Monthly Archives: November 2008

Another St. George interclub blown out ?

Posted on by
3

Well Phil hoped that last weekend’s 40knots would mean this weekend we would have good conditions, instead of the usual 25+ that we get for an interclub heat.

According to the current forecast, it looks like we will be blown out once again:

Saturday Outlook: Wind: NW 20/30 knots ahead of an early SW change 20/30 knots.

Fingers crossed that the forecast changes in the next 36 hours.

Update (Friday PM): The forcast is now a little better, depeding on how you interpret “later”

Saturday: Wind: NW 15/25 knots ahead of a SW/S change 20/30 knots, easing to 15/20 knots later. Sea: 2 to 3 metres, abating. Swell: NE 1 to 2 metres.

Does Twitter have a place in the Mothosphere ?

Posted on by
1

I don’t know if many of you have heard of Twitter. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about it.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service, that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as TwitterFon, Twitterrific, Feedalizr or Facebook.

Essentially Twitter is somewhere between instant messaging and bloging. The main question that I have though is: “Does something like Twitter have a place in the Mothosphere?” or is it only something for the truly geeky ?

If you want to follow me on twitter, you can do it here.

No Olympic moth

Posted on by
Reply

Well you can cheer or cry, depending on your point of view, but there will not be a moth in the Olympics any time soon. The ISAF meeting in Madrid has concluded and the following equipment was selected:

Ballot 1: Women’s Windsurfing – RS:X
Ballot 2: Men’s Windsurfing – RS:X
Ballot 3: Women’s 1 Person Dinghy – Laser Radial
Ballot 4: Men’s 1 Person Dinghy – Laser
Ballot 5: Men’s 1 Person Dinghy (heavyweight) – Finn
Ballot 6: Women’s 2 Person Dinghy – 470
Ballot 7: Men’s 2 Person Dinghy – 470
Ballot 8: Men’s 2 Person Dinghy (high performance) – 49er
Ballot 9: Women’s Keelboat Match – Elliott 6m
Ballot 10: Men’s Keelboat – Star

There was a significant debate about the 29er XX vs the 470 for the women and can read the full story here sailing.org news article

Oh what a difference some vang makes

Posted on by
2

I mentioned a couple of posts back that I thought changing my vang strop lengths had improved my upwind speed. I finally got around to fixing up my GPS (soldering was required) so I could download the data from last week, and the polar diagram really tells the story.

VangDifference.png

You can clearly see that the effective tacking angle is much narrower (the red is before the change and the green is after). The average and maximum speeds, and VMG are all much higher. This is because I am now able to point high and foil instead of needing to low ride if I want to have any chance of actually making the windward mark.

The total adjustment was to shorten the top vang strop about 50mm. This really goes to show that the smallest thing, if incorrect, can make a huge difference. It also highlights the size of the hill you have to climb when you reinvent the wheel yourself.