A new Moth is born.

Last weekend Niki and I launched his new toy. This is the 2nd New Moth that got the launching treatment at Weiden of a bottle of bubbly. How we have moved on from a shower of baked beans...

So we sailed out into a very foggy empty lake full of extremely cold water. The water was so cold that pain was the only sensation I had on my wet bits. So the priority for me was to keep my wet suit dry and let Niki get his dry suit wet, as he was too hi on new toy fever to feel the cold.

The fog was interesting as you could not see much. I thought very cold water zero visibility and zero rescue cover. I worked out the strategy of if if I get lost I can sail in one direction hopefully till I find a featureless bank of reads and then sail along that for a few kilometres until I reach some kind of civilisation. Good got it covered so long as the wind does not die. Probably a good idea not to loose Niki because then we are both lost and have to also find each other. Good job he is just over... SHIT where did he go...

There was not much wind and the fog was very patchy. At one point it cleared to sunshine and at another point there was consistent foiling wind. However the patch of wind we did find allowed Niki to climb as high as the boat would go and stay there until I was laughing my head off and he got a worrying feeling of no control. This state (apart from my laughing) came to an abrupt end with the inevitable nose dive. That was the only real flying time we had, as by the time Niki had changed the push rod length the wind had reduced to low riding conditions again.

I had a go in the Assasin doing an on the water boat swap without getting wet. Jumped board to board which worked twice. Almost as good as the sail along the jetty and jump out the boat dry dismount at the end of the sail.

It is great to have a production boat that is not just another Hungry Tiger with foils. Build quality and detail is not in the Prowler or Mach 2 league but the price is right and the thing is a racing machine. The boat is solid and has some really nice ideas. There is real clever stuff there that makes sense which I like because it is not just a copy. Things like a gunwale hung trolley, small tramps, the wand and push rod mechanism are simple and look reliable as well as seam to work really well, the rudder looks totally mad with the horizontal being way in front of the strut, flat deck, no freeboard etc...

I helped Niki finish rigging it up expecting half the bits to be missing or not fit but it was painless. Everything was there and fitted. I was not sure about the best way to rig bits and was amazed when Niki pulled out a huge manual. This caught me off my guard and I started reading this until I came to my senses and realised that it not cool to read the manual after messing around with Moths for nearly 20 years. The only problem we had was I pulled the kicker anchor off the boom which is a very easy repair. Maybe I should have read the manual after all.

So Niki is happy and I finally have a regular training partner in a good boat again, which makes me very happy. So let the season begin. Actually that as the end of the season for me. So I can not wait for next year, hopefully it will be a good one.