You couldn’t ask for better conditions than we had on Friday at St. George. A good 20 knots, flat water and a great turnout of boats.

Unlike last week, we all headed out early to blast around before the start. After about half an hour, I noticed that my wand was flicking way too far forwards. After a quick inspection I noticed , the ball joint had pulled out of my bell crank. A quick trip to shore and I swapped it over for an older one I had in the toolbox, albeit with the incorrect height.

Well the comparison of the old to the new bell crank confirmed that my setting changes have definitely improved the boat significantly over the last few weeks.

Marty clocked the top speed of the day with 23.1 knots in Silver Shadow, and with my top speed at 17.6 I need to get another 5 knots of top speed to be in the ballpark with the other guys in a straight line.

This means new/updated foils are high on the winter build list, along with a new gantry and giving the boat a coat of paint.

Saturday threw up some conditions that were again less than ideal to get an accurate feel for the new setup. Conditions definitely weren’t extreme, however they were not for the faint of heart being in the consistent 20-25 knot range.

Once again the Georges River also provided low tide on a Saturday, pretty much excluding 25% of the sailable area, and making the first half of the work in a small narrow channel between the navigation markers.

With a handicap start, I left the beach whilst everyone else was still rigging, expecting to be at the line just in time for my start.

I was a couple of minutes late and managed to get a lap and a half in before the next boat had left the beach.

New setups pose an interesting problem, do you trust them ? An by that I mean first time out in a 20 knot breeze are you prepared to push the bow down, and reduce the drag then trust in the wand to keep you in the water? For me the answer was no, and I opted for the sit back and foil slow approach upwind, and the tack downwind (until I returned to the narrow channel ) approach.

Well that worked until the breeze built to 25 knots and I found myself being launched three boat lengths away in a huge get too high, then ventilate then nose plant. After that I decided that sailing low and square would be the better part of valor.

By the time everyone else had left the beach I had completed two laps as they formed up for a start, and with the breeze now a steady 25 and rain squall imminent I decided that whilst neither I or the boat were broken, it would be a good time to head back to the shore in leu of starting the whole “race” over again.

So do my setup changes work? Dunno ? I still need a 15 knot day to know for sure. The last day of the season is Anzac day this Friday so fingers crossed that it will be a good day before the boat comes back home for some winter TLC.

“F**ked if I know what will happen”

To complement the “new&quot foils on my boat, Luka and I spent this evening re-doing my setup from scratch. Rudder, centreboard, gantry, wand, linkages, flaps nothing has been left how it was on Saturday.

To be honest when we sat down and analysed the setup, we are surprised that I managed to keep the boat in the water at all.

Saturday’s forecast is 10-15knots, up from the 8-13knots last week, so hopefully, I will have some better results than I have had so far, and I can actually learn how to sail the thing correctly.