With one day left ( 2 regular heats plus the all important “Medal” race) here is the “lap chart” showing overall progress of all competitors heat to heat.

Heat numbers are across the top, current regatta placing on the left axis.

Back in March 2010, I blogged about how my performance had improved around the course in 12 months.

I though that it would be interesting to dust off that old post and add a polar from the recent 2013 Nationals.

Now yes, this comparison is flawed as the sea and wind states are different, but it is still a good visual indicator as to how the boat has developed and and my sailing has improved over the last 5 years.

The blue is 2009, green is 2010 and red is Jan 2013. The scary part is that I still have a long way to go to improve.

After six month hiatus after destroying my wrist at the Belmont worlds, I had some time to reflect and re-focus on my sailing goals.

I am a club racer. I don’t have the time available to compete realistically at the top end of the fleet, so I should focus on my sailing accordingly.

I am not getting a new boat for the next few years, so I need to focus on getting as much performance out of what I have available.

1. The last few regattas have been dominated by alphabet, this needs to stop.
2. I still loose time through silly boat handling mistakes and poor tacks. This needs to stop.
3. Luckily these goals all point in the same direction, well sort of.

Trim

I jumped on the scales 3 months out from the nationals and saw 95 KG. Definite room for improvement here, in the 90’s I was around an 80 KG mark. Thanks to some bloody hard work I turned up at the nationals at a fighting fit 83 KG. This is still 3 KG away from my target goal of being 79.9 KG.

I can confirm that moth sailing is a lot easier when:

1. You have 12KG less to carry through the boat on every tack, and
2. You can take off earlier because your all up weight is 12KG lighter, and
3. You are a lot fitter and can survive 4 races a day.

Tune

My boat is finally now ready for the Belmont worlds !! I am still running essentially the same package I was then, with three main differences.

1. Another wand that removed any sideways slop, and a different take off point that counter-intuitively reduces flap movement once up and running, but maintains high movement during “takeoff” and “landing”.
2. A new longer, symmetrical rudder that I have spoken about in previous posts.
3. Tweaked foils, but not cut down.

So nothing major … but … the devil is in the details. The length of one rope determines if I can sail downwind in chop or not. The length of another being wrong can destroy my upwind performance ….

Tuning has increased the performance of Teknologika considerably since she first launched. Pre Belmont, whenever I put the GPS on I never saw a 20+ number downwind. Now I am operating well in the 20-25 range downwind, dependent on breeze and angle. I also know that my downwind technique still has a lot of room for improvement, which is something I can still work on.

Time

Unlike the semi-pro’s most of us have a limited amount of time that we have available to spend on moth sailing and boat work. How this limited time is allocated becomes really important. I now have a standard club race day “plan” which basically allows for 1 hour boat prep and rigging, a 1 hour morning practice, half our lunch break then club race. This has increased my sailing time on the water by about one third, and works well to combat the advantage of the mid-week sailor.

Each time I head out now, I try and have a plan of something to achieve on the water. It doesn’t always work out, but it might be something like trying a new rudder angle adjustment or focus on improving something that I know I am bad at (which is pretty much everything).

I try and apply the motorsports testing mantra of “one change at a time”, so I can feel exactly what is going on. Having a speed puck also helps with some real time feedback. There is nothing like having a session and adding 1 knot of upwind pace and 2 knots downwind in 30 mins.

Alphabet

I have changed how I attack boat maintenance, and it served me well for the Wangi nationals. I managed to only have a single alphabet score, which was dropped, so for the first time I can remember, I managed to not carry any alphabet in my final score. The one DNF that I did have was a pro-active retirement when I discovered a crack under a wing U bolt on the heaviest day’s sailing after the second race, before the third started. I decided that fixing a crack on a boat that seas 100% together would be a lot smaller job than fixing a missing corner and broken win bars.

As it turned out, the the structure under the wing was fine (once I dug in there with a Dremel to check), but it was only a quick, minor repair, which is the kind I like.

Results

Overall, my “race” at Wangi was to be the “best of the rest” of the St. George Sailors. Translated that means to be the first non Mach 2, Dave or Luka. As it turned out, that is exactly where I finished, and I really enjoyed racing the other St. George boats in the pack, and regularly beating boats that I hadn’t beaten around the course at home on the river.

My best result was in the invitation race where I finished just ahead of Tassie. Other highlights were out sailing Emmett Lazich upwind into a top mark, (as a kid this guy used to lap me low-riding).

Every Mach 2 that I beat, on any point of sail brings a smile to my face, as it highlights that I am punching above my weight, and these days, I’m not so heavy.