Time to change the rules a bit.

I spent Saturday in the workshop doing wingbar structures, UD on the tramp lashing eyes, control rod work and centerboard re-enforcements. I also started to repair the rudder, and make the rudder stock. I can see why early foils broke at the T joint because there is loads of sheer on it. The rudder T joint has cracked bad so i feed resin it to the crack in the hope it will re-bond it.

I am loosing bad in the Build race with Martin reporting that his boat is at his mates getting sprayed and Fleix's posting pictures of several boats looking completed. My ego is now at a new low. Doug Lord hates me, I have no internet at home because the builders did not lay any bloody cables in the wall and water leaks tho the wall into my bedroom when it rains. So the Boat and Flat job lists seam to be getting longer at the moment rather than shorter despite me putting lots of effort in.

Time to change the rules of the game then and start a new race. Bora has raised the Moth blogging stakes with pictures of his blisters. Well you know when you were a kid and the big people told you to always use a knife to cut away from your body. I found out that it is good advice this Saturday when I sliced my thumb knuckle in two. Check this bad pic:



I think I win Bora.

So with Ego restored I can report on the Austria Boat show which was great. The guys from SegelWelt did great presentations about the Volvo Race and Mini Transat. This was hard core yachting and makes a change from the usual Austria marine stuff like a boat in the shape of a car, or a floating washing basket.




(Actuall the guy behind the floating washing basket was the reason I came to Vienna 14 years ago. If you think that this craft is innovative you should have seen some of the other innovations that sadly did not make it off the drawing board...)

So the stories of falling off your Mini Transat yacht and swimming after it alone in the middle of the ocean were great to hear, scary and incredible... SegelWelt had a competition to win a place in the Volvo Ocean Race but after Christians stories I went and asked for my entry form back.

Niki's Moth was hung over the SegelWelt stage and generated a lot of interest which I hope will lead to some more Moth sailors in Austria. There was also a video running and some Bladerider hand outs. More info here.

Show Time.

So after a long evening of driving, loading, rigging, cleaning and stringing up, Niki's Bladerider is hanging in the BOOT Show in Halle 5, above the Segel Welt stand. I just checked the Segel Welt website and they say they are in Halle 4, so I hope it was there stand that we hung it above. It was dark and late and everyone had gone home.... it is not our fault...

Here is a crap picture.



She does looks dramatic, and I am sure she will generate interest. She will be one of the most hi performance boats at the Show, one of the lightest and the muddiest...

So if you are going to Tulln check her out. We will probably be at the show on Sunday afternoon so come and say Hi then. With other commitments (like the build race) I am not sure if we can man the stand at other times but I hope that the interest will find its was on to the web and we can chat to people there.

In other news I got my new rudder for Aardvark which looks beautiful. Unfortunately the fucking hooligan shit heads from Fed Exp decided to use it for a month as a leaver for lifting the heavy boxes. Now that the T junction is fucked they forwarded it on to me. Mike from Aardvark has been really great and offered to replace it but frankly I want to get sailing and do not want those cunts to fuck the new one. Therefore I am going to have a bash at repairing it but the crack is deep so I hope this will work out. This is frustrating as I bought a rudder finished so that I could get sailing faster not so that I could repair stuff.

Here is an other really crap picture:



So a note of advice if you are thinking of sending foils by post: Do not. Last year I sent a lowrider rudder to the UK and that also got fucked too. They need to travel in a metal box inside a padded container or the delivery monkeys will break it for fun.

So another Moth weekend is coming up with Saturday in the workshop and Sunday at the show for half a day at least.

I fixed the IMCA database problem I had so I will set this up soon (been saying that for a while now). I hope have to have internet access at home soon so I can work on this more. The interest in the worlds is building so it would be good to do a who is coming preview again soon.

The Big Moth Weekend.

The Moth Blog stakes have been raised, by Si Payne and Karl, with their excellent writing. So I will have to try and write a bit betta with proper spelin un stuff and I should watch me bad language... Fuck that, too hard.

On Saturday I headed out the the Workshop early for a day of building. Worked on the wing-bars, finished the trolley and bogged on the tramp lashings D rings.

I weighed the hull at 9.2 KG. She is not painted yet but I think she should end up close enough to a competitive weight.



I called Niki on Saturday night to see if he had sailed despite it blowing Hunde aus Ketten. He got in an hour fighting the chop once the wind had died. He also said that tomorrow would be perfect conditions, with 18 degrees, sunshine and lots of water in the sea. If only I had a Moth, but wait a min I do in the roof of my workshop. Unfortunately I and Tomahawk were not prepared for sailing so it took 3 hours to drive around getting clothing and boat gear stuff and then I had to rig the boat from scratch. However I did it and got in just over an hour of perfect flying and fun sailing with Niki.

It was a great sail and we could to a bit of training and 2 boat drag racing, to check speed and set ups. Niki was sailing with his short foil set up and I had the full length set up. Neither of us had a problem with the water depth, and both boats seamed set up and performed well.

Sunday was a great day for me as it was the first successful day Moth sailing in Austria. (I have had 2 with zero wind and one when my wing bar broke.) We had great fun and learned lots. Judging by the crowd of interested onlookers we will not be the only Moths there for long. This is exactly what I want and finally it is starting to happen. A small group of Moth sailors could develop here and I can spend to odd weekend having great fun playing in these fantastic boats.

One thing I learnt is that my fitness need to be unproved so I am starting to play touch rugby again, as in the last few moths I have done no sport.

