broadland mothing...

Right. 400meters or so wide, around 1 mile long, 4ft deep, complete with navigation posts, 100 or so boats sailing around and a constant flow of tourists driving rental cruisers down the river... oh and a sail up tree lined dyke to get out onto the broad. perfect moth conditions!

Spent the bank holiday weekend up in Norfolk sailing at the Punt Club regatta, has been a couple of years since I had taken the moth up (had the shire horse (bladerider) and cookie with the V4 up previously) and figured it was time the dazzle moth came up for a blast...

-Whiteboats racing (they're all white, a class rule...)

The great thing about sailing on Barton Broad is the fact that the club sits on a raft in the middle of the broad (lake) which is surrounded by reed-beds and only accessible via a short sail up a dyke...(watch it...) River sailing in moths is a seriosley underated discipline, keeping alert for 180degree windshifts and rogue gusts ready to flip you over under the bows of a passing wherry - top training recommended for anyone serious about their mothing.... perhaps some outings on the thames...hmmn... having finally battled the dyke and reached the broad I was confronted by a very gusty westerly breeze (possibly the worst direction as you end up having to broad reach everywhere with little or no escape options for when it all goes wrong...!)

Oh and there were loads of other boats everywhere too....

-Brown Boat (they're brown, but not always...see how the classes are named around here...very sensible...)

-River Cruisers / M2 ??? ;)

Ended up hurtling around intermittently between gusts and obstacles , did finish a race but spent too much time low riding to live up to the handicap... Amazing how much faster and more lively the ninja is than the old BR (which actually felt quite manageable on the broad). Very good boathandling, future forecasting and reaction training , combined with the dykes make for a top mothing location, worlds anyone??? Amazingly didnt break anything (or anyone)...

- great all of the other boats have disappeared.....

-is it a tack or has the wind disappeared???!

Did I mention you can moor your moth on a mudweight too.....ahh the joys! oh and the brass band playing on the roof of a Wherry.... Barton regatta - August bank Holiday weekend 2012. see you there!

-Wherry , White Moth (appropriate)

Queen Mary update

Well its been another great weekends sailing on London's lake garda.  Summer has finally arrived and brought with it some breeze, 30 degrees and bags of sunshine.  On Saturday myself, Doug, Leigh and Paul got out at various times during the day.  Leigh is really getting to grips with his Ninja now and seems to have all the usual routines nailed, would be great to see him doing more circuit events.  Doug also seems to have also shifted up a gear after tuning a few areas of the boat and was going really well on Saturday until he had a disagreement with a mark which lead to a fairly spectacular capsize and some broken spars.   

Andrew is fast getting through the usual new boat issues with his FrankenNinja, even going as far as building his own adjustable wand which looks quite neat (watch out Phil!).  In between launching himself during club racing on wednesday he was looking very quick almost pulling off a few foiling tacks.  I think we'll be seeing some good things from him in during racing at Stokes.

Recently it feels a bit like the fleet at Queen Mary has been thinning out with Jon relocating his Mach 2 to Weymouth and Ben now moving back to Wales but I think numbers are fairly stable with around 13 moths at the club.  We've had a few new boats join and also the welcome return of Adrian in the legendary Nemesis, will be great to see him putting us all to shame again in the light and shifty stuff.  So all in all I think we're in pretty good shape for the Nationals and will hopefully be able to give the HISC lot a good run for their money.

I took my moth home to Torbay last weekend to sail in Babbacombe Corinthian's club regatta, the place I originally learnt to sail in an oppi (low rider).  Was great fun sailing in one of the most picturesque and shifty places I think I've ever sailed. The final race of the regatta is a pursuit race for the club's Silver Dinghy trophy which was good fun, even if I did get slightly dizzy from repeatedly lapping Tasars....The conditions were just right for the moth - 13-16 knots and flat water and fortunately no capsizes meant I won the race.  It was only in the bar when looking at the previous winners of the trophy that I saw that that its actually a fairly significant piece of UK Moth heritage having been won previously by none other than a K Ellway - designer of the Ninja!  

Some photos of from club racing at Queen Mary

The Silver Dinghy trophy, where the Ninja began? 

Moth West

finally the dazzle moth has hit the water! (about time too, a combination of work and too much sanding have been holding this back for too long...!) Headed down to Cheddar for the first outing to join the bristol crew along with DJ and Richard .

