Wednesday 15 April 2009

I cant wait for the weekend to begin!

On Easter Sunday Niki and I got out for a play. The wind Gods tormented my soul with zero wind and Niki enjoyed reminding me that he had just had 2 days of great sailing in 10-15 knots in 25 degrees air temp. I may be an cynical old Bastard but rather embarrassingly when it comes to the first flight of the year I behave like a 10 year old kid at Christmas. So when the wind came in: "The teasing was over and Father Christmas does exist after all!" and I panicked to get out there ASAFP.


We drag raced upwind and downwind and I got my foils nearly set up right. (Still flying too low but could not undo cable adjustment lock nut with teeth on water). Now that I can dial off lift on the rudder Flashheart is much easier to sail downwind and I could almost imagine being able to get downwind in 25 knots. It seams that too much rudder lift results in the main foil and rudder fighting each other until the rudder wins and you nose dive. I have done far to much of that so I am sticking to my no lift on rudder is less traumatic theory for psychological comfort at least.


Flashheart is looking good and you can not see the curtains at 15 plus knots. The wand is no longer as close to the middle so for the first time I notice that Port is lower Starboard is higher. Have to do something about that at some point. The paddle has not been hacksawed off yet so that is not too bad.


I would like to be nice about this but after the: "Die Letzte 2 Tag war perfekte Segeln Doug. Du solte dabei sein. Heute kommt keine wind." The gloves are off, so here is a picture of Niki in one of his better gybes, (or maybe it is a tack it is hard to tell...)

I was facking good. Or at least the lack of ruder lift meant that I did not nose dive mid fack. I still have a lot of work to do to get the out of fack bit right but in light winds it was fun. However I tried to do this is a gust of wind and it reminded me that foiling and tacking normally results in a painful disaster, where if you do not capsize and can sail out of it sitting on a different side of the boat it was a good one.


Ok I feel bad now so here is a picture of Niki in control.

Bloodly great day and a great weekend. On Easter Monday the Pirate School navigated their commandeered Laser all the way to the Island with the one tree in the middle of it. I have never been that far out on the Lake in a Moth since Tomahawks wingbar broke. The lake is amasing you can almost not touch the bottom of it now that there is so much water in it.

Out here in Austria when we go Moth sailing we may not have all the very latest go-faster goodies. But now that I have read that all the fast guys sail with them I have ordered a set of foil bags. What we do have now is Sun and Water and wind gods. So I can't wait for the weekend to begin!

(I would embed the song link because it is well worth watching, but I do not want to develop (or steal, depending on how you want to look at it) other Moth sailors ideas (unless it makes my boat go faster)).

1 comment:

Tom said...

Great post Doug - Flashheats looking awesome! Loving the flat foiling, and the hyde rig looks good too. Partiularly like the rear three quarters shot.. roll on the euros!