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!