Following some intial teething problems (well, my having drilled the gantry pin hole in the wrong place...) and some rapid repair / modification at the hand of squadron leader Cookie the boat behaved beautifully now all I need to do is remember how to sail properly again.. Did manage to pull off a couple of flying tacks too...(I was perhaps more surprised at this than anything else though I think it will be a while before they will be intentional rather than fluke... )

Thanks to Darren for the pictures and Mike and Emma for putting me up and all their help with the boat. Not sure if this sums up the mood properly, perhaps a bit crass, though some of the sentiment is there, well most of it....! - video....

So, just what does a dazzle camouflage moth look like?

Well, here you go, colours are all on, though there is still a bit of fairing to do over tape lines then polishing or lacquer (not sure yet) ... nice!

Looks a bit Jeff Koons (unintentionally...) but without the weird gradients in his scheme, hope he doesn't think he owns the rights to this though too...!

the trouble with multicoloured paint jobs......

a few photos showing progress so far... (I think I could have finished a couple of single colour spray jobs by now, but where's the fun in that...)

essential ingredients for a mean paint job - battleship plans, tape, sander, marker, and plenty of tea

final layer of filler.... good colour.....

taped up...

so far two of the four colours are done, hopefully have some time next week/ weekend to get back to norfolk to get the rest finished, soon time to go sailing!

for those light wind days....

GBR update post rest day

Yesterday was a well earned rest day for the fleet after the previous day's races in what can only be described as epic conditions. Not sure what the wind speed was at times (it always seems more out there then the Aussie weather stations report), however it must have been 25+ knots in the gusts. This led to lots of action in the two fleets with many wipeouts, close calls and some not so close calls. Mikis came off the water a little battered and bruised after someone capsized onto his boat pulling him out of the back at a fair speed, there was also a guy that came off the water with broken ribs although he seems to be okay from what we've heard.

Peter Barton has perhaps had the most bad luck of the fleet after breaking two king posts during the first races of two championship days, losing 5 races in total. However I had to chuckle when he told me about his experiences on day 2 of the championship. Finding his Mach 2 a little high and sketchy downwind during the gusts he sailed into a nearby beach to change his default ride height setting remembering the often said words of a former Ninja sailor “longer for lower, longer for lower, longer for lower”. After enacting said setup change however and unsurprisingly finding it had not sufficiently lowered the ride height he decided to return to the beach to lower further, by again lengthening the rod! Fortunately he saw the error of his ways after becoming fully airborne a couple of times sailing upwind back to the starting area before heading downwind again!

In the gold fleet Andy Budgen continues to impress in his bright yellow mach 2 despite only having had the boat for a matter of months, would be great to see him on the UK circuit next year if he's back in the UK for the summer.  Jason Russell has also shown some impressive bouts of speed pulling in some good results in the breeze. Ben Paton's Ninja has had something of a radical temporary nose job, and despite rumours of some of the GBR sailors taking bets as to whether it would hold up he proved us wrong sending it round for some solid results. Mike and Simon continue to battle it out at the sharp end with the rest of us in silver enjoying some close racing.

For the rest day myself, Peter and Ben decided after doing some boat work and a few other chores to head to a local beach for a bit of a dip in the surf. Finding the beach fairly deserted we thought it must be due to the 'poor' weather i.e. windy and a bit grey and overcast. This is pretty much as good as it gets back home so after a quick change we did a bit of body surfing in the waves which was good fun. Walking back up the beach however we suddenly realised why the beach was deserted after reading a sign warning against swimming due to strong currents, bluebottle jellyfish and sharks! Oops, stupid Poms....!

So today is the penultimate day of the championship with the remainder of the series set to be pretty windy by all accounts. Here's to some great action packed racing for the final 6 or so races.

Ben doing his morning warm up routine with modified nosejob ninja.

 Ben swimming unaware of the dangers lurking beneath.

 Should probably have read this BEFORE going swimming.

 Should definitely have read this BEFORE going swimming!

 Belmont has an array of modern boutiques.  Including this nautical themed adult shop.....great place to source the booby prizes I reckon.

 Ben applying camoflage for a typical day's ninja sailing....

Killer Weed

Wing rigs, smaller rudders, new foil designs, adjustable wands....all those speed increasing innovations aside I totally agree with Matt Knowles' comments regarding the weed.  Yesterday it was pretty much everywhere and could be a real game changer for some of the front runners I suspect where the racing will be really tight.  I missed a couple of races yesterday after ploughing into some at about 9 knots shattered my twist grip on the boat......dread to think what that kind of weed could do at 20+ knots.  

