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!