Heat numbers are across the top, current regatta placing on the left axis.

News Story.

I though that it would be interesting to dust off that old post and add a polar from the recent 2013 Nationals.

Now yes, this comparison is flawed as the sea and wind states are different, but it is still a good visual indicator as to how the boat has developed and and my sailing has improved over the last 5 years.

The blue is 2009, green is 2010 and red is Jan 2013. The scary part is that I still have a long way to go to improve.

I am a club racer. I don’t have the time available to compete realistically at the top end of the fleet, so I should focus on my sailing accordingly.

I am not getting a new boat for the next few years, so I need to focus on getting as much performance out of what I have available.

1. The last few regattas have been dominated by alphabet, this needs to stop.
2. I still loose time through silly boat handling mistakes and poor tacks. This needs to stop.
3. Luckily these goals all point in the same direction, well sort of.

Trim

I jumped on the scales 3 months out from the nationals and saw 95 KG. Definite room for improvement here, in the 90’s I was around an 80 KG mark. Thanks to some bloody hard work I turned up at the nationals at a fighting fit 83 KG. This is still 3 KG away from my target goal of being 79.9 KG.

I can confirm that moth sailing is a lot easier when:

1. You have 12KG less to carry through the boat on every tack, and
2. You can take off earlier because your all up weight is 12KG lighter, and
3. You are a lot fitter and can survive 4 races a day.

Tune

My boat is finally now ready for the Belmont worlds !! I am still running essentially the same package I was then, with three main differences.

1. Another wand that removed any sideways slop, and a different take off point that counter-intuitively reduces flap movement once up and running, but maintains high movement during “takeoff” and “landing”.
2. A new longer, symmetrical rudder that I have spoken about in previous posts.
3. Tweaked foils, but not cut down.

So nothing major … but … the devil is in the details. The length of one rope determines if I can sail downwind in chop or not. The length of another being wrong can destroy my upwind performance ….

Tuning has increased the performance of Teknologika considerably since she first launched. Pre Belmont, whenever I put the GPS on I never saw a 20+ number downwind. Now I am operating well in the 20-25 range downwind, dependent on breeze and angle. I also know that my downwind technique still has a lot of room for improvement, which is something I can still work on.

Time

Unlike the semi-pro’s most of us have a limited amount of time that we have available to spend on moth sailing and boat work. How this limited time is allocated becomes really important. I now have a standard club race day “plan” which basically allows for 1 hour boat prep and rigging, a 1 hour morning practice, half our lunch break then club race. This has increased my sailing time on the water by about one third, and works well to combat the advantage of the mid-week sailor.

Each time I head out now, I try and have a plan of something to achieve on the water. It doesn’t always work out, but it might be something like trying a new rudder angle adjustment or focus on improving something that I know I am bad at (which is pretty much everything).

I try and apply the motorsports testing mantra of “one change at a time”, so I can feel exactly what is going on. Having a speed puck also helps with some real time feedback. There is nothing like having a session and adding 1 knot of upwind pace and 2 knots downwind in 30 mins.

Alphabet

I have changed how I attack boat maintenance, and it served me well for the Wangi nationals. I managed to only have a single alphabet score, which was dropped, so for the first time I can remember, I managed to not carry any alphabet in my final score. The one DNF that I did have was a pro-active retirement when I discovered a crack under a wing U bolt on the heaviest day’s sailing after the second race, before the third started. I decided that fixing a crack on a boat that seas 100% together would be a lot smaller job than fixing a missing corner and broken win bars.

As it turned out, the the structure under the wing was fine (once I dug in there with a Dremel to check), but it was only a quick, minor repair, which is the kind I like.

Results

Overall, my “race” at Wangi was to be the “best of the rest” of the St. George Sailors. Translated that means to be the first non Mach 2, Dave or Luka. As it turned out, that is exactly where I finished, and I really enjoyed racing the other St. George boats in the pack, and regularly beating boats that I hadn’t beaten around the course at home on the river.

My best result was in the invitation race where I finished just ahead of Tassie. Other highlights were out sailing Emmett Lazich upwind into a top mark, (as a kid this guy used to lap me low-riding).

Every Mach 2 that I beat, on any point of sail brings a smile to my face, as it highlights that I am punching above my weight, and these days, I’m not so heavy.

Then back in April last year Karl asked …

Karl on April 3, 2011 at 10:52 am said:
What ever happened to this project anyway?

History is history, and it’s not my story to tell. The story I can tell is that last weekend, after a shitload of hard work by Dave, he sailed this on the weekend at Sail Sydney. It looks gorgeous, and I couldn’t resist taking some photos.

I love the paint job.

The GoPro is quickly becoming a must-have piece of performance analysis equipment, mine has been getting more and more use lately.

