Thursday 13 August 2009

All you blacks look alike.

I am having a great time following the Worlds on the web it is really first class Internet Mothing going on. Well done all the people that have contributed to this.

So from the minutes of the AGM it looks like the boats are going to have more and more bloody stickers. Why oh why do we have to turn our great looking boats into a something tacky that looks like it just came out of a teenagers bedroom. Next we will be making the sails bigger so we can get more bloody stickers on them.

So if you want to make the boats look different do not make them all black. My boat does not look like any other Moth. It is about time someone says it and that is going to be me: stickers are not cool they are tacky and look crap. Fair enough to support sponsors that support our events or your campaign but lets not get too carried away.

I would prefer Moth sailing to evolve to be more races with shorter courses. This makes it more interesting and the boat handling challenge is more interesting than the sit on and ride boat speed (where who spends wins) challenge. I also think that you have to pimp your ride and that will help identify you. We already have big numbers of the sails for this purpose. Anyway I am a long way from the top ten so it does not really affect me. I do however try to collect data on boats and having the ISAF Number as the sail number is great for this.

It sounds like poor Joe is on a downer representing the death of the home build. Well Joe you can still build a competitive home build. Adam, Me, Dave, Martin, Kathrine .... have done it. Yes it is damn hard and it is a lot easer if you buy the foils (although that can be a challenge in itself). However as Martin Zäh said to me 10 days ago "You have to build your own Moth, because, well, you just do". We will probably do a new home build race maybe for the Garda Worlds :-)

If you do not have the resources to win you will not. The required resources are going up and up, so it is likely that there will always be a better sailor or someone with more cash and time. You can only compete with yourself and the Moth is a great challenge to do that. It can be a real emotional roller coaster at times but that is part of the game. This is not new it is just harder these days. Learning is fun for me and there is some much to learn about these boats.

I set my personal target to finish all the races at the Euros after 3 years of finishing half of them. I did it and this put me in the middle of the fleet. Maybe not sailing mag front cover stuff but I know how hard it is to do so I am proud of that. So Joe get the carbon out and get round the course, you are after all the leading home build, and have beaten everyone that did not make it to the start line.

With all this internet Mothing I am dead keen to get out there are sail. There is 2 days of racing this weekend at Weiden. I will probably be the only Moth racing in a handicap fleet but none the less I am in race mode.

3 comments:

Alan said...

On stickers, mostly they are just extra weight and I'd prefer to keep them to a minimum (except for the cool leprechaun head I put on my sail (old boat)). Then again, in many cases those stickers may become load bearing. The top guys are effectively handicapping themselves with all their sponsors! They probably need to leave their boats rigged during the presentation so they can look out and read all the names when thanking people.

If there is another Garda worlds and you have a home build race than I’ll do my best to participate. I’ve toyed with the idea of having a home builder prize at nationals for the best placed home built boat, however the definition of home built may have to be a bit fuzzy. I think it would be good to encourage more home builders. Seeing it’s more than just me I’ll start a thread on the Aus site see if we can get something for Belmont (or Perth).

Good luck with the racing!

chicco said...

hi my friend you've lost a great week of practice in garda!! are you coming to the italian nationals in september?

ciao

enrico

Fred said...

Great comment Doug,
we go out racing at Kühlungsborn on the Baltic sea this weekend. Goals are set. Have fun and smooth sailing!