Yesterday's races kicked off in a very tricky marginal breeze.  This made things interesting as the windward mark was quite close to the shore leading to many low riding and a lucky few that could get up onto the foils gaining bucket fulls of places.  Mike Lennon had a good day finishing in 11th overall in the nationals, very commendable.  Simon Payne building on his top gun quotes during the event build up decided to try and surpass this with an actual re-enactment of a scene.  Going downwind he was heard muttering call signs and screaming eject, eject, eject shortly before exiting the moth backwards/ upside down at about 20 knots - breaking his tiller extension in the process.  Impressive.  Mikis once again reproved that history can repeat itself by somehow breaking a boom (how many is that now?!)  in the marginal conditions, although I wouldn't be surprised if it was the killer weed again!  I think it was a pretty mixed day for the rest of the rest of us brits, having moments of brilliance but also many moments of just going dog slow.....although hopefully with the winds forecast to come back over the next few days this could change...

Heres a clip to give you an idea of what it was like with Ben perfectly demonstrating a new technique for Belmont - 'the Wack' (Weed Removal Tack).....

Time to build that carbon, sailor operated kelp remover for my foils I think! 

Wild

Possibly the most appropriate colour scheme for yesterday's shenanigans....

The day dawned with a light breeze so after some boatwork I hit the water to try out my new Hyde for the second time. This was to be short lived however, as soon as I lined up with a few of the Aussies my kicker blew out meaning a return to shore to re-rig.  The sail feels good although bizarrely I'm finding it much easier to tack than to gybe at the moment.

During the afternoon the breeze built to 20+ knots with an awkward chop. Myself, Ben and Arnaud decided to launch and join the others that were doing mock races. These were good fun upwind and the pack seemed fairly close. Downwind however all hell would break lose in the waves with people spilling and nose diving all over the place.

Mike Lennon had an unlucky day breaking his mast on the final tack of one of the mock upwind legs. Being a true humanitarian I sailed up to him and offered to head back ashore to fetch help (nothing to do with the conditions...). I then proceeded to capsize, pitchpoll and roll my way downwind before making it ashore to get a rib to come to the rescue. The rib driver was a friendly chap who told me that around a month ago he had spotted a hammerhead shark as he pointed at Mike who had been drifting for over an hour by that point.....a detail I thought Mike might not appreciate me sharing immediately. Rumour has it that one of the Yanks also had gear failure and was circled by a menacing shark, however this has yet to be confirmed with conflicting reports suggesting it may have simply been a friendly dolphin, or possibly the shadow of a passing cloud.

Bearing away in 30 knots (or so he claimed) Ben managed to crack the hull of his ninja just next to the centreboard casing and so returned ashore. Perhaps unluckier however was Mikis who proved that history can and sometimes does repeat itself in the moth class. Whilst foiling at some speed his centerboard horizontal decided to go AWOL and also took out his rudder as well for good measure. Fortunately, unlike in Horsens, this time it was a fairly clean break leading to no prolonged centreboard whacking in the boat park.

Today is looking fairly breezy again but at least the sun is out, hope the folks back home are enjoying the snow!

back in england...

Happy new year, just a reminder that the bloody mary is next weekend, and a couple of pictures from last year's event....

Unfortunately my new boat is not going to be ready in time, though it is nearly ready for the paintwork to begin....

Arrived in Belmont....

After a few days relaxing with friends and sightseeing in Sydney I made it up to Belmont yesterday.  So nice to unpack the boat in beaming sunshine and 30 something degrees.  Certainly beats the temperature in the UK at the moment which was -12 when I drove to the airport - definitely the coldest winter I can remember in the UK.  Good luck back home guys with the Bloody Mary!!!!  :-)

The venue itself is really great - friendly locals, flat water, extremely hot (too hot for some of us Poms) with a vast array of fast food outlets (Arnaud...).  The club follows the traditional Aussie sports club model - i.e. is well funded through pokies and other entertainment and the non-sailing locals seem genuinely interested in what's happening on the water - definitely something the UK clubs can learn from I think....

Today the weather is apparently due to change here with the winds shifting to come from the South.  This has led to quite light winds, although I've been told normal service should hopefully be resumed in a few days time.....I really hope so as I'm currently the heaviest I've ever been after having to substitute sailing for gym work due to the weather...

In terms of spying on innovations I havent had a great deal of time to look around.  Hats off to the guys that brought wingsails - very impressive speed out of the box from what I've been told and although they may not be using them all the time for a first iteration they seem very quick.  The new mach 2 booms also look very smart.....

Ricky - thanks so much for your hard work getting the boats out here - we owe you big time.  Looks like everything went really smoothly.

Phil - you post one more shark article on your blog and I'm bringing one back in my travel box to throw at you at the next open....!  Either that or a bluebottle.