★

t’s the difference between hitting a tennis ball against the wall vs playing a real tennis match.

That is what it means for Emirates Team New Zealand to train against Luna Rossa.

When we’re race training against another boat, a bad gybe or tack cannot be dismissed as something that doesn’t matter. Everyone can see what it cost in terms of time and distance.

It’s not rocket science: teams training together. Olympians from different countries have joint training programmes before the games but it’s a new concept in the modern America’s Cup where paranoia runs deeper than the ocean.

Training with Luna Rossa will force us to sail better as team. Luna Rossa has immense sailing talent and their boat is the same design as ours (at least for the time being).

Some people think we are training a competitor. They don’t see what we see – opportunity. As sportsmen we have to prepare ourselves to win, then back ourselves to get the job done on race day.

An awesome post that tells us all how we should train hard with chosen partners, share everything and work towards the goal of making your “enemy”and yourself faster.

★

ETNZ’s AC72 is an awe inspiring sight. The amount of control they have achieved with no control system visible to casual observers is very impressive.

★

Now whilst this is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, I must say that for less than $100 I think it is a cheap passive safety item. I wore the helmet on top of my usual sailing cap, and I must say that I didn’t even notice it was there. Until I bumped it into the boom on a tack, and was greeted with a loud thud noise and a slight push down.

Next up .. GoPro helmet cam.

First, they can enter through an affiliation with a current AC World Series team. Second, they can purchase an AC45 and register a team. Or finally, they can apply and qualify through the Selection Series.

Purchase an AC45!! Team Sugar Daddy anyone ??

★

Heartbreaking

“The ProStart is used and trusted by some of the best sailors in the world. 7 of the 11 America’s Cup World Series teams are ProStart equipped.”

ProStarts are almost standard issue these days across the moth fleet. Valuable tool, or expensive gimmick?

★

“I won’t lie, at this stage I haven’t really got a clue as to what I’m doing. I’ve never built a plug for a boat let alone do anything more with wood than the usual DIY stuff however, I’m finding a natural affinity with it and quite fancy the idea of developing a future in being a craftsman when I retire.”

The best way to learn is to jump in have a go, which is exactly what Phillippe is doing, it’s a shame this kind of attitude attitude is becoming less and less common.

★

“We didn’t know what was going to happen with the new boat,” Slingsby continued. “When the nose went down, the wing hit and a few guys went in the water. We were unsure if the wing would snap, so we all climbed off the boat. Luckily, everyone is accounted for and no one was hurt. The wing is pretty badly damaged.”

I know first hand that it’s time in the water that does all the damage to wings. The AC organisers will need to look into how they can get these boats back upright, fast!

★

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This episode is sponsored by Regatta Graphics.

The crash helmet.

As we go faster and faster, pushing the limits of control, the changes of injury are increasing. Phil wisely chose to start wearing a kiteboarding helmet when the wind is on. Yesterday, he put it to the test.

Unfortunately, he actually impacted below the helmet line and still managed to cut himself, but as the photo shows, the helmet still hit the boom pretty hard.

So maybe we should all be wearing something like this.

Whilst I don’t think that I will be spending $500 on that helmet, I will be getting something. If noting else, it will be a great place to mount the go-pro.

So I hopped back on the boat 3 weeks ago, as sailed at the worlds. Headed upwind, no problem, then turned back downwind and thought … this setup is SHIT.

So I went back to Rohan’s original Bladerider setup guide, and made a new bell crank to those dimensions, which also required a pushrod tweak. And OMFG, I can actually now sail the boat downwind …

Bolt on upgrade #2 is Luka’s old rudder that he had built for Scalpel, but didn’t quite live up to his expectations. On my boat however, it was a bolt-on twin-turbo.

The rudder is a lot longer, and features a tweaked version of the rudder that Dave Lister designed for the Geelong Nationals. With this new rudder, in a breeze that just touched 20 a couple of times in a building swell. The boat was as comfy as a lounge chair. It also drummed into my brain, just how wrong the old big Bladerider and Prowler rudders are.

The next piece of work is an AOA change to fly the boat more ’11 style, and also a gearing adjuster is in the works.

Oh well so much for no boat work …

And the answer is pretty, bloody good. The first show to break the 1000 mark was Dave’s show, but now the new record holder is Joe Turner with 5,601 downloads !. Coming in second is the latest show with Bora and Bear managed to pull an audience of 5,164 unique downloads.

Most surprising though is that all the existing shows still get heaps of downloads with our launch show having 714 downloads since November 2010, so now even it will be well past the 1000 downloads mark.

Show advertising slots are still available, and we do accept contra deals.  :-)

We discuss their wing campaign at Belmont, why they blew up, and set a new record for the number of times we say f%#k in an episode.

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This episode is sponsored by Regatta Graphics.