It was not such a good day for the fish. It is impressive to feel how many fish there are in this big beautiful natural lake but I did feel sorry for them. You know you are hitting a lot of fish when a flock of gulls follow your boat...

Eventually I got Tomahawk back to the workshop, where she will sit waiting for the next good forecast.

So I did a couple of hours laminating on Sunday night and could not help thinking that Flashheart looks like something out of an S&M dungeon...



I am looking good as we approach the windward mark of the "Build Race". I do not know where Felix is as I have lost track of where he is but Martin sent me these pics of his build. So I think I have got him covered for now.





It looks like Niki has sorted out stand space for his Moth at the BOOT Show (Austria's largest boat show). His boat is the current worlds wining boat and will make an impressive exhibit. We will hang it above the SegelWelt Stand. There should be a beamer for some Moth videos and we have to do some information posters or something. SegelWelt plan to use the Moth as a crowd puller and we will use the opportunity to get the Moth noticed in Austria generate interest and hope to get some keen guys and girls that are interested in joining in the fun. I do not know if the Austrian sailors are ready for such a boat on a stand but I will find out on Sunday the 9th of March when I will man the stand for a day confusing the Austrian sailors with my bad German and a boat that flies.

So I have got the data to set up the IMCA On-line database but now I got an issue with Apache Tiles that do not find recourses inside the chrooted host environment. This is very boring and with no Internet in the new pad it is hard to find the time to fix this. I want to get it working soon so that I can program the world event competitor preview. It is nice to see who is coming and what they are sailing but it is very time consuming collecting and feeding in the data so I want to program a self service facility for members. The IMCA website is fun to do but it does take up a lot of my time. Therefore I want to program more DIY stuff.

So with the boat show, fair whether sailing and other life stuff it looks like Flashheart will be slightly neglected. I will get another day in on the Saturday before the show and I hope I can use the Sunday to get some fittings and rope. I think i need about 6 or 7 full days to get her finished so the build race finish line is in sight.

I have to decide what color to pint Flashheart and get some kind of paint too. She was going to be red and white (very Austrian flag) but I used the red paint up on the trolley. I have gone off the 2 color idea because I want to spray her all in one hit and not mess around with 2 spay jobs and another day in the workshop. What color kite would Lord Flahheart fly? Red is out because that is the Red Barron'S color. I will leave the flying Tampax to Si Payne, so that leaves boring blue or some mad bright color. Oh the complexities of building a Moth should not be underestimated.

Nice work if you can get it.

So here is a Video of Kati hard at work...

Flashheart Progress

I got another hungover day in last sat. I spent most of it going round a great kite shop in Vienna to get the control rods and visit a chandlers to try and get some fittings.

Niki and I worked out with the wand to foil rod system and I got a few things glued down and progressed the wing bars a bit.

Here is a really bad picture of the forestay and wand mounting.



Next weekend I should get 2 days in, so I will have to stay off the beer so I can use the time.

Not too sure of the progress of my 2 build race competitors as they have gone for a blog silence tactic.

The electrician fixed the sink, which is a relief.

I am not doing the washing up again.

Motivated to get sailing

I took a break from moving flat and spent the weekend in the workshop, in an attempt to progress the Flashheart to victory in the great build race. I am now working on hull details like gantry mounts, wand mount and the mast post. The next jobs are wing bars.

I think I have made a mistake with the wing bars. I am going to do Bladerider type sweepback of the front bars to save a bit of tube. This may be cool but it makes the build of the bars much harder. I should have run them straight like a prowler and saved time but I ordered the bars and they are too short to run straight.



Flasheart is looking like the right machinery. She is developing a very aggressive functional look. When I saw the hull rendering from Adam the first time I thought that looked mad. Now with the flat deck, low foredeck and sunken wing sleeves she has a deck layout to match the hull. I should throw lots of filler at her and sand down the mountings etc… into beautiful sculptured details but that is time and weight. So I will try to find a reasonable compromise or not bother at all and save that for next winter.

I made my own wand system for fitting to Tomahawk and got it wrong to start with. However my experiments mean I have a better understanding of the system now. The new boat is also going to be a bit experimental but I think it should work OK. I am playing with the phase of the control system to give me what could be better flap movement behavior. However normally copying is better than trying to develop but this is stuff that can be modified later and playing around is fun (if it works).



Niki called me to report on a great sail he had. He tested his shortened foils and said that it flew well and he had no problems with the water depth. This is great news because although the water level on the big shallow lake is high at the moment it makes it realistic to think we can sail more often there. It also means I have to build a shorten-able system which is an extra complication however he thinks that the extra margin for error is worth the effort.

So Niki had a sunny 10 knots sail and complained that he needed a training partner. This, Adam latest on-board videos, my new wetsuit and the build race and I am seriously contemplating not brothering to paint Flashhert. I am definitely motivated to get sailing.



There is also an interesting debate that I hope will develop here.

So now it is back to a week of work and flat sorting out. Next job is to sort out the electric shocks I get from the sink and fix the washing machine!!? The shock I got moving a wall socket was probably related to some bad earth leaking current stuff that I do not understand and it hurts so I have to get someone to look at it. The washing machine I got given from a mate did not survive the transportation and flooded the bathroom… However everything else is working out and I got the official papers that prove (I think but they are in German) that I am now a house owner. This make me feel very grown up, I just wish I was not afraid of my kitchen sink.