In this episode we play some on the spot interviews before the last heat of the nationals with Greg Wise, Mic Boode, Lochie Byrne, Steve Donovan, Marty Johnston and James McKenzie. We also discuss testing AOA adjustable main foils, and why they don’t work.

There is also some very interesting news from Fastacraft.

The show is up now at http://www.mothcast.net

Links from the show:

Bladerider Dash for cash video

New North sails

Velociraptor announcement
2010 Australian nationals sailing area

Sailing anarchy thread, ‘What’s next for foil development’

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podcastDowload the show in mp3

This episode is sponsored by Ful-vue.

On the Australia day long weekend my brother sailed his Hobie 18 at Mannering park. My parents were at the top mark in their yacht and caught some great footage. To quote my brother …

Mannering Park Australia Day Open Cat Regatta. There were some great examples of how to and how not to do a top mark rounding. Here are Andrew’s comments:

First we see a Taipan Vs Nacra encounter with the 5.8 victorious however he is on Port?

Next is a Hobie 18 sail number 16647, note the slick crew work dropping the traveler after the rounding.

Then is a unique moment (at the 2:04 minute mark) when a skipper is stolen from his Hobie 18 by another Hobie 18. The skipper is standing on the leeward deck of the other 18.

Well, the rumour has been confirmed, according to their site, Velociraptor are no more.

It is nice that they are offering the tooling up for sale, as many a moth mould has died over the years, including the one that we built Virtual Reality on, which was loaned out and then never came back.

Are there more moth manufacturers to follow? I hope not.

So the forecast was ugly. Since Monday I had been hoping that it would change, but no. The forecast was building to 20/30. Hopefully we would get out and get a race in before it came.

Arriving at the club, Luka and Kylie had already for a week off, and were playing around with their windsurfer. As it turned out, this was the smartest move of the day.

Dave, Phil, Andrew and I all headed out at 1:30 pm into a 18-20 knot breeze that was definitely building. With 5 mins to the gun, it arrived in earnest, and I took the gun and headed for shore, whilst I was still parallel to the club and not needing to head down wind.

Yes Dave, I was a pussy, and this is another one of those masturbatory-esque blog posts.

Anyway, back on shore I de-rigged and watched what followed.

By 2:30 The breeze had really filled in, Phil was leading Dave and then Andrew, passing to Phil the title of the fastest boat in Sydney. Then he disappeared. Andrew, then Dave arrived at the shore, with still no sign of Phil, who arrived under tow 30 mins later.

As it turned out no one finished. The funniest part of the afternoon was the debate of how strong it really was. The bets were on, Phil’s was “15-20″, Dave was “22-30″.

We grabbed an iPhone and here were the results :

Time                    Dir    Speed    Gust

07/01:30pm      NE      19       22 

07/02:00pm      NE     18       22 

07/02:30pm      NE     21       26 

07/03:00pm      NE     25       31 

07/03:30pm      NE     24       30 

07/04:00pm      NE     26       31 

07/04:30pm      NE     29       35 

grg.h.png

So the winner, Dave by a whisker, then the debate turned to “the BOM isn’t accurate …”

As for me, I got the same result as everyone else, and I get to have another boat work free week. Now If only I could get 20 hours or so in 15 knots to learn to sail the thing. At the same time if I could get some kind of setup that would be nice. Until that happens, it looks like I will be still regularly be eating Whiskas when the gauge gets on the high side of 20.

Apparently I have killed a black cat, under a ladder on Friday the 13th.

After finishing work today I decided to head down to the club for some practice.

When I left I checked seabreeze.com.au, and it was blowing a nice 10-15 perfect. I went to the club to be greeted by 20-25 … huh ? (The club is 10 mins away)

As I was going out alone, I decided against it, although if it was a club race, I would have definitely gone out. I did some work and headed home. Then cleaned the pool.

On checking seabreeze.com.au again, it had dripped back to 10-15 …

OhComeOn.png

Ok so somewhere I have pissed someone off…