So with the summer rolling back around, the 11-12 season is now well underway. This season for me is a along the lines of .. have as much fun as possible with as little work as possible. i.e. just turn up and sail.

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 …