Amongst the swearing at bloody camber inducers on the beach last Saturday I had an epiphany. I am not sailing the new boat at the worlds. This is a decision that I think is definitely the right one, and it is a decision that I started to make, two years ago…

When I went to Geelong, I was rushing to build a competitive foil package. The new foil that I worked on for months before had some serious flaws that I needed to resolve during the event leading to a depressing regatta.

Well I am not doing that again.

My worlds (and Nationals) goal is simple. Finish in the top 49% of results, and even that will be hard. That will require beating Mach 2′s and generally getting things right 99% of the time and being consistent with no alphabet. At the last regatta that is what I aimed for as well. I beat my current benchmark (Phil), but I am still yet to do it honestly and convincingly on the course.

My current ride, is a very different beast to what I sailed at the states. Sure the foils and hull are the same, but the setup is different and the rig is completely new. I can now point upwind with speed, and the boat is a comfortable as a lounge chair.

I am sailing better than I have in a long time, and want to keep up the momentum towards the worlds.

That means getting out of the shed, and sailing SIRs instead of boat building.

What really made me decide was being hour late to the start on Saturday. All in all I hit the water a full two hours later than I normally do.

Why …

New bits. I spent the morning putting new bits on the boat, so I was late to rig and late to the start, by an hour when all the cams decided to pop off and then break a batten or two.

So at that point I decided. If this is what happens with the old boat, and a new rig. I am not going to have another Geelong with a new hull that needs to be sorted. The only bits I will build now will be things I can bolt on, and remove if they don’t work.

Decision made.

And I feel really good about it. Now if only I had decided that BEFORE I had to pay a $100 SIRs late fee …

Now that Adam’s thoughts are up and available for the world in the latest Mothcast I thought I should share my honest opinions on the subject.

Give the wing a fair run

The idea of wings is completely within the ethos of the class in-fact, rule #1 almost demands that it is allowed

“The International Moth is a single-handed development class boat. The intention of these class rules is to give the designer and builder the fullest liberty in design and construction, within these rules to develop and produce faster boats.”

So I think that we should give wings a fair run, say 2 years of development and racing and then re-visit the subject and decide if we want to ban them or let them continue. That way we still have the option to “close the door” if we like, but we can still give them a fair go.

How big is that wing, anyway ?

Having said that there are a number of interesting aspects to our rules, such as different “sail sizes”, depending on a bolt rope, pocket luff or sail on a wing mast.

As you an see in the above diagram we essentially have three different sail sizes: bolt rope, pocket luff and wing mast.

The current state of our rules puts the wing in an enviable place where it can fully exploit the 90mm allowances for mast and boom.  So far, the “gentleman’s agreement” has prevented a wing that is 8.5m2 being built, but why should it?

In a development class it is our job to push the rules as far as we can, leaving no speed on the table. I think that. John Harris made a great point in his comment about the last Mothcast, in the spirit of open discussion on the subject.

“My interpretation of this is that Adam has exploited the rules to build a wing that has the potential to render every current rig uncompetitive or at least mean that people who want to be competitive will need both a wing and a soft sail rig. But then he says it would not be right for anyone to exploit the rules any further than he has. Further he says that it would not be right for anyone to build a wing out of better/more expensive materials than he has. So exploit the rule but only to the arbitary line in the sand that he has chosen? Sounds like having one’s cake whilst also eating it to me.”

This is why we need the rules to be clarified ASAP. If we decide to tidy up in this area, then the simplest way is to make the rule 8.25m2 true area, including the pocket and the area of any wing mast,  and an enclosed boom comes off the area as well.

One slot or two?

The way the rules are currently being interpreted is that there is a mast, and the flap is a sail, restricting us to a single slot. I have no opinion either way, but is that what we really want to restrict. Does anyone care if we have 2,3,4 or 5 element wings?

Hard and soft

Does everyone want to have a hard AND a soft sail, or sails? Do we really want to add $10k to the cost of the boats?

If we decide not to ban wings, then we should move to control cost.  There are a number of ways we can do this. We could limit materials, i.e. No high modulus carbon,  nomex etc. Nice on paper, but in reality these types rules are essentially impossible to enforce.

The other way is a run what you brung, one equipment rule. After talking with Adam about it on the show, I have devised a way so that we can have our cake and eat it too.

The rule  idea simply is that any boat that is in the top say 60% at a regatta is not allowed to use more than one mast and soft sail combination or one wing ( with no option to swap to a soft rig) and one main foil and one rudder.

Exceptions would be for gear breakage, with approval from the race committee on the same day that the breakage occurred before or after the change is made.

This would let the guys down the back chop and change, but the guys up the front are restricted.

Thoughts ?