Well it’s 2:30am as I write this but I have just finished putting my foil into mould form in Rhino. This process can be very finicky as it involves pushing one object into another, and if your surfaces aren’t 100% it will most likely fail.
Anyway it’s done now which means that we can start cutting … well actually no … we can start creating tool paths and spending a few hours on that process, then we can produce come g-code then start cutting.
Well Saturday’s race was a blow out, but following my usual pre-race sail plan I still managed to get an hour in on the water before heading back to shore when the breeze kicked up to 25+
With SIRs Sail Sydney done, my self imposed no new gear ban has been lifted and items are being put on my to-do list, starting with a new adjustable wand, which I decided to video whilst making it … enjoy.
Well the first race today sucked, the breeze was marginal for heavy weights like myself, and it was up and down all race .. official result surprise surprise a DNF.
Race 2 was a lot better, after an ordinary start I found myself at the top mark with Scott’s two previous boats, did OK on the downwind until I came in too close to the tanker …. couldn’t foil … crap.
For race 3 I capsized pre-start, but had caught the back of the fleet by the top mark, when they headed for shore, I decided to follow instead of cruising around by myself … day over.
So despite the official scoresheet I am VERY happy how the last 3 days have been, I am getting more and more speed out of the boat, and the equipment is quite competitive when it is in the groove in a straight line. The problem is just stringing a whole race together, and that will come with more time on the water.
Once SIRs is done, I can lift my self imposed “gear freeze” and I can start working on some upgrades that I have sitting in pieces in my shed, and the back half of the season and winter will now become R&D time for Belmont.
Well the racing today was short and sweet, well it would have been if a) I had gone the right way in the first race and b) my pushrod connector hadn’t failed (again).
For those keeping check the results are
Heat 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Bruce 2 1 1 2 2 2
Phil 1 2 2 1 1 1
Back in the real results, John Emonson who has not turned up is ahead of me then Phil and Marty, all based on alphabetical order of our surnames.
Al least I am not alone in the land of alphabet as only 5 boats managed to make the finish in time in heat 6, so everybody else gets some too …
Lap counting like we do at our Moth nationals is soooo much better.
So SIRs kicked off yesterday, and this regatta does its best to discourage anyone but the best from actually competing. There is one little rule
“14.2 A boat(s) failing to finish within 15 minutes, 10 minutes for 49er, 29er, Techno 293, RS:X and Moths, of the first boat to finish in its race will be scored “Did Not Finish”.”
What this means is that every race I sail at this regatta will be a DNF, or a DNC as most race committees seem to use those interchangeably. This manifests itself on the course as the race committee doesn’t even bother recording times and starts the sequence for the next race 10 mins after the leader has finished.
And that is pretty fucked.
Phil and I have started our own score, of the tfirs one through the gate on the last lap and it currently looks like this …
Heat 1 Heat 2 heat 3
Bruce M 2 1 1
Phil S 1 2 2
No matter, despite that and poor mark placement resulting in up and down races in shitty shifty breezes I was very happy with my straight line performance when it was all hooked up.