Both Niki and I very disappointed with our show down yesterday.
The water level in the lake dropped 20 cm in the last 2 weeks. So that is 16000 * 3000 * 0.2 = nearly 10 million tons of water gone somewhere and no one seams to know where! This meant there was contact with the ground launching, tacking and nosediving.
It did not look that windy with the offshore / cross-shore wind but it was and gusty. It was too windy to tack without capsizing and we were nosediving down wind. It was 10 deg so it was also cold.
So Both Niki and I did not take long to bail out and head for shore. Staying out till something broke or got hurt seamed massachistic. We whimped out and showed that Moths are silly boats to sail. This is the wrong message to send and we should be able to sail round the course and could have had fun doing so. However it was not fun and with the boat hitting the ground regularly it could have been very expensive. If there was 10 knots less wind then it would have been easy with no ground contact, and we could have had a great day racing each other and a fleet of F18 cats.
So that was another year of Moth racing in Austria without starting a single race in Austria (half the races at the worlds and half of them at Ammersee). So next years target is to try and get local racing working. On a positive note the target of less time in the workshop and more on the water is meet this season for the first time since I started Moth sailing again in 2004.
Building a fleet here means building infrastructure too. We have the workshop sorted and nearly got the Moth trailer sorted. We have sorted the training and had a great time doing short races. We have 2 sorted boats that do not break after every sail. The next stage of Moth development in Austira is to get the racing sorted and help a bigger fleet develop.
So maybe that was the end of this season. Now I am starting to focus on the workshop and getting 3 boats in good racing condition for next season. I will then hopefully find a buyer for Tomahawk so that we have 3 boats in the area.
I am not sure if I will do the worlds next year as I think I would rather use my money for travelling locally to do events in Germany, Italy, Croatia, Switzerland and maybe even finish a race in Austria.
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Doug, if you could manage a Moth regatta at say, Lake Wallersee, closer to the boarder, there might be Germans attending. The lake is deep, the wind seems OK. We did use it for DN iceboating. No idea what the wind is in summer. Maybe we could launch from the beach at Rudi Bauers Hotel. (mmh nice food and wine) Neusiedel is definetely too far (1400km) for a weekend warrior. We HAVE to discuss the regatta schedule for Germany in the near future. Makes no sense to split fleets into small regattas everywhere. A combined effort and one heavy ranked regatta per month, spaced out over Germany (1 for Austria) would be my goal.
Totally agree with you. I need some kind of mailing list and a South Europe race calendar. So that we can team up for events.
My problem is that I do not know any events or Sailing clubs in the west. However we may be able to tag on to a Handicap events.
This will have to develop but at this stage I want to do a race in Austria before I organise a Moth open.
I hope that in the coming years a circuit will develop and there will a few nice weekends sailing each summer to look forward to.
I think we need someone to sort this out. I do not have time now but may try to do it early next year.
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