What was going through my head when it broke? Nearly the rudder!

Saturday was an interesting day...

The forecast was for yet another light wind drift but there was a chance of a force 3 in the morning. So we made an early start to try to catch the wind before it died. After rigging etc a solid force 4 gusting 5 was blowing and the sun shone. Perfect Garda training conditions...

I launched and sailed out very slowly and very upright because if the boat healed too much I hit the bottom... Once far enough from land 200m I started to sit out, sheet in bear away to see if I could get the first flight in Austria.



She flew. I had her under control but I needed to really fight to keep the upper hand. After a minute of reaching I had to stop to have a rest. Wow this was hard work. I have worked on my fitness with squash and touch rugby but I need to work on my upper body strength. My arms we starting to cramp after 15 mins. This was a battle that I was not ready to fight for 6 hours so I realized that Garda is going to be hard at best.



I was not really confident to sheet in and go for it but trying to keep the power steady and the boat in a straight line. Delicate smooth and nothing aggressive. There is so much power in the rig that it was hard to use it. This is where the modern Moth floppy headed sails mush have an advantage, because they seam to lock in to the wind and provide drive for low drag rather than exponential power, and drag.



Maybe the boat is not set up right, maybe it is my technique, probably it is both. I am a long way from ready for a World Championship. However the sun is shining and the camera boat is there so it is time to show off.




FUCK.

Amazingly Kati caught this moment when the rear wing bar went. The load on the boat is much higher than in the lowriding days due to the dynamic loads which I had underestimated. A joining collar that Adam and i had improvised in the Garda boat park at the Euros 2005 had split and gone.

Waiting for rescue I had time to contemplate my situation. I was a long way from being race repaired at Garda and have one free weekend before I leave. This free weekend will be spent throwing carbon at all possible breakage points of the boat. The Garda worlds looks like a repeat of the Denmark worlds where I will not complete half the races due to boat work issues. Getting a fleet going in Austria will be hard because I am the only one stupid enough to sail on a lake shallow enough to destroy the boat. Without a fleet to train with it will be hard to ever get out of this isolated no mans land where I have to reinvent every thing. The cost per fighting minute is about the same a Concorde. I have one old uncompetitive boat, an other with the build started and a pile of expensive materials. I still need to spend a lot of cash to finish the second boat. I have a workshop fitted out for building Moths with a Monthly cost. Going to Moth Events means driving to the other side of Europe. Meanwhile others train every weekend or full time in new boats from builders who have refined their construction to near perfection. I put so much into this and I am not getting close to getting much back. I am cold I have cuts, bruises and I am about 1 km away from dry land.

Basically Moth sailing is hard and it pushes the limits. If you push the limits you have to be prepared to find them. Maybe this is where i should say stop the madness and kick this bad habit?

On the positive side I think that Kati got one of the most amassing Moth pictures. I can fix my boat relatively easily. My Garmin is one of the only water prof ones (as it was underwater for over an hour) and it showed a matched personal best of 20.4 knots. I it great fun to go an splash about and it was fun flying while it lasted. I have meet some cool people thought Moth sailing and Thanks to Martin, Niki and Kati for their support and help.

I will get back on the horse and ride again, even if it is a bucking bronco. Maybe I can learn to set her up and sail better so than I can fly more consistently upwind. Maybe then I can do a bit of racing at Garda. There are possible technical solutions to the water dept problem.

I would not miss Garda for the world, and I am looking forward to a great event and meeting up with some great people again. I think I just have to lower my expectations about competing. It is the taking part that counts as many losers say but Moth sailing is a part of me.

The Winds Gods are laughing again.

Last weekend the was a 4bf-6bf all weekend and all week the wind has been good, unfortunately I had no Moth time. Thursday was a holiday and it was blowing 5bf in the morning. Finally some flying time looked likely. So Martin and I headed to Weiden to hook up with Niki. As we arrived the wind started to drop and by the time we launched there was none.

Niki is a cat sailor so I was not expecting much light wind Moth balancing skills from him. However I quickly realized balancing is his thing as he rode 200m on one wheel of his mountain bike and showed me his model helicopter that he flies upside down...!

The wind filled in a bit and there were a few nice gusts so we all got a bit of a sail. However unfortunately there was not quite enough wind to get the boat up in the air.

Launching at Weiden was easy as it gets deep(1.4m) fast so we could carry the boat in with the foils locked in position. There is less silt so the bottom is harder. I am not sure if this is good or bad yet...



