40 trimaran, that Mike lent me, on the water for the first time last week however just as i started to get her going the the steering started to behave slightly strangely which made getting the boat back to the beach a little tricky. The rudder was slipping in the steering arm Hopefully I should be able to give it a another go in a couple of days time as it looks like the wind may moderate a bit for Wednesday onwards.

Finally, having waited most of the week, the wind moderated sufficiently to allow me to go sailing. After the wind hit 72Knots last Saturday We managed to get a club race in on the Sunday in winds gusting to 25knots. The race officer elected to sail a figure of 8 course so there were no gybes. Not that this very beneficial in the moth as a foiling gybe is probably the easiest manoeuvre in strong winds. Sam did very well in the 600 and although was probably slower in a straight line eventually lapped me thanks in no small part to keeping the mast above the boat as opposed to in front of it. With these new foils I’ve found that I have to sail in a different way or else pitch pole but hopefully that’s one lesson learnt. Even if it did take me more then dozen stacks to work it out.

Tuesday morning came and it looked like this might be the only opportunity to sail all week with big breeze returning in the afternoon however when I got out on the water I found the conditions were deceptively windy with winds gusting to 28 knots Portland harbour didn’t seem a very nice place to be on your own with no rescue cover so after a couple of runs I went back. This proved to to be a wise choice as it was soon gusting 35+

After a few more days waiting Friday arrived still with strong winds but a forecast for things to drop as the day went on. I launched shortly after lunch to find winds still gusting over 20 knots but far more manageable then on the previous sail. It was good to spend some time in the boat traveling at speed to get used to what the Ninja foils are capable of. I found with the old foils the boat would really start to become uncontrollable at around 17 – 18 knots. Not a great speed for a moth in anything over about 10 knots of breeze. Now I can remain hiking even in the chop at the bottom of the harbour with the speed reading constant 19 – 20 regularly peaking at 21. Maybe not fast enough yet but a step in the right direction. It’s great that 18 now means speed up not clime to centreboard.

Any way back to winds gusting to over 40knots for the next 3 to 5 days

Ever wondered what 72 knots of of wind looks like? Well it’s a little bit like this.

So no moth sailing today or yesterday, tomorrow could be a go, with some more big breeze forecast for Monday.

We got back to the UK on Friday and spent a few hours sitting in traffic in the rain and then I woke up the next morning with a cold. Great!

Well we missed out on breaking the record but the performance of the boat was incredible. I think we hit peak speeds of over 50 knots on 7 out of 12 runs and 3 of those runs were shakedown runs. So really it was 7 out of 9. I think our best 500m average was slightly faster then the windsurfers have achieved. It’s been great seeing such a unique boat performing so brilliantly and even better having the chance to be involved in the story.

After we packed up the boat we had a few days to see some of the country. I don’t think I left Walvis bay for 5 weeks with everything that was going on. 4×4 is definitely the way to see Namibia. I think we were really lucky with the car we managed to hire. It seemed to have everything from roof tent, gas stove, tables and chairs to low speed gear box, diff lock, off road tyres and dual fuel tanks. With a car like that you can drive along the river bed for miles despite deep sand and rocks.

Now it’s time to get back to the moth and get ready for the worlds. however the list is long and the days are short.