Ok I have been doing a bit of digging into and number crunching from my GPS trace from Saturday to try and better understand exactly where I have improved and where I am still weak.

I think that the best place to start this is to perform a comparison to a race last year, in similar course, wind and tide conditions. The two courses used in this are slightly different, but they are close enough that the comparison will hold. First, the comparison of the polar diagrams.

Well an improvement is very evident here, with the previous race in blue and last weeks in green. You can see that anything resembling downwind bace was simply non-existent before, and I was obviously struggling to get the boat to even foil downwind. But before you all cry foul and say that the comparison is flawed as there was different wind conditions, let’s look a t blow-by blow of the upwind performance.

Ok straight line speed is similar, if not slower, however I am now sailing around 10º higher than before, which gives a much better upwind VMG. This was mainly achieved by my some rig tweaks that I blogged about here. My tacks, which still suck, suck less now, and I am loosing less speed as I do them, as shown in the chart below.

So how much faster? Try one minute faster on a 9.36 minute leg, which is, you guessed it, 10.3% faster. Another interesting factor is that I actually lapped myself when comparing the old trace to the new one. When you look at the graph below it is easy to see why. This graph shows “height” up the course, compared to time, which works really when when comparing WL style courses like we sail at St. george when the NE blows.

On this chart, the green circles are mistakes (mostly bad gybes), each one costing 1-3 mins. The blue circles are foiling gybes, and you can barley see them, which shows the huge gain to be had by clean foil gybing vs not and crashing.

This graph also shows that I lapped myself at the start of my third lap (for me in ‘09). The 3 lap elapsed time is 51 mins compared to 73 mins, which is a huge 30.2% quicker for the three laps …. fark … and there is still a long way to go.

Way back in the dawn of time, (well 2007 anyway), Rohan blogged about a 10% gain. Well today I can confirm that I got one as well, with more still to come.

I hit a new peak top speed of 22.20Knots (41.12km/h), which is 10% faster than my previous 20 knot peak. I was actually more impressed with the fact that was set against a significant run out tide, in the opposite direction so the actual speed is probably a bit higher.

So the boat continues to get better, I finished 20 minutes behind Dave, and I am really looking forwards to the states at easter.

Well Saturday’s race was held in a building breeze that finished off at around 25 knots at both Kurnell and the Airport. With a three lapper, a handicap start and a new main foil under the boat. It was always going to be an interesting afternoon.

I was a minute late for the handicap start, as I the first boards shown were for the 29 min start … doh … I ripped off the line in a nice 15 knots of breeze, and after my first tack, lead all the way around the first lap. I arrived back at the start line, after 17 mins so Dave still had 12 mins before he started … looking good.

I completed my second lap in 18 mins, passing Phil at the bottom mark after he had broken something. The breeze had built to around 20 as I headed back upwind again, the last downwind was a bit more interesting, as the breeze was still building. I rounded the bottom mark, still with a healthy (but decreasing) lead, of 1/2 a lap or so and I only had to travel back downwind 100 meters to take the handicap win.

Little did I know that my foil packer had slipped down and my main foil was flapping around in the case, and my height adjuster had broken, putting me up to full height.

As a result I couldn’t sail downwind, even with the main foil unclipped, as the boat would either submarine or fly out.

I decided that enough was enough, and headed for the shallows and dragged my boat across the finish line to take second place, as no one else had finished.

I am really looking forwards to the states ….

GARAGE SALE: out they go MANIC 1 AND MANIC 2 and unfinished 3rd boat. Well known boats, capable of beating anyone. Treat yourself to something different and stand out from the crowd. Prices depend on mast/sail/foil combos. All boats `lovingly` maintained.

So my brother and his wife have embarked on the build of a Farrier F22R Trailerable trimaran and like all keen boat builders he has started a blog about it.

The farriers use a very interesting technique where they vacuum bag on an open half mould. Andrew just made a cool video of the 2 hours laminating of one of the inner skins of the second ama.

You can follow the progress at www.andrew-mcleod.com.