FoilTown

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.