It was a fun day but that first flight since Denmark is still escaping me so my Garda preparation is about as good as my preparation for Denmark...

On the plus side it gave Martin and Niki enough practice to are able to sail around in light winds with no real problems so they should be able to control the boat when the wind Gods stop pissing around. Of course I am back a work today and there is a steady 4bf...

JPA Maven 2 Hibernate HSQL Test Database.

whatadorkiam posted exactly the article I wanted but it did not work with JPA. After some messing about I got it to work so here is HowTo set up your Maven 2 JPA Hibernate projects so your unit tests run on the test (in-memory) HSQL Database.

Why is this a good idea? Because your test database is always rebuilt for your unit tests but your configured hibernate connection for you installation is left alone. You can build the project and run all tests without installing a database server.

cat src/main/resources/META-INF/persistence.xml
<persistence>
 <persistence-unit name="MyPersistence">
  <description>MySQL Database<description>
  <properties>
     <property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class" 
         value="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver">
     <property name="hibernate.dialect" 
         value="org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect" />
     <property name="hibernate.connection.url" 
         value="jdbc:mysql://localhost/myDataBase" />
     <property name="hibernate.connection.username" 
         value="myuser" />
     <property name="hibernate.connection.password" 
         value="mypass" />
     <property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" 
         value="update" />
  </properties>
 </persistence-unit>
</persistence>


cat src/test/resources/META-INF/persistence.xml
<persistence>
 <persistence-unit name="MyPersistence">
  <description>HSQL Temp Test Database<description>
  <!-- 
      This is not good but the only way I got JPA Annotations 
      to work.  YOu have to list your Entity Classes.  :-/
  --> 
  <class>my.package.model.entities.AddressEntity</class>
  <class>my.package.model.entities.PersonEntity</class>
  <class>my.package.model.entities.XyzEntity</class>
  ...
  <properties>
   <property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class" 
         value="org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver" />
   <property name="hibernate.dialect" 
         value="org.hibernate.dialect.HSQLDialect" />
   <property name="hibernate.connection.url" 
         value="jdbc:hsqldb:mem:MyDataBase" />
   <property name="hibernate.connection.username" 
         value="sa" />
   <property name="hibernate.connection.password" 
         value="" />
   <property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" 
         value="update" />
  </properties>
 </persistence-unit>
</persistence>


cat pom.xml
  ...
  <!-- Hibernate -->
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
      <artifactId>hibernate-entitymanager</artifactId>
      <version>3.2.1.ga</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>mysql</groupId>
      <artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
      <version>5.0.5 </version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>hsqldb</groupId>
      <artifactId>hsqldb</artifactId>
      <version>1.8.0.7</version>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
    ...

Touched Up on the Radio.

Hi! If you have time to listen to Fm4 at (roughly) 13.40 today there is a short feature about touch rugby. The frequency is 103.8 and you can listen on-line http://fm4.orf.at/ if you click on "stream" right at the top of the page.



Chris has also done an FM4 Website Article

Touched Up in Munich.

Went to Munich last weekend to play our first international friendly touch rugby match. We knew we would get hammered by Munich but we needed to get some playing experience at a competition level. It was a big suprise to find we were leading 4-3 at half time. This lead did not last long in the second half when they came back and won 9-5.

Touch is great fun and this was the first match where we really had to run and run. I lasted about 4 mins on the field before I had to sub off for someone with fresh legs. A few min rest and you are back on for the next sprint. Our team was great and we worked well togther considering it was the first proper game we have played. Our defence formation got dismantled in the second half and that is where we need put some to work in. We also had between 7 and 5 players on the pitch at time due to subbing confusion but the refs we quite leaniant on us.



It was a great boost to my ego to get 2 trys from 2 interceptions, which got me my teams vote for man of the match. The interceptions were a bit of a risky move but I got lucky twice.

Munich were great hosts and it was a reall fun weekend although most of it was spent in an over heating car. I have to ask my mate who knows a lot about cars how to cool down a 1.6 estate car so it can keep up with a powerful Audi and BWM...

Another no wind Moth sail

On Saturday Martin and I had another go at sailing the Moth. Again there was not wind but at least we managed to sail about a bit more and get a better idea of the depth of the lake, which seams OK.



Getting some practice at loading transporting and unloading of the boat. It is sort of fun being a "Circus Freak".