Redefine Average

I only know what I see on the Internet so I may have misunderstood Rohans announcement the wrong way.. However it is sad that he no longer wishes to be involved with the Moth class. Rohan has done a lot for the development of sailing Moths and for the IMCA. It is hard at the best of times to mix business with pleasure and it looks like it proved too hard for Rohan. Good luck Rohan and I hope to see you back in a Moth having fun again some day soon.

His departure puts Bladerider, and the Moth Class in a vulnerable position and kills off any attempt to make a business model of "Moth for the masses". If Moth sailors only buy the same boat that the World Champion won in then there will only be one builder at a time and the boats will be very very expensive.

Buying the boat that won is not the same thing as buying the boat that is going to win next time. I suspect that if the average sailor spent less money on gear and more on sailing time they would do much better. However this idea obviously does not sell boats and that leads to a lot of pressure that can not be fun.

So are we going to see a new one design Bladerider or peoples foiler? Will the IMCA have to compete with this new class? Will the Moth have a reduced number of builders and be more and more expensive and elitist? Or will there be even more builders, events, choice and number of average sailors?

Who knows what the future will bring but Moth sailor spending will shape it.

My cooperate strategy is clear:

1. Sail, sail, sail and have fun sailing.
2. Try to build a local team so fleet racing happens more than once a year.
3. Do not play the who spends wins one desgin game.
4. Build a new boat if it is fun to do so.

First Austrian Moth Event

It really great to have Niki pushing me. He is waiting for his Assasin to arrive and sorting out training for when it does. So the first Austrian Moth Event will happen on the 2nd to 4th of October.

It will be a fun weekend at the lake and we will do a mix of Try a Moth, fun flying, short course racing training, small regatta and Partys. So there should be something for everyone. So far as far as I know we have 6 Moths and about twice as many sailors. There will always be at least one demo boat available, so everyone should get a go.

We will also set up some short windward leeward courses for playing chase the leader. The rules will be something like the leader has to tack and gybe at least 3 times per leg and the last boat can take a short cut so that racing is always close.



We have support from Yacht Club Weiden so we will have on the water rescue and Start boats. Some good sailors from Weiden have kindly volunteered to help run the racing too.

It is a three day event so the wind should cooperate at some point at least. In October it is very unlikely that there is no wind but there could be lots of wind. I will probably have some windsurfing gear that can be used there if it blows all weekend.

There will also be plenty beer if you still are not convinced.

If you want to come then let me or Niki know and we will try to sort you out with accommodation etc... More info here.

So hope to see you there,

Doug

Certainly NOT as cool as 40 year old Operating System Design.

Unix is 40 years old and it is still the coolest thing in the computer industry (If you are still using Windows then it is time to learn about 40 year old Operating System design that has become the basis for all proper modern systems). I think that at the moment Apache is the best software manufacturer but Google are becoming a close 2nd. I have been playing with Google Maps and it looks like it is working OK. It was a lot of fun to do, so please have a play.

Events
Worlds
Euros
British
Austrian
...

The search criteria is all events that started less than a year ago and all Worlds and Euros. I do not have a complete set of data but I have a good starting point.

You can reuse this on National sites or your blog or TwitFaceSpaceBo.com...

So what about a map of the moth fleet. If a number of people are prepared to log in and enter where they sail I can make a map of active members. You will have to be a member to get on the map because that is the easiest way to stop SPAM, and clean out old data. I am not sure if that is a good idea, so what do you think and what do you want mapped?

Nearly Cool

I played with Google maps to get a dynamic map of Moth events, and it worked great from Austria for a while, but after I deployed it to the UK based (I think) server it becomes a virus.... I even did the old change your nationality trick so I could try to re-register as British with the help of a ssh tunnel:

ssh imcaadmin@www.moth-sailing.org -L 8087:maps.google.com:80

but it is 1am and I am too drunk and stupid to work out the parameters for the isVirus(); method.

So instead of Bloging about a cool new feature that will make the Mothsphere virtually better I am Bloging about my geo queries getting HTTP 404:



Which means it does not work.

Train spotting

I have updated data from scott and other sources for the Euros:
http://www.moth-sailing.org/europeans/2009_dk.xml
and Worlds:
http://www.moth-sailing.org/worlds/2009_us.xml

Anyone have any corrections additions or CopyRight free pictures of of each boat?

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.

Walchensee

The 1000km round trip was worth it. I had a great weekend at Walchensee.



I finally found some upwind speed by adding more purchase to the downhaul. I got in to 2nd position a few times, the lead on occasion and nearly caught Sven in the last race. A bit of Moth racing and I have learned lots and really had fantastic fun on the water. This was the first time I can actually say I was racing rather than sailing. It was a lot of fun and there is lots to learn. I am very proud to have finished a 4th in the fleet of 12 boats.

Thanks to Daniel and Segelculub Walchensee for an excellent weekend.

More here.